Colours of Fall

(Fall Foliage, Harvard Yard, Massachusetts, 2009)

These are the colours of Fall: Yellow, Orange, Red, Brown -- with a hint of green on a changing blue sky.

YELLOW
The transition. Summer is happiness, the sun is yellow, the lemony freshness of a slight fall breeze deceives us all before the change. It is a slight colour, maybe off-white or cream, the aging pages of a summer diary that's been left out near the salt water for too long. The green fades to yellow first -- a change so small we almost don't see it coming. Like meeting a stranger, like first introductions, like superficial small talk. All laying the base-coat foundations for a new life.

ORANGE
The beautiful. The turn of fall, before it gets too cold: the heat of summer remains, but the beauty of fall creeps in. Like a tree catching alight. Citrus sweetness flows around the yard and maybe in a strong breeze some will fall and swirl around you, dancing fire fairies enchanting and blessing the turn of a new harvest season. A warm hug, a pat on the back, a brush of the hand.

RED
It is passionate. Full of extremity and urgent as needing to jump into the deep end of a pool. Fall comes quickly out of Summer -- one day you are roasting in a singlet and the next you need to take out a jacket and cover up your legs with jeans: like red-hot urgency in a freezer. Clinging to a heater, kneading your face into the crevice of your best friend's neck, a not-so-subtle hard gripping onto fingers. It is fragile, highly transient and so, so intense. Red leaves are the hardest to keep, red dye the quickest to wash away with water.

BROWN
The Settling. It is not death, or the end of something. It is the start of comfort, acceptance and understanding. It is not the unpleasant colour that everyone makes it out to be: not diarrhea, or rot, or slushy mud. It is rather the familiar smell of hot cocoa after a day out in the wind, a robust trunk that you know would never fall under your weight. The swirling melted pot of chocolate in some people's eyes. Brown makes you feel fuzzy.

(Eliot Porter, Pool in a Brook, New Hampshire 1953)*

Like washing paint down a drain: let's observe these colours transition into and through each other and change into something entirely different. Winter is coming and with it a palette of blues and whites, the stark bathroom tiles will be all that is left after your paints have run down your bathtub pipes.

*Just heard about this guy and his photographs this morning in History of Photography, I likeeee his stufffff so I wanted to include it in a blogpost. SUE ME

One moment I was playing tag, the next I was caught in a civil war.

Last week, I was going to get my badminton racquet restrung (finally... I neglected to do it for so long). I walked briskly down one of the streets with the narrow footpaths between the Yard and the MAC Gym, and on the way I passed a little old lady slowly making her way in the same direction down the street with a walking stick. I noticed her frail but sure steps, each one slow but deliberate, as I approached from behind. I felt a little guilty passing her in my rush, a single one of my strides equated to three of her small wobbles. But, what was I to do? As I walked away and left her farther and farther behind me, I thought about what it would be like to be in that situation as I become older. Would I resent the younger generation for being more able than me? How much nostalgia would I be hit with as the years stacked up and my capabilities degenerated with each new experience gained?

Living in the Now is kind of a strange experience. You know where you have come from, but sometimes you forget. There are things buried in our memories that we don't think about but at random times they come up into our consciousness. You think you know where you are heading or at least can imagine different scenarios -- but they aren't set in stone, ever. We can always change our minds about what direction we're heading in. The present is always moving forward though; like a reference point in motion -- with reference to a stationary time dimension our experiences are actually extremely warped by aging.

I woke up from a dream this morning where I was playing tag in a childhood neighbourhood -- not my own, mind you but a childhood neighbourhood nonetheless. We were running and chasing and running and chasing and emotions skyrocketed from a natural high to something more intense, somehow. People started picking up real guns and real bullets and charged into a backyard to protest about injustice, about equality and hope. Most of us were gunned down immediately. I only remember running in the direction to go home, trying to find my friends and finding out that many of their bodies had been left behind in that backyard graveyard.

Then I woke up.

