water

There are no guarantees in life. Apart from the obvious, that which is inevitably death. But we live our lives with such certainty that a future exists, that we know where we'll be tomorrow and what we'll be doing. And 99% of the time, tomorrow becomes today and today becomes yesterday, without even so much as a glitch. But we get so bogged down in the mundane tasks of everyday life that we so selfishly make light of anything horrific or traumatising happening to others, simply because they aren't affecting us. But our time will come, for each and every one of us, where we are beyond hope and we're not even sure we want to see tomorrow arrive. Being left in the lurch is a terrifying experience - not knowing how far you have to fall and how long it will take to even gather yourself and think about the possibility of starting over. Trust is given so easily at times, and yet withheld from the most trustworthy of sources. We trust that our barista won't spit in our coffee, that the plans we make will run like clockwork. And yet we fail to place our trust in the one being who has the ability to give life and to take life away. We have this innate fear in handing over what isn't ours and allowing somebody else to guide us back to where we belong. But in theory, it should be the simplest and most willing choice we make in this lifetime.

4 0 5

I've learned that we constantly give ourselves excuses to limit our potential, that achievements have to be validated by accolades and awards, and everything we do or want to do has to be justified down to the smallest detail. This may be the case if you're doing it for someone else - so don't. Make it your own. Because at the end of the day, your accomplishments mean more to you than to anyone else.

They say that nothing worth having comes easily. In life, some things fall into our laps without requiring us to lift so much as a finger. Other times, we throw ourselves in front of oncoming traffic for a mere chance at an opportunity, only to be met with disappointment (and possibly serious injury). So when something potentially beautiful is dangling within reach, don't ignore that sparkling possibility that's lingering in the corner of your vision. Take it, before someone else does - because they will.

"Once upon a helicopter ..."

BEING SNEAKY

Life jacket bum bags!

: )

ick schmick

When you wrestle your way onto public transport and plonk yourself between a heavyset middle-aged European widow and a bearded man with a questionable smell lingering on the remains of his clothing, you forfeit all rights to personal space and any possible level of comfort. There's little that can be done to avoid the wispy cobweb-esque hair of the foreigner seated next to you brushing your forearm, rocking back and forth racked by silent giggles as you glare at their backpack covered in cupcakes and frogs and wonder what could possibly be funnier than throwing them into quicksand. We are (or at least I am) set an Everest on a daily basis, to push thoughts of contracting skin diseases or gastro out of our minds. I am by no means Emma Pillsbury - I live by the 5 second rule - but CityRail is known as ShittyRail for a very valid reason.

toddler talk

You represent the bungee cord which brings everything back to comfort, familiarity, all that you needed to delve deep to even recall once more. A memory, a state of being, a time which you both despise and hold dear to your heart. But there is always more than meets the eye, peering through those first impressions - the fear is that it isn't adequate in meeting your expectations, those both feasible and completely irrational. It is all good and well to have hopes, fantasies, dreams both inconceivable and within grasp. And the best is only experienced when you have absolutely everything to lose. You are given the opportunity to appreciate, not the superficiality, but the soul, the inner workings of what causes movement, emotion, inspiration, satisfaction. Consciously or not, we are striving for an equilibrium in our lives, and those intent on searching for life's meaning are realising all too late that they are missing out on the journey life itself is. Where does one find the lever to stop analysing, calculating consequences, preparing and predicting for what we believe is ahead? The best we can do is search within ourselves to define all that we are able to. Are we even remotely close to understanding ourselves, through self-appointed descriptions and analogies and comparisons? Perception is unique for everyone, and it teeters on the brink of humorous how we constantly misinterpret one another and, as a result, cause conflict neither party wants to resolve.

I know you were looking, but what were you looking for?

Maybe I am on the path to love, and maybe I will learn many things along the way. So here are some thoughts (though they are not my own) -

"The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those persons who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person - without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.

Then why do they want to be together? It is no longer a need; it is a luxury. Try to understand it. Real persons love each other as a luxury; it is not a need. They enjoy sharing: they have so much joy; they would like to pour it into somebody. And they know how to play their life as a solo instrument. The solo flute player knows how to enjoy his flute alone. And if he comes and finds a tabla player, a solo tabla player, they will enjoy being together and creating a harmony between the flute and the tabla. Both will enjoy it: they will both pour their richness into each other."

