Well, hello. It's been ages since I've last posted, which is kinda counter-intuitive given the number of fun exciting incredible stuff I've been up to these past few weeks. Past few months, in fact. I decided that I'm finally going to unload the BoB (Best of da Best) Storiez of my Christmas trip too. Lest I forget. Pictures are one things, stories are another.
Flew into Eindhoven and spent a couple hours there, finally decided it was time to leave for Amsterdam, so off I went. 3 hours (or so) later, I woke up and realized I'd reach the final stop on the route, Alkmaar. Yep, had overshot Amsterdam by roughly an hour. In my first act of criminality of the trip (hinting at loads more to come, you have no idea,) I pretended to sleep on the train again until it bounced its way back Amsterdam. Successful criminal endeavors: 1!
Amsterdam was beyond amazing, no one had told me it was supposed to be pretty, but it was. Picture perfect canals, fantastically lopsided buildings etc, I was proper loving it. It's gotta rank among my favourite few cities in the world! (pretending to sound like a seasoned traveler.) No weed, because no. Yeah, I'm not that keen on tripping out, I guess. limahkow was probably pretty damned pissed at me after the 48127th time I got us both lost cause I eschew maps, not to mention my compass was pointing in the wrong direction, something I only found out in Belgium somewhere..... Sorry buddy, and thanks for accompanying me to Amsterdam! Most romantic boat cruise of life, sandwiches, apple juice, ym falling asleep... Perfection.
Went to Rotterdam after, cause I wanted to go to Kinderdijk as suggested by ym's cousin. Was supposed to stay the night in Rotterdam but foolishly booked my hostel in Bruges for the night I was supposed to stay in Rotterdam, so I had to rush things something mighty. Finally reached Kinderdijk in the afternoon at about 3, which was a little windmill farm really, with something like 20 windmills? Absolutely picturesque. Was a tiny place, but I decided to wait out the sunset in the hopes of taking a glorious picture of windmills in the dying light of the sun. Was not to be, however. 3 hours later, sun was set and I was sad. Finally arrived back at Rotterdam, foolishly decided to walk from the bus stop to Rotterdam Central where I was supposed to catch my train into Belgium. Foolish cause I got almost completely lost, I was mapless and WiFi-less so I followed my gut feel really. Not the brightest thing to do when your train is in just 1.5 hours in an unfamiliar city.
But I did, cause sometimes my brain trips over its own cleverness and I end up doing totally retarded things. Did manage to find my way to the train station ultimately, with just minutes to spare, and thanks to some fantastic directions from a pretty nice pretty lady. Little was I to know, my train would be delayed by some 2 hours. Not very pleasant, unfortunately. I did use the time to fill in this compensation form, which promised me a full refund since the delay was 2 hours, which is pretty significant no? Long story short, they first offered me flowers to make up (like I'm some depressed girlfriend srsly) which I COULDN'T EVEN ACCEPT cause it was only valid for Dutch/Belgian addresses. Was gonna be the first flowers I ever received too... Then a couple weeks later they told me they were gonna refund me 5 euros or something. Meh. MEHKLASHJLFJHKWSHF.
Anyway, finally got into Bruges at about 12.30-1am, after some Pan!c At The Station, cause I'd missed my connecting trains yada-yada. Finally hopped onto the right ones despite almost no English signboards whatsoever, and the fact that there were no station attendants at that late hour. Kinda panicky really, cause the hostelbookers email told me that the hostel reception was open only till 1am. I finally found my hostel (after quite some wandering about) at 1.50am, to my relief though it had a bar and bars don't close at 1am, so I was in! Hostel was fantastic, had a really good atmosphere and the staff were super friendly, and one of them looked like Ewan McGregor circa Trainspotting or sth, which was cool.
Had a whole day in Bruges exploring, the highlight of which was the evening. By chance I noticed a sign which said FREE HARP CONCERT which intrigued the heck out of the Singaporean in me, so I wasn't going to miss it for da world. Had never heard/seen a harp played either, besides at the Flo+Machine concert, so I was definitely piqued. The most glorious of evenings ensued, just about an hour's worth of beautiful, haunting, incredible music. One of the most enchanting experiences of my life, not even joking. I can't adequately express how entranced his performance left me, I was THAT close to buying one of his CDs even, despite me being a poor student traveler and all. I was one of only 5/6 people in the audience, and I felt incredibly privileged to have heard what I did. What else was cool was that on his guestbook (which, with good intentions but terrible handwriting, I felt compelled to leave an entry in) I saw that 2 other Singaporeans had just been in there at the performance held an hour ago and left a note too, which left me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside at the thought of cultured Singaporeans, albeit cheapo ones.
Next day I had the one-duh-full idea of cycling to Ghent. Dumb ideas of life, is where I will be filing this one under. Google maps told me 2.5 hours, so I thought: I'm stronger than Google, buddies pls, imma do this in 2 hours flat ezpz NP. It was raining. About 1 hour later, I was off the maps which my hostel kindly provided me. By absolute chance I met a farmer who'd come out of his house to check his mailbox. I asked: "How do I get to Ghent?" "GHENT?!?!?!?!" "Er, yes." Dubious look. "3 hours!" "Oh. Okay... Which direction shall I go then?" Kinda how the conversation went, or at least the bits that weren't washed away by that insane incessant inbalanced rain. Long story (again, all my stories are long, or I'm just a horrible story teller) short, 4 hours later I arrived at Ghent. Or 6 hours after departing Bruges. I was soaking wet. I'm not ashamed to say that even my undies were soaked. NO JOKES. I was wearing jeans + longjohns AND MY FREAKING UNDIES WERE SOAKED. Nothing more need be said about that rain. And my camera was kinda spoiled too, although not as bad as I'd feared since it was just the LCD display which went bad. Which meant that I couldn't properly frame my shots anymore, which killed me a little inside, but ohwells, life went on.
Following day was a whirlwind. Left Bruges, arrived at Brussels. Left Brussels, arrived at Luxembourg. Left Luxembourg, arrived at Frankfurt. I had about an hour in Brussels, and slightly more in Luxembourg. I'd intended to skip Luxembourg actually, until this conversation at this Brussels train station. "Bonjour, parlez vous anglais? Oh great! How much does it cost to go to Germany?" "Er, which city?" "I don't know, the cheapest one? Frankfurt?" (Cause I'd glanced at a map and it seemed the closest, that or Koln, which to my chagrin I did not realize was Cologne until muuuuuuuuccch later. Pretty dumb.) "Huh. It's very expensive to get into Germany right now, cause of all the Christmas markets.... 115 euros." "!! Luxembourg?" "25" "OK ONE TICKET TO LUXEMBOURG PLS THANKSYOU."
Which is how I ended up in Luxembourg. Tickets from there to Frankfurt were a mere 45 euros, although it involved taking a bus first then switching to a train. Arrived at Frankfurt at about 11.30pm. Decided to walk around the city in the night since I was leaving the very next day, and I always like to explore a city both during the day and at night since I generally find there is a different energy and feeling to them. Before I left though, the only other occupant in my dorm, a chinese girl, asked me if I could wake her up at 7am in the morning as she wanted to check out the flea market. After determining the whereabouts of said flea market, I said oke doke and left. Cooked myself some pasta at 1am before leaving the hostel. Wandered around for quite a while since my hostel was bloody far from the city center and the river, and finally reached back at around 3-4am. Couple hours of sleep later, arose and woke the girl, who promptly went back to sleep even after I woke her up twice. Went to flea market, and BOUGHT A CLOCK. Backpacking Protip No.1 = Don't buy massive items you can barely fit into your bag, which are practically useless, and fragile to boot. Nonetheless, incredibly pleased with my 8 euro clock, not least because it's still working now, despite my initial doubts. I did bend the second hand quite badly, so it's a little crooked now, but you win some you lose some eh?
I also bought a wall hanging from Bruges, which I forgot to mention, for just 4 euros!!!!!! Super bulky, and I will invoke Protip No.1 Again. But yet again, I'm super happy with my buy. It's just, lugging around a wall hanging and a clock and a laptop is NOT the best way to backpack.
Also had my first taste of German Christmas markets, and promptly fell in love with them. Ya, das ist gut! Love all the food, the carousels, the christmassy shops/merchandise, the gluhwein, schnitzels, Bratwürstes (BRATBEST I SAY!) etc. Went to Hamburg in the afternoon. Nothing spectacular there I guess, except that I really liked it. Might be cause it was the first place I went this Christmas where ice paved the roads, and light snow, and maybe something too about how it was a big city but felt rather town-ish. No big tall buildings like Frankfurt, no metal-and-glass giants scraping skies. It was nice. Upon arrival, I left the station and endeavoured to locate my hostel. I had a very rough idea of where it was based on the map of it provided on hostelbookers, which I'd looked at for a short while a couple hours before. Of course I promptly got lost and couldn't recall which direction I was supposed to take. Decided to ask directions, and I saw a lady shoveling snow off the roof of her car. She said she didn't know where it was, at which point I was gonna move on, when she said she could check her iphone for me. Tidings of gladness! So she did, and pointed out the way to me. Full of gratitude, I started walking.
2mins later, still braving the dastardly cold and imposing my supreme will against the ice praying all the while I wouldn't slip and fall, I heard a car horn. Curious, I turned to look. Lo! Can't be very surprising at this stage, but yes it was the lady! So I got into her car all thankful and warmed by her human kindness, where we proceeded to get lost for about.. 20-30mins? Stupid one-way-streets really. She was Russian-German and a student at some uni I can't recall, and yes, she was quite pretty as well. Come on, you saw this coming, why else would I bother retelling this story?? Well anyway after a while we were still lost so I asked her to just drop me off, which she did. On foot to my hostel, I managed to drop my jumper and my sleeping shorts cause my bag was open. Which led to me spending about half an hour searching for them in the cold before finding them lying sadly on the ice on some street I crossed some time back.
I am actually going to fast forward a fair bit cause I'm boring myself here. Went for free tour, met new friends, ate raw herring, left for Berlin! Arrived at hostel, and by pure coincidence met 2 of my new travel budz coming out of the lift! Dumped stuff, and went out for a not-so-lonely dinner, which was kinda more than I was expecting. Brendal arrived sometime later that night, so we spent the next day (CHRISTMAS DAY!) on a free tour (as singaporean as it gets) which was really good. Berlin's gotta be one of my favourite cities, so much history in one city it's not even funny. Almost warrants another visit srsly. From Branden's burger to world wars and cold ones, jazz and underground music scenes, 3/4 days certainly was nowhere near enough for such an epicity. (Yeah I just did that, I combined epic and city cause I'm cool like that.)
Most of my christmas travel buddiez arrived on boxing day (where practically everything in germany is closed apparently, zee germans are crazy) so we proceeded to conduct our own free tour based on our incredible recollections of the tour the day before. It was pretty decent, especially cause that was basically my first day meeting with all these new people, so it could have gone a whole lot worse.
Long ass train ride to Munich where I was sitting all by my lonesome cause I bought a seat while the others got bunks, didn't go too bad thankfully, and clearly prepping me well for the 15 hour bus journey I was to undergo in February. Munchen.. while it was quite nice, I didn't like it quite as much as I did Berlin so it was a bit of a comedown for me. Also it was nearing my 2nd/3rd week of traveling so fatigue probably kicked in as well, as it is wont to do. Really chill day, pretty much just starbucks and.. cooking I think. We didn't have a kitchen in Berlin so we were keen to start our money-saving with some pasta, although it wasn't my best showing I'm afraid :( Not a fan of washing out pasta sauce using water cause you get waaay too diluted sauce. Saying is just.
We also had girl talk apparently cause I somehow found myself alone with 4 girls. Huh. Did go for a short jaunt into the city later at night, partially cause I was in a different hostel from everyone else so I thought I might as well. I somehow just have to see every city twice, once in the day and once again at night, just because you never know what sort of transformation a city undergoes once it gets dark. And away from hordes of tourists too, I guess, and tours and tour guides. Probably the most interesting thing was this rather entertaining busker, especially cause he had a singapore joke in his repertoire. "I'm from singapore. I am single, and poor." And I Can't Get No Satisfaction too. There were at least a hundred of us around him I reckon, pretty decent for a busker no?
Salzburg the next day followed by Luzern, cause they planned not to stay in Salzburg at all. It was pretty much a drive-by supermarket stop really, cause we anticipated switzerland to be incredibly expensive. And rightly so! Must have saved at least 50 euros or something just by doing our grocery shopping in beautiful Salzburg. We did also attempt to climb up to some fortress or castle or old thing before realizing it cost money to enter, so we didn't. Cheapo singaporean student budget backpackers, that just about says it all really! Poor Austrian tourism board. Found an adequate hilltop nonetheless where we.. didn't do anything much really. Did nothing but luxuriate, I wanna say, cause that word is not verb-ified nearly enough (just like the word verb apparently.) Kinda reminded me of climbing that hill in Lyon, which was great cause Lyon's yet another one of my favourite cities of world. As well as being on the cliffs of Ilfracombe, if only because of the company, and the kind of quiet you only get with friends, as paradoxical as that sounds. Especially if you consider how crazy said friends are, and how noisy they can be.. 杀死宝宝, quite possibly one of the worst jokes of ever of life, and one of the best places too.
Armed and ready to go (with groceries), we took yet another overnight into Luzern. This time I had a bed while the rest had mere seats.. Bestsleep2012nojoke. I even had breakfast served so.. Was horizontal for the night, had breakfast in bed, got to take off my boots after hours upon hours of walking.. What better way to end off one's year?? Life was gut, but not for my friends cause they seemed like they had a horrible time of it on those cheap seats.. Oh well you win some and you lose some and I was winner that day :D I know you shouldn't delight in the misfortunes and miseries of others but still...
Luzern was an eye-opener, and not just for the amazing utility of freaking water boilers. We had our dinner purely on the back of some incredible/disgusting use of 1 x boiler. Noodles, hordogz, soup.. It was a feast! But I think something inside of me died that day. I can never look at food the same way. All my illusions shattered. To think that just over a year ago I was young, naive, and hopeful that I might just be able to take my first hesitant steps into the then-wonderful and glorious realm that is food-cooking.. Fast forward 1.5years and you have me, disillusioned, hardened, and bitter to this cold, cruel world. So ends my lovestory with food. Such is life. It even bears italicizing and bolding.