An October Update

Firstly! I apologize for not updating this thing in the last 3 weeks or so. I've been meaning to for a really long time, I just kept doing other stuff/procrastinating/couldn't think of how to start, but now that I've put it off for so long I have an excuse to introduce a blog post by apologizing about not updating. Yay for excuses!

Anyway, life here has been pretty eventful in the last few weeks I guess you could say. I'm not even entirely sure what's happened. Ummm pic spam perhaps

Mooncake with my cousin for midautumn fest. took like an hour to get to her place due to a disruption in the T so I had to get off at apparently a really dodge part of Mass Bay and take a shuttle to Quincy, so they drove me back later :3 

Starcraft parties late at night lololol korean influence

american footballlll I paid for this ticket when I didn't have to. ): and the guy at the gate thought I was bringing vodka into the game in my water bottle .. do I look like an alcoholic?

CSA cruise boat party in Boston Harbour :) Stole this from Ray's instagram. was a really nice atmosphere, esp since the weather was cool and it was windy on the top deck but it wasn't raining as we had been fearing. Oh yeah and SOME crazy guy climbed on the outside of the boat from the top deck to the lower deck and then got detained by security. No big deal #collegelife

SO MUCH NOMS @ korean bbq

Ok actually I don't have that many photos, I should really take more so I don't forget what's happened haha. 

On the cognitive side of things, I think I'm learning a lot here. Not only about the world but also about myself, which is interesting because back home I feel like I learned a lot about people in general but not so much about myself. Maybe because I was always the observer and didn't really think to include myself in the frame. Since I came here though and I haven't really had anything to hold me back from doing anything, it's really started to help me understand myself. 

I am someone who is very easygoing, but that is only because I haven't really discovered an identity. So, it's much easier to let others define what that is. I don't want to make a statement and in fact feel rather uncomfortable doing so at times because there's nothing really I believe in. So, I just go along with the crowd -- the default option I suppose. In that regard maybe I am a very boring person. But then maybe the fact that I am so malleable is in itself something that sets me apart, making the whole thing very paradoxical. I'm not sure where I fit into the world still, but the future is starting to scare me less ok as soon as I typed that I realized that was a huge lie, it still scares me but I don't know, I see a lot more opportunity in it now? I think I have grown in self-confidence a bit, and I believe I can do a bit more if I just go for it.

At home, I tried to stay under the radar mostly, didn't really get involved in much in my semester at uni and stuck with what I knew. But there are so many opportunities here that it's impossible to avoid, so I just go with it and am discovering slowly the things that I would really enjoy. Since coming here I discovered a multitude of insecurities that I never realized I had hahaha, but I think being here has also helped me work on those.

So, it's a slow process and very tiring among classes and other things but we all come to college to grow as people right? :) 

In terms of classes, CS is great, I'm really more seriously going down the path of possibly majoring in CS now. Ec10 made me like economics a bit less, just because it's all about firm decisions and taxes and alsfkjasl;dfkjas; confusing things that I don't like thinking about, I mean it's not bad and for some reason Econ section cheers me up when I had a bad morning, but otherwise it's really not something I'd want to pursue in life. Which is a pity because the business dept here is amazing and there are always so many events  and internships for people in business and finance, so I feel like I'm squandering those opportunities here, but well there are other things I'd rather be doing I guess. My philosophy class which sounded like it was about friendzoning is actually incredibly philosophically engaging and intense. So far we've read Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine and Sartre, and somehow the ideas I learned actually apply to everyday life. So I'm enjoying that class as well, despite all the readings I have to do hahaha. History of Photography is interesting but the readings are killer and I have no idea how to discuss them in section because I only ever skim them, plus I'm not too sure how well my midterm went so I will have to report back to you... I'm getting it back today. 

Speaking of which it is now 10.45am and I have class at 11, so I need to run to breakfast now :) I'll update soon, I hope haha. 

LIFE IS BUSY, remember to rest sometimes

de-facto Ostrich Pillow

The third stage of culture shock

The concept of culture shock was introduced me in the first week of FIP -- Freshman International Pre-orientation when I first came here. Firstly, it hit me as a bit of a misnomer, since I didn't really think there was all that much difference between westernized countries' cultures so I thought it wasn't really something I would have to deal with much. However, after the talk, it made me a wonder a bit. What stage was I in at that time? However, I quickly pushed these thoughts to the back of my head because they weren't relevant in the busy schedule of every day life here.

