The Girl

It was a rainy day but she needed to get out. Nothing could stop her, not the thunder or lightning, or flash flood warning texts. It was that kind of day.

On days like those, her yellow boots seemed to have a life of their own, and so off they went, taking her on a path that she had never come across. But she could hardly care. Or maybe she didn't even notice. If every thought process, every neuronal activity makes a sound, you'd hear the cacophony of clicks, buzz, and ticks inside that skull, going a little overboard not unlike the time machine that had gone wrong and trying its very best not to explode. Why is all this happening, she thought. She wanted answers. She needed to talk to a friend.

And just like that, she took charge of her path again, finding her way to the coffee shop. It's a hidden gem, on the second floor of an old mansion with a flight of stairs on the right, while the left side of the house was rented to an old tailor. Skipping her way up the stairs, turning right, zig-zagging past all the tables with very chatty customers talking over the soothing 20s' jazzy background music, and not really bothered to only step on the white squares on the floor, something she usually did when she wasn't in this harrowing mood. A dose of bff-pep-talk will make it go away, she mused, crossing the common area, turning left into the corridor with private rooms on both sides, and through the double doors into the kitchen, where her friend was helping her mom making coffee and toasts. Business has always been great, but it's even better when it's gloomy or pouring outside.

The relief of finding her friend lasted about as long as two milliseconds, which instantly evaporated when she caught a glimpse of her. Another two minutes into the conversation and she found that she couldn't possibly burden her friend with her problems when her best friend was having her own crisis as well. After helping out in the kitchen for about an hour, she excused herself, after giving her friend a hug and promising to call later to talk more.

So much for talking to a friend. Outside the color of the sky matched her own dark clouds looming above her head. Again she took off wandering the streets until she chanced upon to a man who seemed like he was expecting her. Out of curiosity, she asked if he knew her. "Come, girl, I want to show you something," he replied. Usually she wouldn't have agreed to that. But it wasn't a usual day, so she followed his lead. A few broken and battered paths away, there they stood, in front of a misplaced apple-green-turquoise minivan with huge floral patterns on it, one that looked like it got teleported from the 60s. To her surprise, the van was like Doctor Who's blue police box, only it wasn't just that. Inside was an entire world of itself. But there was something odd about it. Soon she realized it was a spaceship that was about to take off. And to accommodate as many passengers as possible, everyone had only a tiny caged space slightly taller than the height of a coffin. They were all stacked in twos, and the entire place was jam-packed with rows and rows of caged bunk-beds.

The man led her to her space, with her name labeled on it, and he left without any explanation. She was speechless. Were they expecting her? Why? Where were they going? She never signed up for anything! Was this a punishment for being pathetic? Were all sad and lost souls to be sent off to a faraway prison? So many questions! She didn't have energy to find or ask the man, though. So resentfully she climbed into her space on all fours, and lean against the bars, observing others.  Soon enough she realized, the others weren't forced to do this! They actually looked excited, preoccupied with their handheld devices, perhaps thinking this was some exploratory expedition to outer space or something. Was it?

She had no clue. All she knew was that she's tired, and she just wanted all this to go away. Disappear. She wanted to disappear. Can the ground crack open and swallow her whole? If she closed her eyes long enough, maybe it would happen.

After a long, long while, what felt like an eternity of denial and refusing to face reality, she opened her eyes. And there she was. On her own bed. Alarm clock next to her bed blinked 03:38. A nightmare. It was all a dream. Felt real though. What bizarre subconsciousness has she been suppressing that had to resurface as such in the dream?

More questions. But at least this time, she didn't have to fear being deported into an unknown space while she pondered upon the message of the dream.

Untangling Spool of Tangled Reds Part 1-2

[to avoid confusion, it's probably better to read part 1-1 here before you continue with this post. :)]

every life, breathed into a newborn is destined to end in death. so all mothers who gave birth to a child, inevitably also stipulated the demise of that child. as morbid as it might sound, that is just how the universe works. if you catch yourself wincing to what you've just read, then you probably have not fully understood the true meaning to life. i could go on about life and death, but that's not why i'm here. i'm here to because i have a story to tell, a story about a boy who understood the universe, arguably more so than anyone of us, albeit in his uncanny way.

