weathered.

Quietly the dust settles in the aftermath of a sandstorm.
Roughly piled and dry like dead twigs on a winter's day.
And you say you think I'm gone next stormy dusty winter.
And I say I think you're wrong.

notch down.

In the best of words: differentiate what you want and what you need.
Profound and surprisingly overlooked. It simplifies a life that wants so many things.
And cheerfully agrees with the fact that you "can't have it all".
I would think that the person who achieves this level would be a very peaceful person. Presuming he obtains what he needs. Think about it. It would be so easy to arrange life's priorities:
1. what you need and want
2. what you need
3. what you want
Of course, nothing is that simple. But once the frustation exhausts itself, once the turmoil dwindles, the options continue to escalate and the sadness still lingers, you need to arrange things in simple little boxes and make a straight beeline for one which makes you happiest.
Because in the long run, you only hit what you aim at.

to be young

It's as if my person is assumed. Life keeps moving, life keeps escalating. And soon I will reach the skies alone.

But see, that's an over-simplification. Mere plastic labels to explain complexities. Ambitious. Selfish. Competitive. Karma. There is no depth in such analysis. It does not take into account how souls mature like wine, and how faith and religion invisibly draws a straight unwavering line to follow. To come back to after you side-track. If you side-track. There are always echoes which balance the echoes in my head. And most importantly, it doesn't take into account that nobody can fight alone. And that I realise that.

constant vigilance

These are the days when I dream of where I will be precisely next year. Right now there are about a million feasible posibilities. Possibility number one being the most lucrative at the moment, which really consists of a combination of a certain this, this, this, and that.
But I keep having to remind myself, let's do this in small increments. Let's focus on goaling the balls one by one. Let's take a deep breath and realise that things do not happen without a struggle.
Let's focus on fighting for that dream-job first of all. And then focus on fighting for that dream-team. And then focus on fighting for the ultimate dream. And then, who knows?
There's plenty of battle yet to come. And sweet victories to be won.

Flattery of the day:

"Did you get a boob job?"

=)

Fortune Teller

The fortune teller said that I have many temptations. This is no surprise as life is full of temptations. Perhaps she reads not what is applicable to her clients, but reads what is foremost in her client's mind. For indeed it had been hovering about, nameless, until she nailed it and identified the squirming bastard.
I realise now that not only are mishaps a blessing in disguise as commonly quoted by elderly people, but blessings may also potentially become a mishap in disguise. If you exploit it, if you indulge in it, if you feel too confident about it. I do not.
But I feel immature. Because I am certain of how to handle my temptations, yet feel deprived. Because I am certain of where I want to go, but wonder where the other path leads. I feel I am not grateful for what i have, but that it is extremely humane to never feel satisfied. It is thirst, paired with an uncanny knack of getting water easily.
The fortune teller did not give me predictions of what my life is going to be, but she told me that the path I am trying to focus on is the right one. That's all I needed to know.

Just gimme my diploma.

Graduation ceremony was jading (is that a word?). As a custom, girls must wear the traditional garments and hairdo, which requires at least two hours of preparation. After all the fuss, we endure at least an hour of traffic as hundreds of cars queue up, filled with excited graduates and proud parents and relatives doing last minute make-up checks with pocket mirrors. We cover the beautiful meticulous garments with tacky overpriced graduation robes and step out into the blaring sun. We gingerly push the pentagonal graduation hat on to our painfully perfect hairdo. We jostle and jumble in our high heels with the crowd as we enter the building to endure a ceremony in which our names are not even mentioned because we failed to become cum laudes. And when the ceremony is finally over we jostle and jumble to get out, back to the blaring sun outside, sweat staining our beautiful hidden dresses, make-up running and fake-eyelash-glue melting.
And then we take pictures.

Sunday Spa.

Wafts of fragrant herbal scent

Swirls of petals immersed in wet

Froths of warm and bubbled sweat

Moments so sweet I shan't forget.

.

The story of the silent couple on the other table: what really happens.

As we were sitting in that coffeeshop a few months ago, having the most delightful animated conversation, I couldn't help but notice the couple on the other table.

I said, "Honey, d'you think they're a couple? They haven't spoken a word to each other. I wonder how fun that can be."
He promptly replied, "You're so prejudicial. They might be passing notes!"

So I thought about it, and he might have a point.

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

He had been waiting. She helped herself to the empty chair beside him, set down her mug, leaned over and gave him a light kiss. His cheek was cold, indifferent. It was never warm unless they slept together, cheek to cheek. He lit a cigarette and she sat silently while the smoke shrouded them.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked, unimportantly.
She ignored him.
Instead, she grabbed a paper tissue and started scribbling on it. She passed it to him.

"A kiss so sweet would prove to be
bittered by your smoking non-necessity. "

He smiled, frowned, scribbled, and passed it back.

