Let's find beauty in subtlety.

Thoughts I always have when I am on the bus, or walking along the street. See my string (cheese) theory... I am sad that I don't get to intertwine myself with other people's lives much.

A girl in her late twenties, in a light grey-turquoise overcoat, pink speckled scarf, flips over a page in a leather bound book in her lap. I sit across the bus from her and one row behind, and am at first struck by this image.What is it about this woman that made me notice her so much?  A perfectly neat ear-lengthed blonde bob, dark long eyelashes shading her eyes, focused on this artefact of hers -- it is not often I see someone reading on the bus. Well, I do, but it is normally popular fiction, or magazines, or on a Kindle or smartphone. Perhaps I am attracted to this vintage aura? It is such a picturesque sight: brown oxfords, black tights, pearl earrings. The epitome of classiness and sophistication?

These are the thoughts that I first had as I sat down that morning on the bus. An abnormal sight, or just a typical sight accompanied by atypical thoughts? Who knows.

It was a slightly sad moment then, when I hopped off that bus and saw the woman with the book take off her earphones connected to an iPhone. But, although the illusion of her quaint time traveling was destroyed (she became slightly less interesting to me upon my discovery that she was also not exempt from the technology and conventions of our times), she made a strange impression on me and perhaps even stranger impact on my morning.

It occurred to me again (I say again because I often have such thoughts, just normally at very random and sparse moments), after seeing that woman, that there are so many subtle things to be appreciated in the world, beyond the business of everyday life, beyond the materialism and politics and fights for power and justice and even simply the grinding on to live our lives. I see the water droplets falling down the side windows, all refracting the same orange-blue gradient of the city's sunrise. A thousand tiny bunsen burner flames, orange bases fighting for oxygenated combustion as sun took over the sky and painted our ceiling cerulean: beautiful.

Beyond the traffic on the on ramp onto the motorway is the architecture of our city central. The sharp lines, smooth curves, parallel lines and solid geometries -- manipulation of aesthetic space like I had never seen it before. I marvelled; was I simply usually too oblivious to the view of what I considered to be everyday landscapes? I yearned to take it all in, but it is the emotion inspired that is unfortunately too ephemeral to keep. I knew I'd miss it when I leave -- but then, maybe it was only due to the realisation of leaving that my eyes were opened to these thoughts.

I smile as I see the statue in Albert Park dons a giant orange cone on his head. His 19th century attire and aged bronze skin make him look somewhat like a mockup of a Harry Potter wizard. I slowed to take a picture but felt a bit too self conscious and kept walking. Besides, a picture never quite captures what is saturated in reality.

A bird flies overhead, and lands on the streetlight. A second joins in, flapping its wings more rapidly as it decelerates and lands on the same light. They squawk at each other.

What a wonderful world.

Someone asked me a few days ago, what is it that I live for. What gives me hope, keeps me living, keeps me going in times of sadness and grief? I respond that sadness and grief and tragedy and despair are all part of the human condition, and are not things we will ever be able to escape from. Without them, we would never know the true meaning of happiness either. Appreciate the spectrum of human experiences, even if they are painful. We need not enjoy them, but at least an appreciation of their role in our lives is important to me. Not only this, but I don't think I need to search for hope. It is all around us -- especially in countries like New Zealand, where we actually have the resources to enjoy the world for what it is. No matter what our lives are things to be grateful for.

What I realised after that bus ride is the joy of living in a totally zen moment, without the distractions of our modern and busy lives. Working towards that degree is important, but I must remember to never lose touch with what is solid and real and stable beneath and around us. Appreciate subtle beauty.

pot luck # 5

Not sure why I haven't blogged in so long, but it's probably healthy for me to now. Haven't said anything for over a month, and the new blogger layout is so different (even the post screen is different!! How do I use this...?), and I had very little to say and yet at the same time so much to say that I didn't bother saying anything at all.

I guess I will have to make this a pot luck entry because I haven't updated in so long.
... I just had to go back to see what number pot luck I am up to haha!

1. There is this window in my bathroom. It is small, and in the morning if you get up around the same time as the sun rises, you can see the light spilling into the room through that tiny window. Even if you have the lights on, the light from the window seems to chase all artificial light away. You can see a bit of the sky, and on different days it shows different emotions. On rainy or overcast days all you see is a sheet of white. Other mornings it is bright sky blue without any clouds. But I like it best when it is like above -- orange and pink hues mixing with the blue, the purple hazed horizon and the sunrise warming the whole image. It is like, I am in my own life and in my own house but something so small as a window can lead me into what life is really about -- all this beauty, all these experiences that are so close to me and all around which I may sometimes forget about. I like how that window reminds me of that. La vie est vraiment belle si on l'apprecie.

2. THIS is awesome:



I am listening to this on repeat while writing this post.

3. UNI IS SO BIPOLAR!!! Some days I feel somewhat overwhelmed with all the projects/tests/assignments due but then after a certain 'block' of these everything is so calm and I'm like omg i'm so bored and calm and stuff, nothing to do, but like 2 DAYS LATER MAX it picks up again. @___@ somewhat unhealthy lifestyle. I can't be like those people who can't sleep ): I'm getting forehead pimples and stuff like that just from the weird stress.

4. I feel like blogging provides some kind of weird catharsis of emotions that I haven't had much of and thus have been feeling somewhat bottled up lately. I think it's good to talk to an indiscriminate audience, to 'no one' as yunbin has correctly pointed out that I have spelled wrong in the description to the right (but idc actually, I fail with irony, making the point that I can do stuff how I like and there's nothing you can do about it, so I'm going to leave the grammatical/spelling error as is -hipster glasses flash-). But yeah, I feel like I'm weirdly overemotional lately and it's not cool. It's not the healthy kind of emotional its the obsessive wtf kind.  The kind I haven't experienced for years, so it's distantly familiar and a sick part of it is so attractive that I like being overemotional and dumb but I'd rather stop lollll. It will pass.

5. I am leaving in 3 months and feel like I have a lot of loose ends to tie up with objects and people. But 3 months still feels like a long time and I keep wanting to start new stuff but I remember that I'll have to leave more stuff behind and it's irritating and a pity and I hate it. Why can't things just be teleportable or something? It's weird that I'm finishing this semester and people are starting to talk about next semester and I'm not gonna be here for most of it. I've met a lot of people I'd like to get to know better and am majorly frustrated that I won't be able to.