Other than that immensely sorrowful telling of my passage from boy2man, we also went to a playground and scared away kids probably, likely cause I was pretending to be a pervy paedo, went by the lake to discuss the culinary fates of ducks, and went to bridges to pretend to be buskers to be sneered at by the bourgeoisie. DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING / SINGING THE SONG OF ANGRY MEN?! Now is the time for the working class to rise up! The people must act! Okay yes, too much les mis as I am sure you can tell, not to mention I've got The Communist Manifesto sitting prettily on my bookshelf right now. Proletariat power piak pewpew!
I also managed to wake up at 5-ish, which gave me time for a walkabout on my own too. I kinda needed that as well, a couple of days on the road with other people, while huge fun, also meant that I needed a dose of solitude as well. Especially on the last day of the year. You don't get much reflection time when you're spending 24/7 with friends, which is basically what traveling means. Also time for me to make the photo-ops I don't get the chance to during the day when we're moving as a group. Cause sometimes I take like 25 photos of the same thing just so I can sift through all of them to get that one good shot I can be satisfied with so I can show mom that despite all this flagrant spending I am actually producing something of worth..or at least that's how I'd like to think of it.
Had to pop back in by 7 so as not to alarm everyone else, cause we had a train to catch early in the morning to... Interlaken! I'd meant to go to Interlaken during my christmas break of 2011, but ultimately didn't manage to thanks to the alluring French. So it's safe to say I had rather inflated expectations of the place, supposedly nestled in the middle of two beautiful lakes, within spitting distance of the Swiss Alps.. I cannot say I was in any way disappointed, despite not even visiting either of the lakes which is kind of ridiculous considering what the town is even called.. Also despite our initial plan to go skiing/sledding/snowshoeing, none of which came to fruition. We did venture into the Alps, which gave us our first encounter with snow all Christmas! Hamburg was frozen and icy, so that didn't count.
VMG (like Very Much Thanks but Gratitude instead) to Yann Qi for his meticulous planning without which we would have remained very much stuck at lake level, instead of ascending to the heights of Europe. Which mountain to go, train timings, ticket prices, yada yada, it was fantastic. Alien to me, cause I generally just walk up to train station, ask where should I go, and go. And pay through my nose, probably. Which is why I have unnaturally large nostrils. Just sayin, super saiyin.
On then we went up one peak, then another, dodging skiers and snow-sledders alike, spying with little eyes waterfalls.. Unfortunately the places we went were almost exclusively for skiers and their ilk so we almost couldn't find a suitable location for our snowman competition. Bob (our snowman) won!
We stayed on these magical snowcapped slopes through sunset, and into the night for some stargazing too. The weather forecast predicted a clear sky and it sure delivered. Beating a path away from the bright lights of the village/town thing we managed to find a suitable ulu location where Sirius and Bellatrix could smile their benevolent/evil smiles on us. It was good. A brief, transient, ephemeral moment, of peace and quiet in an otherwise rapid and relentless world. Like a shooting star whose beauty fades much, much too quickly, but shines ever the brighter in our memory for its brevity. Simple times.
Made our way back to the hostel, where we cooked up a storm, making a mockery of the clear skies the day had so kindly provided. Patented Garlick Porck Chops™ was served. Met my gege for the first time in my life, surviving all that awkwardness.. Then we went fireworks hunting, as the midnight approached. I'm not forgetting this particular new year's eve in a hurry, whatwith chasing random fireworks sounds/echoes, finally finding an adequate spot where we could see these nightflowers popping only at about 2355hrs, my first time ever playing with sparklers and shutter speed shenanigans.. A pleasant way to spark off (pun absolutely unintended) the new year, and an unexpectedly un-uncomfortable way to ease into my 21st year of existence. I'd always intended to spend my 21st birthday alone, but this was as good an alternative as I could ever have asked for.
Next day we left for Geneva. Decided to walk around for the night instead of booking a hostel cause my flight was at 10am. Decided to walk towards the lake instead of the city, for reasons still unknown. Espied bright lights descending somewhere in the distance. Decided to walk towards airport at about 5.30pm. Missed turn to airport and found myself at French border. Incredulously spoke to Swiss/French border police to determine location. Arrived at Geneve Aeroport at about 8-9pm. In the rain. Spent next 13 or so hours in airport, on uncomfortable chair. Started wishing death upon myself but instead only got about 3 hours of sleep. Boarded plane, and found myself in Bristol!
Bristol was pretty warped, but I did buy myself the Communist Manifesto at a really cool bookshop, so it was pretty good ultimately.
Hmm. Guess that's it for my Christmas trip really. To date the best holiday/trip I've ever had, despite my unkind treatment of it in that mass of words above. It in no way justified exactly how good this trip was, and how good it was for me too. Thoughts I'd never had, thoughts I'd never dared to think, honest reflection, honest sharing, etc etc. I am in many ways a different person than I was before embarking on this trip, so I cannot underscore sufficiently what it meant to me. And some of the most beautiful places I've ever been to as well, so that's just double props! Yep.
I'm less than a week away from my Easter trip to Spain/Portugal so this is just about as overdue as it gets. Huh. Welllll, haven't even talked about Belfast, or Peak District, or Edinburgh again, I have managed to rack up an impressive backlog seriously. Pretty disgusted with self. Er, ciao anyways, gotta leave house in 45mins for London for rugby for support school team GO EXETER!
Monday, 25 March 2013
Monday, 11 February 2013
Thousands Of Miles And A Phone Call Away.
01
-
11
Where are you? We look around at each other, we are crying. We don't know what to do. Why aren't you here with us?
21
You are thousands of miles and a phone call away. After 10 years I finally realize I've been asking the wrong question. Why weren't we there for you? I miss you.
31
You shouldn't be, but you're still working. I'm slowly beginning to understand you. I might even be beginning to be like you.
41
You're 80. You're not tired of life, but life is a tiresome sumbitch. Mostly, you're bored.
51
Where are you? you cry. You don't know where you are. You barely know who I am. You might not understand me now, but I hope throughout the years you always have - I love you pa.
_________________
I took my tea out into the cold on Chinese New Year's eve. My plan was to 守岁 and skype home at the same time, since conveniently the time difference makes it almost perfect for that. Little did I know my family would sleep in on the first day of CNY.... so I only managed to skype them at 3-4am, finally sleeping only at 5am! Longevity like siao I tell you.
About the tea. I went into the park behind my place hoping to catch a glimpse of the moon, cause I foolishly thought it'd be a full moon, since they call it lunar new year after all.. Just realized my mistake cause new year = new moon = NO MOON. Not to mention it was overcast anyways, sigh. Everytime I go out at night like that I remember that corniest of lines I heard in qiushi so long ago: Even though we might not be standing next to each other, we are looking at the same moon. So everytime you look at the moon, think of me. Something along those lines. Impressive/gross at the same time.
It was CNY eve and I was waiting to skype home, so naturally I began thinking of my family. (BTW they just ate at a 5 star hotel without me so I am sad.) I don't know why but this memory of that one Christmas so many years ago stands out so starkly amongst all the other, better memories. I'm not even sure how real what I remember from that night was. Christmas carolers, and 3 kids so lost.
I don't even know when that was, except that it was during the lifetime of the satay business. Anywhere from p5 to sec1 I reckon. I was what, 11? It's been 10 years since, and I find myself thousands of miles away from home, looking back on all the times we've had as a family. Not gonna lie, it's been rough. But I think if we look out the windows now we'll see that it's rather pretty out, and that we're journeying on to better places. It's been quite a ride, but we're leaving the metaphorical wastelands now, like so much disturbed dust behind us. It's stung us and provoked tears and angry words, but we gritted our teeth, clenched our fists, and we have managed to move on.
This story is for my dad. It's not even a story, maybe. A non-fiction story, if you will. I've never been 31, my dad isn't 80 yet, and I can have no idea what the future holds. But it's true as of today, so I can't accurately describe it as fiction I guess. Just a reminder, possibly, of the revelations I had that night.
I'd come across this poem once, written about the poet's father, which was quite minimalistically done and quite stark and sparing, and I thought that was really powerful. So I tried to emulate that, except that I wanted to insert the passage of time in there and didn't know a better device to do so apart from numbers, almost like chapters or something. So there it is. Probably could embellish it or flesh it out or something, but I don't feel like doing so, I'm leaving it like that.
Pretty tired out. After sleeping at 5+am on new year's eve, I had to wake up at 9am for church. Returned at 3pm and almost immediately had to start cooking for the dinner last night. Kancheong like anything, and we ended up late anyways, although that didn't matter too much in the end. Setting up, finalizing the game etc, no downtime whatsoever. Then connecting, clean-up, and the assorted duties at the closing of an event. Finally arrived home at 11pm. Attempted to watch an episode of 30 Rock before sleeping. Fell asleep halfway. I think falling asleep in the middle of 30 Rock speaks volumes about the extent of shagginess or tiredness someone's experiencing.
What a night. First proper event we've hosted as a team. Can't say I wasn't disappointed, but I felt proud too. It's a mixed bag. Kinda messed up the end of the game segment cause I didn't prepare for it at all, which is pretty silly cause it's not even that hard. Really happy to see the number of volunteers turning up to cook, or help in the setting/cleaning up. I think we're helping to build a strong community here, a church where asians can feel like they belong. It's not insignificant, and I thank God for that.
Hmm yeah. Might go back to sleep now actually cause it's still only 8.30am. Or I might continue with my adventures in FFIX. Well, good-day anyway!
-
11
Where are you? We look around at each other, we are crying. We don't know what to do. Why aren't you here with us?
21
You are thousands of miles and a phone call away. After 10 years I finally realize I've been asking the wrong question. Why weren't we there for you? I miss you.
31
You shouldn't be, but you're still working. I'm slowly beginning to understand you. I might even be beginning to be like you.
41
You're 80. You're not tired of life, but life is a tiresome sumbitch. Mostly, you're bored.
51
Where are you? you cry. You don't know where you are. You barely know who I am. You might not understand me now, but I hope throughout the years you always have - I love you pa.
_________________
I took my tea out into the cold on Chinese New Year's eve. My plan was to 守岁 and skype home at the same time, since conveniently the time difference makes it almost perfect for that. Little did I know my family would sleep in on the first day of CNY.... so I only managed to skype them at 3-4am, finally sleeping only at 5am! Longevity like siao I tell you.
About the tea. I went into the park behind my place hoping to catch a glimpse of the moon, cause I foolishly thought it'd be a full moon, since they call it lunar new year after all.. Just realized my mistake cause new year = new moon = NO MOON. Not to mention it was overcast anyways, sigh. Everytime I go out at night like that I remember that corniest of lines I heard in qiushi so long ago: Even though we might not be standing next to each other, we are looking at the same moon. So everytime you look at the moon, think of me. Something along those lines. Impressive/gross at the same time.
It was CNY eve and I was waiting to skype home, so naturally I began thinking of my family. (BTW they just ate at a 5 star hotel without me so I am sad.) I don't know why but this memory of that one Christmas so many years ago stands out so starkly amongst all the other, better memories. I'm not even sure how real what I remember from that night was. Christmas carolers, and 3 kids so lost.
I don't even know when that was, except that it was during the lifetime of the satay business. Anywhere from p5 to sec1 I reckon. I was what, 11? It's been 10 years since, and I find myself thousands of miles away from home, looking back on all the times we've had as a family. Not gonna lie, it's been rough. But I think if we look out the windows now we'll see that it's rather pretty out, and that we're journeying on to better places. It's been quite a ride, but we're leaving the metaphorical wastelands now, like so much disturbed dust behind us. It's stung us and provoked tears and angry words, but we gritted our teeth, clenched our fists, and we have managed to move on.
This story is for my dad. It's not even a story, maybe. A non-fiction story, if you will. I've never been 31, my dad isn't 80 yet, and I can have no idea what the future holds. But it's true as of today, so I can't accurately describe it as fiction I guess. Just a reminder, possibly, of the revelations I had that night.
I'd come across this poem once, written about the poet's father, which was quite minimalistically done and quite stark and sparing, and I thought that was really powerful. So I tried to emulate that, except that I wanted to insert the passage of time in there and didn't know a better device to do so apart from numbers, almost like chapters or something. So there it is. Probably could embellish it or flesh it out or something, but I don't feel like doing so, I'm leaving it like that.
Pretty tired out. After sleeping at 5+am on new year's eve, I had to wake up at 9am for church. Returned at 3pm and almost immediately had to start cooking for the dinner last night. Kancheong like anything, and we ended up late anyways, although that didn't matter too much in the end. Setting up, finalizing the game etc, no downtime whatsoever. Then connecting, clean-up, and the assorted duties at the closing of an event. Finally arrived home at 11pm. Attempted to watch an episode of 30 Rock before sleeping. Fell asleep halfway. I think falling asleep in the middle of 30 Rock speaks volumes about the extent of shagginess or tiredness someone's experiencing.
What a night. First proper event we've hosted as a team. Can't say I wasn't disappointed, but I felt proud too. It's a mixed bag. Kinda messed up the end of the game segment cause I didn't prepare for it at all, which is pretty silly cause it's not even that hard. Really happy to see the number of volunteers turning up to cook, or help in the setting/cleaning up. I think we're helping to build a strong community here, a church where asians can feel like they belong. It's not insignificant, and I thank God for that.
Hmm yeah. Might go back to sleep now actually cause it's still only 8.30am. Or I might continue with my adventures in FFIX. Well, good-day anyway!
Friday, 25 January 2013
Leaving Shadows On Each Other's Walls.
The beauty of winter. Everything seems beautiful, pristine. Your joy and your smiles frozen in time. Even your sadness and melancholy takes on a wintry sheen it probably doesn't deserve. It's the stillness in the air, the dead calm. Broken only by the hustle and bustle of frantic last minute Christmas shopping. And even that panic has a benign ring to it, a joviality to the desperation. It's the air of expectation. An expectation of good. Of the advent of the new year. Of the coming of spring. The blooming of flowers. Of life to start anew.
Possibly one of the most pretentious things I've written. Think I was somewhere in Portsmouth/London when I did this cause it's one of the drafts in my phone, probably on a long bus ride somewhere. I do believe in the magic of winter though. Especially the past few days where it's been snowing in Exeter, and pretty substantial stuff as well!
I had to get out of the house one night, cup of tea in hand, just to enjoy the silence. Such a sense of peace and calm I think is unique to the soft whisper of snow brushing against your face, falling lightly on your head. (My scalp now, cause no hair.)
I had to get out of the house cause I was doing something incredibly... I'm not sure how to describe it. Awkward. Or embarrassing. Probably true, that. But also something I felt I had to do? I'm not sure really. Wasn't trying to analyze my actions at the time really, kinda incredulous that I actually did it in the end. Awkwardburdenmonkey is me. Hoo boy.
What was I hoping to achieve? I really can't say. I guess the best thing now is if it's clean forgot, so I'm not embarrassed for life. Actually, no. Was hoping for a reply to be honest, but guess it's pretty uncomfortable to, not that I know what reply I wanted to get anyways. Thanks? Reciprocation? Hahaha unlikely. Umm. At least hope it didn't come across creepy or anything, even though I probably did. Gee. Life sure is hard.. Hahah.
What was I thinking, what was I doing? I guess.. it was to be honest. Maybe not just honest, but real. Something I've been thinking about sometimes in the past week or so. I would say I'm an honest person. I guess it's impossible to say I never do, but as far as possible I don't lie. Half-truths, or concealing the full, I probably do here and there, but I like to think that lying is not something I do. And yet, there's a difference between being honest and being real. I might be honest, yes, but am I real?
I'm not sure. I guess this is yet another part of... not so much my current identity crisis, which I don't believe it is, but my personal identity dialogue. Quarter-life 21st birthday syndrome, possibly! What does being real to myself mean? I just watched Drive, Lars and the Real Girl, All the Real Girls and Blue Gate Crossing recently, which might or might not have affected my thoughts in some way. I guess they did, or not what's the point of movies? Rewatched Drive cause I thought it'd be better upon second viewing, and that definitely worked out. So good. Then Lars because of Ryan Gosling (mancrush.)
Lars asks, how do you know you've become a man? The reply was, when you take responsibility, when you start doing the right things, even when it hurts you to do so. (Probably wrong cause I'm just plucking from memory, but the gist of it is there.) And the Driver. That's kinda who I always imagined myself to be. The who I was probably trying to be in secondary school and JC. Quiet, almost emotionally distant, that kinda person. And I probably was, a little bit. And I might still be, a little bit. But the image I project now isn't like that at all. And I'm not sure right now which I'd rather be. They used to call it emo back in the day, some people actually said that I looked angry all the time, which I don't think I was haha.
But.. it felt me. At the time at least. Despite growing pangs and social awkwardness and painful self-consciousness, and the myriad other plights of the adolescent.. Now I'm not, I'm not sure why. Not that I don't feel the need to "emote", I guess I just don't do it in front of others. Instead now I'm more cheerful (arguably happier) and joke and make a fool of myself etc, which I wouldn't say feels unnatural, but I just wonder, what happened to the old me? Sometimes I'm glad I'm not the old me. In fact most of the time I am. But sometimes I wonder whether I've been forced to change, and whether it has been for the good.
Um yeah. This is actually pretty weird because I feel fine. I'm not feeling particularly down or anything, definitely not anywhere near where I've been before, in fact I'd say that right now I'm pretty happy. Happy things are happening in my life. I mean I did just potentially make a complete ass out of myself but it kind of feels right anyhow.
Why shouldn't we live in a world where we are able to say what we mean? Where we can say nice things to other people, strangers even, without worrying about being misintepreted, being creepy, looking like you have ulterior motives etc. If someone's made an impact on you, you should be able to tell her so. I don't know. The world's too interested in playing games and hiding behind facades and false pretenses (not sure if that makes sense or is a bad example of redundancy.. cause pretenses are false surely? horrible sidetrack here) to be truthful. Or telling the truth, saying what's really on your minds, in your hearts, has proved to be too painful over the course of human experience.
So we shrink and we shift and we shirk away from what we really want to say. We end up saying everything except for the things we truly mean. I think.. I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. But I can't help it sometimes, of course. Maybe it's become an integral part of the social structure somehow. You don't say what's really on your mind, and I won't too. That way we're both safe. What do? Idk, random thoughts one friday morning.
Sorry if this is going nowhere, I don't know what I'm trying to say either. Maybe being honest isn't worth it. Okay, that's probably not true. I mean being open, maybe. Who would wear their hearts on their sleeves now? The world's too cynical, too suspicious for that. I'm not sure if I want to try. I can be friendly and cheerful and a joke, but I'm not revealing anything about myself. My secrets I will keep, thank you. Bah not sure what I'm going on about now.
Haha the random and possibly depressing thoughts I have when I am pursuing a seemingly hopeless cause. Sigh. Don't feel particularly shabby though, and I'm not sure why. Never had much hope in the first place maybe. Think it's more just.. no regrets. I don't want to regret anything, and that means I'm doing/have done/will do incredibly stupid things, which in the past the fear of looking retarded has always stopped me from doing. But what's the harm really? To be incredibly stupid and a fool and yet happy. New aspiration, it seems. God I feel dumb.
Speaking of which I got back the essay which I did while in London before leaving for Amsterdam, which I thought was the trashest of trashcan essays but I got 60%. Still incredulous about that. Was hoping for best case 55, thinking I'd get 52 or sth. Not something to be proud of, to be sure, and I'm not trying to boast about my incredible intellect, cause I was dumb enough to leave it to the last minute anyways. In fact it's a possible 70%, a 1st that I've just missed out on, so no, I'm not proud at all. It's amazement at the favour that gives me a 60% which I don't deserve. Grace and favour shall follow me all of my days, He has promised (adapted).
Hanging out with exchange students really showed me how utterly useless I've been with my time. I suspect each of them has done more in their 4-6 months in UK/Europe than I have in my 1.5years. This will be rectified shortly. I just bought tickets to Les Mis and Matilda in London, as well as Cats in Edinburgh. Have a little overnight trip in mind to maybe Topsham, or Clevedon. Rubbish timetable though, pretty hard to plan around meh.
Temper Trap too good, I think I'm gonna buy their CD sometime soon, although with Spotify now... Nah physical copies are nice, and the artistes probably get more money that way too? Not sure, but zapport for artistes pls. Their self-titled album, The Temper Trap, 2gd4wrds. Rabbit Hole, Leaving The Heartbreak Hotel, The Trouble With Pain and of course Trembling Hands.
Also the Drive soundtrack, got me hook line and sinker. Such appropriate songs, A Real Hero and Under Your Spell. Also Nightcall of course, but that's old news now. Gotta reiterate once more what a darling Carey Mulligan is. I think I'm watching either An Education, In The Mood For Love or Lust, Caution next. Rewatch, I mean. Not sure why I've been rewatching stuff lately. Normally I don't do that cause I kinda feel like I'm not making progress, but IDK. Maybe it was watching Closer again when it popped up on TV, which was amazing. Really has got to be one of my favourite movies, so many incredible scenes.
My friend asked me why I liked movies like Closer and Blue Valentine, which I thought was a pretty funny question to ask. Cause those movies are pretty depressing. But you don't have to feel happy watching a movie to enjoy it, sometimes it's just so well done and so beautiful you can't help but fall in love with it, despite feeling hugely depressed. Just watched Stay too, which was quite hard to watch cause almost nothing happy happens AT ALL, I don't even think there was a single joke in the movie, and it was confusing for the large part. With that ending though, everything falls into place and you look back on the movie and think, okay, that was good. I must say that although it wasn't particularly enjoyable when I was actually viewing it, it was worth it in the end.
Did I ever mention Hayao Miyazaki the director of magic? Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away etc. I'm gonna watch all of his films if I can find them, I think. Really breathtaking stuff. Tried to watch Apple of My Eye (那些年) but it's not to be found on Funshion!! Upset. Probably online though, so I'll have to watch that soon. People keep making me feel like a loser for not watching it yet sigh. Even my malaysian malay flatmate has watched it.. Worst Chinese in World.
I just got this beautiful new... book? called Building Stories. It's not so much a book as art, really. Quite pleased with that. Also The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, The Liar, The Psychopath Test, Vernon God Little, Odd and the Frost Giants, Crash, and Law Revision books. Hahaha. Suddenly books. Didn't mean to obtain so many this year but bookcycle too tempting. How to lug them all back home like that. Happy problems for happy people.
Hmm. Belfast was nice. The Irish are incredibly warm and friendly, it's amazing. Really liked the city and the people there too. Unfortunately didn't manage to go to Giant's Causeway, which warrants another trip to Belfast I reckon, but Carrickfergus Castle was pretty neat. Biggest camwhoring ever too, which makes for such a different type of travel haha. Pretty fun! Did buy my furry wolfhat which is alarmingly warm, thankfully, as it was snowing something dreadful out there. It was all so Calvin and Hobbes! Wish I had a toboggan and a pet tiger, that's all I needed then and there..
Also went for a run yesterday, kinda guilt tripped into doing so. Just about an hour or so, and it was really good. Felt like dying halfway through, naturally, but I pulled through and made it home just in time to get my butt into the only lecture for the day. Was gut. Went downriver, ran around the quay, uphills downhills etc, not too bad for an acclimatization run. Which I'm gonna pretend that was, cause I refuse to believe I've become THAT SLOW *)&@&*#!. Although given the prodigious amounts of food I've been eating since December.. I think I'm averaging 2.5 plates of rice per meal. Winter what are you doing to me. I hibernate and eat. Duvet too good invention. In one extreme circumstance I woke up at 8.30am and catnapped till 1pm. That's 4.5 hours of dozing off and comfort sleep. Srsly that's disgusting. Never has something so bad felt so good. Winter is such a good season, when else do you have an excuse to indulge in all these excesses i.e. food and sleep and be able to justify it? To every naysayer my answer is: it's the cold lah. Love winter. Although autumn still remains my favourite season... hahaha.
And discovered that I can do pull ups off this bikeshed structure outside my place, so I don't run the risk of destroying forevermore my wardrobe. IPPT and $200 here I come. I just saw facebook and saw that Alt-J are playing Singapore tmr. ARE YOU SRS WITH ME RIGHT NOW. One of my new favourite bands. I think it's for Laneway or something. Which naturally, only happens when I'm away from Singapore. Always seems like all the good stuff happen at home when I'm away, although Sebastian the crab would probably tell me all about green seaweed yada-yada.. Who am I to complain after Florence and the xx and TNAF and now soon enough Les Mis and Matilda and Cats? Although I'd much rather prefer sweating it out in Fort Canning Park or something..... NUT. Winter for Winners. Sweat for Suckers.
Sometimes feel like I want to say something, like there's something important I really wish to convey, but I open my mouth and my words get in the way. Or my fingers, apparently. For someone who prides himself on them, words are alarmingly difficult to get right. Sometimes everything just comes out wrong, and sometimes the irretractability of words is insurmountable. What is there, then, left to do? Sometimes, there is nothing left to do. Sometimes, there is everything yet left to do.
We live, we love, and we make mistakes. Then we spend the rest of our lives making it up to the people we love, the people we never meant to hurt, the people we tried so hard not to hurt but ended up doing so anyway. And so we live our apologetic lives, everything we do yet more ways of making up for one thing or another, being nice because we weren't, caring cause we never did, listening cause we were busy talking, loving because we didn't.
Depressing stuff, sorry, but this thought did germinate from the last scene in Closer involving Julia Roberts and Clive Owens, which I found incredibly sad. Ho wells. I'm not actually depressed don't worry. Although I did just lose about 400 dota games in a row, which is... upsetting. I love dota but it hates me, apparently. Story of life :'(
I know love does to pain what sunshine does to rain. Chanced upon this I'm not sure how, sometime back in December. Not trying to be nerdy here but it makes even more sense because of the water cycle.... Hahaha sry dunno how I made that leap. Take away the pain, fall in love again (did not even try to rhyme here.. subconscious too strong), fall out of love, here comes the rain. Rinse & repeat. Ad nauseam, ad mortem. Haha just had to throw in some latin there to look clever. But still. It's a natural cycle. But some people are scared even to try. And without rain there can be no rainbows (probably a fallacious argument but I don't care I am lawyer not scientist) unless by some weird chance you happen to have a prism sequestered (what a nice word) away somewhere.. So maybe it's time to lose that fear. Time to fall in love.
Aha I know I'm reaching the end of a post/have nothing to say when I start using parenthesis and inserting incredibly retarded remarks in them, as well as using words like parenthesis.. and fallacious and sequestered. A Great Pretender. Pretentious I am not, cause pretenders must be shot. Death to pretentionismers! Okay this is a downward spiral. I shall end here, then. Must say once again, however, what a fool I am feeling right now. Not sure I've ever done anything so silly in life, but oh wells. No regrets. I am so embarrassed. GOOD BYES FROM THE AWKWARDBURDENMONKEY.
Possibly one of the most pretentious things I've written. Think I was somewhere in Portsmouth/London when I did this cause it's one of the drafts in my phone, probably on a long bus ride somewhere. I do believe in the magic of winter though. Especially the past few days where it's been snowing in Exeter, and pretty substantial stuff as well!
I had to get out of the house one night, cup of tea in hand, just to enjoy the silence. Such a sense of peace and calm I think is unique to the soft whisper of snow brushing against your face, falling lightly on your head. (My scalp now, cause no hair.)
I had to get out of the house cause I was doing something incredibly... I'm not sure how to describe it. Awkward. Or embarrassing. Probably true, that. But also something I felt I had to do? I'm not sure really. Wasn't trying to analyze my actions at the time really, kinda incredulous that I actually did it in the end. Awkwardburdenmonkey is me. Hoo boy.
What was I hoping to achieve? I really can't say. I guess the best thing now is if it's clean forgot, so I'm not embarrassed for life. Actually, no. Was hoping for a reply to be honest, but guess it's pretty uncomfortable to, not that I know what reply I wanted to get anyways. Thanks? Reciprocation? Hahaha unlikely. Umm. At least hope it didn't come across creepy or anything, even though I probably did. Gee. Life sure is hard.. Hahah.
What was I thinking, what was I doing? I guess.. it was to be honest. Maybe not just honest, but real. Something I've been thinking about sometimes in the past week or so. I would say I'm an honest person. I guess it's impossible to say I never do, but as far as possible I don't lie. Half-truths, or concealing the full, I probably do here and there, but I like to think that lying is not something I do. And yet, there's a difference between being honest and being real. I might be honest, yes, but am I real?
I'm not sure. I guess this is yet another part of... not so much my current identity crisis, which I don't believe it is, but my personal identity dialogue. Quarter-life 21st birthday syndrome, possibly! What does being real to myself mean? I just watched Drive, Lars and the Real Girl, All the Real Girls and Blue Gate Crossing recently, which might or might not have affected my thoughts in some way. I guess they did, or not what's the point of movies? Rewatched Drive cause I thought it'd be better upon second viewing, and that definitely worked out. So good. Then Lars because of Ryan Gosling (mancrush.)