it all started when my dad and i were building the tree house, and i wanted it to be painted red. dad wouldn't let me, he thought it was too much hassle, and unnecessary. after persistent pleading, and also the fact that Maya had gotten her doll house for our birthday but all i wanted was for at least one side of the tree house to be painted red, dad decided it was only fair to grant my birthday wish. so i earned myself a little sanctuary, where Maya wouldn't ever come near because she's a girly girl and she'd rather not climb up a tree if she could avoid so. which was fine by me. Mark however, always needed to be close to me, and i couldn't say no to him, so he was always around in the tree house whenever i was up there. it was weird, initially, because Mark would just sit in a corner and stare at what I was doing, like an out-of-place kid invited into a stranger's house. i tried getting him to do stuff with me, only to be met with blank expression and more staring, until one day i asked him if he wanted to draw. what happened next was unbelievable. he didn't use my crayons to draw; instead he opted for the tin of leftover red paint (for the wall) all the way at the other corner of the room and started making these abstract patterns that a five-year-old me couldn't comprehend but knew it was incredible art. imagine jackson pollock's abstract expressionist stuff. it was something like that, except it was in shades of red on white background. done by a 4 yr-old.

subsequent days flew by with a lot of anticipation on his part to make more art and excitement on my part to see what he'd come up with. Mark could work for hours without a break, while i didn't have the patience to be there the entire time he's making his art. so eventually i just left him with his activity and went about my own stuff. he started spending more time in the tree house than i did, which was fine; in fact it was great to see him engaging in something so zealously - until one day when i was up in the tree house to check on him. it was the smell that gave him away. i suppose most if not all autistic savants are oblivious to their surroundings, and the concepts of "right" and "wrong" drilled into us by our parents/caretakers at a very young age. they follow their impulse, and they only have their end goal in mind. what i saw next wasn't what i expected at all. but i guess i knew, then, that it was a glimpse of how things would end, a prologue of the beginning of an end. 

i will leave you with your imagination of what i saw that day, and a snippet of conversation i had with him years later. "why did you do it?" i asked. and he replied, in a most serious tone and a matter-of-fact way, "because." we sat there for what seemed like an eternity, and then he added, "every beginning has an end. i wasn't interfering the circle of life."

footnote: in case you're wondering, it's all fiction, inspired by a dream i had. and yes it was an intense and complicated dream. :/

Untangling Spool of Tangled Reds Part 1-1

he was always a quiet child, so much so that i couldn't even remember him crying ever since he was a child. we all thought he was born mum or deaf, or both. parents were worried of course, but they - the few pediatricians we consulted - couldn't find anything wrong with him - physically, that is. and then one day, when he was about four, he spoke his first words. everyone in the family was so thrilled it was as if we each won the biggest lottery ever. so that was four times of one Brobdingnagian lottery - priceless. only, it did come with a price after all. turned out that that wasn't the only thing we found out on his fourth year of life. like all mothers who know their children from the inside out, mom had an inkling that something wasn't quite right. and so several trips to the ped's office later, little brother Mark was diagnosed with some savvy medical term that i couldn't remember at that age. (after all, i was only a year older than him, and i wasn't quite as bright as i'd have liked - to which i attributed that cause to the imbalanced distribution of nutrients between my twin sister and myself in mom's womb.) anyway - years later, i found out his condition was called 'savant autism' or 'savant syndrome'. you see, little Mark, an autistic savant, was a special boy. not the normal special as in the 'special' that each of us are (or at least we've been told throughout our lives by our parents). no. Mark could do things normal human beings like you and i couldn't do. doctors said it's due to his condition, and so it gave him a gift in return for his extreme slowness - dad explained to me that it's sort of a trade-off with God. but the fact that he was crippled with some disabilities didn't console my bruised ego because he had this talent that i couldn't have, no matter how hard i tried. i could tell you now that, quite frankly, i was an angry child back then. i was mad at Maya for all the beauty and brain that i didn't have; i was jealous of Mark for his talent and all the attention he'd get from everyone all the time. i, on the other hand, was born of the same parental genes, yet was nothing but an ordinary child (or so i thought, at that time). but when i wasn't busy thinking about my mediocrity, i'd spend most of my time with Mark, watching out for him and admiring the gift that he had. they say memories fade in time, and tiny details would be warped into what we'd had wanted to happen instead. yet there are certain things that try as you might to distort or discard, you just couldn't. Mark and his life story was precisely that to me. i could tell you all the things that happened due to his extraordinary gift, but i could never explain to you what it was that he did, except that it was his art that he created from his genuine heart, and that it involves pipettes, a particular fluid to be pipetted, and the source of which that particular fluid was obtained. his life, to him, really only started when he discovered them... but never would he had imagined his life would end because of them. someday perhaps, i shall sit down and tell you how it all began, to the very end of it, although not all in one sitting. i am an old lady now, and old ladies like me need to pee all the time. like right now. so come back again another day, and we'll go back to the past for a little while. the red spool of tangled mysteries need to be untangled someday. before i go, that is.

