i just got home from a nice night out with two former colleagues at everyone’s favourite blog advertising network, and last night i had dinner with kim and gareth where kim cooked up a delicious storm of roast chicken, layered potatoes and meringue cookies. it’s always nice to reconnect with the blogosphere even if in this rather remote and infrequent manner, because i miss so many people in there and it reminds me to be thankful of all the big and small treasures blogging has given me. it has made me many good friends, given me several precious best friends and most definitely thrown in my face many lessons that would have taken me years to learn otherwise. for these things and more, i will always be grateful for being bored one night and starting that little personal space on geocities.com 10 years ago.

so … i’m a year away from graduating and leaving the big apple. three years ago i quite disliked new york city; i found it abrasive and individualistic, and ironically in such a place it was hard to be ‘myself’. but i am beginning to love the city, for its boundless opportunities and its grace in allowing a tired and grey you to be a brightly shining phoenix — constantly in a state of flux, rebirth and renewal of the self — and for these reasons it’s been great to pursue an education there. for better or for worse, that part of me that searches for a chemical reaction on first contact has disappeared. i’m in the younger stages of realizing that the “i just know” sentiment doesn’t apply to everything, including cities, and that one has to be open to the element of surprise and yet know that the reason you love that city is because some things in it don’t change, and will remain a comfort to your changing, growing self. like how the entrances to central park are always just there even though i can never remember which streets they are on. or how the layout of manhattan is pretty straightforward, but once you get deep downtown, even a good sense of direction isn’t going to be of much help in finding one’s way (if one is searching for something in particular).

i think i mentioned somewhere in some recent post that i’ve lost a lot lately. like with most kinds of loss, i’ve been trying hard to repress a lot of the memories, and with time i begin to succeed until someday i realize that it’s been a full ten hours since i last thought about my loss. and then a full twelve hours. then a full waking day. and at some point, you look upon some thing and a distant memory flutters in a cobwebbed corner of your mind. i was looking at some pictures the other day and a whole host of these distant memories fluttered like an army of sparrows. ah, perhaps i should stop taking pictures of things i am bound to lose :) but what kind of life would that be.

and so, for my own archiving, here are some fragments of things i once cherished:

for joe

there’s something quite despicable about built-in furniture and the permanence they impose onto our beings, that tie us to them like gnarled roots do to soil, or viscous soil do to roots. there is an eyesore of a wardrobe attached like a fetus to the corners of my bedroom, and protest as i might it is never going away, unless the edges of my fury can collapse this house and we can all, once again, start from the ground up and build things just the way we like it. this life has become something that i merely inhabit, and during the winters and the springs something in me is sleeping that can only be awakened from the choppy waters of a familiar accent or the promise of something small (… that thing with feathers). every day in my parallel universe, i am tired- and every day i am losing battles waged against myself until i win everything i want. then i find, that in fact, both these lives cannot be superimposed onto each other because they will not fit, and ultimately i am the ultimate loser, because i did succeed in creating two lives — which of course, is something very unfair to the rest of the world and should not be attempted without a proper plan. the million dollar question is: who, really, is expecting me to be someone i am not? the lot of us can kick and scream against ‘the system’ or ‘the pressure’ or ‘my own drive’, but i think the thing to be blamed is the meta-system that tells you there should only be one system, or one world, or one you, (and yes,) or 1Malaysia. i think it should be perfectly fine if i want there to be two of me living in one world. but no, society thinks this fickle, or fake, or spreading oneself too thin. someone once told me, “nobody in the real world will understand this”- and while i used to think that only the purely self-absorbed or the crazy would dare utter such words, i find that the more i grow older, the more i believe this is true.

what can i do to teach myself that it is okay for me to live one day before the other? what can i do to ask you to accept me for who i am? i miss this one person but he is far away. i think my country is going to the dogs. and lately i’ve been learning that the alternatives to the dogs isn’t everything i thought they were. i’ve also since discovered that many of my superheroes are actually just human, with quite human intentions. presented with such foundations, it’s no wonder people attach themselves to drugs, alcohol, sex, music, books until they blend into these things and can no longer tell one from the other apart. i am the book, the sex is me. that must feel a lot better than drifting like a ghost in and out of this world — at least in the altered state you are something. can i say all of this without rebuke?

in the deepest of crises i close my eyes and i think of you. when i hear something funny i wish to tell you so that we can laugh about it together. everything i see i want to see it with you. i dont think i know you all that well yet but this is simply how i feel.

at the end of the day, we must always choose freedom. it’s funny but sometimes i think i do everything else but.