Lars asks, how do you know you've become a man? The reply was, when you take responsibility, when you start doing the right things, even when it hurts you to do so. (Probably wrong cause I'm just plucking from memory, but the gist of it is there.) And the Driver. That's kinda who I always imagined myself to be. The who I was probably trying to be in secondary school and JC. Quiet, almost emotionally distant, that kinda person. And I probably was, a little bit. And I might still be, a little bit. But the image I project now isn't like that at all. And I'm not sure right now which I'd rather be. They used to call it emo back in the day, some people actually said that I looked angry all the time, which I don't think I was haha.
But.. it felt me. At the time at least. Despite growing pangs and social awkwardness and painful self-consciousness, and the myriad other plights of the adolescent.. Now I'm not, I'm not sure why. Not that I don't feel the need to "emote", I guess I just don't do it in front of others. Instead now I'm more cheerful (arguably happier) and joke and make a fool of myself etc, which I wouldn't say feels unnatural, but I just wonder, what happened to the old me? Sometimes I'm glad I'm not the old me. In fact most of the time I am. But sometimes I wonder whether I've been forced to change, and whether it has been for the good.
Um yeah. This is actually pretty weird because I feel fine. I'm not feeling particularly down or anything, definitely not anywhere near where I've been before, in fact I'd say that right now I'm pretty happy. Happy things are happening in my life. I mean I did just potentially make a complete ass out of myself but it kind of feels right anyhow.
Why shouldn't we live in a world where we are able to say what we mean? Where we can say nice things to other people, strangers even, without worrying about being misintepreted, being creepy, looking like you have ulterior motives etc. If someone's made an impact on you, you should be able to tell her so. I don't know. The world's too interested in playing games and hiding behind facades and false pretenses (not sure if that makes sense or is a bad example of redundancy.. cause pretenses are false surely? horrible sidetrack here) to be truthful. Or telling the truth, saying what's really on your minds, in your hearts, has proved to be too painful over the course of human experience.
So we shrink and we shift and we shirk away from what we really want to say. We end up saying everything except for the things we truly mean. I think.. I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. But I can't help it sometimes, of course. Maybe it's become an integral part of the social structure somehow. You don't say what's really on your mind, and I won't too. That way we're both safe. What do? Idk, random thoughts one friday morning.
Sorry if this is going nowhere, I don't know what I'm trying to say either. Maybe being honest isn't worth it. Okay, that's probably not true. I mean being open, maybe. Who would wear their hearts on their sleeves now? The world's too cynical, too suspicious for that. I'm not sure if I want to try. I can be friendly and cheerful and a joke, but I'm not revealing anything about myself. My secrets I will keep, thank you. Bah not sure what I'm going on about now.
Haha the random and possibly depressing thoughts I have when I am pursuing a seemingly hopeless cause. Sigh. Don't feel particularly shabby though, and I'm not sure why. Never had much hope in the first place maybe. Think it's more just.. no regrets. I don't want to regret anything, and that means I'm doing/have done/will do incredibly stupid things, which in the past the fear of looking retarded has always stopped me from doing. But what's the harm really? To be incredibly stupid and a fool and yet happy. New aspiration, it seems. God I feel dumb.
Speaking of which I got back the essay which I did while in London before leaving for Amsterdam, which I thought was the trashest of trashcan essays but I got 60%. Still incredulous about that. Was hoping for best case 55, thinking I'd get 52 or sth. Not something to be proud of, to be sure, and I'm not trying to boast about my incredible intellect, cause I was dumb enough to leave it to the last minute anyways. In fact it's a possible 70%, a 1st that I've just missed out on, so no, I'm not proud at all. It's amazement at the favour that gives me a 60% which I don't deserve. Grace and favour shall follow me all of my days, He has promised (adapted).
Hanging out with exchange students really showed me how utterly useless I've been with my time. I suspect each of them has done more in their 4-6 months in UK/Europe than I have in my 1.5years. This will be rectified shortly. I just bought tickets to Les Mis and Matilda in London, as well as Cats in Edinburgh. Have a little overnight trip in mind to maybe Topsham, or Clevedon. Rubbish timetable though, pretty hard to plan around meh.
Temper Trap too good, I think I'm gonna buy their CD sometime soon, although with Spotify now... Nah physical copies are nice, and the artistes probably get more money that way too? Not sure, but zapport for artistes pls. Their self-titled album, The Temper Trap, 2gd4wrds. Rabbit Hole, Leaving The Heartbreak Hotel, The Trouble With Pain and of course Trembling Hands.
Also the Drive soundtrack, got me hook line and sinker. Such appropriate songs, A Real Hero and Under Your Spell. Also Nightcall of course, but that's old news now. Gotta reiterate once more what a darling Carey Mulligan is. I think I'm watching either An Education, In The Mood For Love or Lust, Caution next. Rewatch, I mean. Not sure why I've been rewatching stuff lately. Normally I don't do that cause I kinda feel like I'm not making progress, but IDK. Maybe it was watching Closer again when it popped up on TV, which was amazing. Really has got to be one of my favourite movies, so many incredible scenes.
My friend asked me why I liked movies like Closer and Blue Valentine, which I thought was a pretty funny question to ask. Cause those movies are pretty depressing. But you don't have to feel happy watching a movie to enjoy it, sometimes it's just so well done and so beautiful you can't help but fall in love with it, despite feeling hugely depressed. Just watched Stay too, which was quite hard to watch cause almost nothing happy happens AT ALL, I don't even think there was a single joke in the movie, and it was confusing for the large part. With that ending though, everything falls into place and you look back on the movie and think, okay, that was good. I must say that although it wasn't particularly enjoyable when I was actually viewing it, it was worth it in the end.
Did I ever mention Hayao Miyazaki the director of magic? Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away etc. I'm gonna watch all of his films if I can find them, I think. Really breathtaking stuff. Tried to watch Apple of My Eye (那些年) but it's not to be found on Funshion!! Upset. Probably online though, so I'll have to watch that soon. People keep making me feel like a loser for not watching it yet sigh. Even my malaysian malay flatmate has watched it.. Worst Chinese in World.
I just got this beautiful new... book? called Building Stories. It's not so much a book as art, really. Quite pleased with that. Also The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, The Liar, The Psychopath Test, Vernon God Little, Odd and the Frost Giants, Crash, and Law Revision books. Hahaha. Suddenly books. Didn't mean to obtain so many this year but bookcycle too tempting. How to lug them all back home like that. Happy problems for happy people.
Hmm. Belfast was nice. The Irish are incredibly warm and friendly, it's amazing. Really liked the city and the people there too. Unfortunately didn't manage to go to Giant's Causeway, which warrants another trip to Belfast I reckon, but Carrickfergus Castle was pretty neat. Biggest camwhoring ever too, which makes for such a different type of travel haha. Pretty fun! Did buy my furry wolfhat which is alarmingly warm, thankfully, as it was snowing something dreadful out there. It was all so Calvin and Hobbes! Wish I had a toboggan and a pet tiger, that's all I needed then and there..
Also went for a run yesterday, kinda guilt tripped into doing so. Just about an hour or so, and it was really good. Felt like dying halfway through, naturally, but I pulled through and made it home just in time to get my butt into the only lecture for the day. Was gut. Went downriver, ran around the quay, uphills downhills etc, not too bad for an acclimatization run. Which I'm gonna pretend that was, cause I refuse to believe I've become THAT SLOW *)&@&*#!. Although given the prodigious amounts of food I've been eating since December.. I think I'm averaging 2.5 plates of rice per meal. Winter what are you doing to me. I hibernate and eat. Duvet too good invention. In one extreme circumstance I woke up at 8.30am and catnapped till 1pm. That's 4.5 hours of dozing off and comfort sleep. Srsly that's disgusting. Never has something so bad felt so good. Winter is such a good season, when else do you have an excuse to indulge in all these excesses i.e. food and sleep and be able to justify it? To every naysayer my answer is: it's the cold lah. Love winter. Although autumn still remains my favourite season... hahaha.
And discovered that I can do pull ups off this bikeshed structure outside my place, so I don't run the risk of destroying forevermore my wardrobe. IPPT and $200 here I come. I just saw facebook and saw that Alt-J are playing Singapore tmr. ARE YOU SRS WITH ME RIGHT NOW. One of my new favourite bands. I think it's for Laneway or something. Which naturally, only happens when I'm away from Singapore. Always seems like all the good stuff happen at home when I'm away, although Sebastian the crab would probably tell me all about green seaweed yada-yada.. Who am I to complain after Florence and the xx and TNAF and now soon enough Les Mis and Matilda and Cats? Although I'd much rather prefer sweating it out in Fort Canning Park or something..... NUT. Winter for Winners. Sweat for Suckers.
Sometimes feel like I want to say something, like there's something important I really wish to convey, but I open my mouth and my words get in the way. Or my fingers, apparently. For someone who prides himself on them, words are alarmingly difficult to get right. Sometimes everything just comes out wrong, and sometimes the irretractability of words is insurmountable. What is there, then, left to do? Sometimes, there is nothing left to do. Sometimes, there is everything yet left to do.
We live, we love, and we make mistakes. Then we spend the rest of our lives making it up to the people we love, the people we never meant to hurt, the people we tried so hard not to hurt but ended up doing so anyway. And so we live our apologetic lives, everything we do yet more ways of making up for one thing or another, being nice because we weren't, caring cause we never did, listening cause we were busy talking, loving because we didn't.
Depressing stuff, sorry, but this thought did germinate from the last scene in Closer involving Julia Roberts and Clive Owens, which I found incredibly sad. Ho wells. I'm not actually depressed don't worry. Although I did just lose about 400 dota games in a row, which is... upsetting. I love dota but it hates me, apparently. Story of life :'(
I know love does to pain what sunshine does to rain. Chanced upon this I'm not sure how, sometime back in December. Not trying to be nerdy here but it makes even more sense because of the water cycle.... Hahaha sry dunno how I made that leap. Take away the pain, fall in love again (did not even try to rhyme here.. subconscious too strong), fall out of love, here comes the rain. Rinse & repeat. Ad nauseam, ad mortem. Haha just had to throw in some latin there to look clever. But still. It's a natural cycle. But some people are scared even to try. And without rain there can be no rainbows (probably a fallacious argument but I don't care I am lawyer not scientist) unless by some weird chance you happen to have a prism sequestered (what a nice word) away somewhere.. So maybe it's time to lose that fear. Time to fall in love.
Aha I know I'm reaching the end of a post/have nothing to say when I start using parenthesis and inserting incredibly retarded remarks in them, as well as using words like parenthesis.. and fallacious and sequestered. A Great Pretender. Pretentious I am not, cause pretenders must be shot. Death to pretentionismers! Okay this is a downward spiral. I shall end here, then. Must say once again, however, what a fool I am feeling right now. Not sure I've ever done anything so silly in life, but oh wells. No regrets. I am so embarrassed. GOOD BYES FROM THE AWKWARDBURDENMONKEY.
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
All Made Up.
Hmm. I didn't mean to have an introspective this early in the year, but it appears like I might. I'm not sure why I've been thinking this all day, reflecting on what stories are, what they do, as well as what makes up me. Or rather, what makes a person? Definitely a continuation of some of the thoughts in my travel diary.
What do I like so much about having a travel diary? Your thoughts depend on your state of mind, and your state of mind depends on the state your body finds itself in. Every passing landscape, every new city, forces you into new thoughts. Traveling forces you, encourages you, inspires you to thoughts you never knew you could or would think. I'll explain.
This might even just end up as my travel post, because it is impossible to take my thoughts out of their contexts, or to not give an explanation of the circumstance I found myself in. I started off in Amsterdam. The Anne Frank House was probably one of the best things I could have began my trip with. It immediately made me reflect on the value of life, of freedom, of being so free to do all the things I want to do, of being able to breathe and live and laugh loudly without fear. Not being cooped up in a tiny house in the fear of discovery and deportation, not from the age of 13. Not having a diary as the only means of escape from a life that offered little in the way of happiness and joy. We have so much but we don't see it. We focus only on our lack and on how much happier we would be if we had more, instead of finding happiness in the things we already have.
I complain about life and whine and feel depressed occasionally and somedays just want to curl up and sleep the days away. But I have the liberty of getting up and getting out, of breathing in the fresh air and the flowers and the fields, and the only fears I have come from within, not without. It puts things into perspective. Should we not relish life so, so much more?
Scattered across Europe are monuments to the Wars fought on it. It is easy to overlook them, to pass each and every one of them and feel nothing but indifference. Perhaps it is because I am a soldier, but I cannot. Every monument, every pillar is another reminder of the lives lost in defending something. An ideal, freedom, family, friends, the Fatherland. The horrifying effects of war on its victims, not just the soldiers but everyone, who's lost a father or a husband, a child to starvation, whatever. War makes victims of us all. I'm a soldier, that doesn't mean I like war. Is violence the means to an end, I don't know. Is the military the perfect solution, or any solution at all? It is not perfect, but it does not need to be. But it's like a hostage situation, if you will. Who is going to be the first to lay down their weapons? As long as this dialogue never happens, there will be a need for the military. In an ideal world, I'd be out of a job. But the world is not an ideal one, and a less than ideal solution exists to protect it.
Didn't mean to talk about war or the military like that, but I guess it's been prancing around the back of my head for a while now. Or maybe it was watching Les Mis that conjured up those thoughts with those revolutionaries and all. Most amazing movie, btw, I've not watched the Hobbit or anything but I'm not gonna reserve my judgment, best movie of 2012/2013, it is going to sweep the awards really. Must-watch.
Traveling through Germany and it's hard to imagine what is must have been like 70 years ago. Ravaged by war, its young men off to fight a war they did not realize would cost them so much, its women aiding in the war effort however they could. A country that had been geared for war and was in the middle of one. Not just war. Never are we to forget the atrocities committed under the Third Reich.
The train winds through peaceful looking towns and villages, green fields with a fresh coating of frost on them, and you wonder: What is in the hearts of men?
And then I arrived in Berlin. The Holocaust Memorial hit me. I wandered through it as slow as I could, as I was part of a tour. As a soldier, I think its important to remember what the consequences of our actions can be.
Makes me wonder, what would I have done had I been a young officer in the Wehrmacht 70 years ago? It's easy to say I would not have gone ahead, but if that is so how can nobody in the armed forces have raised any objections at all? It's hard to say. Which is pretty scary.
We visited the Topography of Terror, which was a museum about the SS activity in Nazi Germany, and it was shocking to see how much of it was done "with the approval or assistance of the Wehrmacht." How much of it boiled down to fear of reprisal and how much of it to just obeying orders, to the point where it becomes justification all on its own and thereafter the fear of being found out? Who can say now?
