Time of my life.

Confusion. The nagging feeling.

Indeed it is. I've never seen myself as an assertive person with decisions. But even with love, it still puzzles me to this day why people feel the way they feel in countless of situations. With career, there also this nagging feeling to move on but it comes with the need to renounce nostalgia and conquer uncertainty. Grow balls, damn it.

I certainly hope this phase will pass.

zomg.

Culinary should stay as a hobby. Will not get sucked into dreaming of my own cooking show after consistently being glued on to TLC and AFC every morning *snickers. X)

Nonetheless, it's a family reunion of sorts. My brother came home today as well! :) Jolly week ahead. (Cept for Monday. Dentist appointment) :S

Merry Christmas everybody!

:D

It still puzzles me to this day.

I'm clearing out old messages clogging up my phone memory. (The warning has been appearing for some time now lol). It's nice being nostalgic. Some pretty fond memories I'm reminded of as I travel back to time (or at least back to 2009) by reading messages I decide to keep and decide to discard. Interesting conversations with people I've met, people that I loved and people that I have not hung out or speak to anymore with for a while now.

Then there are also messages that come from people whom I keep in contact every once in a while, more frequently during the holidays (because, like birds, students studying overseas migrate in flocks).

Messages mostly revolve around post-Gippsland, Gippsland, Melbourne and Honours/Bawang merah era. I haven't run through ALL because I've not cleared out my inbox since forever just skipped a couple as I go. I'm quite sure it'll take days to finish. Haha.

Honestly speaking, 2 years is a comparatively short time. But I dare say, for me it's been rather eventful despite having some line of communication gone dead or, just simply, changed. It still puzzles me to this day why it happens? Out of sight, out of mind? Why it's so hard for me to keep in contact with people being apart after long periods of time. Apart from billing and some energy to type the message, why does the effort seem great?

Would it be weird if I were to suddenly say hi? And if I do decide to make the effort, what if the other party does not reciprocate? Maybe it's just better to remain MIA instead of having to be rejected. But then if I try hard enough, maybe they would realize I care and reciprocate.

Now I know that's not always the case.

Christmas coming in a few hours time. It's time I reached out to the right people.

Resolutions.

I didn't make any resolutions for last year but every year is more of the same. Any form of self-improvement is an achievement.

http://ojingeo.blogspot.com/2009/12/assessment.html

So yessirree! For 2011, I shall be specific. :)

1. Do not procrestinate - This has been on my resolutions list like 4 years in a row! Insane.

2. Do not overspend after getting a proper paying job. - I told myself that my tutoring Money will go to my Send-Sze-To-Melbourne fund. But of course, like mum and dad predicted, it didn't. *guilty face*

3. For 2011, do some budgeting and financing as well. During honours, I spent most of food. In line with this is 4.

4. Watch diet. Create a Chicken Quota (5 servings a week), Beef Quota (1 serving a week), McDonald's quota (Once a month, but would be even better if none at all) and at least one day of the week to be dedicated to veggies! Do not order sweet drinks when eating out. For health! *gungho*

5. Exercise. I've been doing 150 ca for a while, increase to 200 by January, 250 by February and 300 ca by March onwards. :D YEAHHH. Invest in a bike. For health! *gungho*

6. Will be moving to a new place, and will be having a homie therefore it has to be neat. And for it to be neat, I have to be neat and not leave things lying around like how I do. My Kayu Ara room's a mess. :S

7. Get a dog. Fingers crossed, I hope my new place allows for it.

8. To not be a door mat. But also be more appreciative of people around me. And be more confident. Accept it as difference not inferiority.

9. To learn from past mistakes and not repeat them.

10. Spend more time with the family. I can sense they would rather want me to work in Singapore because I can commute to work and back home and the fat pay cheque. I'd do that maybe in the future, about 4 years from now? For now, I'll just cook for the family once in a while. And continue watching Channel 8 drama's with them. At least to understand who in the world is Xie Ming Ming.

11. Be happy.

And that's that.

My family doesn't really celebrate Christmas, but we definitely appreciate the day off! =)

Everyone's all geared up for Christmas. So must we. Merry Xmas.

Tis a season to be jolly

Yes. This is on the list.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/other-recipes/the-perfect-potato-gratin

:)

Epitaph.

You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.

-James Blunt.

Truthfully - A Love not Colonizing.

Contrary to popular belief, I actually don't have anything more than admiration to the person who wrote this.

A Love Not Colonising

The narrative of love is peculiar in its static monotony and the fact that it can nonetheless appeal to the one addressed. Though the same utterances are made time and again, and the words have been spoken since time immemorial, three simple words strung together in a sentence stir the emotions of the one to whom they are directed, and even the most rational counsel fails to temper the heart-strings, once pulled. Reason tries in vain to pull back the reins of passion, but the emotions have bolted heavenwards.