footnote: the whole story was actually a dream, but if i were to tell you just the dream itself it'd be too confusing. and since the storyline wasn't in a chronological order, i fear you'd wanna punch me out of frustration after you hear the dream. so to make it more interesting, i created characters with names and added some background info to make it seem more real. i'm also retelling under the guise of an old lady. in my dream, it wasn't that elaborate of course. so read it as a fiction and don't take it too seriously. anyhow, whenever possible, i'll be jotting them down in as many parts as it would take to reiterate the dream. :)

I wanna...

1. ... speak fluently in the languages I've already known, and on top of those, French, Spanish, and Russian.
2. ... write relatively beautifully with my own 'style' - of which I have yet to discover.
3. ... lose 25 pounds, just for fun.
   
4. ... be good at at least 1 musical instrument.
5. ... learn more about the financial world and how to get out of the rat race.
6. ... earn enough to be able to support my lil' brother to achieve his dreams, and let my parents live comfortably ever after.
7. ... spend my spare time with my grandmas and family, get to know more of them before it's too late.
8. ... keep in touch with all my friends whom I've been close to at any point in my life - which includes elementary, high school friends, taiwan study tour friends, Kursk friends, dhamma camp friends and the rest whom I met randomly yet was able to click so well.
9. ... write letters to those I used to write letters to.
10. ... learn how to brew good coffee.
11. ... learn how to make asam laksa, bubur chacha, roti canai (from scratch) and all the chinese new year cookies.
12. ... learn more new languages, and still remember how to speak and write well in all the languages I've learnt.
13. ... start a chinese blog.
    
14. ... play tennis like a pro, increase my red blood cell count till I'm eligible to donate blood.
15. ... go to China or Darfur to volunteer, preferrably working with kids, healthy or sick. Or anywhere else in the world that needs help.
16. ... put a smile on a person's face every day.
17. ... write a book by the age of 30, a book that is publishable and sellable, that is.
    
18. ... go on Peaceboat and/or work for PeaceCorp (but I think I can't cuz I'm not a US citizen).
19. ... have a small and loving family with 3 or less kids, and be a good mother. Or if I'm not married I wanna adopt many many kids.
20. ... try all the extreme sports and experience everything that I've never done before, and keep a record of all my 'first-time's.
    

But if you come up to me and ask me, so what do you want to do in life? - I still can't give you a definite answer, or I'd tell you another thing a month later.

Yes I wanna do many things. Yet because I want too many things I'd end up achieving nothing. Or, perhaps all those can be done, I just need more time. :)

But right now, I'm seeking to fill the emptiness in me. And from there, we'll see how it goes...

Scribble Scrabble

Do you know that if you stare into the space long enough, you'd actually see things that will most likely reflect what's in your innermost self or subconscious mind? Try it. Oh wait, there's a word for it. Ahhh yes, Daydreaming.

Right now, in the midst of mugging for a Genetics Midterm, I muse about how those friggin' scientists found out such abundant bout what's going on in our tiny little cells. Dont they have better things to do, like spend time with their kids or nurture their plants in the garden. Or something. Do you know we have 3 billion base pairs in our genome, and 2 copies of genomes, which gives us 6 billion base pairs, of which comprised of purines (namely adenines and guanines) and pyrimidines (cytosines, thymines, uracils) only? And that's it! 5 of these block letters in certain sequences make you and I different. How cool is that. But then, its not so cool anymore when I have to pump in so much info into my tiny tiny brain in such a short time.

Number of cute guys seen in campus of late - nil. Number of annoying people appearing seem to increase exponentially. Well okay, I'm exaggerating. But one has to exaggerate sometimes to spice things up. You know, to make life a tad bit more dramatic. Just for the fun of it. heh. :P Dull and mundane life will just bore everyone to death. So will a dull and monotonous blog.

What? What what? What what what? No, I have, like you, absolutely no idea what I wanna say. But one does not always have to know what one wants? Do they? Perhaps readers could draw up a conclusion from this incoherent post.

Are you as confused as dazed as me now? =) Have a nice day, dear all.

Little Things in a Shopping Mall...