I definitely have other stuff to say. I don't feel properly cleansed yet, but I can't think of anything specific right now...... so I will leave it at that. :D Promise to blog more often. Curse you uni and my own laziness!

College. + My common essay

Sup readers. It's been a while since I last updated haha, and since then, well, as you probably know, my life has pretty much flipped upside down. And, since the university midsemester break is finally here, I finally have time to blog.

Where to start? The last two weeks has transformed from nailbiting anticipation to apathy to happiness to discomfort to calmness to anxiety to patience to curiosity to absolute disbelieving elation to shock to ambivalence to being lost to stress to a higher state of peace now (I hope...). So I've had a pretty colourful two weeks hahaha.

Firstly, I guess I have to say I am somewhat relieved that the process of college applications is now officially over. During the last three months of waiting for offers, I have had many an admissions related dream, depressed days where I don't feel like doing anything because I felt like I had no chance anywhere, days where I felt motivated cos I was like YEAH I'M THE MAN I'LL GET IN, but not a single day where I did not think about flying over to a question marked destination in the US. Now... I have another 5 months of knowing that such a thing is happening. It is so exciting!! But at the same time, so sad that I will be leaving most of my friends behind ):

I owe people who helped me out in the process and listened to my whining and excitement and worries hahahah.... especially those who helped me proofread and edit my essays, teachers and counsellor who wrote my references and did the colossal task of filling out all those forms, the admissions officers themselves who read my application and chose to let me through, or those who took the time to read them anyway and put them in the rejection pile, I am still thankful :) I am grateful for all my supportive friends who have since congratulated me on my acceptances as well, and all the strangers who took the time to congratulate me as well hahaha made me feel pretty special :) An especially big thank you goes out to my amazing boyfriend who has been so supportive of me during the whole process even though it will be really hard for us when we are separated, and for staying strong even though I know it kills him inside to think about me leaving ): but that's another story for another day and I don't want to be sad for something that has not yet happened @_@ And of course to my parents, the ones who brought me up to want to aim for something that seemed so impossible from the beginning, for planting the passion to reach my potential and giving me all the resources I could have ever dreamed of, no less bending over backwards to give me the best life that they could. T_T I am so lucky to have all of these amazing people in my life. I honestly feel like I am the luckiest person in the world all the time.

Nawww I am getting emotional. I think I will wrap it up here, I have no intention of writing an official leaving statement yet :P It is still early days yet!!! Well just for you guys I include my Common Application essay (sent out to all 8 universities I applied for). I know a lot of the people who proofread will rage at me at the fact that I didn't take out the metaphor diarrhoea I am so prone to but I CAN'T HELP IT I JUST LIKE IMAGERYYYY )))): Enjoy I guess...

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Soft Wooden Heart

The backbone of my life is my writing desk. I like to describe its surface as an organized mess (despite my parents’ overdramatized description of a bombsite), a state of positive entropy and minimum energy. Math exercises overlap an organizer, set next to almost-empty tubes of paint and overdue library books. A constantly filled bottle of water sits behind a glasses case full of guitar picks and carved into a mountain of paper, right in the middle, is a space reserved for my laptop – on days when I am slouching, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare needs to be slid under it. An eclectic desk shows an eclectic personality; mine has had the honor of being the training grounds prior to the Great (final) Battle (exam) of Chemistry, the peaceful meadow of relaxed reading afternoons and all in all the pristine-turned-colorful canvas of an inquisitive mind.

I remember buying it with my mother five years ago, when my bruised knees protested against the tiny white-paint-gone-yellow one I had used since childhood. My new desk was made of native Rimu heartwood – solid, resilient, dependable – a perfect role model for me to grow into. Over the years, its material became representative of my New Zealand identity, its surface slowly coated in quirky personality, and its compartments filled with treasured memories; the heartwood desk echoed my heart.

At first, it did not fit with the décor of the rest of my room, which even now appears boxy and stark next to my grandiosely elegant writing desk, but its quiet strength is unafraid of individuality, just as I have learned to become. It has watched as I grew stronger branches, a straighter trunk, firmer roots; whereas I had once been but a shy young seedling, I sprouted leaves and with them the ability and yearning to provide shade for others. I have certainly physically grown into it, but although I would like to think that I have become completely independent, I remain human; in inevitable times of need, it is still my steadfast, sturdy desk that offers its support.

I sit here and, well, I write: joyfully, desolately, irately, wistfully – at times paralyzed by excitement, at others crippled by fear. I scrawl notes in my organizer (which is, naturally, not in the least organized), words overflow my blog, over-emotional oranges and blues plague my illustrations; shallow scratch marks indent the wood from where I have pressed too passionately into paper. It may be solid, but it is elastic enough to be shaped, resilient enough to adapt: this is my soft wooden heart.

It can take it. My desk remains constant despite scars of experience – unassuming, stoic, ever-watchful. Even when I dismembered dying cell phones, their frail keytones pleading for mercy, the desk stood there, nonchalant. Regardless of what fervor goes on from time to time, it knows there will eventually be a constant calm; my lively nest of rebuilt mobiles still calls this place home. Sometimes, I rest my uncertain head on its reassuring solid surface and the wood presses back into my heartbeat, communicating in Morse... “Don’t worry. Some things will never change.”

And, like a mother, it always turns out to be right. Beneath my seemingly chaotic coat of papers and objects, beneath the superfluous, temporary things that define my present life, my desk and my heart remain still – solid, stable and evergreen, ready to be written onto and scratched into by experience.

"Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it."

This is an essay question from my college apps as part of the UChicago supplement that I thought would be a fit addition to my blog considering all the random floaty stuff I blog about lol. So, enjoy? Hahahaha

...omg just read over this. did I really call myself a SCIENTIFIC-ENTHUSIAST? WTF DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE

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Essay Option 3: Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote, 'Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it.' Give us your guess.