From Being in Love

by Osho

Pyrenees Mountains, South France
Not jealous at all ...

Happy one month, Simons!

By the one and only Marie Ramos x

"You miss 100% of the shots you never take."

- Wayne Gretzky

total serendipity

Leaving something behind gives you something to return to.

Airports are the most magnificent of places because they allow you to escape as far off into the distance as you can imagine, yet the beauty of travel is that it should never be constrained. Every flight is a journey, every step away from familiarity is a new beginning, a glimpse into the millions of potential pathways which disappear from existence the moment we choose to walk down a particular one. Never leave with a heavy heart, don't take another step until you are fully aware of the wonders that the world has to offer. Because it is in the letting go with no regret that we gain everything and more; and embarking on a journey, especially a spontaneous one, is one of the most rewarding and exhilarating leaps of faith we can take.

I Shift+F7ed 'perfect' and got "just what the doctor ordered". Um, Microsoft Word needs to consult an actual thesaurus sometime in the near future.

add-me

 

The envelopes that the Red Cross supplies taste like pears, definitely the best tasting envelopes I've tried so far. I want to file and budget and organise and promote and be a fairy! It's raining phlegm (hallelujah!)

Emma says no more questions

Date with one Jess Chu!

.

We write about our thoughts and we think about our feelings and we feel the things that we do and love and believe and share and I want words, I want words to encompass the essence of the present, the lingering scent of the past and the anticipation of what's to come that you surrender every fibre of your being to focusing on keeping your hands in fists so as to not spoil what is or what isn't. I want to overcompensate for the wasted, the empty, the neglected, the deprived, the forgotten, I want to overindulge until I am seeing but I am not, I want them all to coincide and blend, amalgamate, marry into one beautiful splendid moment of everything and nothing. I want to hold on but I know the beauty is buried in the letting go, something so precious that you suffocate its whimsical image by bolting it down with bricks, bricks of steel and heavy hearts. I want sentences, and I crawl under the table, picking at crumbs and scraps of fallen greatness, begging for more, more to sustain and nourish, but most of all to reassure.

sunday funday

Nostril flare contest

Little rats!

She's even got the fists going

Peek a boo

Best kid evahhh

Fries a la pho

kobe jones

Too lazy to form sentences. We had fun, it rained. Here are some pictures:

photographic diarrhoea

Anger at whoever took me to a MUSHROOM FARM for lunch

Look how close I got to the ducks in Perth!

One of the rare occasions where every member of my paternal family showed up

Lake of Dreams at Sentosa

Marina Bay Sands

Asian moment

Azn hair in my eye

Bread = Happiness

Some of my favourite things - oh, and Jess!

watching marstahsheff

The Chocolate Room with Miss Chu

"You look like a little rat"
: (

LOOK AT THESE SHOES by far the funniest things I've seen this week

This coming week I will embrace mud crab and pandan cakes!

can I have my job back

"According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people. In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half." 

Haruki Murakami Kafka on the Shore

I love this idea of how people might have been once, if you stop to think about how much sense it makes when the person you thought was your other half turns out not to be - the betrayal and disappointment because you're not their other half, either. And we pass through life like we do when we shop for fruit, picking up apples that look how apples should look, until we return home only to realise that it's rotten from the inside out when we cut it open. And so back we go, when we can be bothered or when we're out of anything left to sustain us, and the search begins again. But you don't want apples if you're a popcorn machine - you want corn. Only you don't know what you want or what you need because you don't know who you are.

I feel as though ignorance isn't something we can be legitimately frustrated about when we view it through our self-appointed intellectual eyes. Sometimes a piece of writing can make one realise that there is a house outside of the room they've been holed up in, a neighbourhood surrounding that house and an entire nation and world beyond that. And I'm not going to be pretentious and publicise my interest in and knowledge of Objectivism, mainly because I understand as much about the topic as I know that there is cheese in Tasmania. But the ability to submerge yourself in the beauty of its words and visions is more than I can say for the mundane yet highly relevant (apparently) world of marketing.

highlight of my week

Unable to hear the right lyrics anymore

do you sleep like a spoon?