my undying cynicism of people’s intentions will one day be the death of me. it is a sort of cautious suspicion that appears to be rather useful artillery in this dog-eat-dog world that spins on an axis of the survival of the fittest… but as my own history will tell me — and i’m sure the history of many others out there — such artillery is only useful if it comes with some sort of a compass. it is an ongoing theme in my life: i am constantly trusting all the worst friends (people), and subjecting the ones who love me most to an increasingly harrowing gauntlet of tests. it’s not that i don’t love them too. in most cases i think i love them more than they love me. but it’s almost like i can’t quite understand why they love me, and why they are here in my life. it’s sort of why girls love asking their perplexed (and often frustrated) boyfriends why he loves her. ‘i just do’ doesn’t quite cut it. it’s not that we’re vain, or stirring shit – we just want to know if you really know who we are. ‘because you’re cute, pretty, smart, kind’ doesn’t cut it either. every 5th girl on the street probably has that combination and there’s nothing at all amazing about it, as well as nothing thoughtful about such an analysis. someone once told me that he knew he loved her when she yelled at him for not registering to vote. i thought that was all kinds of wonderful, even if she made him sleep on the couch for a night.

i knew i loved him when:

1 – he canceled a date with me at the last possible minute to help his mother with grocery shopping

2 – we were looking at shooting stars outside my house, in the restless night, and he ‘gave’ me two shooting stars because i was sad that i’d spotted two less shooting stars than he had

3 – the 7th or so time that he came home to get me for lunch, and it occurred to me that this was going to happen every day for as long as we both wanted

4 – as we were breaking up, in the yellow cab, i moved to kiss him on the cheek and he turned away and said, please don’t do that

it sometimes strikes me in a flash of blind panic, when i look up and everyone is unrecognizable, that time is running out and my vacation is likely to end. as these things don’t usually last more than a week or ten days, i must then absorb as much as i can from this new place before i take flight once again. in this photographic instance, all my senses become heightened and every particle of every thing seems to rush off their surfaces and narrow in aggressively on me, and my time, and my consciousness, and all the things that are attached to me like my clothes and the velvety insides of my shoes. it occurs to me that the bartop in this wannabe french cafe is made of steel and how strange that is, and that the woman from earlier has some hair out of place. everything comes as some surprise.

those questions that we like to ask each other as kids- today i remembered one: if you had to give up one sensory faculty, which would it be? my answer has always been the sense of touch. it seems the most disposable. i’d probably miss the sensation of running my fingers across brittle pages of books, or my hand through hair, but what do we get out of water straying across our backs? or pulling at petals. or grasping the fat hips of a cold bottle of wine? not very much. the memory of it evaporates, and it takes a lot of effort to be grounded in the experience. sight, sound, taste, smell on the other hand are perfectly irreplaceable and irresistible. we would be rendered defenseless if any of them destroyed itself. and so lost! sight is probably the most crucial of all — such an immense, vast and rich arena of opportunity it bestows upon us small humans. and how sound complements this arena and helps us make sense of what we see, gives us access to emotions even when we close our eyes. the sense of touch really is the least important, i think. but suddenly some cuff of denim brushes against my ankle and i realize this isn’t really a vacation. i’m actually here and it’s not a reprieve and i’m not leaving in ten days, because this is new york. that’s why everyone looks different. but there’s this denim on my ankle and it feels wonderful. it’s so scratchy. it’s pressing down on my skin quite urgently but softly. if i reach out, our fingerprints match- and i can feel the crest and trough of every groove in the most explosive sensitivity possible. in ten minutes there will be a hug-break, and we’ll slow dance on the sidewalk where people also struck with spring romance will smile at us. there’s that crisp shirt and how it feels on my cheek.

my nose has been so assaulted by the aroma of coffee because we’ve been in this cafe so many hours, and my ears are quite numb from the mutinous sounds of A.R Rahman, and even the lamps are dimming to welcome the evening dining ambience… so in an experience quite like tunnel vision, all i can feel is that damn denim on my ankle. right now it seems like all i can understand. i’m going blind and deaf from this. somewhere in the back of my head i’m remembering that this actually is a vacation. but at least i have more than ten days before my sense of touch destroys itself.

it’s been a weekend of tiered festivities, what with chinese new year and valentines’ day falling on the same day this year. Flushing, New York was redder and more boisterous than usual this weekend, with stalls of roses lining the streets and calls of 新年快乐! being jostled back and forth amongst the exuberant crowd. some of us had gotten together for our own reunion dinner the night before, courtesy of carol the domestic goddess, and this morning we all went for a dim sum brunch before scattering back to our various locations in the american northeast once again.