Now, as I enter into my second month here, I feel the concept has some new meaning for me. I'm not sure if I have grown much wiser in the little time I have spent here, but it certainly feels like it has gone by really quickly. And yet, I am starting to feel at home. It occurred to me this morning that perhaps I am entering into the third stage of culture shock, finally: integration and acceptance into a new home.

Culture shock is the concept of integration into a new environment; it need not be vastly different from the place you come from, I realise now, but it still takes some time to adjust to new surroundings. Apparently there are supposed to be 5 main stages: Honeymoon, disintegration, integration, re-entry shock and re-integration.

Honeymoon describes the initial feelings of excitement when first arriving in a new place. I feel like I didn't experience much of this, partially because I was on edge at the time and emotional from other things happening in my life, but I did feel a certain kind of nervous anxiety vibrating inside my heart as my cousin drove us past MIT and down Mass Ave that day, towards the red brick of my new home for the next four years. I couldn't help thinking back to the first time I visited, 3 years ago now, and what I had been like then. Completely green, no intentions, no ideas, no experience. Stepping into the yard on that first day incited strange feelings. It was like re-entering a place I had been before, but as a different person, 3 years older and 'wiser' and yet just as clueless. I hadn't thought that I would ever revisit when I first came here.

Disintegration describes the time of trying to get used to the new environment, usually unpleasant and can come with feelings of depression and homesickness. I did get this a little during my first one or two weeks here. It's actually been 5 weeks since I arrived here, which puts things in perspective. These feelings died down with time and as I met more people I could connect with. To be perfectly honest though, meeting new people gets very tiring. It is exhausting to have to put with so much small talk from day to day, in addition to learning ten or twenty new names and faces every day, It's even harder when you have nobody to have a real conversation with. Fortunately, I think I met a few people here who I could do that with. And, I took the time to chat with friends back home so that I wouldn't go crazy. But, it made me miss home a lot more when I saw them.

I am not quite sure if I am still in the above stage right now, but it's definitely improved a lot since then. I realized this morning that perhaps I had already begun to transition into the third stage of integration. I was looking at my own Facebook page actually, specifically at the "Currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts" line. It suddenly hit me that I am in America. I'm not sure where I thought I was before now, because I knew for sure that I wasn't in New Zealand, but maybe my brain had put itself in a position of perpetual transition before now. I realised finally that I am actually here, in the Northern Hemisphere, in Massachusetts. Might not seem like that revolutionary of a realization but for me it was literally mind-blowing. Plus, the thought that I've been here for a month! How crazy is that. This place is starting to feel like home as well. Actually my FIP leaders talked about how quickly people adapt to new situations, and eventually Harvard feels like home, and you don't want to leave anymore.

It's actually a scary thought. When I came here I was looking forward to going home again after 4 months. And yet, there are only 3 months left now, and I honestly have to say that I can't imagine leaving. Settling into a routine made me forget about that life I previously had. What mattered to me now was the daily progressions of action and thought right here in front of me. Home is of course still important to me; when I skype with friends back home I miss them dearly. And yet, not as much as when I first arrived. Another thing my FIP leader talked about back then was that "Harvard changes people". At that time a small part of me knew he was right, but for some reason the bigger part of my consciousness tried to refute it. "I'll never change," I thought, "I don't want to change. I'll never forget about home and the people there. Nothing here would take that away from me." And honestly, now I'm not sure which way to think. Because on one hand, life is different in these two worlds, but they are both part of me now. Yet on the other hand, should I prioritize my past a bit more? I can't possibly forget about home that easily.