Unfortunately I did not manage to visit the Dachau concentration camp. Hopefully one day I will, as well as Auschwitz. I really do think it's important that people remember these things. And perhaps especially people like me, those of us who for whatever motivations decided to make a career out of violence. I'm not saying we are violent, and yet if violence did not exist neither would we, or at least not our chosen vocations and professions. I would argue we are defending against violence, that we are a bulwark against violent actors on the international stage, but I cannot argue that our means are not violent ones. It is fact. It might sound rather harsh and damning but it is something that all military men must reconcile themselves with sooner or later. We might not lead lives of violence, and yet we earn our keep through the promise of violence, in training for possibly, one day executing deadly violence. Even as we fervently hope that that day never comes.
That's kind of the weird situation soldiers find themselves in. We train and train, but always in the hope that we never have to truly practice what it is we have spent our lives perfecting. Warfare. Does that make what we do pointless? Of course I would say no. We're insurance, possibly, and yet more. Lives are and will be affected by my actions, my words. Be they NSFs, or regulars, officers have the power to really affect lives. I find it useful to remind myself of that from time to time, lest I one day turn out completely selfish and have no regard to the people around me or under me.
Haha okay I think that's it with the reflections on my career path, hadn't meant to talk about that in such detail actually. Let's talk about stories, or fiction instead.
What is the point of fiction? Or stories? Or Art? "All the Arts … imitate as far as they can the one great truth that all can see," said Virginia Woolf. Is art the reflection and imitation of life? Is it not instead to transcend reality, cause what is fiction doing trucking around with reality? Reality sucks and fiction shouldn't, cause we want to believe in the hero who falls deeply in love, who saves the day. That at the end of every story, everything is all right. That's what we want to believe, don't we? What then the point of fiction which shows us that reality, it invariably fails us. Inevitably, people fail us, and we fail the people around us.
I'm just gonna ramble because I clearly don't have an answer. I'm not sure anyone does. I do enjoy a classic tale where against all odds the hero triumphs. I think there's always room in our lives for victories and guaranteed happiness, even if it is only through a character in a movie/book. But one of the tips the author Kurt Vonnegut has on writing is: Be a Sadist. Only then can you tell what your characters are made of. And if you're drawing from the drawing board of life, sometimes you find that some people aren't very nice.
Is the value of a piece of writing in the story it conveys, or in the feelings it evokes, the thoughts it inspires? Of course, usually these go hand-in-hand cause great stories stimulate thoughts. But sometimes you read a book and you go, wow what a great story, and that's the end of that. Doesn't make it any worse of a book that you don't go on to have a major philosophical discussion in your head after that. Or badly written books whose subject matter in itself is enough to start your mind racing, wondering about the greatest questions in life etc etc. What's the point of fiction and stories? I really don't know. I'd say it depends on the reader. What is the reader looking to get out of each new story he reads? Is he looking for echoes of his own life so that the entire story resonates with him? (Arguably all great stories and characters do this, they allow you to become the character, to put on the story.) Is he looking for an escape from reality, for the answers to the burning questions in his heart, whatever it is he is looking for.
So books. Seriously, I blame brainpickings.org cause without that website I would not have managed to scrunge up so many semi-coherent thoughts on books and writing. Or have had the delight to read so many quotes from so many literary lights. Favourite new website really. One of the articles was on How To Talk About Books You've Never Read, or something. Which is kinda pretentious sounding, cause everyone knows the twat who just wants to sound like he know everything. But it wasn't, and did contain this that I found interesting.
That the books you don't read say as much about you as the books you do. Cause we are the books we read. So I'm not Edward Cullen, and I'm proud of that fact. Loving books doesn't mean you have to appreciate every single one. And I think books say alot about a person. Which is probably why I do take quite alot of care with my book collection. It does seem very self-conscious, which it probably is, and like a carefully constructed presentation of how I want to seem like instead of who I actually am.
Which begs the question, who am I actually? You know you saw this question coming. We are the amalgamation of everything we are. Every extension, every projection, even the carefully constructed ones. Blog, twitter, instagram, facebook profile. Some people carefully curate everything that goes into these social platforms, and there's nothing wrong in that. Being conscious of what you present to the world is a part of you, however much you might like to reject that label (as I do, sometimes.) We are all made up of everything we make up.
Every word you use, every picture you like, they're another clue as to who you actually are. They reveal you. Because I don't believe that there is a fixed, definite or final "you", nor should there be. It's constantly in flux, and you discover yourself all the time, and you grow and you change and you adapt, and isn't that wonderful? Why would you want to discover the "real you"?
I remember still that discussion I had with (I think) nuo shi many years ago about men and masks. Well not just men, people I guess.
I'm different things to different people, and I behave accordingly. Around my friends or people I'm more comfortable with I'm suitably retarded, for the most part. In church I have a slightly different persona, probably like that of an older brother maybe? So I act like one and hopefully am someone the younger ones can look up to.
At home I'm the eldest son and hopefully also the more mature one, although my brother certainly is trying to give me a run for me money. I feel like I have to be more sensible, more responsible. I've got a job and I have to think more about the family's welfare and wellbeing, more perhaps than the other 2 do.
As an officer I hope I come across as competent, not arrogant but no pushover either. I have to maintain that aura of "Officership" I suppose, and that includes my fitness and sharpness of mind I guess. As well as social awareness.
As a sportsperson/wannabe sportsperson I have to keep fit as well, and be aware of my strengths and corresponding weaknesses. And also to have that spirit of trying my best at all the things I do, of giving my all.
And it's all different, some of them possibly varying to a rather large extent. And yet I believe that some part of your character manages to shine through whatever identity you're donning that the time. Something that people recognize, maybe, as being "you".
And then I started thinking about what people are remembered for. It is a tragedy that all too often in the papers the story of another young person's death appears. Not that anybody's death is acceptable, it's just the idea of youth, of so much potential, so much to live for, which is supposed to be brimming with vitality, the idea of youth passing away prematurely is such an affront to our beliefs that we are saddened and outraged, and we should be. "Full of life," they always say, "and always cheerful." No one says though, "He was retarded and completely silly! He did the dumbest and most incredible things you wouldn't believe." Packaging the essence of a person into stock, bland words. It just doesn't seem right.
I did come up with a couple of stuff regarding the essential and essentially unanswerable question of Who Am I while I was traveling. Arguably THE question which drives people to travel, which people ask while they travel, and which hopefully people manage to answer in whatever small ways they can after they travel. It is the travellers Question. What I'm trying to put across here is that I hope it's not just me stoking my ego by thinking Me, ME all the time, but a natural by-product of traveling, especially on your own. Hahah. I really am worried about my ego getting out of control sometimes.
Naval officer studying law in the UK, rugby and badminton player, avid (if not particularly good) cyclist and rock climber, backpacker of Europe/the World, member of Asian committee in church, writer of stories of dubious quality, recreational tennis player and dragonboater (which I really miss actually), street soccer ping-pong and foosball player might as well throw in here too, avid foodie and budding chef, purveyor of beauty and laughter and all that is good in life, dota player, book/movie/music fanboy (but neither a good writer nor actor nor musician), and clearly an avid fan of recording sometimes worthless shit for posterity, or for better or worse.
Which probably serves effectively to sum up, at least on a somewhat surface level, the question of Who Am I. I'm sure there's stuff I've missed out in there but if I did then that probably means they don't mean much anyway. But these are just sort of distinguishing features, a description of what I do or like to do, possibly more a What I Am rather than a Who I Am. Which leads me to my next set of musings and ramblings, which I couldn't actually bring myself to complete.
To answer the question of Who Am I? I think it is necessary first to answer the whole set of the Husband and Wives. To set out the context of the question, before finally delving into it and hopefully answering it (I won't.)
Where am I - Bruges, Europe, thousands of miles away from home.
When am I - 19.12.2012
What am I - Traveller, Student, Naval Officer, Christian, Singaporean
Why am I - Do not know. Possibly the most fundamental question right next to Who am I.
How am I - Simple biology. A sperm and an egg.
Or there's this.
I am in Europe, thousands (6156 - Berlin) of miles away from home. Or perhaps, thousands of miles away from where I should be at this moment. How incredible is that, how unreal is it that I should find myself here? In places people would give so much to be.
I am in 2012 (almost 2013 now), the new millenium, in the grips of rapid and massive technological advances. 70 years after the last World War left the country I'm in, and was, and will be in, burning. Millions of people dead or dying or homeless and starving. Something we've almost managed to push to the back of our consciousness in a mere 70 years. Which tells you what a 70 years it's been.
I am a human being. Homo sapien, inheritor of the world or the top of the food chain. And depending on where and when I find myself, I define myself differently too. Now I say traveller, in Exeter I say Singaporean, subsequently student (I don't often think myself as a student.) At home I say Naval officer. Almost everything is contingent on each other, it would seem.
I am here because. A higher being (in my case, God) has made me so. Some would argue the random event billions of years ago, the big bang, and all the universe's transformation and evolution since. It stretches my imagination to think that out of all this entropy, all this randomness and energy and mass could come about such perfect circumstances to sustain such life as our earth does. It is just too mind-boggling for me. Life in all its variations? The millions of species of flora and fauna, could that really have come about purely by chance? Not for me, no. My personal How am I is answered then by God.
I am here for a reason. I might not know it yet, but there is purpose in my life. There is a reason Why I am. I hope that I find reason in all the things I do. And that hopefully by doing so, I can figure out my own reason for being. If you cannot find the why in the things you do, how can you possibly find the why in yourself? So I will continue to do the things that are meaningful to me, things that I can give meaning to. And maybe I will too mean something to someone. Is that enough a reason to exist, to mean something to someone? Maybe. I don't know. I'd like to think it does, I think.
And that leaves Who Am I. Which I don't know, not yet at least, and maybe not ever. And maybe it doesn't matter that you'll never obtain the definitive answer, maybe it's important that you never do. In our strife to be better persons we constantly renew ourselves, we reinvent ourselves sometimes, cause sometimes we have to.
What has travelling done for, or to, me? I might not know exactly who I am, but I know better now who I want to be. It's taught me self-acceptance, but also that that's not enough. What's the point of being able to look at yourself, to see the bad with the good, if you don't try then to preserve the good and excise the bad? Self-acceptance maybe means that you are able to honestly look at yourself without blinkers, without trying to delude yourself into thinking you're something you're not. To accept you're not as good as you've made yourself out to be. I think I've managed to achieve some form of that, which is quite a step for me.
Hmmm okay. I guess I kinda exhausted myself now. Not quite a complete treatise on the question of identity, or on travelling, or even on the purpose of the military, or of fiction. More like a completely random mish-mash of all of the above, and which hopefully make some sort of sense to you, as it kinda does to me haha.
Just watched an excellent video on happiness, which kinda distracted me I guess. The best sort of distraction really. In fact I'm gonna put it here cause I think it's really worth a watch!
I did especially like the part where he described stuff like health, travel etc, sort of things that people always include in their list of wants, as auxiliary. Because I did have some ruminations on wants the other day.. But don't worry I won't go into that cause I've forgotten it all now! It's been a long post..
Alright then, it's time to sleep I guess! I am feeling rather a fool right now, for reasons I will not specify, and oh what a feeling. Oh no. I'm in a bad way.. Ugh ciao!
What do I like so much about having a travel diary? Your thoughts depend on your state of mind, and your state of mind depends on the state your body finds itself in. Every passing landscape, every new city, forces you into new thoughts. Traveling forces you, encourages you, inspires you to thoughts you never knew you could or would think. I'll explain.
This might even just end up as my travel post, because it is impossible to take my thoughts out of their contexts, or to not give an explanation of the circumstance I found myself in. I started off in Amsterdam. The Anne Frank House was probably one of the best things I could have began my trip with. It immediately made me reflect on the value of life, of freedom, of being so free to do all the things I want to do, of being able to breathe and live and laugh loudly without fear. Not being cooped up in a tiny house in the fear of discovery and deportation, not from the age of 13. Not having a diary as the only means of escape from a life that offered little in the way of happiness and joy. We have so much but we don't see it. We focus only on our lack and on how much happier we would be if we had more, instead of finding happiness in the things we already have.
I complain about life and whine and feel depressed occasionally and somedays just want to curl up and sleep the days away. But I have the liberty of getting up and getting out, of breathing in the fresh air and the flowers and the fields, and the only fears I have come from within, not without. It puts things into perspective. Should we not relish life so, so much more?
Scattered across Europe are monuments to the Wars fought on it. It is easy to overlook them, to pass each and every one of them and feel nothing but indifference. Perhaps it is because I am a soldier, but I cannot. Every monument, every pillar is another reminder of the lives lost in defending something. An ideal, freedom, family, friends, the Fatherland. The horrifying effects of war on its victims, not just the soldiers but everyone, who's lost a father or a husband, a child to starvation, whatever. War makes victims of us all. I'm a soldier, that doesn't mean I like war. Is violence the means to an end, I don't know. Is the military the perfect solution, or any solution at all? It is not perfect, but it does not need to be. But it's like a hostage situation, if you will. Who is going to be the first to lay down their weapons? As long as this dialogue never happens, there will be a need for the military. In an ideal world, I'd be out of a job. But the world is not an ideal one, and a less than ideal solution exists to protect it.
Didn't mean to talk about war or the military like that, but I guess it's been prancing around the back of my head for a while now. Or maybe it was watching Les Mis that conjured up those thoughts with those revolutionaries and all. Most amazing movie, btw, I've not watched the Hobbit or anything but I'm not gonna reserve my judgment, best movie of 2012/2013, it is going to sweep the awards really. Must-watch.
Traveling through Germany and it's hard to imagine what is must have been like 70 years ago. Ravaged by war, its young men off to fight a war they did not realize would cost them so much, its women aiding in the war effort however they could. A country that had been geared for war and was in the middle of one. Not just war. Never are we to forget the atrocities committed under the Third Reich.
The train winds through peaceful looking towns and villages, green fields with a fresh coating of frost on them, and you wonder: What is in the hearts of men?
And then I arrived in Berlin. The Holocaust Memorial hit me. I wandered through it as slow as I could, as I was part of a tour. As a soldier, I think its important to remember what the consequences of our actions can be.
Makes me wonder, what would I have done had I been a young officer in the Wehrmacht 70 years ago? It's easy to say I would not have gone ahead, but if that is so how can nobody in the armed forces have raised any objections at all? It's hard to say. Which is pretty scary.