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Rumour has it that it takes the average human being about 7 minutes to fall asleep every night. In those 420 seconds, our brainwaves slow, our thoughts drift and eventually our consciousness lifts from our bodies and flies away to some alternate dimension where physics is malleable and the unimaginable becomes reality. This is the ephemeral moment between living and dreaming that each of us experiences every night, and one that very few understand; it is not a rare occurrence, but the veil of unconsciousness slides over our minds before we can stop and think to observe. And, of course, if we wait for it eagerly in an attempt to study it, sleep never comes – like the light that drives away shadows we wish to inspect. Between living and dreaming there is a third thing – mystery.

As Albert Einstein once said, “the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious—the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” As an artist and scientific-enthusiast myself, I can relate to this sentiment; mystery provokes curiosity, which induces scientific advancement and artistic vision. The bridge between a dream and making it a living reality is the urge to understand a certain aspect of the world we cannot envision – the effect of mystery. There are then those who are quite happy with the concept of the mysterious, the belief wherein that which cannot be understood should be left as is – the dreams in our minds are pure imagination whereas our physical living world is tangible, but any blur in between should remain smudged.. To sharpen it would, as romantic poet John Keats described, be to “conquer all mysteries by rule and line… unweave a rainbow”.

Indeed, the beauty of mystery is one we all know too well. The strange feeling of déjà vu where we cannot distinguish reality from imagination flows over us as a tinglingly uncomfortable, yet elucidating, sensation. How boring would the world be if we knew everything as truth? No more wonder, no more knowledge-pursuing motivation, no more curiosity to explore? Mystery is the limitless shades of grey between the ends of the scale, between the stark white of wake and reality and the black unconscious world of sleep and fantasy. I want to form theories that can both neither be de-bunked nor proven, the liberty to invent, the freedom to imagine!

I do wonder, though, where we go during our dreams. It seems a whole new imaginative world is created, but how are we transported there? The journey surely takes place in the question-marked blank between wake and sleep. I like to imagine that perhaps it is the spirit of a train, pale blue and shimmering, masked behind galaxies of stars, reaping the minds of the asleep without their knowledge and dropping them off some place over the horizon in another dimension we cannot usually see. Or, perhaps each of us have a smaller being inside our brains that we become when we fall asleep, miniature selves exploring the labyrinths of our own memories. We can only theorize – and that is the beauty of the mysterious.

Yes, mystery represents inquisition, beauty, imagination and unknown expedition; it allows us the ability to bridge the gap between our minds and the world, between reality and fantasy, between living...


…and dreaming.

Then again, perhaps it is not altogether as inexplicable as I think: I am sure that my friends who roll around restlessly for hours past the allotted 7 minutes would tell me that the only thing between living and dreaming is insomnia.

The power of storytelling -- for better or for worse

So I watched The Social Network again about two days ago. It was a film we watched in Scholarship English last year as well but it turned out to be quite hard to write about. The idea it expressed to me was more of a byproduct of its existence more than the actual film itself. It became slightly clearer to me when Andrew Stanton's TED talk appeared yesterday morning and I watched it on my way into uni on the bus:

BTW Andrew Stanton wrote the screenplay for Wall-E, Toy Story, A Bug's Life and Finding Nemo to name a few.

He talks about elements of storytelling, what makes a story great. He talks about characterisation and how each character has one thing they always keep constant, and everything else can change around them if certain conditions are met. This reflects human nature, I suppose. But what happens when a real human is made to be abstracted into such a stock form and subjected to abstraction of screen writing?

Obviously, pseudo-documentaries such as The Social Network will have altered certain aspects of the truth, even if they were "based off a true story". I did some digging and found the two biggest misrepresentations of the truth in the movie that I found somewhat significant to the movie's overall representation of the story behind facebook...

1) Eduardo's character is painted as a victim. In fact, during the period where he was in New York, he partied a lot, while Mark's report from California was, "in general we don't do fun things. But that's OK because the business is fun." The situation was the exact opposite of how it appeared in the movie. He planted ads for his business project on the site without clearing permission with anyone else. He was accused of treachery by Zuckerberg "You developed Joboozle knowing that at some point Facebook would probably want to do something with jobs…putting ads up on Facebook to advertise it, especially for free, is just mean."

Actually this move makes sense because Eduardo Saverin (the real life guy) co-operated with the author of "Accidental Millionaires", which the movie is based off. No other co-founders of Facebook were involved with the book or movie. The viewpoint in the first place is biased. This first of all demonstrates how storytelling depends on perspective; in this case, it caused a misrepresentation of the facts. I guess not everyone can be objective.

2) Mark Zuckerberg did not create facemash and consequently facebook because he was pining over a lost love. He started dating his now-girlfriend Priscilla Chan in 2003, before Facebook even existed. Erica Albright in the film is a fictional character. The only reason I can think of to her concoction is to make Zuckerberg look like a bigger dick and also to retain the status-quo of society, where the stereotype of the 'loser nerd' wins out. Is it so inconceivable that the creator of facebook might perhaps have a normal social life? That he is not as withdrawn and awkward as Jesse Eisenberg made him out to be?

Perhaps it is just a convention of screenwriting to make stories more interesting in order to, as Andrew Stanton said in his post, make people care. However, where does the line come? When we need to be informed of something? When we are trying to document a moment in history? I suspect The Social Network is supposed to be entertainment rather than a documentary about the real beginnings of facebook, but many people take it to be 100% fact and do not bother to dig deeper. Popular culture as a way of replacing truth in our brains because the media is so prominent in our lives.

Such an example arises with the release of the KONY 2012 video tonight. An incredibly emotion-inducing video, a call to arms for change, for revolution because 'it's our time'. Andrew Stanton mentions the importance of hooking the audience in a film, to make them interested in what will happen next, to make them care. Surely in a movement that involves everyone in the world, KONY 2012 has done just that.

Yet, that is all the video is -- of its two main purposes, 1) spreading awareness and 2) getting donations for Invisible Children, only the first is beneficial to society. Many have dug deeper into the issue and found that the charity is not exactly the best (with merely 32% of donations making it to the country, along with lack of political knowledge concerning the situation in Uganda).

