Clutter at the crossroads

I finally did spring cleaning of my room because the physical clutter kind of reflected my mental and emotional clutter in a rather disturbing way. It brought back tucked away memories, which is probably why I had subconsciously put it off for so long.

Bits here and there that I thought back then had not outlived their usefulness. I'd somehow find them useful someday, I thought. Well, they are now in my dustbin.

Souvenirs, gifts and mementos from friends that I placed somewhere out of my sight because it was kind of painful to be reminded of the lives that had once intersected but had now diverged through no fault of ours.

I am getting a bit too emotional for my own good. I need to get back to work. And put off thinking about my future for the time being.

Good night, and good luck

I'm back from a two-week FYP/graduation trip to Japan. Visited schools there, talked to principals, teachers, students and a whole lot of people in between. Japan will always have a special place in my heart by virtue of my obsession with manga, anime, doramas and the like. Its culture is just in a league of its own, and to understand it we have to learn to "read the air", which I'm not particularly good at, at least at the moment. I think Yi Wen had typed out a nice list of observations about Japan, which I mostly (and lazily) agree with, so you can just hop over to her blog.

Christmas has kind of lost its meaning to me amidst all the lights, fake trees and end-of-year discounts. But then again a lot of things have kind of lost their meaning to me. I care a little lesser about what people think of me, get a little less disappointed when things don't come my way, waste a little less time on useless things like watching TV and replacing it by doing other equally if not more useless things like watching The Ellen Degeneres Show on YouTube. I guess that's one of the symptoms of growing a little older, which is not necessarily a good thing. Growing older often means growing more boring, more pompous, more know-it-all, when at the end of the day I think I don't exactly know that much more about the world compared to 10 years ago. The more you know, the less you understand, and the less you understand, the more you feel the need to pretend.

I was away for two weeks and I came back to a stack of newspapers, all collecting dust and other unsavoury air particles from sheer abandon. The news junkie in me can't leave the pile of news alone, even though I intermittently browsed through New York Times online when I had the luck of accessing the Internet in Japan. So I've been reading three week's worth of news in the last three days, and by the end of the day my head is spinning like a ballerina. There's just too much news in the world, too many problems to fix, too little political will to fix it. Which makes me wonder why I even bother reading about it because if I could cull a general trend from everything I've read so far, it's that the world is doomed.

Good night, and good luck.

A speck of dust in forever

The semester is coming to an end. Sometimes I find it hard to grasp the concept of time (so what if another semester is over?). Let me see it based on milestones:

More than three years since I first entered university.
Nearly two years since Mizzou.
Nearly half a year since internship.
Around four months since Vietnam.
Two weeks away to the final exams of the semester.
Three weeks away to FYP trip to Japan.
One semester and then some away from graduation.
A speck of dust in forever.

All this is a smudge of excrement surging to sea

I know this blog is teethering into non-existence. Well if you have missed updates about my life in the past four weeks or so, not to worry, I have culled out three major trends so far:

1. I'm generally feeling unsettled by having to graduate next year and make choices. I know being able to make choices is a privilege, but it doesn't remove the niggling realisation that I'm an adult now (I don't qualify for Sakae Sushi youth buffet anymore!). Let me tell you that while networking events can be fun, they are kind of tiring too because you have to be on the lookout for yourself all the time: which person should I talk to now to improve my job prospects? At networking events you categorise people into "important" and "not so important" people, some of whom may hold the key to unlocking doors for you, and people don't feel "real" to you because they're always trying to give the best first impression. That's not a very nice way of looking at people, but that's the reality of adulthood. Thinking ahead, making choices.

2. FYP is moving, but there are a million loose strings that have to be found and tied.

3. I've been reading as many books, watching as many movies, going to as many concerts, as possible. Every week I watch 2-3 movies at the School of Art Design & Media Library. Rachel Getting Married (great dialogue), 2 Days in Paris (really funny), The Graduate (didn't make sense), etc.

Woe is lack of sleep

Schoolwork is such banality nowadays. I'm taking four modules on top of my Final Year Project, two of which are huge warts perching on my butt. FYP is moving rather slowly, whereas every one around me seems to be zooming ahead like Speedy Gonzales running on nitro fuel. We're planning to write a regional feature story, so obviously it'll be good if we can get sponsorship to travel around the region. This is the time of the year when students turn into beggars, knocking on the doors of organisations/corporations/foundations with a bowl in hand. Right now we're adopting the 'spray and pray' strategy, which I've used quite a few times in the past. Email 20 organisations, I don't care, just get them all out and wait for replies.

I've been having sleep problems for unknown reasons. I'm not that stressed, I'm not lovesick, I don't have a history of insomnia at all. It's screwing up with pretty much a lot of things, because how the hell do you do things at an optimum level without proper sleep at night? Reminds me of Christian Bale's The Machinist, who hasn't slept for two years. Pray I'm not going to turn out like that.

What's the worst that can happen?

They'll think you're a bozo and ask you to f off.
You'll feel crushed for a while, but then you wake up every morning and realise the sun still rises every single morning.
So you move on.

Les Adieux

I turned 22 yesterday, but it felt like a non-event. I guess after you hit 21 birthdays are not that big a deal anymore. Anyway the books I got are enough to last me till a few months later. Enough to keep me busy during my long train rides to Pulau NTU. Thanks, book fairies.

Been listening to Rudolf Serkin's rendition of Beethoven's Sonata no. 31 on a loop. Wonderful stuff. It's hard to find good music nowadays, and the kind of music they play on the radio are like ear-drills. I do prefer the 90's and classical to rap, hip-hop and metal. As my ex-colleague said, I'm a young fogey.

I didn't know that quite a few people read Elmer. My secondary school friends whom I haven't met for years wished me happy birthday on Facebook, adding that they like my Elmer stories. It's always nice to know someone likes your work. No man is an island after all. Those artists who say they do art for art's sake? They're lying. On a side note I'm stuck on part one of Elmer on Island of Geometry. No inspiration nor mood to write ever since.

All I want to do right now is fly somewhere, any place new. And do that for possibly a hundred more times, till I get sick of everything. Life's not bad, but I'm always wanting more.

Time Magazine had an article about these services that charge to disseminate your online legacy to your loved ones after you're dead. Meaning that they're the custodians of your blog entries, passwords to embarrassing websites, a thousand and one things about your life that have made their way to the World Wide Web. And when you finally croak, they'll give them to your family members who need some sort of a closure, or who want to know more about you. Would I let my loved ones read my "unspeakable secrets" after I'm gone from this earth? The reason why they're unspeakable to begin with is because they could hurt people, no? What for hurt people even after you're dead?