We visited the Topography of Terror, which was a museum about the SS activity in Nazi Germany, and it was shocking to see how much of it was done "with the approval or assistance of the Wehrmacht." How much of it boiled down to fear of reprisal and how much of it to just obeying orders, to the point where it becomes justification all on its own and thereafter the fear of being found out? Who can say now?
Unfortunately I did not manage to visit the Dachau concentration camp. Hopefully one day I will, as well as Auschwitz. I really do think it's important that people remember these things. And perhaps especially people like me, those of us who for whatever motivations decided to make a career out of violence. I'm not saying we are violent, and yet if violence did not exist neither would we, or at least not our chosen vocations and professions. I would argue we are defending against violence, that we are a bulwark against violent actors on the international stage, but I cannot argue that our means are not violent ones. It is fact. It might sound rather harsh and damning but it is something that all military men must reconcile themselves with sooner or later. We might not lead lives of violence, and yet we earn our keep through the promise of violence, in training for possibly, one day executing deadly violence. Even as we fervently hope that that day never comes.
That's kind of the weird situation soldiers find themselves in. We train and train, but always in the hope that we never have to truly practice what it is we have spent our lives perfecting. Warfare. Does that make what we do pointless? Of course I would say no. We're insurance, possibly, and yet more. Lives are and will be affected by my actions, my words. Be they NSFs, or regulars, officers have the power to really affect lives. I find it useful to remind myself of that from time to time, lest I one day turn out completely selfish and have no regard to the people around me or under me.
Haha okay I think that's it with the reflections on my career path, hadn't meant to talk about that in such detail actually. Let's talk about stories, or fiction instead.
What is the point of fiction? Or stories? Or Art? "All the Arts … imitate as far as they can the one great truth that all can see," said Virginia Woolf. Is art the reflection and imitation of life? Is it not instead to transcend reality, cause what is fiction doing trucking around with reality? Reality sucks and fiction shouldn't, cause we want to believe in the hero who falls deeply in love, who saves the day. That at the end of every story, everything is all right. That's what we want to believe, don't we? What then the point of fiction which shows us that reality, it invariably fails us. Inevitably, people fail us, and we fail the people around us.
I'm just gonna ramble because I clearly don't have an answer. I'm not sure anyone does. I do enjoy a classic tale where against all odds the hero triumphs. I think there's always room in our lives for victories and guaranteed happiness, even if it is only through a character in a movie/book. But one of the tips the author Kurt Vonnegut has on writing is: Be a Sadist. Only then can you tell what your characters are made of. And if you're drawing from the drawing board of life, sometimes you find that some people aren't very nice.
Is the value of a piece of writing in the story it conveys, or in the feelings it evokes, the thoughts it inspires? Of course, usually these go hand-in-hand cause great stories stimulate thoughts. But sometimes you read a book and you go, wow what a great story, and that's the end of that. Doesn't make it any worse of a book that you don't go on to have a major philosophical discussion in your head after that. Or badly written books whose subject matter in itself is enough to start your mind racing, wondering about the greatest questions in life etc etc. What's the point of fiction and stories? I really don't know. I'd say it depends on the reader. What is the reader looking to get out of each new story he reads? Is he looking for echoes of his own life so that the entire story resonates with him? (Arguably all great stories and characters do this, they allow you to become the character, to put on the story.) Is he looking for an escape from reality, for the answers to the burning questions in his heart, whatever it is he is looking for.
So books. Seriously, I blame brainpickings.org cause without that website I would not have managed to scrunge up so many semi-coherent thoughts on books and writing. Or have had the delight to read so many quotes from so many literary lights. Favourite new website really. One of the articles was on How To Talk About Books You've Never Read, or something. Which is kinda pretentious sounding, cause everyone knows the twat who just wants to sound like he know everything. But it wasn't, and did contain this that I found interesting.
That the books you don't read say as much about you as the books you do. Cause we are the books we read. So I'm not Edward Cullen, and I'm proud of that fact. Loving books doesn't mean you have to appreciate every single one. And I think books say alot about a person. Which is probably why I do take quite alot of care with my book collection. It does seem very self-conscious, which it probably is, and like a carefully constructed presentation of how I want to seem like instead of who I actually am.
Which begs the question, who am I actually? You know you saw this question coming. We are the amalgamation of everything we are. Every extension, every projection, even the carefully constructed ones. Blog, twitter, instagram, facebook profile. Some people carefully curate everything that goes into these social platforms, and there's nothing wrong in that. Being conscious of what you present to the world is a part of you, however much you might like to reject that label (as I do, sometimes.) We are all made up of everything we make up.
Every word you use, every picture you like, they're another clue as to who you actually are. They reveal you. Because I don't believe that there is a fixed, definite or final "you", nor should there be. It's constantly in flux, and you discover yourself all the time, and you grow and you change and you adapt, and isn't that wonderful? Why would you want to discover the "real you"?
I remember still that discussion I had with (I think) nuo shi many years ago about men and masks. Well not just men, people I guess.
I'm different things to different people, and I behave accordingly. Around my friends or people I'm more comfortable with I'm suitably retarded, for the most part. In church I have a slightly different persona, probably like that of an older brother maybe? So I act like one and hopefully am someone the younger ones can look up to.
At home I'm the eldest son and hopefully also the more mature one, although my brother certainly is trying to give me a run for me money. I feel like I have to be more sensible, more responsible. I've got a job and I have to think more about the family's welfare and wellbeing, more perhaps than the other 2 do.
As an officer I hope I come across as competent, not arrogant but no pushover either. I have to maintain that aura of "Officership" I suppose, and that includes my fitness and sharpness of mind I guess. As well as social awareness.
As a sportsperson/wannabe sportsperson I have to keep fit as well, and be aware of my strengths and corresponding weaknesses. And also to have that spirit of trying my best at all the things I do, of giving my all.
And it's all different, some of them possibly varying to a rather large extent. And yet I believe that some part of your character manages to shine through whatever identity you're donning that the time. Something that people recognize, maybe, as being "you".
And then I started thinking about what people are remembered for. It is a tragedy that all too often in the papers the story of another young person's death appears. Not that anybody's death is acceptable, it's just the idea of youth, of so much potential, so much to live for, which is supposed to be brimming with vitality, the idea of youth passing away prematurely is such an affront to our beliefs that we are saddened and outraged, and we should be. "Full of life," they always say, "and always cheerful." No one says though, "He was retarded and completely silly! He did the dumbest and most incredible things you wouldn't believe." Packaging the essence of a person into stock, bland words. It just doesn't seem right.
I did come up with a couple of stuff regarding the essential and essentially unanswerable question of Who Am I while I was traveling. Arguably THE question which drives people to travel, which people ask while they travel, and which hopefully people manage to answer in whatever small ways they can after they travel. It is the travellers Question. What I'm trying to put across here is that I hope it's not just me stoking my ego by thinking Me, ME all the time, but a natural by-product of traveling, especially on your own. Hahah. I really am worried about my ego getting out of control sometimes.
Naval officer studying law in the UK, rugby and badminton player, avid (if not particularly good) cyclist and rock climber, backpacker of Europe/the World, member of Asian committee in church, writer of stories of dubious quality, recreational tennis player and dragonboater (which I really miss actually), street soccer ping-pong and foosball player might as well throw in here too, avid foodie and budding chef, purveyor of beauty and laughter and all that is good in life, dota player, book/movie/music fanboy (but neither a good writer nor actor nor musician), and clearly an avid fan of recording sometimes worthless shit for posterity, or for better or worse.
Which probably serves effectively to sum up, at least on a somewhat surface level, the question of Who Am I. I'm sure there's stuff I've missed out in there but if I did then that probably means they don't mean much anyway. But these are just sort of distinguishing features, a description of what I do or like to do, possibly more a What I Am rather than a Who I Am. Which leads me to my next set of musings and ramblings, which I couldn't actually bring myself to complete.
To answer the question of Who Am I? I think it is necessary first to answer the whole set of the Husband and Wives. To set out the context of the question, before finally delving into it and hopefully answering it (I won't.)
Where am I - Bruges, Europe, thousands of miles away from home.
When am I - 19.12.2012
What am I - Traveller, Student, Naval Officer, Christian, Singaporean
Why am I - Do not know. Possibly the most fundamental question right next to Who am I.
How am I - Simple biology. A sperm and an egg.
Or there's this.
I am in Europe, thousands (6156 - Berlin) of miles away from home. Or perhaps, thousands of miles away from where I should be at this moment. How incredible is that, how unreal is it that I should find myself here? In places people would give so much to be.
I am in 2012 (almost 2013 now), the new millenium, in the grips of rapid and massive technological advances. 70 years after the last World War left the country I'm in, and was, and will be in, burning. Millions of people dead or dying or homeless and starving. Something we've almost managed to push to the back of our consciousness in a mere 70 years. Which tells you what a 70 years it's been.
I am a human being. Homo sapien, inheritor of the world or the top of the food chain. And depending on where and when I find myself, I define myself differently too. Now I say traveller, in Exeter I say Singaporean, subsequently student (I don't often think myself as a student.) At home I say Naval officer. Almost everything is contingent on each other, it would seem.
I am here because. A higher being (in my case, God) has made me so. Some would argue the random event billions of years ago, the big bang, and all the universe's transformation and evolution since. It stretches my imagination to think that out of all this entropy, all this randomness and energy and mass could come about such perfect circumstances to sustain such life as our earth does. It is just too mind-boggling for me. Life in all its variations? The millions of species of flora and fauna, could that really have come about purely by chance? Not for me, no. My personal How am I is answered then by God.
I am here for a reason. I might not know it yet, but there is purpose in my life. There is a reason Why I am. I hope that I find reason in all the things I do. And that hopefully by doing so, I can figure out my own reason for being. If you cannot find the why in the things you do, how can you possibly find the why in yourself? So I will continue to do the things that are meaningful to me, things that I can give meaning to. And maybe I will too mean something to someone. Is that enough a reason to exist, to mean something to someone? Maybe. I don't know. I'd like to think it does, I think.
And that leaves Who Am I. Which I don't know, not yet at least, and maybe not ever. And maybe it doesn't matter that you'll never obtain the definitive answer, maybe it's important that you never do. In our strife to be better persons we constantly renew ourselves, we reinvent ourselves sometimes, cause sometimes we have to.
What has travelling done for, or to, me? I might not know exactly who I am, but I know better now who I want to be. It's taught me self-acceptance, but also that that's not enough. What's the point of being able to look at yourself, to see the bad with the good, if you don't try then to preserve the good and excise the bad? Self-acceptance maybe means that you are able to honestly look at yourself without blinkers, without trying to delude yourself into thinking you're something you're not. To accept you're not as good as you've made yourself out to be. I think I've managed to achieve some form of that, which is quite a step for me.
Hmmm okay. I guess I kinda exhausted myself now. Not quite a complete treatise on the question of identity, or on travelling, or even on the purpose of the military, or of fiction. More like a completely random mish-mash of all of the above, and which hopefully make some sort of sense to you, as it kinda does to me haha.
Just watched an excellent video on happiness, which kinda distracted me I guess. The best sort of distraction really. In fact I'm gonna put it here cause I think it's really worth a watch!
I did especially like the part where he described stuff like health, travel etc, sort of things that people always include in their list of wants, as auxiliary. Because I did have some ruminations on wants the other day.. But don't worry I won't go into that cause I've forgotten it all now! It's been a long post..
Alright then, it's time to sleep I guess! I am feeling rather a fool right now, for reasons I will not specify, and oh what a feeling. Oh no. I'm in a bad way.. Ugh ciao!
Friday, 11 January 2013
When Dreaming's This Hard It's Not Meant To Come True.
Treading the ground
I once used to know
People are strangers
Same as before
Streets look familiar
I remember the park
Where I buried my head
So deep in my hands
All around me was dark
This here city
Is for the lonely ones
Won't find no angels
Selling maps to the lost
This here place
Is too small for two
It took one to realize
When dreaming's this hard
It's not meant to come true
So throw me a line
Somebody out there help me
I'm on my own
I'm on my own
Throw me a line
Afraid that I have come here
To win you again
With trembling hands
Passing the days
Looking over the buildings
Time seems to stop
While the millions keep moving
Now here I am
I'm a drop in your ocean
Noise in the crowd
Pushing through your halls of reason
Ohh
So throw me a line
Somebody out there help me
I'm on my own
I'm on my own
Throw me a line
Afraid that I have come here
To win you again
With trembling hands
Hear me now make me whole
Hear me now make me whole
So throw me a line
Somebody out there help me
I'm on my own
I'm on my own
Throw me a line
Afraid that I have come here
To win you again
With trembling hands
With trembling hands
There goes the ending
It left me in the war
But I tried everything yeah
I am done with my part
-Trembling Hands, The Temper Trap
2012
Victory, conquering, staggering loss, nothing, nothing, everything.
Like walking through a tunnel searching for light and then it hits you and you feel nothing.
Like wanting the sea and getting a river.
Its been a strange one kids.
Im neither happy or sad its over but I am ready to move on.
Slowly.
Patiently.
If there is one thing I'd like for the next year other then fireworks, love and pure creation it would be a little more self acceptance/love/forgiveness.
I've been carrying and nurturing the same wounds for so many years now and all the sudden I am a scarred woman laughing whilst crying, not fully realizing how much lighter things actually are.
Its almost like I miss my darkest days or maybe I haven't found the right things to replace the dark with yet.
I still want more,
more,
more,
of whatever I can get my hands on.
Or maybe its just me getting older. One year at a time.
Happy new year lovers.
May all our dreams come true so we can create new ones.
-Lykke Li
Hello all. I'm not sure at all what this blog post is going to be so don't hold your breath in anticipation of anything wonderful.. I might or might not talk about my trip, or the past couple of weeks, or just random thoughts in my head, or maybe from my journal. I am absolutely and wonderfully hooked onto this amazing song, Trembling Hands by The Temper Trap. Definitely my newest favouritest song. There's such a... I don't know how to put it, forlorn, yet wistful feel to it? It captures the desperation of the lonely, and that video.. Absolutely entranced.
The lyrics remind me of home too, for better or worse. I'm always afraid of going back home to a strange land of strangers. I guess everyone who goes overseas has that fear. It might ease up over time but deep down each of us retains some sense of it. Clearly everyone is getting along fine, without you? Surely that must mean they are moving on, without you? Yes, it does. But do not be too selfish to realize that you, too, are moving on from them. We are all moving on from something, in one way or another, and if we're lucky we might even be moving towards something.
