rainy days and mondays

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre

My favourite poem ever :) Felt February called for this, even though its pretty much the last we shall see of the month, this year.
In other news, term is ending. Is this a good or bad thing? I can't decide yet. Also, its raining heavily and not getting any warmer. Who knew winter would last so long. Who knew sky could be so grey. Who would have thought I could write so much about the weather.

Song for february: Step on my old size nines- Stereophonics. About dancing on someone's shoes in an old folks home.
Will I get old and laugh, about sthg?
Will I get what I want from this world, daydreamer.
Step on my old size nines and I'll take you round...

Much love to all of you. May the weather be better for you girls in all the various places that you are (:

i typed and wanted to whine about the amount of shit i ploughed through the past week. but girls, death has crept out of the shadows and is staring starkly at us. i don't care for all that existential angst crap anymore. i cannot breathe thinking how near we are to extinction as who we are on this world. there's no time to wallow in self-pity or futile speculation when there's so much more to feel. it's sick how i can think about myself at this time when what i urgently need is a phone number to get to someone's voice telling me we can return to the past when our sight was short and shut out the unpleasant bits.

my god it's happening all over again. this is a sobering kind of fright, when it's so real you can't really feel anything because you're focussed on clawing away from it.
you probably won't read this, but i will follow you into the dark, just as i did for someone else 6 years ago.

more to you all in emails.

this is just a shout out to myself and the world to
1) LISTEN. never take words lightly. never take the lack of words lightly.
2) TALK. let's express our deepest concerns and fears and joys. let's not make the loneliness of uniqueness more acute by hiding always.

ok, now for that which i need to do.

hey girls, do my johari's window for me haha. http://kevan.org/johari?name=shups86 all those who are reading the blog too.
eh i tried doing a nohari's window too.. same concept, but it's about the negative traits instead. i had a hard time shortlisting the 5 negatives and it was so painful doing it! stripping away all the positive delusions about myself =( haha.
im on vacation now, been slacking lots, but chim dont worry, your wise words are in my head. =)

hello hello

shuping: remember your resolution! don't want you to regret after 4 yrs that you didn't keep to it... very tempting to slack off and just have fun but aiyah it turns out to be not so fun if don't have basic academics settled at the back of everything. i think. listen to wise chim who's trying her best to knock some sense work-wise into herself this semester. let's struggle along together.

fuzzy: what the... why are there new riots/protests in nepal all the time? i check the news everyday and it's quite chaotic there. we want adventure but this is a bit scary... we'll book our flights when we go back in july hopefully it'll be alright by then. grr to those rebels.

jo: well, you're twenty. and this prospect is damn unsettling. getting depressed already by the weight of the number. how do you handle it so well?!?!

very irrelevantly, you know how my voice is deep? lately it's been getting shrieky and i hate it. i want my scary guy-voice back. loud high pitched girl voice is scarier.
also very energetic, feel like running and running in the disappearing sun. why's the gorgeous weather going away?

suddenly have an urgent need to know what are you guys' expectations of yourselves? very afraid that i've a very deluded romanticised notion of who i am and what i can do. and i keep on building up so many layers that i'll end up like that sad man in death of a salesman, blind to myself, the most terrifying loss of sight i think. AHHH. crisis of identity and purpose after attending a bible study session, was in a very bad mood cos everything felt so indefinite and baseless. how do you live with/without a religion?

enough.

happy happy birthday

to the most vulgar cultured person i know:

there was a girl
my girl jo
with her face like an angel's and soul like a child's
my girl jo
kiam pahed and buay songed
her way into my heart

happy birthday babe.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JO DEAR! CONGRATS ON HITTING THE BIG TWO-OH!!!!! =) may you have a fantastically awesome year ahead!





sorry for this belated post, ive been so busy, only got to a comp now!

no problem fuzzy i love you too! pls try and check out the organisation i sent you for the nepal thing k cos i need to start planning summer break.
HOY why does it take one month for my pineapple tarts to reach me but less than a week for all my packages to reach you guys??? i think i was too kiasu about stamps or something.
life is good now, not easy, but interesting at the least. somehow it feels that all the world is in accord with my efforts to have a more engaging, rounded semester, dashing color when it's ripe for brilliance, stimulating even in the tedium of schoolwork.
there was coldplay, where we were upgraded to floor seats in a sold out crowd and we never got to sit down cos everyone was so high with anthemic grooving music and spectacular light displays and basically a very good band playing their hearts out to us.
then the almost surreal experience of lying on the grass outside moffitt library with someone i've always felt strangely comfortable with and whom i thought had disappeared from my life, strangely cos we're coming from such different backgrounds, and listening to her fears and just catching up confirmed the fundamental chasm in where we come from and my amazement at being able to relate to someone from an almost alien culture.
a few good meals and movies with another girl i admire a lot for her drive in life and appreciate for her interest in history hehe i like history buffs! jennifer seems like a typical asian american gunning for business school next yr and law school for graduate work, but she has that passion for history apart from the pragmatism cultivated by the needs of her family that she's pursuing, and that perhaps amazes me more than her strong determination to excel despite circumstances. i'm biased toward historians lah.
my com service experience is evolving; i feel more teacherish than volunteerish, more helping than hindering. finally got my model un application going blab blab it's 2am and i'm rambling. excessively sorry.
essentially trying to go beyond superficial relationships, be it with people or work or life in general. the tunes of nina simone are lashing me on to strive for deeper involvement, to rise from the dead. i swore 2 years ago never to slip back into a genial cruising through life after feeling so alive, albeit from you know what with rage and fear. now that life's getting back under control, i cannot be numb as i was for so many years.
you guys are a constant reminder of what i'll be missing out on if i were dead again. thanks guys.