Yet the litany of love rings hollow once the magic spell is broken; the hitherto-wondrous Other returns to the realm of the mundane and the ordinary; flight is grounded as angels' wings are clipped - the one you held resumes a human countenance, riddled with the flaws and failings of the mortal.
Pain arises from the breaking of trust; the betrayal of innocence. Her touch is poisonous, venomous. The Self recoils in horror, the horror of knowing.

Can there be a love not colonising?
A love not grasping, beholding, robbing and stealing? A love that does not invade that sacred space of one's self-knowing, the secret garden we all have and are entitled to have, the garden of nostaligic longings and regret, pain passed, hopes dashed, lost smiling memories, quiet moments of solitude and lonely walks down the pathways of memory and reflection.
Chauduri's thoughts on the four windows of the soul come to mind: No matter how open we are, we all have - and must have - a private space, a secret garden, to call our own.
And no matter how closed we might be, we all can - and must - have that capacity to open up to the Other when the situation arises.

Yet this tension between opening and closing, between sharing and privacy, is a secret tension we all bear upon ourselves. It is our lot, as sentient beings who love and can love and wish to love. But it is a sacred tension; a higher, nobler lament, that we must carry knowingly and with respect.

There lies the moral dilemma of love: To love, to want, to wish to possess; and yet to restrain ourselves from that maddening, insane, irrational temptation to possess the Other entirely. Like some childlike infantile longing to grasp with clammy hands the Other and in that suffocating embrace arrest the Other for eternity, to freeze the Other in the gaze of the lover and to render immobile, arrested, policed, the object of love as an object possessed; though in this case it is the lover who is possessed.

How many times have I suffered this tiresomely repetitive episode; like some tawdry soap opera that is repeated ad infinitum for want of anything else to entertain. The same sad, pathetic, sickening spectacle of the Other, clumsy in love, stupid in jealousy, childish in conceit, irrational in faith, intolerant and oppressive in longing: The Other who enters your space, is welcomed into the privacy of one's most intimate and innermost confession, only to see the colonising tentacles of possessiveness uncoil and reach out, grasping, touching, moving and removing all those things that are so dear to me.
'I only want you for myself'; 'I want to love you for myself', 'I only want to start a new life with you', 'I only want you to forget your past', and so on, and so forth: the plaintive cries of the other are so, so, tiring and predictable; they no longer move, they no longer affect.
How odd, and sad, that the one who professes love is often the one who doesn’t understand what it is, and what it entails.
To talk of love and loving is glib and facile; living with the attendant responsibilities of respect and ethics is something else entirely. The former is the aspiration, the latter the deed.

How many times have I witnessed this sad pantomine of misguided emotions let loose? How many times have my space been invaded, my possessions divested, my memories trampled upon and forced to retreat before the advance of the one who professes love but who only imposes?
How many times have I returned only to find that one other memory of mine has been robbed from me; one more photograph displaced, one more letter torn or burnt, one more note effaced. How many times have my space been invaded by the intrusive claws of this thing they call Love.

Our pain and our past make us who and what we are. There are those who try to forget, but some of us try to reconcile and re-member the broken body of our shattered history as best we can; and to live and live on, as scarred bodies that carry the shards and fragments of our broken pasts embedded in our selves.
My pains and my memories are mine, and nobody has the right to rob me of them. To love, and to utter those fateful words that profess that love, is never easy: One loves only when one can accept the other in the Other's totality, warts and all, flaws notwithstanding. Yet how many times have I been proven wrong, and how many times have my judgment faltered. Every outward gesture, every invitation, has instead been met with intrusion, invasion, violation of my private space, my Self.

Oh, for a love not colonising. For a love that is born out of acceptance and not wanting, not possessing, not clasping, not suffocating.
For a love that can sit by your side on the park bench, quietly smiling, watching from close yet afar, with wonderment and tenderness.
For a love that sees with eyes that do not spy; hands that touch but never clutch.
A love content, quiet, still in its constancy and that says to itself: "Here beside me is the man I love, in a world entirely his own, vast, expansive, rich".
How far am I from that happy land; and for now all I am left with are my memories that echo like footsteps in the dark.
Yet rather that than possession; may nothing and no-one ever own me.

End. - Farish Noor.

I find new meaning every time I read it again. The struggles and the effort to keep the flame burning yet at the same time it is delicate in case of any wrong move. I get closer to a first person's point of view than a second or third. This passage contains a quote that is dear to me. And I realize to some extent, bravery I do not possess. I recoil.

你不知道的事

:)

And I found something mindless to watch!

Sunny side up.

It's been a while since I met any of my mother's colleagues. I spent this weekend catching up with a couple of them during the company's family day at Desaru. Some aged a bit, bellies grew but many I could still recognize.

I have to admit, I initially thought that since most of my peers wouldn't have attended it and since I'm not such a smooth auntie-talker, nor a face that attracts tiny tots, I expected myself to be quite out of place. I figured out since it was a beach outing, and since Zoukout didn't materialize, it'll be a fun time with the family.