Yet I am scared about the 4th stage of culture shock: re-entry shock. I don't know what to expect when I go home again. "Life will be different when you go home. You won't be able to tell exactly what has changed, but it will be different. Harvard changes people, or people back home will have changed without your presence." In some ways I wish this weren't true, but of course life will be different. I'm not sure if I'm still denying it to myself, but I remember when Lucee came back for the first time it was a little bit different. Or even when Jamie, Yunbin and David came back, or even seeing Chen again in Taiwan at the beginning of the year. It was like old times, but there was some small part of us that had changed. I don't know if we became closer or more distant in their absence, but life was not quite the same after our separation. I suppose it might not necessarily be a good or bad thing, just a phenomenon that happens. I wonder how much re-entry shock I will experience. How Americanized can I become in 4 months? Hahahaaha...

I guess it's just a time in my life where I'm very uncertain about the future and the opportunities to pick up here are limitless to the point where you can imagine many amazing scenarios for your life to become yet you cannot pick any of them. What do I love? What do I value? What am I trying to achieve here, why am I here in the first place? These are questions I must answer. For now though, it seems like I am floating around every day following a superficial routine I have created for myself to keep a facade of progress, yet in the end I am just procrastiwaiting for something to change, for the future and its possibilities to come and slap me in the face. You'd think I'd know by now that if you want something, you have to go and get it yourself. ...Actually that's something I did know, but such a method has no meaning if I have no knowledge of what I want, right?

These are the circular thoughts of someone who needs to sleep now. But actually I am not that sad, I apologize if I come off as privately wistful in this blog post. I am actually quite content with life here, I just wonder at times where it is leading. But I think it is good that at least I am starting to be able to call this place Home.

PS. On a semi-sidenote, I started listening to some Blackmill, which I am enjoying very much. A lot of his songs come up on the Ratatat pandora channel, which is where I learned about him from, so if you're into that kinda style of music/soft dubstep/trance electronica you should check his stuff out :)

My Incomprehensive Harvard Experience

Sup guys, this is a somewhat incomprehensive update on my whereabouts and wellbeing so that I don't have to repeat myself over and over to people and I'll forget who I've told what haha. So, PUBLIC BROADCAST! :D

Anyway my time here has been really good so far. I was missing home quite a bit when I arrived, but it's a lot better now that I've settled into my new room and classes have kind of started and I've met some people I get along with well. Just a little bit less lonely :) I did laundry for the first time by myself yesterday! Aren't you proud? Haha last week my parents were still here so my mum was pretty much overbearingly taking over doing everything...

Canaday F, aka my entryway! :D These are the people I live with haha.

aaand, here's my room! :D

Haha other than that, the food here is surprisingly good for mass produced stuff. People complain about it but I don't think it's bad considering they cater for 1700 odd people. Maybe I'm just not picky / have no culinary taste whatsoever (if you're wondering why I have so many pictures of food, it's because my parents want me to send them a picture of every meal I have so here are some of them hahaha. This is mostly at Annenberg, the freshmen dining hall):

 

Also I'm still typing this on my old as laptop because when the one I ordered arrived, it was broken ): The bottom of the chassis was deformed and the screen was cracked and they only just picked it up 2 days ago for replacement so HOPEFULLY that'll come soon so I'm no longer stuck with this piece of crap that lasts like 15 minutes so I can't actually take it to any lectures rendering its laptop-ness completely redundant...

I'm pretty sad this year that I missed the first day of Spring in New Zealand. I tend to blog on that day every year and I couldn't this year because... it wasn't Spring ): there were no baby calves and lambs jumping around here, no first blossom, no warming of the weather... instead all I had to remind me of a change of season was a slight chill and some drizzle. But that's ok. Life changes, I suppose. I wonder what the turn of Spring in March here will look like.