.... that I couldn't help noticing:

1. A quite good looking guy (but more on the gay sense of good looking) who walks in a very awkward way that made him seemed so out of place in the whole shopping mall. I'd walk up to him and give him a big bear hug and tell him everythg's gonna be okay. IF I have the balls. (But I dont. So I didnt.)
2. A bunch of korean boys all with curly hair, small beaded eyes and small style of fashion. They all looked so cute. And young. Fresh. Not that I intend to eat them or anything, regardless of how you interpret the definition of the word 'eat'. All I'm saying is, they looked.... so Korean. -.- and I'm considering perming my hair. :P
3. This couple whom the boyfriend looked more like the girlfriend of the girl if you looked from behind. His hair is so friggin' long (longer than mine and mine's really long already) and much much more thick and silkier than mine. Imagine. I just loved his hair. Oh btw, if you wonder how I know he's a guy rather than the girlfriend of a lesbian partner, it's cuz when he turned around it's pretty obvious - his face, his you-know-where and his flat chest.
4. 8 out of 10 girls have long hair; 9 out of the 10 have proportionate legs (as compared to the whole body); and those with nice figures have not-so-nice features, those with nice face have not-so-nice figures, those who're on the plump side have nice silky healthy hair. God is fair.... sometimes. (ps: this does not always apply to all girls in general and is not a valid statistics okay. just my few minutes' observation on a particular day.)
5. Myself being very bored hence all this nonsensical talk. Dont bother. It's me on one of those panda-eyes days.

Say cheese. And smile! :)

Story of the Crow

Lemme tell ya a story that happened last wednesday... :)

So on the june 28 (wed) morning I woke up extra early... well earlier than usual at least... at about 8am. Finished chores at around 10.45am. So as I was happily enjoying my Honey Stars with milk, feeling extra energetic, I heard sounds outside so I rushed to the door and take a look. Turned out this huge crow was sitting on the clothes-hanger (or whatever it's called..you get it), trying to grab a red new hanger with its beak! It was soooo gigantic I actually had a scare by just standing 8 feet away from it. (Then again that's normal for a animaliaphobic person like me!)

Anyway, I opened the door and shooed it away. Went back to my Honey Stars, thinking that everything is back to normal, the same stupid sound appeared again, in less than 2 minutes. Deep down I'm cursing... for making me confront a crow, which would make me look stupid cuz I'll be a laughing stalk for being afraid of a bird!! I shooed it away again; but as I did, I thought, this poor crow must be looking for something to build its nest (i've seen birdnests with a hanger before). So I couldn't help wanting to do something for poor Mr. Crow. Guess what I did?

Thought I'd offer Mr. Crow an old slightly-broken blue plastic hanger and hanged it where it was sitting just now and took all the others to the bottom-most hanging line. But Mr. Crow was smart! He didnt come back for it anymore... maybe cuz it was old, broken and slightly rusty at the tip. I was really amused by it!! Impressive!!! :P

Anyway, tht wasn't the main point of the story. The night before my mom asked me to take a cloth in and keep it in the kitchen drawer. A while after the crow-incident, I saw the cloth on the floor cuz of the breeze and made a mental note to pick it up before the crow did. Not sure if I did, but sorta forgot everythg bout it. Till in the afternoon around 5pm, I suddenly recalled of that cloth and panicked! Did i bring it in or the crow took it? Went out to check and it wasn't there anymore!

Straight away I made a conclusion that Mr. Smarty-Crow took it for its nest! Cuz the cloth is used to clean the altar, I was pretty annoyed at myself for being so forgetful. And so when mom came home I told her all bout it and how the Mr. Smarty-Crow wanted to take revenge and took the cloth away! I was so convinced that when I told my mom I thought I sounded very animated anyone would've believed me right away even if the story was a bit illogical. But while I was saying it, my own sense of logic hit me and for a millisecond there I had a slight doubt. So I decided to check the pile of clothes that I collected in.

Oooops!! I was wrong afterall. The cloth is just sitting right there! The crow aint that smart afterall... Then I realized how stupid I am, to think that the crow was smart enough to choose the hanger and to wanna take revenge! Dumb! And I call myself a college student. Which college student in their right mind would think of it that way?!! Nonetheless, we all had a terribly good laugh bout this!

Moral of the lesson: Sometimes imagination can impair our judgment. Having an idea in the head bout smthg that might happen a certain way before anything actually happens might sway our rational thinking, and it'd blind us from the whole picture or the truth itself. So never make any conclusion before knowing the whole situation clearly. Oh and of course, the crow's persistence is to be admired too, eh? :P

So nice, a crow taught me 2 lessons that day. heh.

