where thoughts materialise.

So we're into the sixth version of my blog after the last version hung around for a year or so.

Now, a bit of info on this image. This photo was taken one lovely spring afternoon, featuring the iconic Old Well from the UNC Chapel Hill campus. I would like to think of this image as a tribute to my time in UNC Chapel Hill, the awesome friends I made and the memories I now hold dear.

A milestone in my life indeed.

I've dropped the tagboard cos its useless and taking eons to load. But thanks to Angela who helped me set it up, I still do like and will miss the pink interface.

So yeah, it's the sixth one you fellas!

Yours.

27 April 2008

you know you miss my older entries

October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008

Friday, March 30, 2007

Read this.

"Night.

I'm sitting at my screen reading this story. In turn, the story reads me.

Did I write this story, or was it you, writing through me, the way the sun sparks the fire through a piece of glass?

I see through a glass darkly. I cannot tell whether the moving shapes are on the other side, or whether they are behind me, beside me, reflected in the room.

To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself, I stay on the run.

Here's my life, steel-hitched at one end into my mother's belly, then thrown out across nothing, like an Indian rope trick. Continually I cut and retie the rope. I haul myself up, slither down. What keeps the tension is the tension itself - the pull between what I am and what I can become. The tug of war between the world I inherit an the world I invent.

I keep pulling at the rope. I keep pulling at life as hard as I can. If the rope starts to fray in places, it doesn't matter, I am so tightly folded, like a fern or an ammonite, that as I unravel, the actual and the imagined unloose together, just as they are spliced together - life's fibre knotted into time.

Gently the rope swings back and forth through the mirror, through the screen.
What is my life? Just a rope slung across space."

- Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook.

* *

Absolutely beautiful. Beautiful. Winterson gets the words right and so aptly in place.

Isn't this what we all face in life? That tension and that somewhat conflicting and contradictory predicament we find ourselves in all the time. And not seemingly helping, this rather confusing perplexity is what many of us would come to know as life.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:04 AM

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Friday, March 23, 2007

525600 minutes. And more I suspect.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 5:17 PM

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It is not enough to say life is beautiful when you haven't exactly lived it. It doesn't take a genius to figure that it is one thing expounding on life while tap tap tapping on a laptop, and quite the other being out there and letting the world consume you as it were. It takes so much to live, it really does, to live in this world where you can only sift out happy moments from everything else apparently not so happy, and to say you have lived.

When then, can you truly profess to have lived, or to even claim that life is indeed a beautiful one? Having travelled the world? Having the perfect family? Having the riches? Having "made it" in life? Even the fool would tell you, my dear friend, that the answer is squarely, no.

We fail, we fail as students, we fail as lovers, we fail as sons and daughters of parents who have, in one way or another, failed us as well. Even as I get older and perceivingly wiser, I still fail. And that is were hurt originates and takes on a destructive path in lives.

I do not want to know the key to happiness in life, for honestly, there is none. (If you are lost here, I am not negating the existence of happiness, I am merely claiming that there isn't a prescibed secret to it.) Perhaps I fear failure, fearing it very well in the capacity knowing that I shouldn't, for humans are afterall made to fail. But until we can stop fearing failure, then, I guess that is where living can truly begin.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 4:38 PM

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We have all become essay churning machines.

It has been such a busy week writing essay after essays, but I aint gonna lament like everyone else does, cos it aint gonna help one bit. I am just enjoying in my suffering cos the pride and sense of achievement of seeing that A grade is priceless, and timeless if I may add (since I didnt spend any moolah on the essays). That aside, I am also thankful for family and friends who have brought so much joy in my life - and no amount of good results can trade for that.

Miss Yamagata last saturday was a lil disappointing cos the crowd was not the best and her voice too. No doubt that she has the talent but her voice that night was a little weird, and she admittedly said so too. But she was really witty when she joked, "My voice sounds like I'm going through puberty!... I like the way you Singaporeans put those pictures on cigarette boxes. If you had an audio version, put on my voice... Smoking is bad." She smokes by the way.

Okay, I really should be heading to bed. And sorry for the rather uninspired entry. I just wanna Wala this sat, which I am.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:27 AM

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:00 AM

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Monday, March 12, 2007

(1) Wala last sat was great, like uber happening. It was the first time in all the years (actually just 2 years) that I've been there that I've seen almost two-thirds of the crowded second floor (you have to have been there to know what I mean) up on their feet and dancin away. Oh I sure do miss Wala, the last time I was there was with dear Jessica back in early Feb or somethin.