In terms of classes, they just started two days ago but it's shopping week at the moment, which means none of our classes are finalized so we can go into any class we want to 'shop' it and see if we want to take it. So far I've gone into an Art History class on American art and Modernity between 1865 and 1965, a Science and Cooking class where they gave us this plant extract stuff that binds to your sweetness receptors on your tongue so that you can't taste anything sweet for a short period of time and it made sugar taste like sand and, IMO made cookies taste nicer cos you can actually taste the bitterness of the chocolate but other people beg to differ..., and a maths class that I wanted to take but I don't have enough slots this semester so I'll probably take in the Spring, an Ethical Reasoning class (Justice by Michael Sandel, perhaps one of the most famous here, Jono recommended it to me before I even came here hahaha), EC10 (Introduction to Economics), CS50 (the most famous compsci paper here, looks awesome, I can't wait to start this course like actually -- even though it will probably eat up most of my time), and my freshman seminar (I got Just Friends: I don't love you like that), which I already have 40 pages of reading plus a response paper for due in a week. But it's really flexible here and the classes are really interesting so yay Harvard :) But weirdly I still don't feel like classes have started, and I felt much more hard-working back at AU. Maybe because I live on campus now so it just feels like I'm bumming around alllll the time. It's weird.
[I apologise for my atrocious grammar in this above paragraph but I really cannot be bothered making it fluent in a literary sense since this is my blog and I do what I want so go away Yunbin :)]

EDIT: actually I wrote this a few days ago, I've pretty much finalized my classes now, I'm taking CS50, EC10, C&B30 (History of Photography) and Just Friends. Plus I'm probably going to end up auditing Science & Cooking just cos it's so darn cool. I mean just look at these liquid nitrogen marshmallows. No pun intended.

There have been heaps of random events during orientation as well -- there was intramural house sports, and then convocation (which is like the opposite of graduation, where you dress fancy and people give speeches and a ceremony and stuff). There was an activities fair two days ago as well, where all the extracurricular groups had a stall and gave away free stuff :D I'm getting spammed by groups that I signed up for to get free stuff from now though hahah.

Woodbridge international society tshirt ;) 

In terms of social life, there are heaps of parties going on all the time. It's pretty amazing. Went to a few and have seen a few people getting taken away by UHS from passing out after drinking, probably not a pleasant experience but I haven't drank since I got here. Other than that there are also lots of performances going on, and everyone kinda does their own thing. Went to an AAA (Asian American Association) mixer where it was too hot to be classy despite the dress code, an A Cappella performance last night, a dance group performance last week that I can remember off the top of my head...

You can't tell from the photo, but we're all sweating profusely.

Hmmm, apart from playing a lot of card games and hanging out in common rooms til the early AM during orientation, there's nothing much else I can think of to talk about regarding my current life.* Classes are soon to properly start, and I already have a CS project and a reading and response paper to write to Plato's The Symposium, so I shall go and sparknotes the hell out of it now :) Hope you're all doing well where ever you are, and I'd love to catch up sometime so just chuck me a message and I'll reply when I can haha @_@

*EDIT: actually I just remembered, one night we went to the science center at 12am in the morning to learn the gangnam style dance using the apple store glass doors as our mirror. Good times... but maybe that's a story for another day hahaha.

nonsensical things i write on planes

The spray of water following a car's wheels on a wet night, illuminated by street lamps and traffic lights, fairy dust trailing a horse-and-cart-carriage.

Sunrise. Warm water blurs my tears into the shower stream, cleansing and burning away the panicked emotions in my heart. And yet why do I leave the shower box feeling empty and cold? Outside the window a new day shines onwards.

Sunset. I close my eyes for a moment as I sink into your arms. The watercolour sky transformed from a multitude of blues to a darker, more sinister purple. Blue paint sinks from the sky into the water below, edging either towards or away from us -- I cannot tell which way the tide rolls in the dark.

A thunderstorm devastating my Facebook news feed. I slept through it. It is so transient that when I wake, the streets are still, silent and deceptively peaceful.

A ghostly fog as I cross the road. It seems to shimmer in one place, yet when I look again through the windscreen it is everywhere; still beautiful no doubt, but not quite as magical.

Transience is getting on a plane. One moment you're there, next moment you're gone.
...Or are you?

Though I wish I could stay in that moment forever, such want only comes from the knowledge that it is impossible. Though it lasted only seconds, minutes, hours -- such transient moments are the ones I will cherish for the rest of my life. Concentrated, pure emotions; taking in every smell, every feeling of that saturated ephemerality -- that is how I will not forget.

