Not listless

[Just very the uninspired about titles for blog posts. Good thing I don't have to write any headlines for a while.]

1. At some point during my two-week excursion to KL and Singapore, I contrived to break a nail clipper, for the second time in my life. It fell apart in three pieces. I was sad. At least this time it was my nail clipper, instead that of a girl whom I'd just met. Hmm. Actually, maybe I should try to make sure it's someone else's clipper, because that girl ended up becoming one of my closest friends. <3

2. I have been using the whole <3>

3. I'd be really embarrassed if people don't realise that that last "o_O" was ironic. But then my dajie's fiance has been reminding us that sarcasm varies a whole lot by culture, so there's a small chance that irony might too. I really should keep laying on the self-referential comments, shouldn't I.

4. It's always really gratifying and really humbling to meet up with people after a year or two or more, and just spend time catching up and enjoying their company. I really don't know why I get to have friends like you guys, but you all rock. Thank you. (Uhhh. Clearly I'm assuming that some of the people who read my blog, if they exist, are people whom I have met. Given the want of substance in this post, they are also probably people of questionable taste, but I suppose one has to take what one can get.)

5. Bonus from the cleanser that the dermatologist recommended for me: bad French English, i.e. "a shiny skin" &c. I'm used to bad Malaysian/other Asian English -- e.g. "clean makes u beauty" in a KL public toilet -- but bad European English is a novelty.

6. Among the many ways in which Williams has spoiled me is that I have gotten used to having good theatre/live music/art around me. As gorgeous as Penang may be architecturally and gastronomically and culturally and people-wise (mental adverb thesaurus fail) (conciseness fail too), it doesn't offer too much as far in the form of the (snobby? budaya kuning?) art that I have come to enjoy. Penang definitely has more than most Malaysian towns, although it isn't anywhere near as accomplished as KL*. O, for free performances and museums in beautiful Berkshire college towns! And for next semester in London with galleries and student rush tickets woot. But till then I shall sincerely relish being at home = with family = in Malaysia, and I know the people around me will enjoy it more if I minimise the whinging and gloating and pretentiousness.

*Although the KLPac's location is so prohibitive for those of us who don't have cars/dare to ask for rides from acquaintances/like paying for cabs. Which makes sense because of the whole art "appreciation = marker of upward mobility = exclusivity" deal, but I'm sure that wasn't the developers' intent. And I am also sure that I am rambling.

7. A week or so ago, before I dozed off at my friend's house in Singapore, I was contemplating the burgeoning Bangsar boutique and blogshop markets (Dr. Seuss impression not intended) as well as a completely disjoint phenomenon that fails to come to mind, and I reflected that they both were undergirded by some airy pseudo-philosophical generalisation that would possibly sound impressive on a blog. And so I resolved to report that epiphany (heh) here, but my memory did not choose to cooperate. I do remember, however, that my final train of thought before drifting off was: human desire to be imitated by other humans = (impulse to be like God + knowledge that we are made in the image of God) * fallenness. Mmph. Sometimes I really do wonder if my tendency to conceive the world in sweeping propositions, like my tendency to say terrible sarcastic things to people whom I'm comfortable with, indicates a deep character flaw. And no sarcasm there -- although, now that I think about it, those are broad generalisations. Bleh.

8. It be time for bed, yo. I will say that I hope I have more normal thoughts en route to unconsciousness, although I'm really not sure if I mean that.

Through the looking-glass

I really shouldn't be up at this time, but I have a long bus ride tomorrow, during which I fully intend to pass out, and I don't know how much of an internet connection I'll have while I visit KL and Singapore.

But what happened when my parents, sister and I visited some some relatives, as well as churches in Pahang that we used to be part of, was interesting: at least half of the people I spoke with started our conversations by commenting on how I'd put on weight, which bothered me intensely. Not with the emotional bite that it would have had a while back -- although yesterday I was disappointed to catch myself peering into the mirror more than usual -- but rather more philosophically: I'd like to think that how I am, or what I am doing in school, is more interesting than how much I weigh (i.e. a healthy amount).

I was also confused because I didn't think I was any bigger (or smaller) than I had been when I came home a year ago. But then it's been proven several times that I'm effectively useless at telling whether or not people gain or lose weight, since I recognize people by gait rather than physique. Out of curiosity, I finally got around to weighing myself this afternoon, and if memory and our decrepit Imperial system scale are accurate, I've only put on five -- ten on the outside -- pounds since I left for college in '07. But family (who often regard their skinny genes like an entitled heiress does her True Religions), friends, photos and old jeans testify to the fact that I'm wider than I used to be -- which I'm thoroughly comfortable with, much as I may squirm at the term 'womanly'.