One of my college interviewers last month asked me whether I thought an idea could be better represented through a story (such as in film). He raised the point that film can oversensationalise an issue, whereas I disagreed and said that despite the sensationalism, awareness of issues and ideas can still be brought about as well as incite responses as maybe without sensationalism we are so desensitised in our regular lives that no other method can cause a reaction quite as strongly as a well-made film. With the overwhelming virility of the KONY 2012 film, I feel both our points have been well-illustrated; the dangers of a propaganda-like film being oversensationalised in the ideas it portrayed, yet the emotion and outrage and sense of community it caused.

However, something neither of us talked about was the proactivity of viewers in further research to dispel the inaccuracies represented in our media. Only with a keen eye for detail and the ability to think beyond what our minds are fed can real awareness come about. An ability to peel ourselves away from the ignorant masses. Yes, we are allowed to empathise with the child soldiers, feel outrage towards warlords, be entertained by Aaron Sorkin's Zuckerberg character, allowed to FEEL, allowed to care about the characters in the media we watch. Such empathy is part of our humanity. However, let not curiosity fall away as another part of our identities -- the yearning to learn more about stories told from real life, to know all sides of the story before we, blinded with emotion, make our next move.

And, of course, kudos to Jason Russell and David Fincher for creating great movies in their own right -- at the very least, their purposes have been fulfilled :)

I am now a university student.

I was going to post an update at the end of last week but never did due to my perpetual laziness. Better late than never though :)

I have to say, last week was one of the slowest weeks I have experienced in a while. I don't know if it was just that time goes slower when I'm not scrolling the Trending page on 9gag 3 times a day, or just that so much happened that it felt slow, but it crawled by like a snail.

University turned out to be a little different to how I expected, but then again I can't imagine what I expected it to be like before I went. I do not really find it FUN per se, but it is not awful. It just is, I guess haha. The classes are not especially interesting or fun, neither are they horrible. Running into people everywhere is interesting but awkward when you wave to someone and they don't remember who you are.

Lectures that are too far apart geographically on campus are a pain.

We had a china camp reunion on Thursday night which was fun. It's interesting how there was no awkwardness even though it was so long ago and I haven't talked to many of them since then. Really enjoyed catching up with everyone and seeing how people have or haven't changed at all haha. Even though the trip itself at the end of 2006 was only 3 weeks long, 5 years later we're still in touch, and can enjoy such an evening together... that's really amazing :)

I also can't help but think, in just a few weeks time, I'll know whether I'm going to the US in another 6 months... or staying in Auckland. And I'll know exactly where I'm going and what I'll be doing in the next 4 years. That's such a scary thought -- I know I've been saying I can't wait to know and the anticipation has been killing me (and it has, really!), but the thought itself is still so alien to me. I want to know, but it feels SO WEIRD to know that I will finally know, so soon!!! Hahahah I guess I'm just excited.

The future is exciting :) The present, not so much. Hahahahahaha oh ENGGEN 121, how I dislike your problems.

/summer. farewell

Well to be honest I was going to write another short story tonight but after reading Kim's recap of the summer I don't really feel like it anymore. I no longer feel the need to vent minor things, so I will put a metaphorical plaster over my skinned and bruised knuckle, and move on. I will not change the way I think nor will I take the immature route of receding back into an emotional mess over small things that perhaps do not go my way in my head. I will not oversensationalise my problems or exaggerate emotions that almost do not exist in an effort to make myself more interesting, not even to others, but to myself. It seems rather pointless at this point in time :) There are bigger things to concern myself with.

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Well, summer is almost over. The three months that at first seemed boundless are finally coming to an end. Boredom has been replaced by nervous anticipation for the start of uni, and expectations of USA uni offers is just about killing me but hopefully with uni full time, time will go faster.

The end of my summer is usually my least favourite time of the year. Actually when I was younger, I liked to say that my favourite season was Autumn to seem different to everyone else (who at that point liked summer the most because it meant long holidays). I convinced myself that Autumn had a beauty that other seasons didn't, but let's face it, in New Zealand Autumn is pretty shitty. It is damp and the temperature drops and the days get shorter and we lose an hour on daylight savings.

I never liked winter because the days are so short and it gets dark so early and I feel like I have achieved nothing all day, as well as the lack of sun and minor SAD. It is also the middle of the year and I get a case of "mid year crisis" where I have gone through 6 months and feel like I have achieved nothing and get stressed out due to exams and get feelings of bleakness due to the huge gap between then and the long summer holidays and all that cool stuff. So yeah, I never liked winter.

I quite like Spring now because it marks the end of winter, and I like the hope that earlier sunrises bring and the days slowly get longer and longer. It reminds me that summer is coming. However, Spring also brings with it an inordinate number of wet days and soaked chuck taylors from unexpected rainfall. It also brings with it the wardrobe problem where the 'transition period' makes it incredibly difficult for me to decide on what to wear for the day because my clothes are almost all strictly categorised into 'summer' or 'winter'. I end up wearing a lot of tights and cardigans that I often have to shed due to randomly hot weather.

So, ironically against my childish wants to 'stand out', I have decided that my favourite season is summer. I like the long days, the early sunrises and the late sunsets that make me feel like I have plenty of time to achieve what I want to. I like the sun smiling down on me every morning when I wake up and beaming its happiness down on me all through January. I like being able to sit here on my bed in a t-shirt and shorts and go to sleep with a single layer of blankets and not freeze. I like being able to throw on random combinations of shorts and tshirts every day and not worry about layering and whether or not 5+ items of clothing look good together. I like waking up at 10am and going outside and lying underneath the greenery of the tree on our deck and seeing monarchs dart around the roses, moving my toes past the barrier between the shadow of the upper-storey balcony and gentle licks of sunlit warmth. Yes, summer brings with it a blissful kind of simplicity and plenty of sun that no other season does.

But I have noticed that when I wake up these days, the sun is only just beginning to rise. I have begun to feel momentary chills in the middle of the night moving between me and my blankets, and the hyper-humidity of the last few days has been the precursor to the unpleasant kind of end-of-summer days that are trying so hard to squeeze out all the remaining warmth of the summer sun that it overexerts itself and sweats a bit too much in the process.