Those songs
Every time I hear those songs I know they can be interpreted in a thousand different ways for a thousand different people, and none of them the way the writer meant;
Yet I will choose to interpret it for you
Perchance it was inevitable


everyone has their own stories, this is ours and ours alone.

missing you before I'm gone

Life changes in a matter of days. Well actually, I'm sure life itself has not changed much, but rather our perspectives of it. It did not hit me for a long time that I am leaving soon, so I put off packing my bags; perhaps I was in denial of my imminent departure. It is a strange kind of feeling, to know that in a week everything will change. I went through high school seeing friends off to Australia and America, but I never considered how exactly it would feel from the other side.

Random objects are strewn across all surfaces in my room, random objects which I must choose whether to take with me or leave behind. And if I leave them behind, when will I see them next? Or will they be one of those things that are lost between relocations? I have a lot of precious things that have no use for me in college, so I am leaving them behind. But, I am scared that they might go missing before I come back, and I don't know if I would even remember which boxes I put them in, or if I would even remember if such precious things exist. I think I will take a small box of the most important memoirs even though it doesn't serve any purpose other than safekeeping...

As I count down my last days, I am constantly reminded of how amazing those people around me are. I haven't taken pics of everything cos I'm lazy but here are just some of the things that made me cry hahaha (if you follow me on instagram you'll already have seen these...):






Among other things I received which I haven't taken good photos of yet, including a Salvatore Ferragamo keychain from Vicky, Walker&Hall jewellery from Laina, a book about the internets from Karl, winneeeee from Cleo, an illustrated noobs guide to cooking from Rose/Jisu/Suzie, University of Auckland jumper & winter gearz (gonna keep me warm in winter :3) from Gur/Johan/Daniel/Tanush/Eric, homemade soap from Shirley, lovelyyyyy notebooks from Wenbo, Will, and Cherry/Vicky/Cathee/Renee and about a million cards and notes and in Firip's case written statement at the back of a Whitcoulls receipt that I will keep for life cos they filled my life with happy and sad tears ;__;

Honestly...  U GUYZZZZZ ): I'm going to try to pack as fast as I can so I have more time to spend with you stupid tear-inducing people before I leave and don't see your face for 4 months. Even though I haven't known you all for very long, it feels like we've been friends for ages. Reading your thoughtful notes and cards, I was really surprised that I am so close to some of you who I only met this year. I hope that my absence won't degrade that haha cos I honestly wish I met some of you sooner so we could have had more time together.

As for you people who have had to put up with me for half your/my life -- YOU CAN'T GET RID OF ME THAT EASILY :P haha but honestly, thanks for always being there for me... sometimes when you spend a lot of time with someone you don't realise how close you become, how much you grow to care for them and how much you actually love them. Because it's not that you took them for granted, you just never expected to ever have to leave them. This hit me like a fridge falling from the sky and I never, never want to lose you, no matter through thick or thin or all the water across the Pacific Ocean.

In the end, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm tired and barely had 5 hours sleep last night and I couldn't get back to sleep so I decided to write this up because it was on my mind. My brain is fuzzy from the love I have for you my dear friends, I hope you're happy ♥

nineteen

Well it's that time of the year again. The time to blow out my candles and make my wish, which is normally the same every year and always comes true. Okay actually it was yesterday and I was going to blog but in the end I didn't cos I was replying to everyone's comments. I didn't expect so many people to comment on facebook this year since I took my birthday off but I guess after 1 person starts the chain there's no escape hahaha. It's very interesting how social networking affects virality. I enjoyed replying to everyone and leaving messages for people who I don't see often :)

I can't remember ever feeling super different following a birthday, but every so often I do self reflections and something in my life seems to change even if it isn't something tangible. A year ago, I had gotten into a new relationship and was thinking about it quite immaturely, nothing had really come together and I was just doing things in the moment. Two years ago, I was really surprised by how many gifts I received from friends -- I remember walking to EGGS for extrav practice and people waiting there with their cards and presents. This year was, in comparison, relatively low key compared to the last two haha. I did not receive many gifts but I was still really surprised by what I did get :O (a pandora ring from Yujie, a swarovski necklace and some money from my aunt and uncle)... then I had dinner with my family and cake as per tradition :) It was an enjoyable day despite the horrible weather.