Ummm. Yes. In other news, I went to a dermatologist today about my acne. As vain as I may accuse myself of being, I often forget that I have bad skin. Of course it's an annoyance, but I only fluctuate into disgust or despair when I'm getting ready to go out and spot a particularly nasty breakout, or when I get one of those really massive painful pustules, or last semester when I'd be up late studying and in the bathroom mirror my glasses, eyes, eyelids, zits and zit scars would all be flaming red.

But then once in a while I realise that people around me mostly have good skin: healthy skin. So this trip to the dermatologist marked an evolution from,"I want to see a derm (even though I know it's frivolous and expensive but I want to anyway)" and never actually seeing one, to "I should see a derm because this is a health issues" and finally going to a clinic.

Like many health complaints, this one is costing money to fix, even with generic isotretenoin. Ouch. Good thing I never ended up getting braces. And contacts can wait. Whatever vanity's name might be, mine is supposedly delight-in-righteousness, so I shall try to save face a bit. (That was a joke.) (A bad one.)

I know I'm still slim, if not thin, and that my zits don't render me hideous (unless my friends are all liars). But I also know that we all have a ways to go as far as loving ourselves and each other is concerned (and managing subject-verb agreement, apparently). I am further aware that this post is in danger of mutating into one of those that ends with a campy moral; a Bible quotation -- although we really are fearfully and wonderfully made; what some people call my drunk-boy singing -- I am beautiful nomatterrrwhuttheyseyy; or a saccharine aphorism, so it shall terminate here. Live and let live. I'll be back.

A double birthday post, in advance

Once upon a time, in the faraway kingdom of Japan, an exquisite baby girl was born on June 29. She got even more exquisite as the days went by, and learned to love her country and her people, although she did have a penchant for a certain amusement park with life-size rodents and ethereal princesses. She also loved the colour pink, which suited her sweet disposition perfectly. This little girl also had a winsome smile that charmed all who saw it; indeed, she won the hearts of many during her Grand Tour in London, wherein she acquired much polish.

One year and one month later, on July 27, there was born in Thailand another baby girl, no less delightful than the first. Unbeknownst to them, they would one day become fast friends in a mystical land. This second child lived a vibrant and varied life in Bangkok, India, Beverly Hills, and some other places that some of her friends always forget -- and in an order that the same friends can never recall -- and soon grew to be as captivating and as each of her wondrous abodes, more generous than the most philanthropic wife in 90210, and kinder than the gentlest monk in the Himalayas.

And so it came to pass that these damsels both wanted to go to the number one liberal arts college in the United States -- and, being supremely endowed with every grace known to mankind, got in without breaking a sweat -- and so they each traversed oceans and deserts and found themselves in the remote purple mountains of the Berkshires. It was here that they made each other's acquaintance and won each other's loyalty.

Being of noble bearing, they also lavished many hours of their illustrious presences on a third damsel, who hailed from an eastern archipelago and never ceased to be filled with wondrous awe at her fortune in finding such incomparable companions, even if she sometimes got silly or whiny and forgot to show it, or seemed to prioritize her other friends or schoolwork or the newspaper or whatever. And of course the two maidens were so totally awesome that they always forgave the third one, and let her invade their rooms and talk and laugh with them. (As restitution for her vagaries, the third kid let the other two eat as many of her saltines and chocolate truffles as they desired. She hopes they enjoyed them.)

But the time came for the trio to be parted, for they were to test their mettle in foreign lands. After a sumptuous banquet, they bid one another goodbye. The first and second damsels embarked on a quest together in lands that neither had forayed into, before they each set sail for mysterious duchies. And after the moon had waxed and waned ... uhh, many times, all three maidens were reunited, for a senior year which absolutely rocked.

What exactly happened after this idyllic season is uncertain, as the ladies -- for that is what they had become -- from Thailand and Japan were so accomplished that there was not room enough in the royal records to chronicle their exploits. But legend has it that, among many other feats, one went on to entrance thousands from the stage, and the other at some point in her dynamic life fed starving refugee children all over the world while dancing and speaking to them in their very own dialects. And if that were not enough, they also each married the most cordial men from among the legions of lovelorn suitors who begged favours from their hands and fought wars in their honour.

(And they did all of this while keeping in touch with the third friend. Right? Though the third friend was sometimes tardy in replying, she always gave them truffles or Malaysian curry at some point as an apology. So worth it. Just saying.)