It turned out that I was not the only twenty something over there. Everyone has grown so big. O.O And it's difficult to imagine how fast time has passed. One was even working already.

Being the queen of awkward that I am, while people rattle away, I listened and stayed deep in thought. It's hard to digest when you see how pranksters become model examples of society, it's not the first time I've said it. This other one, was like a kid when I last saw him and now he's taking STPM.

I feel old.

Funny how people move on from one point to another at different rates. Though like many acquaintances, I doubt we'll be meeting or keeping in touch after this. It was fun while it lasted though.

As I watch people get serious with life, I realize it's about time I did too.

Fix me.

But if you never try you'll never know just what you're worth - Coldplay.

Drive.

To drive along the highway back home is an accomplishment for me. It's strange how the sense of accomplishment never lingers long enough to keep me happy. The constant longing for such a feeling perhaps is only sparked by my inability to consistently accomplish things often enough for me to recognize.

My parents were really lax with how they brought me up. They never pressured me and constantly gave me recognition for any achievement which came by coincidentally, they were often very very tactful with criticism.

How often do I get to walk up on stage to receive a reward of sorts? Not very often.

My bag of achievements only came by during University when I actually started for the first time scoring well for the subjects. Completing Honours, is yet another achievement.

But why do I always have this nagging feeling that I'm never good enough? Does this recognition always come from someone else? Or does the problem lie with my failure to recognize these?

Is this the reason why I keep thinking I'm not good enough for higher paying jobs and better companies? My doubts. My lack of drive. My inability to accept criticism.

This recognition, I realize, ultimately comes from myself. My own disapproval of my capabilities. And it's something that I have to rectify.

:)

Back home in Johor right now never felt better. Settling in my bed. But it doesn't feel the same anymore. My room has been unoccupied for a while so there's this musky smell emitting from my pillows. So are the clothes I left in the cupboard. I'm typing from the table I used to mess up during my college days. Now It's neat as fuck. I assure you it will be messy in a few days time.

This is a space I used to call mine, and unlike how I took over my brother's room when he left for college, there was no one to take over mine. The fact that I still have this space, I feel, is a metaphor to signify no matter how far or how long I'm gone, there is still a place for me at home. A place I can come back to when I need to. A place that no one else can offer.

I'm starting to get excited.

Acknowledgments.

In no particular order, my thanks go out to:

Dr. Yeoh Seng Guan, for his efforts and commitment as my Honours supervisor. Thanks for lending me books and other materials (including the left-side of your brain for constructive feedback and the right to produce ‘Yeoh-isms’ to keep me afloat) that were needed throughout the process of writing this dissertation.

My interviewees: Alexa, Natasha, Emily, Yaya and Monalisa for giving me valuable insights and participating in this project.

Other staff and students at Building 2, level 6, for company and support throughout the Honours year. Dr. Sharon A. Bong, Dr. Helen Nesadurai and the late Benjamin McKay (like your departure, your arrival at SASS has also touched us in many ways): your kindness will not be forgotten.

My family: for providing an unlimited supply of love and support. Mummy and Papa, the two of you were never felt far even despite residing 3 states away. To Sze Wei and A-Ma, who I have not spent enough time with but yet have me in mind, I will make it up to you soon.

Nadiah and Paulista: for educating me through nerdy theoretical debates and curry puffs I thoroughly enjoyed.

Weiyan: for being an awesome wingman despite your own uber tight schedule.

Karina: the who got me interested in fashion in the first place. Thanks for showing me the wonders that fabric and a loyal friend could make.

Sonia: who pulls off the sexy ‘little black dress’ look nicely but is even more awesome in an apron. Danke schon for the home cooked meals and brilliant company!

Sharveen: a fellow research student I empathize with, good luck for your dissertation, buddy.

Jason: for your extremely mindless but effective de-stressing humour.

Alex: thank you for Adam Lambert concert tickets and sushi and his ‘other-half’ Weiliang, the one who believes everything is either a good thing or a bad thing, for being a good thing.

To everybody who was there through during the process, thanks and spanks. This is for you.

*

I don't have to read another academic book anymore. :D

Happy Birthday Alex YEOoOo. :D With love!

Terms and conditions apply.

But too bad I didn't read the fine print.

First up, Reggae Bar.

I'm just looking at myself in the mirror going oh gosh. I don't fit my fancy clothes anymore. *bimbuuu* :D I don't think the whole thing can end even better than this. It's the best feeling, yet the most dreadful one as well.

The whole year has been fruitful. And coming back to Monash and to KL has been like possibly the best decision I've made. I've learnt, grown and yeh maybe more aware now what to expect once I set foot into the real world.

Can I live in a 'jungle'?

With time and what I have, I can live anywhere.

Now it's just a matter of choosing which jungle to inhabit only. tsk tsk.

About there.