Yes, Autumn is coming again, and with it another cycle begins. However, this Autumn and Winter will surely be a different experience to years past. And thus, I look forward to them. I will probably never enjoy them as much as I have now conceded that I enjoy Summer, but a slyly content form of nonchalance is better than contempt, right?

Hmmm... what's your favourite season and why?

Ways in which Mousehunt has improved my life

For those of you who don't know, I have been playing the facebook game Mousehunt since July 2010. I have been mocked about this and have been asked why on earth I play it many times, as well as many people threatening to delete my account. So, I will now blog about the ways in which this game as benefited my life.

I started playing it because Jeremy and Firip kept going on about it and I saw it on Firip's laptop whenever we went to Yunbin's house for gatherings. I decided to give it a go I guess hahaha. I can't even remember who was playing at this time but a lot of them have since stopped and a lot have started. At first I was like wtf is this, it's so boring? But then the more I clicked the more I grew addicted to clicking, and then 12250 horn calls later... now we are here.

The game itself is uneventful. You are a mousehunter, and every 15 minutes you have to "sound the horn", ie. click the hunter's horn, to have a chance at encountering and catching a mouse. In addition, every hour the horn goes off on its own. Whether you will encounter a mouse depends on the cheese you have and whether you catch it depends on the base and nature of your mouse trap. There are hundreds of possible combinations of traps and as you move on the game and unlock new areas, you also unlock more and stronger mice as well as the ability to use and craft more powerful cheese, traps and bases as you gain experience points.

So, pretty straightforward right? And you're only on it really every 15 minutes, and all you do is click a button. Sooo many people are confused as to why I would play such a boring game. But you see, this is the beauty of mousehunt -- minimal energy and effort. I have an alarm plugin for it which means I am automatically reminded to sound the horn every 15 minutes. It doesn't interfere with whatever else I'm doing on the computer, and I just keep it as a single window open.

For such minimal effort, it has brought me pretty good return. The cheese and names of mice in the game is all very punny, after real life cheeses and mice. This has shockingly enough actually aided me in my life in de-ignorancing my knowledge of fancy cuisine:

1) I would have no idea what Havarti is, for instance, if not for mousehunt. At first it reminded me of Pavarti Patel from Harry Potter but now I know better :P Havarti was brought out at a dinner party with my dad's boss. I felt slightly more classy having at least heard of it before :) This also happened several times while I was in France.

2) The knowledge of what Gouda is helped me when I was watching She's the Man.

3) I now had a reason to choose between swiss, smoked and cheddar whenever I went to subway because I had a better idea of how they were in fact different and that cheese didn't all taste the same. I always choose swiss now btw, just because it's the most expensive of the three on mousehunt. That, and cheddar is too salty.

4) The knowledge of how cheese is made actually helped me in the secondary schools' chemistry quiz last year. One of the questions was a puzzle where chemicals and materials had to be joined to the product which they were used in the manufacture of. One of the materials was "whey". With my mousehunt knowledge I was able to connect it to "cheese" :) That's 1/3 of a point that helped us get third place in that competition :D

5) The pictoral representation of mozzarella which mousehunt provided helped me find it in the supermarket when my mum wanted to buy some to make pizza.

Those are just a few of the random bits of knowledge that a click every 15 minutes will grow for you without you realising :D And all knowledge turns out to be useful, even if it's about cheese haha.

However, I think most of all, the greatest lesson Mousehunt has taught me is the importance of perseverance. Having the patience to click every 15 minutes even when you're not catching the thing you want and having to start all over at the beginning of a region because you have recollect the materials for special cheese really tests that hahaha... (cough 19 misses on dragon mouse...)

But despite that, it made me realise that even if the chance of capturing something is 3%, if we try for long enough and click enough times, it will eventually happen. No matter how hard something seems to achieve, if we stick at it then numerically it's bound to happen sometime. After playing mousehunt, I perceive a 10% likelihood of something happening to be pretty good hahahaaha. Perhaps you could say that it's given me a warped perception of statistics, but I feel that it has definitely helped me be a lot more patient in other parts of my life. Not to rush, or to give up too easily. These are things that such a simple and menial game has taught me.

So, next time someone asks me why I still play mousehunt, I can just direct them to this blog. :) This has got to be the nerdiest blog I have ever written....

Layout recoding

So I spent a few moments each day in the last few days trying to add a facebook like button to my posts because some people suggested it (cos they're too lazy to comment .......... noobs), and found out it can't be done except on new layouts.

So, I upgraded to bloggers new layouts and tried to convert my old html layout to xml, except it can't be done by machine.

So instead, I took a template and recoded it to as close to my old layout as I could :) Just so you know, this present layout came from something that looks like THIS:

Yeah it took me a while. But I got there :) It was fun. Was listening to skrillex during the whole thing and felt like a badass computer hacker while changing code when actually I was just redecorating my blog ....

So I will now test the like button with this post :) Hope you all like the new layout anyways haha minor update.

A thunderstorm is coming D:

General Update

GENERAL UPDATEEE -salute- (HIMYM reference for you noobs who don't know)

So I think it's about time for an update seeing as I apparently haven't updated anything in ages which is, mind you, not an indication of how busy I've been so much as how I have been so bored and lying around at home so much that I have nothing important to note.

However, I suppose there are inevitably some things that happen with time passing, which I will now update you on:

1) Starting anew:

Well I figured what with 2012 being the year I start for uni and stuff, coupled with the fact that it's a new year (okay well it's February already but I tend to lag a bit due to procrastination), meant that I should perhaps clean my room (which is now merely only half the mess it started out as). I took all my posters off my wall except the one I can't reach and my huge ones that I have nowhere to put, and now have a huge blank space on my wall where I can play movies because I found out that we own a projector :)

Also, I finally upgraded to Windows 7 with a wiped harddrive and only the essentials, which has been mildly frustrating but generally great so far, plus I still haven't changed the background from the default windows one that comes when you install windows 7 so I look like a tech illiterate. But I feel like if I change it, it won't feel new anymore ): So I'm going to keep it like this for the time being.

I cleaned out my wardrobe (which took a full two days on its own), and from this experience I have found out that I am extremely lazy, too lazy in fact to bother with throwing out old clothing, and so to combat this I have decided that I will simply not buy any more new clothing unless I actually need it. I feel like 2011 was an extremely consumerist year for me in which I made a lot of useless purchases which I will never use again and so I will try to keep both my laziness and my wallet happier by not spending so much on materialistic goods (film tickets, by the way, are not materialistic goods. I am willing to pay ten dollars to fill my brain with intellectual ideas. Unless the film is bad, in which case I am still filling my brain with wonder concerning how amazingly horrible it was). I think going to Asia over the summer really helped with this decision as well, HK to me now feels like it is driven by consumerist culture which is something I really came to dislike about the city even though I was only actually there for 3 days.

2) Finding a job

So after looking for a job for the majority of my holidays I finally got 2 interviews and have two trial shifts tomorrow :) The first is as an English writing teacher for chinese kids at Saturday school in Newmarket. I'd be teaching to a class of Y5&Y6 and to another one of Y7&Y8. It's pretty scary LOL, I have to like plan all my classes and resources myself @_@ I'll see what it's like tomorrow... It was funny cos Kun came to me at like 11.45pm one night saying his mum was in desperate need of English teachers and that he recommended me to his mum. The next day I threw together a CV, sent it and went for my interview in the afternoon HAHAHA... Efficiency level: Asian.

The other is the hookup at Bakers Delight my thoughtful status garnered for me with the help of Jessy :) I'm just worried about the number of shifts I have to do per week once uni starts, since I don't want to have ZERO free time lollll... I'll ask tomorrow. Getting a job is such a scary process. And the job itself... hmmmm I'm looking forward to learning new things :)

3) TEAMANDREW YOUTUBE MEET WHATTTT

Everyone was trying to photobomb this photo cos Timmy did the same to everyone elses hahahahaaha.


Jumpingggg... we tried to do another one with everyone who was at the meetup but in the mess both Andrews were lost... hahahaha :D

For those who don't know, gunnarolla and songstowearpantsto were in New Zealand. Together they are known as Team Andrew because both of their names are Andrew. @Steph, songstowearpantsto is the one who did Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing On Rainbows :) I highly recommend you guys check out their channels, they both make music and videos and are both asian and both live in Toronto and both are called Andrew, so yeah they are pretty much the same person.

But it was a heap of fun, pretty cool to meet them, got a signed poster, preordered a Pants CD and got a free button and postcard from gunnarolla :) pretty legitttt.

Now to convince Wongfu to fly over...

The puzzles of our lives

We spend so much time trying to find that perfect puzzle piece that fits, searching for the perfect job, the perfect friend, the perfect degree to take in university, the perfect soulmate.

Our lives are like enormous incomplete jigsaw puzzles -- we constructed our straight edges from childhood; our parents taught us values, we learned how to walk, to speak, to listen and to act. We learned when to smile and when to cry, when to walk ahead and when to sit by. These are basic emotions and skills, picked up without our trying.

But as we grow up, we need to build inwards from this border -- things suddenly become complicated. Our sky is made of billions of shapes of the same hopeful blue, our earth millions of shades of brown and green. We dream so many dreams, of a better future, of a happy future -- there are so many ways to achieve it. Our present is full of different factors, our friends and family, our career, education... as we build and build and reach the horizon, how do we connect our future to our present, our dreams to our reality?

If we defined ourselves as a single individual puzzle piece, "me" -- where do we sit in that puzzle? Are we only concerned about our present situation and situated in the earthen browns? Or do we spend too much time with our head in the clouds and float amongst the blues?

Or, perhaps you are like me, stuck in that awkward, tenuous, fuzzy border between blue and brown. Perhaps you are looking for the next piece in your puzzle, to fit your grooves and protrusions. There are those myriad pieces that definitely don't fit -- perhaps the grooves are too small for your sticky-outy bit, or perhaps too large and you slip out of it too easily, disinterested. There are then those millions of pieces that look like they fit, but as you try to branch out from those, you realise you were mistaken; it might take a second, it might take years. A doctor who turns to acting, or a lawyer who turns to comedy. Who are we to know what the future will hold?

We could spend eons searching for that perfect piece that fits exactly where it should. Some people are lucky and get it right the first time, but for the majority, we just choose pieces that look like they fit. Many go back and change it later... For a puzzle with so many pieces, in a world so big, and where the pieces look so similar in appearance (is this shade aquamarine? or perhaps cerulean, turquoise, sky blue, cornflower blue, azure, maya blue, royal blue?? should I go into criminal law? or perhaps international law, property law, contract law, constitutional law, art law, civil law??) -- we could spend our entire lives paused and searching for that one piece, but how will we know when we have found it?

After all, how are we to know that a perfect piece that fits exists at all? In a puzzle this big, with all the colors of the visible spectrum and limitless opportunity in our world, we have the power to choose any piece we want and build our puzzles from there. Each of us can choose a fundamentally different puzzle to build; it is not like our lives are predestined to show one picture and one picture only -- if we do not like this red piece here, perhaps we will replace it with a magenta one, or even take a risk and exchange it with a lime green! There are so many pieces in the pack we have been given that there is no risk of ever running into that notorious missing piece!

Even in the end, when we try to look at the big picture of our lives, it is only ever partially complete. There are so many pieces to use that it is impossible to ever finish a full picture in with only 86400 seconds in a day. So, the real question is... with the time you do have, what kind of picture will you construct?

新年快乐!! Baby you're a firework~

The Chinese word for fireworks, 烟花，means literally 'smoke flower'. Both visually stunning and ephemeral, 烟花 encapsulates the passing of time for new years -- we are reminded that like smoke, our time on earth is transient and yet, like flowers, it is beautiful and shouldn't be cast away. This is certainly something I reflected on as I watched the terrific fireworks show exploding off the Taipei 101 this new years.

It was the first time I've actually been to such a big event to celebrate new years. I remember the flying homemade lantern of 2010 done at jamies house, or the yelling out of apartment windows in Paris of 2011. All very small but sure ways to celebrate the coming of a new year. Fireworks are of course the more traditional way to celebrate new years and it's surprising even to me that this is the first time I have come into the new years with fireworks :)

New years day represents for me a cleansing, a way to start anew and take a look at where I am going, where I would like to end up by 365 days later (nevermind how this year is a leap year...). 2011 has been relatively good year; I feel like I learned a lot as a person and matured more as I got more used to the 'real world'.

