a small window on the lower right of the screen gives me the treasured opportunity to peer into his world, to see strange cushions of hot vapour billowing out into the snowy air, as he bangs and clangs around the kitchen, always narrowly missing the coffee pot. from so far away, it is magical to behold that vapour — it looks like smoke from a chimney, sauntering upwards into the morning air pompously, and almost seems to me to puff forth from the pages of a fairytale script. but more magical than anything is the truth that if i speak, he can hear me. sometimes that is all i need. somewhere i have read, and in life have been shown firsthand, that this sort of thing can be dangerous. it is so dangerous that i don’t even want to define it, lest i realize it is exactly what my affliction is. but then there is trust. and nothing makes sense henceforth.

some pictures from a jaunt into williamsburg, brooklyn earlier yesterday:

when i was in standard one, my grandmother showed up outside my classroom at school, a little nervous and jittery, and asked to speak to me. it was a strange obtrusion, but i was quite pleased to see her nevertheless, so i hopped out of my seat very quickly and scurried to the door in excitement. she told me to bring out my schoolbag, and when i did she quickly opened it, revealing thick stacks of foreign currency in the front compartment of my bag. i had no idea that there was any money in my bag, or why she put it there that morning when she was packing my peanut butter sandwich lunch for me, but she seemed relieved that there was even any money there at all.

when i went home after school, i found out that the money belonged to my dad, and the news around the house was that i had stolen the money. no one ever yelled at me (i think they thought i saw some money and just grabbed it without much thought) so i wasn’t too perturbed. i knew it was my grandmother who had put the money in my backpack, because she does things like that sometimes, putting things where they don’t belong or forgetting what she had just said a few minutes ago. i wondered for a brief moment if she had defended me or if she had allowed everyone to believe i had taken the money… but then i realized i didn’t care either way. there are these people that we love, and sometimes they do very strange things, but you love them anyway because you know they are good people.

a year later i got in trouble with my dad over some chinese traditions (he is quite superstitious) and he had started to cane me. my brothers are the type who run helter skelter around the house when caned, but for some reason i never knew i was allowed to do that, and so i’d sit and grab at my legs, howling like a dog while being caned. at some point, as she always does, my grandmother tried to stop him, but she moved a little too slowly and got slashed by the rattan cane on her arm. she has this condition where she has very thin blood viscosity, and bruises and bleeds easily, this occasion being no different — and the night was punctuated with a long bloody gash on her right arm. later that night (after she made us some hot milo) we sat in bed putting talcum powder on each other’s wounds and talking until we fell asleep.

i’m missing my grandmother a lot tonight. it’s about 5pm in KL now so she’ll be just about getting ready to have dinner – this disgusting porridge blended with carrots that smells absolutely foul but is supposed to be good for her. i haven’t had a real conversation with her since i was 13 and even those were disconnected smatterings of sounds and words. in this world very few people can be that proverbial friend who sits with us on a swing, saying nothing, and leave us feeling like it was the best conversation we’ve ever had. my grandmother is one of those people for me. whenever i have the opportunity to go home for breaks over the school year, i like to lie in bed with her and just sleep. she pulls my hair sometimes to wake me up but those are still the deepest sleeps that i will get to have for a long time.

some pictures of old people, taken while i was working in hong kong this summer:

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:

was tagged as this image on facebook, so i guess it’s about time i said something here: