A Request

hi everyone,

i have two things that i sincerely need some help with, and if anyone out there can help me, i would be eternally grateful :)

1. Medicine

i will be going to Honduras in January to do some volunteer work with the Global Brigades. my work there is primarily centered around the building of public health facilities for the locals of my assigned zone, but our team is also heavily involved in healthcare for the sickly. we will be having qualified doctors on our team to help us in our mobile clinics, but right now we are actively searching for medicine donations, so that we won’t be going there empty handed with nothing to prescribe.

i’d like to ask if anyone reading this is close to doctors or dentists either in New York or in Malaysia who would be willing to donate medicine towards this trip. i have a long list of medicine that would be very useful towards helping the most dominant diseases that affect Hondurans, but it’s way too long to attach here. i will be back home in KL for two weeks in late December / early January, and i would very much like to meet with any willing doctors if any of you could point me in the right direction!

it’s for a really good cause, and i would appreciate it so much if anyone could put me in touch with doctors or medicine suppliers who would take the time to listen to me! thank you :)

my Global Brigades website is here.

2. Hong Kong or Asia Internships

i’m currently searching for a summer internship in several fields that i’d prefer not to disclose here. the catch is that i’m looking to intern in firms that are based in other Asian countries besides Malaysia and Singapore. i have a very strong preference for a Hong Kong internship, as well as an inclination towards small firms/start-up companies.

i’ve been doing some research in these areas, but i’ve not been able to find many firms that perfectly capture what i’m looking to do. so if anyone has had experience working in any field (be it at big firms or start-ups) in other Asian countries besides Msia and SG, please do drop me an email if you’re willing to have a chat with me. i would be very, very grateful!

———

my email address is quitequaintly[at]gmail[dot]com. if you think you could potentially help me with either thing, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. thank you all so much in advance :)

8 comments December 3rd, 2009

Boston in October

my heart has been irreverently displaced by something very small. its tiny, pulsating force seemed so harmless in the beginning, but i can ascertain for now that my feelings have truly been hurt. isn’t it weird? i have no right to feel like this. i should be trying to finish all the work that i allowed to sit and curdle over the long thanksgiving weekend. but this is bringing back a lot of horrible sensations from 2003 that i can’t seem to fight away alone. i just want someone to make this better :(

pictures from boston, when joe and i went to visit dominic:

#1 dom’s very waspy suburban neighbourhood

#2 fall colors, all gone by now

#3 it has been my lifelong dream to climb onto a mailbox and take pictures

#4 but that picture didn’t come without a very ungraceful behind-the-scenes process

#5 success! after many, many tries where i trampled all over poor dom

#6 a slightly more graceful picture

#7 then joe decided to copy me. to add insult to injury, all he did was swing himself atop the mailbox T_____T

#8 mine now :)))))

#9 sunset spilling over the Charles River. i wish we’d had the time to walk along the river :( this photo was taken from inside a moving train

#10 dom took us to Quincy Market for dinner. it reminds me of some place in melbourne, just as bustling and with as many good smells

#11 joe and his lobster dinner. i dont think i’ve ever seen him so happy

#12 this picture happened because i squealed, “joe! let me take a picture of your mussels!!” -____-

#13 it’s a real place after all

#14 at the train station

#15 you know how sometimes you fall into these moments, and you feel like you must capture it in a photo… but as you are deliberating whether or not it would be polite to snap a picture, the people shift, and your moment is gone?

#16 for the first time i deliberated faster

#17 dinner with the very pretty xiao and her roommate ashley :)

#18 would you spend your dollar on mints or a tampon?

#19 our relative feet size

#20 i keenly apologize to all feminists in advance, but i was very drawn to the creative for this poster. at some point i announced, “she is all the marketing that harvard needs!”

#21 there is something about supermarkets that defeats their sterility

#22 i have never taken a newspaper from those stands. one day i must

#23 a house somewhere in the midst of the place where people go to get lost in boston

43 comments November 30th, 2009

The One Foot Rule

i often stumble into those things that i’ve tried hard to parcel away into just ’some month’ in the many months of many life. but it’s almost that time of year again, and the renewed festivities in the air bring me back to that epoch, that carefully partitioned meadow that i often look at longingly from behind a glass wall. it smells like fresh sheets and the melting evening sun. it sounds like the soft giggles of secret sex. it’s so very, very tempting and it lies there, beckoning me to come in, and it promises to be so warm — but like everything else in history, it is inaccessible to me because i am older now. i have grown and i have moved on. for every day that i wake up and think, shit, i’m late for class, i am really moving one day away from it, further and further until it is displaced from me and mine and i will no longer remember the sounds and the smells and how he looked as he watched me put on makeup. i was putting on eyeliner. i saw him watching from the mirror, so i turned around and asked, what? nothing, he said, it’s just cool that i’m dating a girly girl. we’re not dating, i wanted to say. are we? then we slipped out of the house together, my hand safe and snug in his pocket, my heart comfortably resting on his, and he held me close in the blustering winds. one foot rule, okay? that’s what we decided on. we had to keep a distance of one foot from each other for the night. this is my friend! i introduced him. i basked in the awkwardness with which he handled my friends, and me, as i playfully ruffled all the seams of his composure within a one foot radius. he sat beside me during dinner, and i complained loudly, emily make him stop! he’s flirting with me! and emily shouted over, yeah stop flirting with her! he blushed hard and i laughed cruelly with emily. later that night, when the one foot rule had dissipated and we were entwined and warm under the sheets, i giggled and apologized for being mean. he smiled, kissed me, and we fell asleep holding hands. it’s always like that. it’s always about me being mean for the sake of fun and glittery excitement, while he just kisses me and waits patiently until i’m bored of the game du jour, and i return to him, pouting. but i like the fun and the excitement. i can’t give it up, no matter what month of the year it is. there is a pace, and i wanted him to run with me too. but everything happened so long ago, and i’m so in danger of forgetting him. today i did not think about him at all. i appreciated the realization that i had simply forgot to keep him at the fringes of my mind, if not at the very center. it made me feel like i was finally in control. but then it occurred to me that i’ve only been awake for three hours today, and three hours of not thinking about him is not very substantial. nevertheless it’s a start. i’m thinking less and less about him, and every day that i wake up is another day further from ’some month’ in the many months of my life.

