Pinkish yellowish white.
My eyes are greyish blueish green,
But I’m told they look orange in the night.
My hair is reddish blondish brown,
But it’s silver when it’s wet.
And all the colours I am inside
Have not been invented yet.”
adj. (of a person) reserved or uncommunicative in speech; saying little
Felt rather ambitious in the morning and began this post in a series of “Ich bin müde”s and “Ich bin schlecht”s but decided against it anyway because 1) I haven’t learnt enough grammar or vocab in german to tell the world about my feelings and 2) Writing in a foreign language won’t make me feel less tired or less bad. And also it is pretty tiring racking my brain for which endings should be there and whether I should be using the Nominativ or Akkusativ case.
Had a conversation today with a dear friend of mine regarding people of the past and it really made me think of all the friendship forged and lost. I must admit I have made some pretty good friends in college, despite all the “thingamabob”s that lay forgotten (probably buried in some trove in the depths of my mind) after some petty quarrels (both vocalised and non-vocalised). However sad I may be after reading and re-reading old letters, little notes, blackberry messages… there is always the future to look to and I will tell myself not to make those same mistakes again.
School was pretty crazy last week with assignments due, and the 3 mid terms that still continue to plague my mind with “OH, i should’ve done this….” or “WHY DIDN’T I STUDY THIS BEFORE”. The only consolation I have now is that everything in NUS is based on the bell curve and I can only pray that others have made the same mistakes I did, or maybe even more. WELL at least mid terms are out of the way and I can do the usual things I do during holidays, which is to
- wake up early so that i won’t waste my mornings
- have proper breakfasts
- visit the library and indulge myself in good books
- chill with a friend over Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner
I was about to mention “marathon HIMYM and The Big Bang Theory” but then realised that I do those two things whether or not I’m having a break from school. Whoops. By the way, I think it is pretty frustrating how my body forces itself to be up before 9 when I’m on a holiday but refuses to allow me to “aufstehen” when I have school.
Had an early breakfast with Sarah on Monday at the Marmalade Toast, after which we headed down to Paragon to handprint our tote-bags that I now carry wherever I go. (Mine says “Infinite.” and hers says “Look For Beauty”) The rest of the day was pretty colourless.
Had to force myself out of the house today to run some errands. Got myself into an adventure in Iluma because I had no idea they were renovating the place and I was just walking in circles trying to find an exit out. (There was no way for me to go out the way I came in from because of my horrible sense of direction which led me into thinking that all doors and entrances looked the same.) After what seemed like an eternity, asking someone for directions seemed like a pretty good idea and I mentally smacked myself for not thinking this earlier. Dropped off the library books which I was lugging around for the past hour and sat myself down in one of those comfy looking chairs in the national library. Staring in my face was “The Penultimate Peril” and thinking that I was in no position to tackle something as heavy as “The Grapes of Wrath”, I yielded to a children’s book which I have read a million times over. (I ended up borrowing it too, heh.)
The rest of the week has already been planned out and I usually don’t write about what I’m gonna do till I’ve done it (juuuuust in case I jinx it), so more soon!
X
“Hiawatha” (Taken with instagram)
<3 (Taken with Instagram at The Paragon)
Breakfast with @sarahisafairy (Taken with instagram)
n. A barrier which separates the mundane from the transcendent reality.
I’ve always had the impression that our meeting was some kind of a serendipity. Despite my broken heart and your lack of care, I will never regret the friendship we shared.
“It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. Then second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at siping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of a soda jerk, a phrase which means “ice cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue”, and by the twelfth time you find a thumbtack, your despair is even greater still, until you can hardly utter the phrase “root beer float” without bursting into tears. It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.”
A proper update is in order….. once I’m done with mid-terms next week.