Compared to a year ago, I guess I have to say I have matured a lot. So many things have changed in the last year, even though turning 18 felt like a day ago. It has been both an extremely eventful and quick year to pass. I feel like there's so much I've learned, yet at the same time I'm not sure if I'd apply the newfound wisdom if the opportunity arose. Maybe that's the next step haha. One foot in front of the other taking one step at a time :)

Maybe I'll post a present haul sometime, after my ring comes in either next week or this week. Had to go get it resized and they had to order a special shipment cos they don't stock rings for small hands like mine ):

3 weeks remaining

In this little world of mine, I wonder what others actually feel about my leaving. I wonder if it will be just another event in their ongoing lives. I wonder if we will stay in touch.

I don't like the prospect of packing. I have to pack my entire room up because we're renovating the house after I leave so I have to move everything out. Going through all my crap is like doing a huge spring clean; there's so much that I never use, but it also seems like a huge waste to throw away. What do I do with it??? When did I accumulate so many useless things? Then there are the sentimental things that I can't stand to throw away even though they no longer have any utility. Every time I clean my room I toy with the idea of starting a scrapbook to put all this stuff in, but I never get around to it. Scrapbooking materials are so expensive, and I don't know if I'd ever be bothered doing it in the long run. So now that it's too late, I throw my old diaries and journals and thoughts and seal them into a cardboard box, unsure of when or whether I'll see them again.

Well, it's not goodbye for long. I will be back in five months. But it's a bit like starting anew. On one hand, I have wanted to start fresh for a long time now. From the start of year 11, when I wanted to transfer to AIC. Then again I have changed a lot from then. I have established a way of living and a comfort zone. Starting again should be interesting. I am excited and scared. I want to try new things, but I don't know if I have the courage to do so. I am afraid to be lonely.

As someone who is only ever lukewarm in excitement levels, I feel somewhat alienated by the high levels of OMG 1 MONTHHHH going around, which makes me think I might be one of the ones to end up depressed and getting counselling because I feel like I'm not making the most of my experience and opportunities, but hopefully that doesn't happen.

Sometimes being trapped inside my head is like arguing with winter. I will protest and use logic -- I will want to grow my frail mustard plants in this plot of soil, but in the end she will still rain and freeze and cast her hurricanes my way and force them to keel over and sink back into the Earth, she will twist my words, cloud my mood and blow cold wind through the holes in my raincoat.

I am sure it will be better once I let things go and jump right into the deep end. It will be spectacular, like falling down a waterfall at the end of the rapids and discovering an idyllic lagoon at the bottom.

Just gotta hack it out for these last 3 weeks.

a letter to nobody

Through grey-tinted windows I survey the landscape beyond my touch
Rushing by so quickly, yet the road continues for miles;
Each moment so temporary, yet feeling the same as the one before.

The brown-black Othello board of cows and horses shivers beneath adipose clouds
Shrouding the flatlands, making them seem more barren than they already were...

I am the tumbleweed moving through a landscape of nothingness.
Without purpose, without direction -- taken where ever the wind blows.

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

I will miss you, you know. I think a lot of us are so caught up in our own lives sometimes, and we look around and we see that everyone is struggling along the same path, keeping to themselves. We yearn companionship actually, with those around us, but we think they do not feel the same way.

At least, I hope it is like that. Because I am one of these people, and sometimes I feel so alone. These blank shadows around me, who really cares about me? Who really understands me? An unspoken kind of understanding, which needs no affirmations. A silent friendship that roots itself halfway across the earth and still draws water continents away.

In your case, I wish to let you know how much you actually do mean to me. We have known each other a long time, and life will be very different without you. I can placate myself by reminding myself that I will not be gone for long, but I am still leaving behind this life and trying to start something different. Life is changing. I want you to stay in it.

This section is not about what you think it is about.

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Seven black umbrellas, bobbing up and down as their owners stride past.
Beads of rain roll along their woven yet impenetrable surfaces, drip-drip-dripping onto the sidewalk below
Swallowed by the sewer rats retreating into their homes

Will my tears end up as lacquered raindrops on this umbrella of distance, unable to reach you?