How'd I do on my own flimsy goals tho? Which I never look at after making them...

1) Make this year much much better than 2010 -- I do think it was a better year than 2010 haha, so this was good~
2) Become more open :) -- no idea I think i was pretty open to begin with and may have gone backwards :/ but I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing in many respects..
3) Do things I want to do, not things I feel obligated to do -- I tend to do this much to the annoyance of others because it is selfish. Lol can't win in this world...
4) Push boundaries -- yeah I guess I did go through with a lot of things I wasn't super into but the rewards were really good, I'm glad I pushed myself :)
5) Dedicate myself to the things I love 120% -- still haven't found something I love so much. At best I think I have committed 90% though.
6) Complain less -- not sure how this went. I don't keep track of my own complaining...
7) Get more fit. Because I didn't do it last year. ): -- better than 2010, still not that great though haha
8) Have more reasons to smile than frown :) -- definitely :D

Hmmmmm. Not bad I suppose. My way of thinking has changed a bit. New nyrs time~

1) do your best in uni. No slacking off even if other people say it's easy - get your grades first and then play around :)
2) if you are in America by the time you read this again, you are the man.
3) try new things - especially in uni, look for the things that might pique some genuine passion. Find the spark you lack.
4) GO AND FREAKING. WORK OUT YOU FAT SLOB.
5) get a job and earn some money :) becoming more independent even when support is there
6) be socially conscious
7) keep in touch with old friends
8) again -- have more reasons to smile than frown :)

I wish you all a very happy new years and an amazing year to come. Hopefully we are all still alive by January 1 2013 and the smoke of the 烟花 has not yet been extinguished by conspiracy theories coming true :p

Remember that every day is a gift we should be so thankful for because life is the single most valuable thing we each possess, and it's pricelessness makes every year an amazing experience -- make sure when you look back at the years of your life in nostalgia that each and every year is like a different colored explosion, and your life becomes a beautifully unforgettable fireworks show!

oh life, the most variable and constant thing of all...

I have been wanting to make this blog for a long time but due to moving around very frequently and lack of internet I never really found the time.

I'm in Taipei at the moment at the DongWu Hotel; we flew in on Tuesday from Hong Kong and before that I spent 2 days at my grandparents' apartment in Guangzhou.

I used to visit Guangzhou with my family every 2 years or so and I used to think it was an overurbanised, overly-grey concrete wasteland. However, as I grew up, I somehow started learning things and becoming inspired whenever I go back to visit. There is just something irreplaceable about a hometown, albeit one that I can barely remember. The important thing is the tiny snippets of memories that flood back to me when I stand at the physical locations of my childhood -- the shop where I bought small mantou snacks next to our house, the paved courtyard of the kindergarten where I would wave goodbye to my grandmother every morning and make her promise that my grandfather would pick me up in the afternoon on his bike (very important, I would be deeply saddened if he showed up without a bike), the commercial sector of town where I would go shopping with my grandmother and politely go with her choices of clothing which would always end up making me look like unicorn's vomit.

It is a wonderful coalescence of the past and present.

I found my uncle's old diaries lined up neatly on his shelf. I picked a blue one up -- 1986. 7 years before I was born. It was so menial -- date, weather, temperature, recount of the day's events. Twice a week, consistently, for a year. The writing reached just halfway through the notebook; the rest of it was blank. And then 1987 began -- a green notebook. It's amazing to think that at the time it was written, there was no such thing as internet or personal, affordable computers. The everyday events in that notebook were so ordinary and yet, from the perspective of our society, so extraordinary. Nobody would lead such a boring life! This is why I find it amazing. Although at that time it was just a way for him to write down and record events in his life and to spend time on when bored, its sheer age makes it so precious today; I felt as if the paper could disintegrate in my hands and cherished history crumble forever.

The room where the diaries sit is a record of my uncle's life. Outside of the shelf, there is a large stack of WoW giftcards. A large frame containing his wedding photo hangs above the bed and a gigantic teddy bear sits before the pillows. There are many shelves in this old apartment room, as he has since moved out. The older ones contain his old bug collection and holiday photos with his friends -- I see my twenty-year-old aunt in a group photo in Tibet; the first time they met. The newer cupboards had the inescapable essence of woman -- my aunt's jewellery, her perfumes, her makeup. It's amazing to see how life can change.

This time, since I was only staying for a short time, my uncle took half days off work to show me around the city. I always found it so interesting how my uncles are always so friendly and familiar with me even though I barely talk to them normally. But as I flipped through the old photo albums, I saw myself a small-potato-sack-sized baby in my uncle's arms. The date read September 1993. I was 2 months old -- my uncle looks almost identical to how he is today, minus a few white hairs. It's interesting how quickly things can change. I flipped another page and saw a family photo with all my cousins. 2002. In just 10 years between 1992 and 2002, my family grew by 4 children, all of whom the adults loved dearly. I was the first, though perhaps not necessarily the first to realise how amazing the potential of the present is; what we do now will certainly determine where we end up later. And it is this unknown that is so beautiful.

More travel updates soon maybe. I felt inspired at some point but no time/energy to turn inspiration into words ):

From beginning to end of high school.... part 3

And then... this year.

I grew closer to so many people this year that I never knew before. Everyone is so friendly and warm, and staff members treated us like peers. It is an environment that promotes community and natural maturity. I love being able to sit down and talk with anyone in the year 13 uniform and have a chat. I love being able to pass them in town or newmarket and wave and smile, even if we don't share any classes or if we have never talked previously. There's just something about STCC that ties everyone together, and there are no ulterior motives, or reasons, why I would want to say hi to someone I barely know. I just do it because I want to. Plus, this year made me feel like I grew up so fast, I didn't have time to look where I was going or take care with where I was stepping. But, all turned out well.

What an awesome year it's been. It's been such a different experience than previous years; like a roller coaster ride, it's gained its own momentum and events just stacked up week after week, day after day, and before we knew it we are here -- at the final stop on the train schedule. It's been a long ride, but it's time to get off the train now and make our ways up from the underground subway station into the busy world, our feet firmly planted on the ground and only the empty sky above us containing our growth.