But let us tarry a while at the fortnights after that farewell banquet, before the marvelous adventures and princes and confections, for the maiden from Malaysia seeks to wish an unsurpassedly glorious 21st birthday to the damsel from Japan, and a similarly superlative 20th birthday to the damsel from Thailand, because she loves them so much, though not anywhere near as much as she should. And she already misses them a whole lot.

And they lived happily ever after. The end.

200th post, apparently

Can't believe I've been [frittering time away] on this blog for that long. But the konon landmark number saves me the effort of giving this post a real name [and thus wasting more time].

I'm home! And it's wonderful. Yay family (or 2/3 of my family, at least). I can't believe how fast the months have gone by, though.

Yesterday we drove past that shop gloriously named American Accents, which I assume sells furniture. Less humourous: yesterday I also spoke American to the China Airlines cabin crew all the way to the Bayan Lepas airport, in part because I was chatting with my American seat buddies throughout. Ugh. And this morning, I capped off 13 hours of sleep by blearily asking my sister in American whether it was her alarm. It was a singularly unpleasant jolt (but not enough to get me out of bed). In addition, I find myself being cavalier about time prepositions the way New Englanders are. Overall, though, my sister tells me that I'm "still very good at terrible English," so not all is lost -- but then she's spent eight years in Singapore.

I keliru lah. لا أعرف. أنا قعلاًُ لا أحب هذا الشي. [And by the end of the summer I will *hopefully* be able to add a lament in Chinese as well!] Ah well.

On a related note, here are things that I expected but reacted to nonetheless, in order of increasing enthusiasm:

1. feeling sticky all the time -- I really don't like it when I get whiny

2. A4 paper

3. the prospect of three months of Malaysian food (Penang!)

5.5 hours away from home

1. I'm in the Taipei airport now, awaiting the final leg of my journey home. I can't tell you either my flight number or the name of this airport without looking them up: on one hand, I'm happy that I've been getting compulsive about logistics; on the other, it scares me how blase I've become about air travel. Of course, a good deal of that stems from going to school in a country so large that intercity travel often happens via aeroplane, but still. This is similar to the tension between my squeamishness about people thinking that I'm economically privileged contra my partial gratification when they say I carry myself like a rich girl.

2. I've also been thinking that maybe I talk about myself too much. This is one fo the many things that I frequently end up doing, and am always embarrassed about in retrospect. I'd like to think it happens because I don't want to bring up things that might be boring or offensive or intimidating, and if they're already talking to me then either (a) they don't think I'm any of those three or (b) they already think I'm at least one of those three and what I say won't change their opinions -- I dunno lah. Gah. If I've ever foisted unwanted anecdotes about myself on you, I far more sorry than I seem.

3. Since I left campus on Tuesday morning, two new people have fallen victim to my (hopefully not too?) self-centred rambling: a retired nurse/counsellor from Williamstown with whom I waited out a three-hour interval between two buses, and a girl from Carlton on her way to Bangkok with whom I hung out in JFK, Anchorage and Taipei. Because of them I've had a really good journey: chatting while we wait (and taking turns to use the loo), sleeping in transit and reading (WSJ, Newsweek, Narnia and the Fields of Arbol, the Bible) here and there. And it's thanks to my new Carlton friend that I found out about the free wireless here too. Yay people. :)

4. Does the framework of Slumdog Millionaire remind anyone of E.L. Koningsburg's The View from Saturday?

5. I've been using Facebook in BM, and apparently they're still working out the kinks. Exhibit A: the other day, my feed said that some people ditada dalam gambarbut others ditag/ Exhibit B:


5. I am gembira. :)

(Sub)stance

Yesterday evening I hung out with the other students who will be event staff for the alumni reunion on campus this weekend. Consequently, I may have to forfeit my claim to never having been drunk. I say "may" because I have yet to lose control of thoughts or actions because of alcohol, but yesterday my body quite clearly told me that I'd had too much.

I still (a) fully governed what I was saying through several serious conversations, including a very frank one about faith and sexuality, (b) made sure I was back in my room before midnight, and (c) finished moving my cupboard and sofa across my room* while (d) making myself drink a whole lot of water**. After all of that, however, I spent half an hour burping then retched a little. And I was really annoyed throughout.

*Some of you may know me well enough to know that this is a function of my stubbornness, not any intoxication.
**I also have yet to suffer a hangover woot.

This is interesting because the only other time that I've had too much was the first party in my common room last year: I'd downed a couple beers and thought (and apparently made other people think) that I was in total control of the words coming out of my mouth, but the next morning felt sorely disappointed in myself because I realised that said words been flowing rather more freely than usual.