"Non-necessities are bittersweet indeed
but being here with you is all I need. "

She smiled. He had a glint in his eyes. The cafe was slowly filling up, and the loud chatter of customers started to blend with the aroma of coffee and smoke. But he and she were oblivious to this. She looked up at him seriously now, the smile vanishing into a saddened expression.

"You haven't called me very much", she said.
It was a statement. Matter of fact. Non-accusatory, but unmistakably disappointed.

He slowly took a long drag and blew it out before taking another tissue paper.

"Should I be satisfied to hear your voice?
your lack of presence pains me without choice."

She took a moment to read it and a long moment staring at it. Her expression was unfathomable, but he didn't mind. He waited.

"What excuses, darling! But maybe it matters not
at rare times like this, lapses might well be forgot."

She slipped him the tissue but he took her hand instead and held it. It felt warm, unusually warm. For the remainder of the night, he and she remained oblivious to the crowd.
The rest of the world simply did not matter.

Here was a scene at a cosy coffee place at Clarke Quay. As usual, it involves merrily chastising my brother's Singaporeanised antiques. This usually involves: being fussy about wearing safety-helmets before cycling to the next block, washing your hands as soon as you get home, and being extremely worried about bird-flu. But we always listen to his life in Singapore with enthusiasm.

[bro:] "I haven't bothered reading Newsweek ever since I got here. Besides, I've been busy reading much more interesting stuff on the Singapore daily newspaper. Only last week there was a man prosecuted for cat abuse. They finally proved him guilty for abusing three cats. He's a friggin' serial-cat-abuser. It was all over the news."

[me:] "Atrocious."

[bro:] "I know."

The temporary pedestrian

"Brick, cobblestone and wood plank pavements were once common in urban areas throughout the world, but due to their high manual labor requirements they are in some countries typically only maintained for historical reasons, while in other countries they are still common in local streets."

In any event, I had a morning jog by the river with its cobblestone pavements. The morning was beautiful, the river was calm and deep green. By simple logic, obviously this is not Jakarta. Whether brick or cobblestone or asphalt, whether for aesthetic or historical reasons, whether for economic or cultural purposes (like, Javanese people don't like walking), Jakarta does not have significant pavements, let alone clean deep-green rivers. I'm very jealous. :( It's simply wrong for a midget country, a tiny red dot on the map to be this nice. For the sake of bittersweet chauvinism I shall say that despite everything Jakarta is ... exhilarating, unpredictable, and mysteriously lovable. In a way it's true; I actually can't wait to go home and embrace the familiar chaos.

Fret.

I don’t know how it began, but, I find myself not knowing someone as much as I’d like to know that someone. I had overestimated myself. Some people simply do not depend on other people to share their burdens of life. And suddenly I don’t know his burdens in life, let alone be there to help solve it.
And therefore I am useless.

essentials

I've graduated.



Now, on to the more important things. Bunaken was fabulous! Located just off the coast of Manado, what's important about it is not Bunaken island itself but a cluster of coral reefs nearby which we had to get to from Manado by a splendid white little boat which allowed me to sit at the hull with the wind in my face and the dark blue sea with glittering sparkles of sunlight like playful diamonds and the vivid blue sky with little cottons of cloud and mountain slopes decorating the horizon and later on the coral reefs viewed from the glass-paned boat with the whole city of rainbow coloured fish and lobsters and bright blue starfish which then compelled me to jump off the boat and dip myself into the clear blue sea to swim among the corals and fish. =) Perfect!

Dad just called me an “unemployed intellectual”. Yikes. That’s pressure in a lyrical way. However, approaching the end of my campus days, and hearing lots of stories about working life makes me appreciate the value of unemployment. Most definitely not material values. But Time. Controlling it. Subjecting yourself to leisures or pressures, to a glass of wine or a deadline, because you want to or feel the need to. Not because you have no other option. But that doesn’t make sense doesn’t it, because, theoretically, there’s always an option, innit.
*sigh*. Is there such a thing as “intellectually unemployed”?

And inevitably, football.

At 2 am an unlikely group of people gathered at the La Piazza to join the hundreds who were all watching the World Cup together on the big screen in the middle of the plaza. The surrounding café’s were all working round the clock to cater to this magnitude of an event. The unlikely group, btw, happened to be myself, with my parents. It never occurred to me that they would suddenly feel like watching footie with the masses. At 2-bloody-a.m. Admittedly our cable-TV, with its ESPN and Star Sports and whatnot, amazingly does not transmit the World Cup. Mum had a great time, possessing a moderate enjoyment for football. I, felt weird hanging out with my parents at 2am. Dad was only in it for Mum, and successfully persuaded us to split 15 minutes before the game ended.
Later on in the day Dad went typically contemplative.
He said: “It’s ironic that thousands can be so fanatic about another nation’s football team, that they would all gather in the middle of the night to watch. Everybody, everybody gathering in the big malls built over the empty grassy lands previously used by kids to play football.”
I did not have a response for that. Predictably, we are watching the finals at home tonight. We hijacked our maid’s antenna-TV.

rejection.