Childhood Memory

When I was young I had the tendency to draw stuff on my body. Like on my palms, my arms, my legs. Could be anything.. my imaginary tattoo, words, my own name. I'd write a chinese character on each toe, or on each finger tips. Or on each knuckles. Then when I stretch out my hand I liked seeing the words crumble into weirdass shape. And I write em' in all different colors of ball-point pens. Then I'll try to rub 'em off and see which ink is erasable, and how fast. 'twasn't a fetish or anythg... just... a bad habit I guess. one that I'd find myself doing without realizing it. heh.

Of course, it didn't last long. Like I said, it was a bad habit, so after I realized it I stopped myself from doing it. Now... I think I prefer drawing stuff on other people's body parts. :P

Siao!

If I have nothing to worry about, or no one to answer to, no norms to comply to, no expectations to live up to, no one that i could or might harm by my actions, no punishment to befall me, no consequences to bear, no prison no guilt-haunting no zilch, and if logic doesnt exist at all in this universe, I would:

1. Do something nasty however I feel like it to those who couldnt get pass my Standard Hypocrisy Test which I'll set by reasonable standards and logic.
2. Eat everything I love, whenever I want it, however much I can manage to eat, until my stomach is close to bursting. muahahahahaaa.
3. Fly a jetplane to the Arctic and Antartic, catch a fish or some rare animal that you cant find in tropical ocean, bring it back to Malaysia and adopt it. I'll name it... The Fish. I'll have my own gigantic Arctic-imitation aquarium. Before I come back, I'll take many many pictures with the whole Polar Bear family and the Penguin family and their "yi ma gu zeh" ('all the relatives' in cantonese)!
4. Find a suitable date and name it the Annoyance Day, and dedicate that day to just annoy the hell out of every single people everybody meets and make it compulsory to all citizens in the whole wide world. Those who disobey will be sent to a room where they get annoyed till they couldnt stand it and have to repulse and annoy those people back. No choice whatsoever.
5. Continue talking crap until all of you get agitated and burst into tears! And then laugh in your face!

Unfortunately, i dont think i'm capable of more crap than this. sorry to disappoint you, ppl... Well i think this whole entry is nothing but rubbish, so if you somehow miraculously read till here, then i respect you! have a nice day! eat more ice cream, get fat, be happy, dont worry bout tomorrow!
*evil laugh*

Vinod The Intruder

i feel i talk too much sometimes. giving out too much information bout myself. too revealing. aint good... sometimes i feel like damn!
my housemate thinks im stupid but i suppose he's not all that wrong.
I have this bad habit of whipping out my books while my surrounding enviroment is having fun.
You cant blame me,these grades i obtain sem after sem dont come from the sky.
I really need to talk more,its the best way for me express whats really going on inside.
These past few weeks have been awesome.Being with Jean and Jess helps me relax and i have to admit I enjoy their company very much.Unfortunately things have been the same with vinod.I still think he's crazy and lately he's been very lazy.He thinks he's some sort of lit cum music major.He actually spent the whole night reading about Albert Camus and going through the script of Anything Else (2003).I wonder why he cant channel all that strange persistance to his studies.


*Note: Above was written by my crazy housemate Vinod (except for the italized line). Decided to keep it cuz its funny, and will be even more so years later when we look back. heh. but i trust you all to not believe anythg he said bout me ok. the guy just escaped from some mental asylum so dont expect much n cut him some slack.*

Knock some sense in me!!

Cherry blossoms are pretty flowers dont you think.

Sleep is extremely important for every single homo sapiens. Not enough of it spoils the whole day... or maybe even week.

Some ppl are very judgmental, and they dont realize it. Me on the other hand, has a lower threshold of patience these days and am getting increasingly irritated by this species.

Despite all the talk about 'not gonna care what others think or say as long as you know you're doing the right thing', I just cant help it sometimes.

Im not being overconfident in my studies as accused, just being slightly too comfortable with my just-average results. But I'm well aware of it, and I'm working on getting back on track. Working on it okay dad.

If someone can donate some money for me, it'll be nice.

Try flexing your cerebellum. If you can.

Find something to be obsessed with. It's quite fun.

I donno what I'm typing anymore. Blur. Gone case.

Not enough sleep that's why. All those stuff written above might not have anythg to do with anythg. Just jumbled thoughts bout trivial things tht happened to pop into my cerebrum.

I need coffee. Or anythg that can keep me awake. Am terribly deprived of sleep.

Maybe I should just go and sleep. Best cure.

heh.