If it were you condensing in this cold weather, I would be the first to lower my umbrella and become cleansed. I would raise my coloured parasol when you return, offer it to you, walk along the flat and seemingly endless road of time with you and keep the sun off your smile.

My thoughts on marriage

When I was younger, I used to think that marriage was something magical, where a girl and a boy meet each other and fall in love with each other, and they marry and some inexplicable force of nature brings a woman a baby at a certain amount of time after she becomes wed. I used to think that I had a Prince Charming in the world somewhere ready to sweep me off my feet, someone that was already predestined to be mine, our hearts tied together by a spool of red string.

Then I became older and more cynical. What with escalating divorce rates, affair scandals, adulterous stories... anyone with a sense of logic knows that the child's idyllic vision of marriage is, ironically and unfortunately, as transient as the stock marriage nowadays. I noticed that as a society becoming more and more liberal (which, fyi, I have no problem with; my opinion on most issues is liberal and I think people should have the right to do whatever they want), we have become reliant on the convenient, lazy and unwilling to fix things. I have never really liked materialism and consumerism for this reason; it makes no sense to me to keep buying more and more if we do not need it. People tell me their one-year-old cellphone is outdated while I happily use my four year old laptop to type this out (although, admittedly, it is finally being replaced at the end of the year, but not before we've been through everything -- including a cracked chassis being held together with tape at this moment). My point is, we have become so used to being able to throw things away and buy new things at the snap of a finger that we have come to treat marriage as the same thing.

To be honest, I think this increasingly utilitarian society is one of the main reasons why divorce rates keep rising. Instead of trying to fix marriages, people throw them away. Because it's more convenient, to find someone else than to fix what is already broken. Doesn't that imply that people are replaceable?

I think it's for this reason that I have a huge fear of commitment. How am I supposed to know whether or not the person I am with sees me as replaceable? How am I supposed to trust someone if an increasing majority of the population becomes more used to this idea that broken marriages = divorce? Why even bother putting in all your effort into a relationship if there is the possibility of it ending? Maybe I block people off, and maybe I do not put all of myself in because of that. Maybe I am scared of being hurt. Am I being weak or just rational...? Some people say that if I meet the right person it should feel effortless. But I haven't ever felt that, so how do I know that I am capable of that at all? Sometimes I am so scared that I am actually an unemotional psychopath who has no ability to love anyone or anything at all.

If I ever do get married, I want it to be with someone I can totally trust. I want to be able to be pretty much telepathically connected to him. I want to know and love him as a friend, and then I want to love him as a partner. We would have to be other halves. Best friends. I don't think I could marry someone I have known for less than at least three years. Best, after five at least hahaha. Someone once told me that they can imagine me getting divorced once or twice. How horrible... I would at least work hard for a stable marriage than throw it out to divorce straight up. I'd kind of rather not get married at all than have to go through a divorce I think @@

I do not want a grandiose proposal, I want to mutually decide to get married one day in passing, perhaps when we are watching television in the lounge. I do not need a decked out wedding, a simple one fit to celebrate the event of a joining of two people would be enough. Big proposals and weddings are too fantastical; love is rooted in the familiar. If we let ourselves get carried away with this surreal representation of love, it doesn't really reflect our real relationships at all... a false wedding.

Recently, my mother was in hospital. When I visited with my father, I saw him take care of her and settle her fears and worries, say soothing words of support, hold her hands, care for her as he would his own mother. I have never seen my parents kiss. They do not wear wedding bands. He never even bought her an engagement ring. Their wedding photos were staged, much after the actual wedding. Yet, they are so strong together. This is proof to me that the flamboyant rituals that society demands of marriages are superfluous. Yes, they fight sometimes but it is only ever out of small and temporary annoyances. When I saw him beside the hospital bed, looking only at her and holding her hands and saying such words of all-encompassing friendship, I felt so happy. Sinking back slightly into my childish idealism, I can only hope that one day I can share the same thing with someone.

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.