It's all just a crazy, beautiful meeting of sorts, thinking about how feelings and experiences become the essence and inspiration for music, which in turn affects people in the most incredible of ways, sparking a whole new generation of emotions involving millions of different people who will never meet one another or have the chance to ignite amazing relationships, romantic or otherwise.

I think I'd have a better chance of success following in the Korean Seventh Day Adventist closet-rock-band-drummer footsteps of Lane Kim with these knitting needles than actually doing any knitting at all. Casting on .. YOUR FACE SHOULD CAST ON.

Sometimes I think that the entire corporate world is a well-kept secret, that behind the millions of frosted glass security swipe-your-ID-card-here doors there really is nothing but coffee breaks and water cooler conversations and should I be sleeping with someone from the office? And they employ little men from Mars that scuttle around doing work and refilling paper and toner whilst these corporate giants take all the credit for it.

warm my bones

"Promises are meant to be broken, and people are only surprising when they aren't disappointing you. When you're young, you think things get better as you get older. But the truth is you just get better at dealing with them."

- Carly Cristman 

Yes, she's a makeup guru on Youtube, but she speaks the truth! I can't express how much mediocrity seems to be the norm, and at any given moment things are either bad or worse. Disappointment and delays occur on a daily basis, but at least it isn't disease and death we're dealing with. (Wow I didn't even mean for that to happen.) Are we missing all that the world has to offer by zooming in on what it lacks? It's never "I'm happy with what I have", it's "Why don't I have enough? Why can't I have what she has? Damn I should have ordered the veal." We can dream, we're encouraged to, but the fantasies which bring most fulfillment are completely unattainable. If you 'believe in yourself' it's been said to help, but I always feel as though it'd jinx your chances and you've got to act nonchalant, and not let the universe know what you really want in case they won't let you have it.

This may seem like a negative post, but in truth it's the opposite! Really :)

Happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat

don't hate me but ...

I LOVE YOU. (Like, I don't even know what went down between photo #1 and #2.)

BOUNCY BOUNCY

I've put it down to a medical disorder that does not allow me to focus, at any given time, on the task which clearly holds the top slot of my priorities folder that is stacked like Jenga in my head (though it's nearing the end and there are way too many holes like the osteoporotic, calcium-deficient bones of an 85 year old).

One week - that's plenty of time!

Two days - that's even more time than one week!

24 hours - I'll come back from work then have dinner then watch Masterchef then Gilmore Girls then F.R.I.E.N.D.S then Youtube ... Then rearrange all the folders in My Documents by name, size, type and modified - just for laughs!

8 hours - who needs 8 hours when I have paté and WATERTHINS FINE WAFER CRACKERS PEPPER & CHIVES?

5 hours - I brushed my teeth in the shower so that I wouldn't eat, but then I had my snack (see above) and think I need to get me some TEA!

And this is where we're at now. Sorry, never be in my group for uni. 

presence*

We get together with people because they're the same or because they're different, and in the end we split with them for exactly the same reasons.

- Nick Hornby Juliet, Naked

This is so simply put, and yet boy does it contain as many seeds to grow rants as there are Christians in the world. It's like how when you're friends with somebody, their ticks and quirks and annoying-as-hell habits evaporate, yet when you realise they used your eraser without asking or sat with a girl you hate at little lunch, all of a sudden there is nothing you want more than to spread endless amounts of cream cheese on their face.

There is little that I find harder to achieve in life than unconditional love, yet that is contradictory in itself because anything unconditional shouldn't be hard work. It shouldn't be pressured or reckoned with, it shouldn't be like trying to fit a two tonne boulder through a pasta machine (which, admittedly, I sometimes feel happens in relationships). 