Yeah, I actually shamelessly ripped that idea off of thoughtcatalogue, and I can tell you, brainpickings.org just might be even better than that, possibly cause it's a more hipster version of it. And everyone knows I am a hipster to beat all hipsters, cause I was hipster before most hipsters had hips. Anw I've been poring over the posts there, most of which are delightful, super quotable nuggets which would look amazing on tumblr I reckon, but I don't tumble. Shame.
No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we’re not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.
Tristan and Isolde is scarcely the story,
women at least should know the difference
between love and death. No poison cup,
no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder
should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder
not merely played but should have listened to us,
and could instruct those after us:
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us
within us and against us, against us and within us.
-Adrienne Rich
Just kidding, I'm gonna post this stuff anw cause they're too good not to share. Even to the 7 people or so who read this blog. Which, incidentally, I just found out about recently from an unknown source. I actually have more readers than I've always thought, which I guess is slightly awkward, but doesn't matter I guess? To be perfectly honest I've always been slightly ashamed of my blog, or the fact that I even have one. I really enjoy having one, don't get me wrong, but the fact that people might be reading it... My newfound self-acceptance or my attempts at ridding myself of self-consciousness, however, means that I don't care anymore. I probably would have a short time ago, but I guess I'm different now. Not to say that I don't feel self-conscious, I'm not sure that's ever going to be possible, but I've decided to try and ignore that now.
And to decide to continue blogging, of course. Because.
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us
within us and against us, against us and within us.
Again from brainpickings comes this:
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.
Certainly this reeks somewhat of a self-centredness in the way it sets us keepers apart from "others", or normal people, because normality of course is poison. Keeping a notebook reminds me, allows me to remember what it was to be me.
And so we do. But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable “I.”
It's a pretty, perhaps damningly so, accurate description of the motives behind a notebook. And yet we cannot help it, because that's probably what compulsion means anyway.
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.
That was surprisingly eerily close to what I'd been thinking before even stumbling upon this brilliant website, probably a product of my travels sometime. Which was that this blog reminds me of who I was, who I used to be. I can tell you that of some of my older posts, I am 100% embarrassed because that's exactly what I was, embarrassing.. On occasion I read through some of my older posts and I cringe inwardly, nay 'tis a lie! outwardly because it's just so bad. It's the kind of shame that goes way deep and I'll never admit in real life.. Thank god for anonymity of the internet, which is silly cause it's the source of my shame anyway. Huh.
I'm going to randomly shove in some of the drafts I'd typed out on my phone. I only got my notebook in Rotterdam, which means that for the first 1.5weeks of my trip I had only my trusty (and now shattered) phone with which to record down thoughts, and incidentally, another story. Here goes the story.
If We Could Only Hate.
Why? I have to know.
I guess.. I was never truly happy. I know I was meant to be happy, I thought I loved you, and that you loved me.
I did love you. (I do, still.)
And then one day it just hit me - I didn't love you. I couldn't. I was in love with an idea, the ideal man who seemed to have it all.
But I never could match up to the man inside of your head.
No.
What was I supposed to do? What can I do? You're trying to say I never had a chance. Then why did you even try?
I.. I was in love. Just not with you. With the idea of you. I'm sorry.
No. No. You can't do this. At least give me something to regret. Give me something to blame myself over. Something to point to and say I should not have done that, that I have only myself to blame. That I at least had a chance. Come on. Please.
I can't. I'm so sorry. You're a good man.. just not perfect, not the way I imagined you to be in my head.
What do you mean? Was I supposed to be perfect? Was I not allowed to do anything wrong at all? I mean, come on! You never told me I had to be perfect. At least tell me what you expected of me before I got into this!
Would it have changed anything? Would you have walked away if I'd told you this in the beginning?
No. I don't know. What does it matter? Don't you dare turn this on me.
(silence)
Well. You've certainly taken me on a damn ride then haven't you?
What do you want me to say? Yes. No. I don't know. I'm sorry. I know you're bitter. You must hate me.
No. No I don't. If only I could. If only it were that easy. Goodbye Emily.
________________________________
This started off in my head as a dialogue between 2 people. Guess it's not much of a story at all, just a possible conversation maybe. I don't know why this was in my mind as I took the bus to Portsmouth to watch the xx. Which incidentally, was amazing. Emily only because I don't actually know an Emily personally, and it seemed nicer to end on a name rather than just with a Goodbye. Meh, make of it what you will, I guess.
I guess I'll talk a bit about some of these stories. Just as a recording of why I wrote what I did, I guess. The beauty one I wrote in response to a string of thoughts I had, which was this.
Friendship is like a thread held between 2 people. And it takes effort from both sides to hold on. They're all different though, and can afford different amounts of tension and slack. Some are extremely loose but require the efforts of just one person to take up the slack. Sometimes the burden is too much for that one person and he gives up. Sometimes one party, or both, are so needy that the rope becomes too taut. It seems to go along fine, it's nice and firm but the slightest bit of tension and it goes. It's hard to pick up the pieces.
Others are stronger, layered over by their pasts, shared experiences, common interests, plain compatibility of characters. Others have just one tenuous connection, possibly even something as base as desperation, or a craving for companionship. And some are doomed to failure. The rope at breaking point. And are the more beautiful for it. The beauty of the fleeting, the transient, the ephemeral.
I'd been reflecting on a series of friendships that I'd had, and which for whatever reason now, no longer do. Also on the friendships that I am and always will be grateful for, those that have managed to last, those that have gone the distance. I guess.. I'll always have my regrets, or at least rue the friendships I've let slip away, some for such puerile reasons that I almost cannot believe what I've done. Well. That's done now, I guess. Except for that which might still yet be salvaged. Hope, as ever, springs forth.
It almost feels like I should go through my diary somewhat chronologically, cause I guess everything sort of builds up to the next entry. Nevermind, I guess the contents of a diary has meaning only to its writer, the topics inside close only to his own heart.
The next one was What They Took From Her. This was unplanned, not one of the many little fragments of possible stories I find in my head from time to time. I'm not sure where it came from. I think.. I think it just might be from Mystic River. At least, that seems to be its origins. I think it could refer to anything, really. Not necessarily an abduction or any sexual abuse, but it is based on Dave I guess. But it could be life that's taken away from her, or a string of lost loves, or constant disappointment. I don't know.
Then there's Beautiful Pressure which admittedly is rather unfinished, but I just can't bring myself to continue any longer, idk why though. Just think I've done all I can with that. It stems from the idea that beautiful people are different from those who are not. I've actually had this idea in my head for a really long time. The way people notice those who are beautiful, all the time. The almost unfair expectations foisted upon them. How they can never be inadequate. How being aware of your own beauty makes you self-conscious, and dare I say it, makes you unbeautiful too. I guess anyone else who's been singled out in anyway too. The pressures of scrutiny, maybe. Idk, it's just stuff that's been floating around my head for a while now so I tried to write this. Probably kind of forced it out, to be honest, just because I had some free time on a train or something (I forget) and there was this story I'd always wanted to write. Meh.
Hmm. Kinda forgot what I wanted to say actually, which isn't an issue today, I think. I think today all I needed was to unload whatever, not something I've been able to do for a while now. Why? Because of essays, which are over now. Traditional post-essay YESSAHBOMB in order here. But I feel kinda lost too. How shall I put it, hmm.
I guess it started on the 2nd of Jan. I'd taken my flight to Bristol and the bus to Temple Meads, where I had little over an hour before I was due to board my train back to Exeter. As soon as I got off the bus and decided that I'd walk around town for a bit instead of waiting at the station, I was struck by this colossal sense of loss. I felt completely lost, and it was bewildering. Something changed. And I have my suspicions.
I'm really tired. It's all adding up. Maybe it culminates here, maybe it doesn't, but I can feel it now. Like a rush of something that threatens to swamp everything it touches, except it's been dammed up, except it's been dammed up too long now. Maybe it's the videos and the songs like Trembling Hands. Maybe it's a movie like Blue Valentine. Maybe it's having someone to talk to, really talk to, for the first time in years. Maybe.
Maybe it's realizing that no man was made to walk this world alone. That everyone needs someone to share their joys and their despairs with. The smallest accomplishments. The little things that made your day. Anything, and everything. Or it's the cumulative melancholy of one and a half years abroad, of too much time spent alone, of too much time left alone. The despair of waking up days on end feeling confused and aimless and above all, so, so lost and having no one to turn to. Maybe it's that.
I don't know what it is. In any case, I don't think I've felt that way in a long while. I asked myself, okay, where shall we go now? And came up absolutely blank. It kind of shocked me, which you might or might not have been able to tell by now.
But I think I know now what I want. What I actually want, instead of the wants that have almost become obligatory. Things like good grades, or success, or money, stuff like that. To be perfectly honest, I don't want that. These are to me things which fall under the nice-to-have category. Probably means I'm a terrible student, cause I do know countless other people who'd kill (in fact they're dying) for good grades. I'm just not a good student at all.. Which would probably disappoint my parents, or my relatives, but well that's that. If I actually do well it'll be for them, not for myself I don't think. But finally, maybe the first time in a long while, I actually want again.
Might not be any specific something, or even a someone, it's just the feeling of wanting something. Who ever heard of someone wanting to want something? I think that was me. It probably characterized my 2012, a year in which I felt so lost so often. By no means my best year (if ever there was such a thing), but it wasn't my worst either. It had its ups and downs just like any other, distinguished only by that sense of loss which I never could quite elucidate, not in my thoughts nor my words nor my actions.
But this is the new year, and I do feel something different. Maybe there was something in the air that night/the stars so bright. Going against the grain, for once, of all my favourite new year songs by U2 and Death Cab for Cutie.
I usually try, I don't know if you notice, not to share too much here, at least not anything that affects me too much. I write words and stuff but I always shy away from saying what it is exactly I feel. Normally it's cause I'm afraid it'd be read. By persons known or unknown. But that doesn't matter all that much now, I think. I reckon the only people who do read this are close enough friends that I've ever told them about it, or if they're random(ish) people who've taken all this time to read this far then hey, hello. Thanks, and maybe I'll know you one day.
Otherwise this is just another url, destined to an existence of near complete anonymity, a drop in the ocean if you will. In the vastness of cyberspace, just another tree falling in a lonely forest. But it does make a sound.
Well now. Blue Valentine, if anyone is interested, is a really good movie and incredibly well-acted. Of course it helps that I have a massive man-crush on Ryan Gosling, but Michelle Williams was amazing too. Not an easy show to stomach, mind you, and definitely not what I'd been expecting. I heard ukelele and Ryan Gosling singing a song and thought, it must be fun! And while that scene was brilliant, the whole movie was... pretty depressing. It was almost painful to watch. But really good nonetheless, especially if you want to check out Ryan Gosling's range as an actor. Way too many Ryan Gosling's in one paragraph for a hetero young man, I'm afraid, so I shall desist.
Guess that should be all for today. Not exactly what I had in mind when I started off, but not what I didn't have in mind either, if that makes any sense at all. I might watch Ides of March, or Spirited Away. I did watch Howl's Moving castle sometime back in December which I might not have mentioned, and it was so good. Somehow the town scenes just remind me so much of Final Fantasy, probably FF9, and for a good 2 weeks I had that peaceful town in mind. Truly a masterpiece.
Yep. Good bye now.
I once used to know
People are strangers
Same as before
Streets look familiar
I remember the park
Where I buried my head
So deep in my hands
All around me was dark
This here city
Is for the lonely ones
Won't find no angels
Selling maps to the lost
This here place
Is too small for two
It took one to realize
When dreaming's this hard
It's not meant to come true
So throw me a line
Somebody out there help me
I'm on my own
I'm on my own
Throw me a line
Afraid that I have come here
To win you again
With trembling hands
Passing the days
Looking over the buildings
Time seems to stop
While the millions keep moving
Now here I am
I'm a drop in your ocean
Noise in the crowd
Pushing through your halls of reason
Ohh
So throw me a line
Somebody out there help me
I'm on my own
I'm on my own
Throw me a line
Afraid that I have come here
To win you again
With trembling hands
Hear me now make me whole
Hear me now make me whole
So throw me a line
Somebody out there help me
I'm on my own
I'm on my own
Throw me a line
Afraid that I have come here
To win you again
With trembling hands
With trembling hands
There goes the ending
It left me in the war
But I tried everything yeah
I am done with my part
-Trembling Hands, The Temper Trap
2012
Victory, conquering, staggering loss, nothing, nothing, everything.
Like walking through a tunnel searching for light and then it hits you and you feel nothing.
Like wanting the sea and getting a river.
Its been a strange one kids.
Im neither happy or sad its over but I am ready to move on.
Slowly.
Patiently.
If there is one thing I'd like for the next year other then fireworks, love and pure creation it would be a little more self acceptance/love/forgiveness.
I've been carrying and nurturing the same wounds for so many years now and all the sudden I am a scarred woman laughing whilst crying, not fully realizing how much lighter things actually are.
Its almost like I miss my darkest days or maybe I haven't found the right things to replace the dark with yet.
I still want more,
more,
more,
of whatever I can get my hands on.
Or maybe its just me getting older. One year at a time.
Happy new year lovers.
May all our dreams come true so we can create new ones.
-Lykke Li
Hello all. I'm not sure at all what this blog post is going to be so don't hold your breath in anticipation of anything wonderful.. I might or might not talk about my trip, or the past couple of weeks, or just random thoughts in my head, or maybe from my journal. I am absolutely and wonderfully hooked onto this amazing song, Trembling Hands by The Temper Trap. Definitely my newest favouritest song. There's such a... I don't know how to put it, forlorn, yet wistful feel to it? It captures the desperation of the lonely, and that video.. Absolutely entranced.
The lyrics remind me of home too, for better or worse. I'm always afraid of going back home to a strange land of strangers. I guess everyone who goes overseas has that fear. It might ease up over time but deep down each of us retains some sense of it. Clearly everyone is getting along fine, without you? Surely that must mean they are moving on, without you? Yes, it does. But do not be too selfish to realize that you, too, are moving on from them. We are all moving on from something, in one way or another, and if we're lucky we might even be moving towards something.
Yeah, I actually shamelessly ripped that idea off of thoughtcatalogue, and I can tell you, brainpickings.org just might be even better than that, possibly cause it's a more hipster version of it. And everyone knows I am a hipster to beat all hipsters, cause I was hipster before most hipsters had hips. Anw I've been poring over the posts there, most of which are delightful, super quotable nuggets which would look amazing on tumblr I reckon, but I don't tumble. Shame.
No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we’re not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.
Tristan and Isolde is scarcely the story,
women at least should know the difference
between love and death. No poison cup,
no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder
should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder
not merely played but should have listened to us,
and could instruct those after us:
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us
within us and against us, against us and within us.