Apart from the immediately physical and retrospectively verbal impulses for disappointment, I have another frustrating alcohol-related but entirely sober behavioral trait. To wit: it is maddeningly easy, especially when I'm with peers who are conventionally cooler than I am, for me to discuss alcohol in a way that almost glamourizes it. I find myself boasting about how I think light beer is gross, but am partial some of its better-tasting (and, by implication, more refined) counterparts.

In a way this tendency is no different from how I instinctively remarked on how fast college passes by, but how wonderful Williams is, and what warm weather we were having -- and, oh, the poor graduating seniors under those black gowns! -- to countless parent types while I was ushering for commencement festivities this past weekend. But in another way, this tendency is pathetic, insecure and hardly representative of the person I want to be for the sake of, say, the kids who were in my Bible study this year.

Bleh.

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Yesterday was also interesting because it saw me become a lab test subject. Unfortunately, it's the sort of lab test that you(r insurance honchos) have to pay for. It also entails not showering for a few days, but that's as good an excuse as any to avoid the gym. (Such excuses are very welcome when you've spent the last few days getting paid for standing for hours on end in pretty unsupportive shoes.)

I should probably explain. I've spent the last half a year or so with a nasty bout eyelid inflammation which both I and the college health center had assumed was due to eczema. I'd first experienced this towards the end of my newspaper internship/beginning of college, and sporadically since then, but never to this extent. It was triggered by the lovely cats in my sister's apartment when I visited her during winter break, then stuck with me through three-week shift from a Williamstown winter to a Cape Town summer and back, and has since refused to leave. In addition to religiously applying the prescribed ointment, using my allergy eye drops, and copiously moisturising my ailing lids, I temporarily gave up crustaceans (not too big a sacrifice) and dairy (cheese yogurt ice-cream!), but to no great effect.

Then last week I heard about a dermatologist just off the edge of campus. This dermatologist eventually squeezed me in to his already overbooked schedule due to a very heartfelt referral from the health center, and immediately said that my eyelid issues are probably allergies -- I seem to have become an interesting case study. Improbably, his best friend is a dermatologist from Ipoh, which he validated using photos of a nga choi kai restaurant from the time they co-chaired a dermatology conference in Malaysia.

I was ordered to stop putting anything on my eyes or lids, except things like neutral moisturizer and Natural Tears. And now in addition to the two imposing bandages on my back, which constitute patch tests for 24 different allergens -- hence the prohibition on bathing -- I also now have eyelids that look almost completely normal. The next few days could well reveal that my eyelids are allergic to my allergy eye drops, just like how the eczema ointment drive my eye allergies livid. Heh.

It amazes both the doctor and me how quickly my eyelids have gotten better. And it horrifies me that I went so long without chasing down a cure, how easily I got used to the state of things: first the constant questions about my red lumpy eyelids, then flakes of skin floating across my field of vision and settling prominently on every black shirt I wore, then (only over Holy Week, mercifully) blood on my eyelids when they cracked, then (at the end of the semester) yellow junk oozing from my eyes throughout the day.

This is similar to how in RJ I would assume I was happy even if I was actually stressed, out of a desire to be happy; or how I sometimes leave academic assumptions unchallenged, out of a desire to understand concepts (and then I have to dissect my intuitive comprehension in order to reverse-engineer answers to the questions that friends throw at me; they accept these answers with unnerving regularity). So I find it very easy to believe that things are okay and people are nice and my eyelids are tolerable because I really just want the world to be a good rational place.

Which is why it was difficult for me to ask people to pray for my eyes towards the end of the semester. Not that I didn't think God wanted heal them, or that I wasn't praying about them -- it's just that I've always marginalised my petty concerns from the context of communal prayer, because my life is mostly good (if often irrational), and really the starving children and terrified freshmen need the support more. But then it occurred to me that saying I don't need help, even within a Christian Ministry For Those Poor People context, is pride of a particularly insidious form. And that the things I that I denounce as vain or petty or frivolous may well matter to God as much as CMFTPP.

This is also why it remains extremely difficult for me to reconcile the demands on my time this past semester -- Christian Fellowship, newspaper, and new Christian journal, as well as the homework imperative and the community imperative -- with the demand that I live a healthy life. I was certain that God wanted me to discharge both obligations, but the combination just didn't make sense. But it is just as incomprehensible that I got to do so much stuff this semester, and that at the end of the 12 weeks I felt contentment rather than a desperate need to recuperate -- unlike the previous two busy semesters.