Talking about bringing friends, Wan Xuan just told me that her Swedish friends are heading over in 2 weekends' time and no points for guessing where we're bringin them.

(2) Speaking of Wan Xuan, I came home yesterday to find a postcard from Wai Siong and wx while they were backpacking in Vietnam, who had both returned since cny. To qualify, I was very touched and glad to receive the card, I think a mail from friends overseas is such a warm gesture. So thanks guys! Back to the story now, the postcard was written on 4th Feb this year, which really meant that the postcard took 1.5 months to find its way to me.

Then I realised why. Or think I realised why. There was no indication that the card was supposed to end up in Singapore! Hurhur. Cos the address was all alright until the postal code where it was written "S(xxxxxx)". To date I think there are 26 countries which start with the letter S, ranging from Switzerland to Swaziland, so I figured the Vietnamese postal service exclaimed a wtf when they saw the postcard.

So I conclude that the Vietnamese postal service is very inefficient, but very determined nonetheless.

(3) Speaking of backpacking (see how all of this links), nev and i have pretty much confirmed summer vacation plans to backpack through Italy! Pizza mamma! 3 plus weeks or so that will hopefully be enough time to visit and soak in the sights we wanna see (that includes the Pope). And hannah would be in Rome too, which means we might meet her for a meal or some sightseeing, just like the good old days back in England.

(4) Okay, completely unrelated. Project deadlines!! They are a mad rush and these are the times you bond with your group mates the most, spending most of your waking moments with them, huddled up around a single laptop and probably even haunting you in your sleep.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 10:02 AM

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Friday, March 09, 2007

The word nostalgia finds its roots in two greek words. Nóstos, meaning to go back; and algos, which means pain. The product then, nostalgia, essentially means the suffering of pain derived from the yearning to return.

I am sitting on an arm chair, plush with its well embriodered cushion yet sturdy as its wooden frame forms its shape. This was where my grandma spent her days at home watching tv or sipping her afternoon tea. So this is how grandma must have felt. While this chair was not exclusively hers, it was unspoken within the family of how this chair came to be known as Ah Nae's chair, meaning Grandma's chair in hainanese.

You asked me once, if you would live to see me graduate. I said yes, you must persevere and hang on. It was apparently too hard, too tough, too much of a struggle. But you tried and eventually let go. Was it painful? We didn't even notice the last breath till we saw that you were not gasping for air anymore.

We live, but we live in pain. The suffering of pain derived from the yearning to return. To return to the days when you smiled and hugged us in your warm embrace. We live in days of nostalgia. We live to miss you more.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 5:43 PM

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Wednesday, March 07, 2007

It seems almost wrong that time should move on without you.

Like a square peg in a round hole, I cannot comprehend. But time is merciless and does not owe us a living, it goes on and does not wait for anyone or anything, even someone as extraordinary as you are.

And we are forced to live in these warped times. To move on when we do not want to, to move on into a future that only tears us away from the days of you. How hard it is, to live with you in memory but never with you in person.

It seems almost wrong that life should go on without you. Almost wrong.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:46 AM

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Monday, March 05, 2007

Cafe Iguana, 20 Feb

iguana chill

So it was a great way to end off the long cny holidays, with a dinner and tonnes of happy hour margaritas at Cafe Iguana's.

Somehow cny this year was different for us at home, without grandma with us. And somehow, the irrevocable loss always seems too hard to swallow, too hard to accept. She meant so much to us, she meant too much to me. But we celebrated cny as she would have wanted us to, pretty much sure she was shining down on us from heaven and pleased with how we've led our lives six months on.

After all, we're living products of her immense love, and it is only natural we love each other this way.

Nev once asked me of what I would say to my grandma if I had the chance to. "No regrets definitely," I replied, "Just telling her that I love her a lot, and we miss her so much."

She was simply such an awesome grandma.
awesome is she

nimgnoy let the night fall at 1:20 AM

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Friday, March 02, 2007

For the benefit of the regular odd folks out there, this blog is not dead.

I have just been too busy with too many things to blog. But stay tuned, I'll be posting photos from the cny season, which includes family fun, iguana galore, ms lee surprise and the usual ad hoc stuff.

And I am currently in the midst of making a very important decision in life, and I shant disclose it till it is fully materialised.

So my point? Stay tuned, and yes, I'm alive.
And always thankful as usual.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 2:30 PM

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