So you pride yourself on finding someone who shares the same interests as yourself, same taste in music, same appreciation for films that you enjoy and have similar goals in life, career or otherwise. But the fights begin, and suddenly you can't stand that they know you better than you know yourself, or that they can predict what will make you fly off the handle and be more accurate than the FIFA World Cup octopus. And everything about them becomes a catalyst for you to despise them, and put it down to "our personalities were just too similar". So then what? If it doesn't work out, and you've put in all the effort you feel it deserves or that you're capable of, do you fix it all in your mind by reassuring yourself that you'll find it with somebody else? What if you don't?

And that's the most frightening bit of all. It's not losing what we have right now, whether it's "it" or not - it's what if we don't?

* A MILLION GOLD STARS FOR YOU

glisten

So beautiful. Splish splash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMi7j5ie0Wk&feature=BFa&list=AVGxdCwVVULXfZL-BVKvDNqzoNGFyyMAnz&index=48

underneath the sycamore

People always complain that love hurts. I can imagine that falling in love might hurt, because anything which involves falling would generally induce some form of pain. But love is great. Or I at least assume so, because it's what we all strive for in one way or another, isn't it? Love doesn't hurt. Disappointment hurts. Expectations not being met hurts. Lack of trust hurts, and shitheads disguising themselves as princes certainly hurts.

But so much of the time, it isn't even these things which causes the greatest amount of pain. It's the bruised ego, the "Oh fuck, well that trumps all of the stupid things I've heard and believed through the years", it's the humiliation that makes you bury yourself under layers of quilts and mull over all the good reason that flew out the window once you heard "Yes".

You then convince yourself that it's not love, it never was, you're too young to understand love, people can go through life without ever experiencing it. But in reality, it's whatever you wish for it to be. Some people look at green and see blue. To me, they're stupid, but maybe they really do see blue. And unless I have the ability to swap eyeballs, then it is what it is. (NB: It happens with blue and purple, too.) So the denial is only a result of the process of losing what you thought you had ... Or didn't have. At least I know my love for fries will never fade.

To get you all through the rest of the week!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGth7aSd0EM

walk my way

A long period of special inquiry is required to arrive even at a valid hypothesis. This does not stop the amateur psychologizers. Armed with a smattering not of knowledge, but of undigested slogans, they rush, unsolicited, to diagnose the problems of their friends and acquaintances. Pretentiousness and presumptuousness are the psychologizers invariable characteristics: he not merely invades the privacy of his victims’ minds, he claims to understand their minds better than they do, to know more than they do about their own motives … The harm he does to his victims is incalculable. People who have psychological problems are confused and suggestible; unable to understand their own inner state, they often feel that any explanation is better than none.

- Ayn Rand

missing: baby hat

I should have mentioned these during the evaluation today! Happy times before my hormones turned me into the angry midget I appear to be. I really do like you, promise ...




You amaze me

cosmic love

Things that I am incapable of:

- Maintaining consistency
- Blowing my nose with one hand
- Tolerating stupidity ("Afghanistan seems like they always have wars going on hehe" toolbox in my class at uni, you know who I'm talking about)
- Leaving people alone (ie. pushing them like a button, beeping like a reversing truck)
- Finishing a meal without feeling like a freshly rolled sleeping bag
- Steaming silky coffee milk

Things that infinitely frustrate me:

- Inconsistency
- Lack of personal space
- Ragged cuticles
- Not being able to recall where I've previously seen TV extras
- Crooked frames that I'm unable to straighten in public areas for fear that the staff will accuse me of attempting to steal

I'd forgotten about this photo! I haven't used this word in a long time, but I really do look spastic.

let's go home

Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him. We, people's hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them - the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness.

If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise. If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur ... The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.

- The Alchemist Paul Coelho

The burden of tomorrow and the pain of yesterday ensures that the present will never be treated the way it should be. When you're consumed in a moment, caught in the melody of a song or the beauty of an amazing landscape, you're never happier than you are at that point in time. It feels like for a minute or so, your mind is free with clarity, which some people achieve through meditation but which always leads my mind along the path of "Black; with my eyes closed all I see is black; some call it a colour but some people define it as a tone; now I'm thinking of rainbows, except the violet stripe doesn't really exist" and you can imagine how it goes on. But this is how it plays out every single time, as predictable and Turkish delight and Belgian dark chocolate.

What's in the box?