-Adrienne Rich
Just kidding, I'm gonna post this stuff anw cause they're too good not to share. Even to the 7 people or so who read this blog. Which, incidentally, I just found out about recently from an unknown source. I actually have more readers than I've always thought, which I guess is slightly awkward, but doesn't matter I guess? To be perfectly honest I've always been slightly ashamed of my blog, or the fact that I even have one. I really enjoy having one, don't get me wrong, but the fact that people might be reading it... My newfound self-acceptance or my attempts at ridding myself of self-consciousness, however, means that I don't care anymore. I probably would have a short time ago, but I guess I'm different now. Not to say that I don't feel self-conscious, I'm not sure that's ever going to be possible, but I've decided to try and ignore that now.
And to decide to continue blogging, of course. Because.
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us
within us and against us, against us and within us.
Again from brainpickings comes this:
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.
Certainly this reeks somewhat of a self-centredness in the way it sets us keepers apart from "others", or normal people, because normality of course is poison. Keeping a notebook reminds me, allows me to remember what it was to be me.
And so we do. But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable “I.”
It's a pretty, perhaps damningly so, accurate description of the motives behind a notebook. And yet we cannot help it, because that's probably what compulsion means anyway.
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.
That was surprisingly eerily close to what I'd been thinking before even stumbling upon this brilliant website, probably a product of my travels sometime. Which was that this blog reminds me of who I was, who I used to be. I can tell you that of some of my older posts, I am 100% embarrassed because that's exactly what I was, embarrassing.. On occasion I read through some of my older posts and I cringe inwardly, nay 'tis a lie! outwardly because it's just so bad. It's the kind of shame that goes way deep and I'll never admit in real life.. Thank god for anonymity of the internet, which is silly cause it's the source of my shame anyway. Huh.
I'm going to randomly shove in some of the drafts I'd typed out on my phone. I only got my notebook in Rotterdam, which means that for the first 1.5weeks of my trip I had only my trusty (and now shattered) phone with which to record down thoughts, and incidentally, another story. Here goes the story.
If We Could Only Hate.
Why? I have to know.
I guess.. I was never truly happy. I know I was meant to be happy, I thought I loved you, and that you loved me.
I did love you. (I do, still.)
And then one day it just hit me - I didn't love you. I couldn't. I was in love with an idea, the ideal man who seemed to have it all.
But I never could match up to the man inside of your head.
No.
What was I supposed to do? What can I do? You're trying to say I never had a chance. Then why did you even try?
I.. I was in love. Just not with you. With the idea of you. I'm sorry.
No. No. You can't do this. At least give me something to regret. Give me something to blame myself over. Something to point to and say I should not have done that, that I have only myself to blame. That I at least had a chance. Come on. Please.
I can't. I'm so sorry. You're a good man.. just not perfect, not the way I imagined you to be in my head.
What do you mean? Was I supposed to be perfect? Was I not allowed to do anything wrong at all? I mean, come on! You never told me I had to be perfect. At least tell me what you expected of me before I got into this!
Would it have changed anything? Would you have walked away if I'd told you this in the beginning?
No. I don't know. What does it matter? Don't you dare turn this on me.
(silence)
Well. You've certainly taken me on a damn ride then haven't you?
What do you want me to say? Yes. No. I don't know. I'm sorry. I know you're bitter. You must hate me.
No. No I don't. If only I could. If only it were that easy. Goodbye Emily.
________________________________
This started off in my head as a dialogue between 2 people. Guess it's not much of a story at all, just a possible conversation maybe. I don't know why this was in my mind as I took the bus to Portsmouth to watch the xx. Which incidentally, was amazing. Emily only because I don't actually know an Emily personally, and it seemed nicer to end on a name rather than just with a Goodbye. Meh, make of it what you will, I guess.
I guess I'll talk a bit about some of these stories. Just as a recording of why I wrote what I did, I guess. The beauty one I wrote in response to a string of thoughts I had, which was this.
Friendship is like a thread held between 2 people. And it takes effort from both sides to hold on. They're all different though, and can afford different amounts of tension and slack. Some are extremely loose but require the efforts of just one person to take up the slack. Sometimes the burden is too much for that one person and he gives up. Sometimes one party, or both, are so needy that the rope becomes too taut. It seems to go along fine, it's nice and firm but the slightest bit of tension and it goes. It's hard to pick up the pieces.
Others are stronger, layered over by their pasts, shared experiences, common interests, plain compatibility of characters. Others have just one tenuous connection, possibly even something as base as desperation, or a craving for companionship. And some are doomed to failure. The rope at breaking point. And are the more beautiful for it. The beauty of the fleeting, the transient, the ephemeral.
I'd been reflecting on a series of friendships that I'd had, and which for whatever reason now, no longer do. Also on the friendships that I am and always will be grateful for, those that have managed to last, those that have gone the distance. I guess.. I'll always have my regrets, or at least rue the friendships I've let slip away, some for such puerile reasons that I almost cannot believe what I've done. Well. That's done now, I guess. Except for that which might still yet be salvaged. Hope, as ever, springs forth.
It almost feels like I should go through my diary somewhat chronologically, cause I guess everything sort of builds up to the next entry. Nevermind, I guess the contents of a diary has meaning only to its writer, the topics inside close only to his own heart.
The next one was What They Took From Her. This was unplanned, not one of the many little fragments of possible stories I find in my head from time to time. I'm not sure where it came from. I think.. I think it just might be from Mystic River. At least, that seems to be its origins. I think it could refer to anything, really. Not necessarily an abduction or any sexual abuse, but it is based on Dave I guess. But it could be life that's taken away from her, or a string of lost loves, or constant disappointment. I don't know.
Then there's Beautiful Pressure which admittedly is rather unfinished, but I just can't bring myself to continue any longer, idk why though. Just think I've done all I can with that. It stems from the idea that beautiful people are different from those who are not. I've actually had this idea in my head for a really long time. The way people notice those who are beautiful, all the time. The almost unfair expectations foisted upon them. How they can never be inadequate. How being aware of your own beauty makes you self-conscious, and dare I say it, makes you unbeautiful too. I guess anyone else who's been singled out in anyway too. The pressures of scrutiny, maybe. Idk, it's just stuff that's been floating around my head for a while now so I tried to write this. Probably kind of forced it out, to be honest, just because I had some free time on a train or something (I forget) and there was this story I'd always wanted to write. Meh.
Hmm. Kinda forgot what I wanted to say actually, which isn't an issue today, I think. I think today all I needed was to unload whatever, not something I've been able to do for a while now. Why? Because of essays, which are over now. Traditional post-essay YESSAHBOMB in order here. But I feel kinda lost too. How shall I put it, hmm.
I guess it started on the 2nd of Jan. I'd taken my flight to Bristol and the bus to Temple Meads, where I had little over an hour before I was due to board my train back to Exeter. As soon as I got off the bus and decided that I'd walk around town for a bit instead of waiting at the station, I was struck by this colossal sense of loss. I felt completely lost, and it was bewildering. Something changed. And I have my suspicions.
I'm really tired. It's all adding up. Maybe it culminates here, maybe it doesn't, but I can feel it now. Like a rush of something that threatens to swamp everything it touches, except it's been dammed up, except it's been dammed up too long now. Maybe it's the videos and the songs like Trembling Hands. Maybe it's a movie like Blue Valentine. Maybe it's having someone to talk to, really talk to, for the first time in years. Maybe.
Maybe it's realizing that no man was made to walk this world alone. That everyone needs someone to share their joys and their despairs with. The smallest accomplishments. The little things that made your day. Anything, and everything. Or it's the cumulative melancholy of one and a half years abroad, of too much time spent alone, of too much time left alone. The despair of waking up days on end feeling confused and aimless and above all, so, so lost and having no one to turn to. Maybe it's that.
I don't know what it is. In any case, I don't think I've felt that way in a long while. I asked myself, okay, where shall we go now? And came up absolutely blank. It kind of shocked me, which you might or might not have been able to tell by now.
But I think I know now what I want. What I actually want, instead of the wants that have almost become obligatory. Things like good grades, or success, or money, stuff like that. To be perfectly honest, I don't want that. These are to me things which fall under the nice-to-have category. Probably means I'm a terrible student, cause I do know countless other people who'd kill (in fact they're dying) for good grades. I'm just not a good student at all.. Which would probably disappoint my parents, or my relatives, but well that's that. If I actually do well it'll be for them, not for myself I don't think. But finally, maybe the first time in a long while, I actually want again.
Might not be any specific something, or even a someone, it's just the feeling of wanting something. Who ever heard of someone wanting to want something? I think that was me. It probably characterized my 2012, a year in which I felt so lost so often. By no means my best year (if ever there was such a thing), but it wasn't my worst either. It had its ups and downs just like any other, distinguished only by that sense of loss which I never could quite elucidate, not in my thoughts nor my words nor my actions.
But this is the new year, and I do feel something different. Maybe there was something in the air that night/the stars so bright. Going against the grain, for once, of all my favourite new year songs by U2 and Death Cab for Cutie.
I usually try, I don't know if you notice, not to share too much here, at least not anything that affects me too much. I write words and stuff but I always shy away from saying what it is exactly I feel. Normally it's cause I'm afraid it'd be read. By persons known or unknown. But that doesn't matter all that much now, I think. I reckon the only people who do read this are close enough friends that I've ever told them about it, or if they're random(ish) people who've taken all this time to read this far then hey, hello. Thanks, and maybe I'll know you one day.
Otherwise this is just another url, destined to an existence of near complete anonymity, a drop in the ocean if you will. In the vastness of cyberspace, just another tree falling in a lonely forest. But it does make a sound.
Well now. Blue Valentine, if anyone is interested, is a really good movie and incredibly well-acted. Of course it helps that I have a massive man-crush on Ryan Gosling, but Michelle Williams was amazing too. Not an easy show to stomach, mind you, and definitely not what I'd been expecting. I heard ukelele and Ryan Gosling singing a song and thought, it must be fun! And while that scene was brilliant, the whole movie was... pretty depressing. It was almost painful to watch. But really good nonetheless, especially if you want to check out Ryan Gosling's range as an actor. Way too many Ryan Gosling's in one paragraph for a hetero young man, I'm afraid, so I shall desist.
Guess that should be all for today. Not exactly what I had in mind when I started off, but not what I didn't have in mind either, if that makes any sense at all. I might watch Ides of March, or Spirited Away. I did watch Howl's Moving castle sometime back in December which I might not have mentioned, and it was so good. Somehow the town scenes just remind me so much of Final Fantasy, probably FF9, and for a good 2 weeks I had that peaceful town in mind. Truly a masterpiece.
Yep. Good bye now.
Saturday, 5 January 2013
Beautiful Pressure.
No, he never felt like he belonged to the Crowd at all, although no one
had a say in that of course. It was a naturally pre-determined thing,
you were either in it or you were not.
And yet he could not help but look at other members of the Crowd and feel like he was somehow different. They were all cool, and effortlessly so. They never made any gaffes, or if they did they were suitably and hilariously goofy, never embarrassing, and never anything to be ashamed about.
He could not help but feel like he on the other hand was doing too many things which were unpleasantly embarrassing, like that time he played football (which he was not terribly good at) and missed 3 easy shots at goal. He was sure everyone was looking at him and laughing at him. And they laughed particularly loudly at him too, compared to the other guys who made mistakes.
He never saw other members of the Crowd get into situations like that. They almost always were good at the sports they played, and would never be seen playing something they couldn't. How did they manage that?
He always felt like people were looking at him, that when they were they did so with great expectation, that when he failed they laughed their vengeful mocking laughs. One of the Crowd failing so miserably. He could never be merely mediocre at anything, for that would be considered failure in their eyes.
He felt their eyes on him always. And the pressure. The pressure to be brilliant, to be beautiful, to be wittier, and stronger, in every way superior to the others. Cause that's what it meant to be part of the Crowd. You could not be worse than the rest, you could not even be just the same as the rest of them. You were superior and you were supposed to look down on them, past your perfect nose, and twist your perfect lips with a sneer as they try to be like you. Oh no, you were nothing like the rest of them.
And yet he could not help but look at other members of the Crowd and feel like he was somehow different. They were all cool, and effortlessly so. They never made any gaffes, or if they did they were suitably and hilariously goofy, never embarrassing, and never anything to be ashamed about.
He could not help but feel like he on the other hand was doing too many things which were unpleasantly embarrassing, like that time he played football (which he was not terribly good at) and missed 3 easy shots at goal. He was sure everyone was looking at him and laughing at him. And they laughed particularly loudly at him too, compared to the other guys who made mistakes.
He never saw other members of the Crowd get into situations like that. They almost always were good at the sports they played, and would never be seen playing something they couldn't. How did they manage that?
He always felt like people were looking at him, that when they were they did so with great expectation, that when he failed they laughed their vengeful mocking laughs. One of the Crowd failing so miserably. He could never be merely mediocre at anything, for that would be considered failure in their eyes.
He felt their eyes on him always. And the pressure. The pressure to be brilliant, to be beautiful, to be wittier, and stronger, in every way superior to the others. Cause that's what it meant to be part of the Crowd. You could not be worse than the rest, you could not even be just the same as the rest of them. You were superior and you were supposed to look down on them, past your perfect nose, and twist your perfect lips with a sneer as they try to be like you. Oh no, you were nothing like the rest of them.
Friday, 4 January 2013
What They Took From Her.
She was the best of us but they changed that
they took her away from us they took her away
they took away her smiles the happy ones the sad ones
they took away her joy her life her trust in life
they took away the wind in her hair the bounce in her step
they took away her hopes her dreams her childish fears
(and replaced them with grown up ones)
and now she
cannot give and cannot take
only hurt and maybe hate
cannot love and cannot trust
a stranger to the rest of us
cannot dream she cannot dream!
no respite in worlds unseen
and now
she cannot cry not even cry!
it hurts too much to even try
and now
she rots and now she rusts
the girl who was the best of us.
they took her away from us they took her away
they took away her smiles the happy ones the sad ones
they took away her joy her life her trust in life
they took away the wind in her hair the bounce in her step
they took away her hopes her dreams her childish fears
(and replaced them with grown up ones)
and now she
cannot give and cannot take
only hurt and maybe hate
cannot love and cannot trust
a stranger to the rest of us
cannot dream she cannot dream!
no respite in worlds unseen
and now
she cannot cry not even cry!
it hurts too much to even try
and now
she rots and now she rusts
the girl who was the best of us.
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