Subway Entrance by Themeny

Walking out of school today in my white shirt and long skirt, knowing that it's the last time we will ever wear them, was a strange experience. I will never walk into the school as a student again. It's time to put away our 'mauve' ribbons forever. I will never have to address my teachers as 'Mr.', 'Miss' and 'Mrs'. I will again never be constrained into the "St. Cuthbert's Student" suit, and yet I will miss it.

I will miss the traffic jams between Hunter and Robertson, I will miss Mrs. Ali's unreadable handwriting, I will miss intruder drills where we all hide under the desks, I will miss the THUDs from Mr. Torrie running into walls in adjacent classrooms, I will miss Cheeky's perfectly-timed wolfwhistles, I will miss Mr. Cuer's bright turquoise shirt and lunging at the whiteboard waving markers, I will miss Mr. Bryden's lying about making all the physics equipment, I will miss Mr. Ball's dry jokes, I will miss Mrs. Saunder's kitten heels, I will miss wobbly desks in exams, I will miss the "draw a heart/smiley/elephant if you are bored" engravings on tables, I will miss badly timed fire drills and having to walk with disgruntlement all the way over to the sports field, I will miss waiting for year 9s to pass with their house bags, I will miss seeing Gabby's face all around the school on Open Day, I will miss Mrs. Rodgers writing on the wall in Year 10 and telling Ruby not to talk back, I will miss wheelie chairs in the art department and I will miss the (questionable presence of) fleas in the common room and I will miss getting up early to ensure parking on market road every morning and I will miss Zoe running into me in corridors and Marijke playing shooting games in English class and Steph JY punching my boobs (okay I just realised how amazingly lesbian that sounded and I apologise for any awkwardness but in my defence you are the one punching my boobs), but most of all I will miss everyone for all their eccentricities and awesomeness and presence around me...

I think it's true, not many people graduating from their high schools would have had the experiences we have had, and we have been giving such amazing tools and background for our future. I can be anything I want now, and yet under this paralyzing freedom I don't know where I will go or what I will do, and I can do nothing at all for the time being.

I require time to get a sense of my bearings, which hopefully this long summer holiday will provide.

Being vomited out of the subway station now, we see an intersection. Roads in every direction, people scuttling past -- which road will you choose to travel on? Retracting back into the security of the warm subway is the only option our freedom doesn't grant us; life is a one way train, and we did not think to buy return tickets before we came.

From beginning to end of high school.... part 2

I just watched the leavers video and teared up a little bit at the end ): I don't know why, I'm happy to graduate and I'm ready, but I'm just really touched by everything the school has given to me and I feel really, really lucky to have been given the opportunity to attend such an amazing environment for the last 7 years...


Picking up from where I left off last time, year 10 was one of the years that really changed me. At the beginning of the year, I hacked off all my hair. I don't really know why it happened, but I just decided to cut my hair short suddenly, the day before school started. I was still pretty withdrawn, but starting to take more responsibilities and be more socially conscious. It was a slow growth mainly haha, but I think I grew up a lot in the second half of 2008. This can be largely attributed to Kahunui. I came out of my shell a lot. I guess I never really realised how isolated and quiet I was til people pointed it out. I tried to open up more to people around me, not only close friends but classmates as well. I learnt that it didn't matter if we weren't familiar, because all friends are strangers at first as well. Spending a month with these people brought out frustration, boredom and helplessness as well as confidence, self-realisations and fierce independence. And it is the latter qualities that are permanent; hardships are temporary, but experience is forever. The last time I cried, truly cried, was on the last day of Kahunui. I don't really know what caused it -- it was as I was hugging the instructors, and I realised that I will probably never see these people ever again, yet they have impacted on my person so much and changed my perspective on the world so dramatically -- Kahunui is naturally an experience that I never want to forget.

^4 leaf clover found at a firedrill

Year 11 turned out to be one of the most enjoyable years so far. At the beginning of the year, I was seriously considering transferring to AIC. I even went to sit their entrance exam and had an interview. I got a scholarship, but ultimately decided not to go. Maybe it was intuition, and I'll never know what would have happened, but I can't imagine not staying at STCC for the rest of high school. The environment at AIC seems so stark, so cold compared to at STCC. I'm so glad I made the choice to stay. I had a mini crisis school-wise in the choice between IB and NCEA and subject choices later on in the year. I had to do a lot of soul searching and decide what I really wanted... it was the first time I had to make a tough decision like that and make it definitively. For anyone who knows me well, you know that I suck at decision making, so you can imagine how agonisingly painful this period of my life was for me hahahaahah. But, it all worked out. And i have to say, choosing to drop biology was one of the best choices I have ever made. I think I grew and matured so much in Year 11 that I regard everything prior to the summer between 2009 and 2010 to be 'the last stage in my life'. I feel like I have been reinvented through change that year; I don't know whether it's a good or bad thing, but that's just how I see it.

Year 12 was not really memorable for me school-wise. I just feel like the entire year was spent in the Art Department, and it was here that Art became such a huge part of my life. The Art Department at st. cuths is absolutely amazing -- as MKD said, St. Cuth's students come out with an amazing work ethic and skills at 2nd or 3rd year university level. We don't notice it, which is a credit to the way the department is run and the atmosphere within the school. I never considered that art could become such a big part of my life before -- it was already something I enjoyed, but it didn't truly become a passion til then, and I never actually noticed this transition until just now as I was typing this (This is why I blog!)... I also grew closer to staff members this year, having gotten over my semi fear (?) of older and more qualified people haha.

Without STCC, I would never have been given the amazing opportunity of experiencing Europe. It opened my eyes to another lifestyle in another country, and it was really amazing how different it is. Therefore it is worldly education, both literally and figuratively, that STCC has given me, and it has truly been up to us to choose which opportunities to take because there are simply too many to do them all. Even though I look around at my fellow graduating class and feel jealousy for some of the things they have done, I remember that we are all simply trying to grasp and hold everything the school hands out to us. It's impossible to hold it all, especially for someone with hands as small as mine :P

...to be continued...