He approached my car with Jesus tucked under his armpit, skinnier than usual and covered in lacquer. With his other hand he waved about the other Jesus, equally skinny and shiny, outside my window. I waved my hand submissively and he proceeded to the next car in the traffic line. Amongst the billow and hum of steady fumes, in the few minutes before red turns to green, other sellers swarmed around to promote their ware. They specialize. One type of ware for every seller. Mini helicopters which could actually elevate for a few minutes before dropping dangerously close to my windshield. Crispy snacks which are allegedly fried in hot sand and allegedly non-cholesterol. Giant, footlong pencils which you could flexibly twist. Skeleton keyrings and hairy gorilla masks sold 5 months in advance of Halloween. A dazzling array of World Cup fever memorabilia. Playboy magazines, and Jesus.
And then of course, there are the others. The ware-less, beggars. Tiny barefooted children, their tiny baby siblings slung on their backs. Old women leading their blind old husbands through the maze of cars. Skinny muscular men strumming their broken guitars, or just clapping. I cannot feel sympathy for these men. The people in the cars usually have preferences. They, too, specialize. Some prefer the kids because they should be in school. Some give to the muscled men because they are annoyingly persistent. I prefer those who obviously cannot be productive. But it’s so easy to be apathetic, simply because one gets used to it. Even sympathy is a different thing from philanthrophy, the former not necessarily leading to the latter.
And so it was today that a blind man approached my car, befitting into my ideas of obvious unproductive-ness. But not this man. This man was selling bottled water, chilled despite the blaring heat. He’d press his hand on the window to feel whether it opened for him or not.
As it was, mine did. Howmuch?, I asked him and he told me the price would be 2000. I gave him 3000. Before he handed me the bottle he took the notes and felt them slowly around the edges, one, two, and three. He gave one back to me and said, “this is too much”. No its okay, I said, take them all. He shook his head and handed me the bottle with the 1000 note.
And he walked away to the next car, hands outstretched.

"Rome"

There are many roads to Rome, it’s true
And possibly I feel subdued
I’m humbled by the twists and turns
The overwhelming choices earned

But there are many ways to Rome, he’d say
Before you change your mind and sway
through Rio, Brazil, and Madrid, Spain
To see the world and back again

It almost seems like Rome is near
Though many paths, the goal is clear
Still, fears come greet me all the while
For life most perfect is, most fragile…

[for the complete, unabridged version please ask me very very sweetly ;p]

Thesis is like Soap.

You never really end up the way you had predicted from the start. Although this theory is dependant on how consistent, and how competent a scholar, the writer is, I would like to think that most writers don’t end stories up as planned. In the beginning there will be a sneak preview, the introduction of characters that seemingly lean towards a certain predictable tale. In the middle complexities and subtle nuances appear, frantically trying to steer the writer in other directions. If I were not a thesis writer at the moment, I would gladly yield. It would be the most natural thing to do, like when life throws hurdles at you and you simply flex, bend, and take an alternative route. In extreme moments, I feel currently my thesis is like a soap show, not merely tempted to steer off track, but to steer in and out, add and subtract characters, undergo extreme surprises, have affairs left and right, and voila… end happily.
But no… it must be boring and rigid. With the thesis, you must end as you had planned, because the professors hold you accountable for your plans. I so lack the privilege of a melodrama.

How sadly deprived.
In anticipation of a certain event tonight, I had spent a few hours of two days deciding on what to wear. Helped by mom, always so excited and intervening, I tried on thisandthat, even became a little adventurous. As if a holiday spirit had come over me, all I seemed to covet were girly windblowy skirts and beaded necklaces. So unlike me. And precisely why I completely failed, having discovered that I do not have enough resources to develop a holiday fashion within two days. How can people manage to match every bag with every shoe? It’s beyond me. My talents reacheth not this realm. I am humbled. In resignation I settled upon my usual simple look, elegant at best and quite boring. Assured myself, as Oscar Wilde has so eloquently stated, that ‘fashion is a form of art so ugly that it must be thrown out every three months’. Also quoting from Mies van der Rohe, that ‘Less is More’. Of course, I stoically ignore that neither scholars work in the fashion field. After much ado and psychological reframing of mind, I was finally content and set upon having a good time, fashion-oblivious. Only to be told that the event had been cancelled!

I am now wishing I had more quotes. :(

brink.

Today was my last exam at campus. No more exams.

Somehow it’s not as milestoney as I thought it might be. I need to graduate now, innit. And find jobs and important things to propell me through life. But right now Im thinking I need to paint my hair, grab a picnic basket (and iPod ;p), travel to Rio and take samba lessons. Will there be time somewhere in the adult life to do reckless things? What if I grow up? What if I never get to wear converse sneakers again? Worries which, undoubtedly, I will not be worrying about when I can afford to buy Manolo Blahnik… but the concept is terrifying. You wait your whole life to be mature and independent, and at the brink you falter.
How embarassing. But then again, I’ve got an ego the size of London, bf always says.
Too huge for me to flinch.