I love Christmas -it’s the only time of the year where I hear Christian songs in almost every shopping mall I go to. This year, I’ve even heard worship songs sung in malay in Indonesia. It was amazing. It also made me think how incredible the singer is, spreading the gospel with her vocals. It makes me wonder if I’m making an impact in the lives of others.

2011 hasn’t been a garden of roses for me; I had learnt so much, met so many people. I’d fallen into bad situations, failed my own expectations, cried, felt insecure, lost faith and felt insecure. But I’d learn that things are often never what they seem, to stop looking at myself and to focus on others; I’ve understood the need for hard work, yet seen how empty things can be life is without a greater purpose than to do well. In that sense, 2011 was amazing. I am so thankful for the people that I’d met -they had been so inspiring and I had learnt so much from interacting with each of them.

Just spent the past hour or so reminising with V about life back in high school. 

Back then, everything felt like they would last forever -the friendships, the laughter, the inside jokes. But through the test of time, we have realised that it isn't true... We really missed it. The feeling of knowing that you belong in a community, that people notice if you were not there. Missing the times when we didn't have a care in the world, like studying was not the sole reason you are in school. When we had the liberty and time and nerve to do stupid things. Doing things like having potluck recess because school food sucked, rushing through meals so that we could run up to the classroom and nap in the 'comfy corner' together before break ended, shouting down the hallways, mass reading sessions of the In Death series in the library basement... It's really the feeling of having a close-knit community that you share so many common experiences with. 

We grew apart. Eventually, we grew out of the things that glued us together, and being in different schools, different continents, meant that we no longer shared common experiences. I think that was what drove the wedge into the previously closely-knitted group. People changed, situations changed, and eventually the relationship changed too. 

In university, things just aren't the same. The people I see in lab sessions and tutorials, I would hardly ever talk to them outside of the scheduled classes. Even if we did, it seems like all we would ever talk about is schoolwork. I am almost afraid of buiding deep relationships with the people in university, because it seems to me that everything would just be so temporal -that when the semester ends, when you are no longer taking the same modules or staying in the same place, things would move on. Suddenly it really does seem like life is just a stage.

So often I feel like the people around me see only a minor portion of my life at a time. People in school would only see the Me in school, people in church would only see the Me in church. There is no longer a sense of continuity in my life -and I miss that. I miss having constants in my life -people who know the entirety of my life. Now I just feel like I am hiding so much from so many people, just because they wouldn't understand or were not there at that point in time. 

Conversly, I feel like I only see minute portions of other people's lives, even the ones that I deem close to. It feels rather sad...to want to feel like you know a person, yet at the same time being forced to acknowledge that there's this entire element of that person's life that you have never seen or witnessed. 

Now, it just seems like everyone has a "greater purpose" to fulfil in life. Everyone is striving for a faraway ideality -to travel, to ace that exam, to be a nicer person to everyone, to give back to the community, to dream big, to achieve big... to the point that we seem to be missing out on making the best out of the moment, doing things that are completely pointless other than in the act of doing... 

I missed the livejournal community, back when everyone in the clique had a livejournal. We missed the group activities; the mass online conversations; the cookie-spamming, book-devouring moments; the inside jokes that didn't require complete sentences to convey; the spontaneous laughter; the mutual understanding. We miss high school. Also, we miss quintaesencia

(':

This is how my ideal morning would look like:
0600h Rise&Shine
0615h Morning run
0635h Shower
0700h QT
0720h Breakfast
0740h Leave for lessons

This is how my mornings currently are:
0715h Jump out of bed/Wash-up
0735h Rush through breakfast
0745h Leave for lesson
0805h Arrive for lesson 5min late.

My aim is to eventually sleep by 11pm every night so that I can wake up earlier, and still get the sufficient 7 hours of sleep!
That is my aim...

All the best to me, for I still have yet to finish going through my notes for my exam later!

I think I will go get some Starbucks.

This reminds me of all the times we lived vicariously through fictional characters, and brought them to life in our daily conversations. It reminded me of the years we spent in the library, breathing in words, absorbed in our individual but shared worlds. 

This brought back the memories of what it was to read, and read, and read...


Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway

» Do It Anyway, by Mother Theresa
taken from: thelittlekennel.bs.com

We all need someone to be there for us when we're depressed, to hold our hands when we're nervous, or to hug simply because we feel like it. I believe that everybody wants to love and be loved, for humans were made to be social creatures. That's why there are so many songs out there in the music arena covering the controversial topic of love, across the many varied genres.

A personal favourite question of mine to ask, is for the definition of love -how do you know when you're in love with somebody? With the frequent use of this simple four-lettered word, one would think that many would know the answer to that seemingly innocuous question. Yet, no one seemed to be certain of the answers they could come up with, which were vague and incomprehensive. Not that we could fault them, of course. The abbreviation of so vast and noble an emotion would be surely be taboo.

Love goes everywhere with its entourage myriad of other emotions -joy, sadness, comfort, jealously, confidence, anger, self-assurance, and so on. The act of loving, or the termination of such a feeling for another, inevitably and irrevocably changes us, in subtle or obvious ways. These changes are brought over to the next relationship, moulding it to be crafted differently from the former, thus bringing about a new wave of freshness and new changes. Eventually, through the many relationships forged and relinquished in our lifespan, we become emotionally stronger and more stable.

When we love, we give a part of ourselves to another person -a fragile and completely breakable piece of our heart. It's an act of trust in itself -loving ♥