Adieu
“I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theatre to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will loev you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale and the sperm whale loves the flavour of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, and suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and that long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else—your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R.—although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry—and I will love you if you have a child and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”
Soggy Sidewalks
On some days, the rain is simply unforgiving. Dense and resolute drip drops crash against your parasol, leaving you to wish that you could be home sooner, snug under a quilt or cuddled by a loved one - all to keep the cold at bay. This is not a playlist about that. Soggy Sidewalks is a playlist for the gratifying stroll one might take after a storm, to revel in all the beauty that is nature. Soggy Sidewalks represents a renewal of faith, a promise, that things can only get better from here.
n. a song, poem, or hymn especially of praise
Christmas this year is unusually ordinary. 12/25/2011 (and the 12 days after which marks “the season to be jolly”), usually circled/bolded/highlighted/or plastered with lots of exclamation marks and silly hearts, is left as it is on my calendar. No parties, no family dinners, nothing. The excitement from my trip to the U.S and caroling with The Vocal Consort have died down, and I’m back to lying belly-down on my bed, having one-way conversations with dimmed screens (brightness kills my eyes) (laptop, iPad, phone) till someone decides that he/she is lonely enough to entertain me. The build up to this festive season was great. I have a mental postcard of each of the places I visited in the states, and I will do my very best to recapture those moments of pure bliss.
For L.A, it was a piazza of sorts brought to life with chains of fairylights, a gigantic ferris wheel, pretty boats floating about the river next door under the brightly lit “PARADISE PIER” and a bustling crowd.
Being close to my favourite animals in their near-natural habitats was the best experience I had in San Diego. Lions, Giraffes, Elephants, Antelopes, Wildebeests, Rhinos, Tigers… I can never get enough of these Savannah-ic majesties. And there was the very colourful sea life I saw at Sea World; the neon Sea Stars and the pacific Octopus being the stars of my time there.
Vegas would have a completely different image. Living in the Strip definitely had its benefits because every night was a different experience. My postcard of vegas would be a collage of a Pyramid, a blue&red rollercoaster enclosed in a mock-Disney castle, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Colosseum with many statues of Roman and Greek Gods and Goddesses; It was like being in Egypt, Paris and Rome all at once! I was surrounded by the best of each World for 4 days straight, so tell me how I can feel more infinite than that.
Flagstaff&Williams were simply gorgeous and they would be the closest images I would have of a “White Christmas”. What I remember most are the walks my family and I had through lanes between apartments in the evenings. A blanket of snow covered every roof and icicles attached themselves to the gutters of the houses. Each time the blinking lights from the christmas trees struck the icicles, a strange kaleidoscopic image formed itself on the white sheet that surrounded us, making it seem as if we were partying with Nature herself. Night welcomed herself quickly each day, and you could see the Moon up in the sky as early as 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Still, we managed an afternoon up in the Grand Canyon, snapping photos of the austere grandeur that lay before us when the Sun shone the brightest.
On our last night in America, we stopped by Rodeo Drive, where we spent Christmas many years ago (2005). We weren’t donned in the best possible outfits to battle the cold (think hoodies, tights and shorts) but yet we were posing at every street lamp or christmas tree possible for pictures that would go down in our family holiday album. I guess it is pretty cheesy of me to quote this but I’m going to do it anyway:
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Things return to normalcy once a new equilibrium is established (refer to the hedonistic treadmill of happiness), but I have been receiving quite a few pleasant surprises along the way that keeps me slightly tilted towards “HAPPINESS” on the mood scale. Like looking out of my window and finding that the lights back home are just as pretty :) Or hanging out with my colleagues after a long day at work.
School’s starting again soon and I can’t say I’m thrilled with the heaps and piles of projects and term essays to write. But the party doesn’t last forever, so back to routine life it is. Oh and uhm I asked myself what would be the best present to receive for christmas (I like thinking of hypothetical situations like the above, don’t judge) and my thoughts went something like this:
new camera
MORE IPAD COVERS
booksbooksbooks
a higher CAP!!!!!
get-skinny pills
be happy forever…?
be sad less often
Being happy forever would be great, but it’s impossible so let’s just forget about it ha ha. I just wish 2012 to be a year of less-sadness; where I won’t have to resort to silly things like talking to Pommy (who, btw, is a stuffed toy penguin) or eating my heart out. Last post before the year ends!
Here’s to a great 2012 ahead guys \m/
Sarah for making the time to meet up with me last week ♥♥
Victoria Heng♥