thank you!

hi chim i love you thank you for your package !
just had to be said :)

fuzzy!
check out the new moe attachment schedule thing! it ends 3rd week of aug, i should be flying back to berkeley very soon after the dialogue session thing.
this means... we can't go to nepal together.
howhowhow?

aiyah i'm sorry i suck

hello hello!!
i know, i know, i'm crap at keeping in touch on this. happy new year girls!! haha. as with everything else, punctual as always, me. has been a busy term (relative to last one.. i actually have tons of free time that i've gotten really good at wasting away) really liking the politics though my lit module this term is pretty crap. grr. took me awhile to adjust back to school (as you probably know chim, cos' you were the poor soul i chanced upon online and ranted to on returning) got too used to the sightseeing and change of scene every 2/3 days haha. since 2006 started i've seen cold, cold vienna and beautiful budapest. both are really gorgeous places! budapest, esp, is probably what i imagined europe to be :) walking at sunset against a wide river flanked by gorgeous architecture. and cool, crisp air. and trams. haha.
now i'm back at york and into the swing of things. (i'd better be, considering i'm pretty much half way through term.. almost) hard to write about life here. i keep going on about how the newness is fading, but in a sense i've solved that now and it's not a bad thing and maybe there'll always be a bit of newness still, once in awhile. i don't keep track of the days and they just seem to disappear so quickly i'm half-sad..i know not everyone will share the same sentiment as i do but i just want time to slow down so that i can grasp the moments.
it's getting colder here suddenly since february came. no chance of snow though.. so much for the hope :)
i do hope everything is alright with all of you. i wish i could share what's been going on with me better but i'm inarticulate and forgetful when pressed and i have no discernment whatsoever about the things you want to know. if i told you here about the minster ball and the band or toff's or housemates imagining branches on the way home or badgerbadgerbadgerbadger or the fullmonty i saw in a pantomime it wouldn't be the same as in person would it? so we shall just have to wait months more for proper, live updates i guess? for now be content with this space... haha
right. i'm off to do my essay now. . been putting it off for a week. of all things i could do i've chosen sthg i don't understand. i can't even pronounce the bloody word properly. hoho.
may february be a gd mth, may we all have great weeks ahead (to infinity) and may i finish my essay on time...
oh and watch the constant gardener if you haven't. it's brilliant. or just read the book..
and jo babe happy birthday in advance! hope you're feeling better now... go gym and get endorphins :) and i may be able to come to rome with you...
chim: can you help me d/d more songs pls?? i'll email you requests haha. sorry. i'm deprived.
shups: don't be so sian about hall :) and sleep earlier!!! i'll try to upload more pictures...
love to all of you!!

song for january: walk away by f. ferdinand
sthg about being cold (how literally true) and the end where churchill claps mao on the back. (thanks chim for sending me this song haha)

sweetie

hello my sweeties i like it when people call me sweetie - this damn hot girl on my floor, this guy on my floor, the motherly checkout lady at terrace cafe ooh yes.

feeling very at home now especially after returning to my com service place yesterday and the teacher gave me a hug and the kids remembered me, especially this little girl who used to call me "mommy" until i told her to call me "sister" cos it didn't sound right to be her mommy. but i soon realised why the teacher was so happy to see me again - it's crazy! they need a damn lot of help everyday in their after school program. every kid is craving for attention and they're all so cute and energetic it's hard to squash them. i like how the teacher reasons with them instead of just telling them to shut up. very different from my tyrannical kindergarten days. so yeah if you go to berkeley and you read this and have time to spare and would like to help out at a school every week give me a call k. i hope this inspires you all to play with kids too hehe. and jo, i thought you helped out at a school too... doesn't it cheer you up sometimes when it gets a bit claustrophobic and blue in school? eh seriously, if you run away, i'll have to come and rescue you from the ulu place you run away to.

when i compare this semester with the last i realise how crazy i was, in that i lived so insensibly i lost myself somewhere in the middle. now i feel like i've climbed back to some kind of stability that's still not all hunky-dory, but not upside down at least. do you guys feel that you've settled down somewhat? i know you're still blue jo, but maybe there's a comforting sense of familiarity with the environment now? that will thankfully not change that much as you face down all the horrible things that hit at times.

i think above all i feel very glad that my relationship with my roommate is fantastically good this semester. i don't feel the mean urge to shut her out when she gets a bit too controlling (she told me honestly that she is possessive by nature and i've learnt to accept it and to remind her when it gets too much i guess), and this means a much happier dorm/home now, and a good friend to boot.

i hope we'll end up more satisfied than last semester.

finally, lesbian gay bisexual transgender studies are fascinating but too much reading that i'm not doing. going deep into the human psyche and learning about the discourses on sexuality makes you VERY aware of your primeval urges. today's main take in class for me- how masculine/feminine do you view yourself and so what kind are you attracted to? interesting conclusions, definitely worth my time in the class hehe.