52 comments November 25th, 2009

I Jumped Into Cold Water

heartbroken people should avoid concerts, i think. and since we are all heartbroken people, i suppose that none of us should ever attend concerts. last week, i went to watch Joshua Radin’s show at Webster Hall. i went with some friends from school, but i left them because i’d found what i thought was the best seat in the house– some tall speakers right next to the stage, atop which i hastily clambered and found myself at eye-level with the man himself. i was thrilled at first, but quickly realized it was a big mistake, because i could see everyone. webster hall is quite small. i could see all of the girls being cradled from behind by their tall boyfriends, his chin on her head, as they swayed together to the music. i could see all of the guys going to get drinks for their girlfriends, and those girlfriends holding their boyfriends’ coats as they waited. there was this one couple right in front of me — the guy kept twirling his girlfriend’s hair around his fingers, and many times he would lean down and press his face into her hair (it was so golden and soft-looking). she smiled much. i wondered if she was happy.

i felt sad as i watched everything. is this how god feels? all these songs are about me, i couldn’t help but feel, and because god has so many songs written about him, he must be sad too. is he lonely as he watches over everything? where do all these people in love come from? and why are they always at concerts?

for all of the concerts that i’ve been to lately, i’ve been missing someone. that someone is always far away, whether in hong kong, new york, australia, china, london or singapore. i’m somehow always in these situations. perhaps i’m a sucker for pain. let me tell you guys the story of the Bangkok 100 Rock Festival that i went to a few years ago. i was 18 and so young, and that time feels like showers and showers of meteors away, but the truth is that i’m only 21 now and three years isnt that long a time. when i was 12 i used to read blogs of 21 year old girls in towns scattered all over the world, and i would think, wow, how old these girls are, and how real their lives seem to me, this 12 year old in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who was, for the most part, quite happy. now i am their age. but my life doesnt seem real to me at all. Unnecessary Tangent Counter = 1.

the point was… the concert in bangkok. so i boarded the very colorful Thai Airways plane, and i remember thinking how easy it was to swathe capitalism in happy purple and yellow seats, big posters exclaiming ‘fair trade coffee!’, big smiles, buy 1 free 1 promotions. but before i knew it i was at the concert site. did i know that i was going to meet the love of my life there? probably not. i wanted to hold his hand but i was afraid. perhaps it was possible that i’d always loved this guy. i remember him feeding me cut-up sausages with a skewer stick, and us sharing a big cup of Coke, but i don’t remember if he held me from behind as we listened to Oasis and Snow Patrol.

lots of things are hazy now in my memory. i dont remember how many nights i stayed, or if i was nervous before i met him. these days, i’m thankful to have him in my life because he saves me from drowning. the last time i was back in KL, i was supposed to help him with some shopping, but the day started and ended with me storming out of his car angrily in the middle of a vast and congested road. he never came back for me, so i kept walking. i could have walked off the edge of a cliff in the middle of bukit bintang and he would never have known. sometimes i think i need to check that fervid temper of mine.

i dont have much to say today. i’m really quite emotionally drained, as i tend to be these days due to nothing at all. it’s the start of a new week, i know, but i had such a restful weekend that spanned extra days. my favorite parts: a dusty evening nestled among old books at the strand, ice skating at bryant park, playing drinking games over lychee soju and the best fried chicken in the world (now sold in singapore too), hearing Sandstorm being played at a club, and the 12-hour sleep i got on Friday. blissful rarities! but these things can become undone so swiftly just by one wrong move. but then again, i’ve always been lucky.

Winter by Joshua Radin

I should know who I am by now
I walk the record stand somehow
Thinkin’ of winter
The name is the splinter inside me
While I wait

The walk has all been cleared by now
Your voice is all I hear somehow
Calling out winter
Your voice is the splinter inside me
While I wait

at the concert, he told us that the inspiration for this song came to him as he was walking along 1st avenue, between 3rd and 4th — which is the name of his first EP. but of course that’s where it had to happen.

22 comments November 24th, 2009

If I Were A Painting

this would be me

26 comments November 17th, 2009