as we ate, we could hear the faint sounds of the lion dance drums rolling up from the streets beneath us, the familiar thumping rhythm calling out to our homesickness like the pied piper. some of us wanted to leave the restaurant to quickly catch a glance of the lions, but how lucky we were that the lions came to us instead. two of them, white and red with silver skin, burst into the dim sum parlour along with their troupe, and we dissolved into such excitement. i wondered aloud why they had the same colours. ‘twins!’ he responded. and suddenly i was young again, short and sitting on my dad’s shoulders, watching two lions with big eyelids prance around the crowd, soaking up love. ‘twins,’ the adults would nod in marvel and say knowingly, as if twin lions were rare and magical. i used to cry when i saw the big ceremonial platters of roast pig with its head still intact (complete with flower in its dead mouth), but i loved the lions. i loved the wooden ladders and watching the two lions dance up and down, up and down– before one of them would emerge victorious with the red ribboned vegetable in her mouth. i loved getting a fraction of the prize money from my parents if they won the gamble on either lion. and i did so hate chinese new year music, with its annoying pitch, but i loved the pink plastic cherry blossom trees and the red paper fishes that we used to help our aunts make out of angpau packets.

and of course i loved angpaus too. chern han and i chanced upon a little temple in flushing today, and we stepped in to offer joss sticks. they gave us little angpau packets (from Citibank!) as we left, and i thought they would contain some Taoist good luck charm, but instead each packet contained $2. i was so very thrilled, but the slice of authenticity felt strange in my hand. it was my one and only angpau this year. if i were back home, my brothers and i would be hoarding red packets, counting to see who got more this year. my mom called me today to talk about some money that i owe her, and i jokingly said that she could help me keep my angpaus from her friends as part of the repayment. she snorted and said that’s more like a rebate on the angpaus she had to give out this year anyway. and i laughed because it still seems so familiar to me how my mom used to usher us quickly into a corner and make us check how much Uncle This or Aunty That gave us, so that she could ‘pau’ the same amount for their children. in my semi-angsty teenage years i used to think, wow, how artificial this practice of giving angpaus is! but who cares! money is still money. angpaus are still angpaus and they’re still awesome and i still want them. the adults can worry about all the red packet politics!

we didn’t gamble last night but we did play games with cards. chinese new year does lack something without the crackling sounds of mahjong and the smell of new crisp paper notes. i was always the ‘water fish’ so i shied away from gambling, but now i wish i’d learned how to play from my parents and my brothers, who are all incredibly pro at anything involving cards and money. it’s something that you miss out on, just like how you’re missing out on a whole world of existence if you can’t read chinese and you find yourself in flushing or little bourke street, taipei or hongkong, or a chinese dessert place with no english menus. but at the very least i am redeemed by my ability to peel a very mean mandarin orange uni-peel.

i called my parents the other day to wish them a happy chinese new year. they were having reunion dinner at my grandfather’s home, as is the annual tradition, where my aunt makes the best foochow fishballs, steamed fish, fried glass noodles, wined chicken and all sorts of wonderful festival fare. my parents passed the phone around, and for 5 minutes, my soulless suite was filled with life as my relatives gabbled down the phone. so much shrieking! when they hung up, all was quiet again, and it was just me in a house of people who don’t quite get along, in a wintry state, surrounded with schoolwork and the problems introduced by dictatorial democracy, frenemies, long distance, and growing pains. i’ve grown so much stronger being here, even if i often feel helpless. i guess giving up some years of chinese new year and valentines days is a worthy trade.

this is my campus in the snow. it looks beautiful. i was late for class one day but stopped to admire the vast fields of snow as the blizzard raged. days like this i love my school and can’t imagine myself anywhere else. especially when we get snow days where all classes are canceled and there are snowball wars! though i’m still very bruised from particularly well-packed snowballs.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

early last night we walked past one of those flower warehouses that was open all night in preparation for the valentines’ day rush. the buckets and buckets of flowers and fillers and strewn newspaper everywhere reminded me so much of valentines day in 2005, and the flower project that we had in high school. we’d went all the way to cameron highlands, song jun and i, to look at the different grade of roses so that we could order them in bulk to make bouquets for sale. i vaguely remember us having them delivered to someone’s (aira’s?) house and storing all the flowers in her bathtubs before we started the wrapping. jamie, who’d worked in a florist the year before, taught us how to wrap bouquets and shred curled ribbons. it’s a lot harder than it looks, as is de-thorning roses. but we made so much money! it was the most exhausting valentines day ever, but so memorable. this year, i have a silly smile on my face. it’s quite like the silly smile that sieutheng used to get so aggravated by back in form 2. :) there is a lot of health in how i’m feeling. these smiles keep spreading across my face like– dandelion seeds! in the wind. and they are really quite unstoppable.

happy chinese new year, happy valentines day, and happy life, everyone! :)