This semester, I learnt that faith is the act of trusting the trite truism that things will work out for the best, even if I have no clue what is going on. Because if things depended on me having a clue, ... well, let's all find our happy places now.

God is in heaven
and you are on earth,
so let your words be few. [Ecclesiastes 5:2b]

Whoops.

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It's embarrassingly characteristic for me to dump a truckload of words on this blog barely two days after a public declaration of writer's block. Darn gin.

Vulgar expressions and wanton alcoholism aside, it was really my horror at how bad I'd let my eyelids get that had conjured sentences in my head again. I'd planned on waiting for the patch test results (O for a shower!) (my non-existent roommate would concur) before I blogged, but then my grossed-out-ness at my drinking (and at my terribly clunky constructions) triggered a hyperactive word stream last night. I'd typically have silenced the thoughts and fallen asleep, but then I figured that I don't often get to have deplorable sleeping habits by choice (heh) so I got out of bed circa 3:30am and wrote part of this post till 5am. (Yes, I am resigned to your mockery.)

I do have a good idea, though, of why I hadn't been going off on confusing aural trains of thought: after I got back to campus from camp but before I started work, I met with a couple career counselling people to ask about internships -- primarily high-brow consulting or journalism -- that I wanted for next summer. And out of an awareness that my penultimate college summer could bolster whatever post-college applications that I chose to make, I purposed to pray and think very hard about what I should be doing. It seems like the very specific focus may have shifted mental (and we all know what that means in England) writing out of the cross-hairs.

And just in case you were breathing a sigh of relief that the alcohol and eyelid chronicles were over, two of my predominant sentiments about the whole future dealio relate to each of these episodes.

1. Re: the impulse to be cool
A few years ago, I told a very dear friend that I find the fashionable lifestyle -- jet-setting, schmoozing, swirling cocktails, discussing esoteric poetry readings -- fatally attractive. She frowned a little, then said: "Ohhh, you mean the pretentious lifestyle."

I really, really don't want to be pretentious. Or presumptuous. And possibly a lot of other things that start with pre-s that I probably do all the time but feel exceedingly embarrassed about after that.

2. Re: the neglect of my health
I also really really don't want to be a workaholic. I'd be lying if I said I anticipate a laid-back life with leisure reading and maybe even TV every evening, but I just don't want to be one of those people who work themselves to death for the sake of doing work.

I know the crux is slowing down to make sure you're actually where you should be. Believe it or not, I've gotten gotten exponentially better at making space to listen to God (or, according to some friends, exponentially weirder, but I say it takes one to know one).

Right now think I'm listening correctly, but some things seem clearer that I dare to believe. So I'm not going to document my thoughts right now, but I will relay these musings when I trust that instinct more.

Don't think I didn't see you cringe.

Ah bah

It's annoying that the words in my head are coalescing only around things I've said over the last several weeks, and self-conscious drivel like this.

Poodle.

Eh

[by which I mean *puzzled sound*, not the salutation]

I've been taking a break from my daily journalling since spring break, in the interest of becoming a less compulsive person. This sabbatical of sorts, coupled with general busyness, spilled over into a blogging hiatus. I don't know when I'll start journalling again, but I'm done with course essays and newspaper articles and press releases for a season, so I do want to resume blogging.

At first I couldn't figure out how to keep my grand (re)entrance from becoming too emo or verbose or staid or burbling, then I realised that I could just settle for indecisiveness. Go me?

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It's been so long since I've used this blog that I'd clean forgotten about the last post I started, a poem circa Maundy Thursday. I rarely dare to attempt poetry and probably ditched it because I wanted it to be really good but didn't have time to remedy the juvenile triteness or rhetorical questions or gross inflections or gaps etc etc, but I'm not emotionally attached to it anymore and don't foresee myself doing anything to it anytime soon (if ever), so you are welcome to have fun judging.

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Iam

Well, no -- of course You may not wash my feet.
Because they smell, that's why.
And yes, I'm not too shy to tell You that,
but You're not getting close to them.

I don't know what other people will think.
And sometimes I'd rather not
think about it either.
I don't want anyone to see those
blister scars from breaking in
pretty ballet flats.
Or how I'm on my way to bunions.
And that toenail -- really,
why can't it just heal
on its own?
Why can't they stay clean
without You washing them?

I suppose I must be scared.
Not scared of talking about being scared
-- but of exposure
to stink judgment love life fear

They smell like feet, You say?
Well, then.

Thank You.