avoid bright lights

There is a tiny window of blogging opportunity where my proxy server seems to be functioning but I’m afraid it will close any moment.

So, this blog is pretty much dead, thanks to the great fucking firewall of china. I can access it once in a blue moon but I’m trying to decide whether to keep it alive in a half-dead state or shut it down altogether and wait until I get out of china to start blogging again.

Btw, how ridiculous is it that china blocks the wikipedia page that lists all the sites banned in this paranoid country?

if i am lost for a day try to find me

am having a blah day.

In a way, it’s actually worse than having a bad day because at least with a bad day there is anger, drama, tears, possible throwing of heavy objects. A blah day is just…well…blah. A bad day can be rescued by a pint of ice cream — or my preferred alternative: a shot of tequila. On the other hand a blah day doesn’t warrant the unneccesary intake of calories nor does it seem to justify having your head in the toilet bowl puking alcohol.

I think it’s time for a nap.

note: this post was written some time ago.

you are the reason that i still believe

The thing is there is never a time when you will be more honest, when your convictions will be stronger, or your motives will be more pure than they are right now. Which means you should chase whatever excites you. Be confident, and take risks, and paint over my words so you can start writing your own. My story may have inspired you, but I’m certain your story will inspire the next girl to live in our room. I want you to know you don’t need somebody to write about you in order for your life to mean something. You can write about yourself… make your own destiny. Then years from now the next girl will keep what you write on that door long enough to remind you how inspired your life is. And you can tell that girl to paint over the door because you realize the words you wrote, the friends you had, the urgency you felt will always be there under the paint. The love you professed will always be there, the spark of something undeniable, a seed of hope, the truth for better or for worse burning fiercely just below the surface.

- oth, s4.

right now he’s probably buying her some fruity li’l drink cos she can’t shoot whisky

Passiveaggressivenotes.com

Perfect for when you wake up cranky and need release.

And what might make one cranky, you might ask? Noticing that in September 2009, one wrote a total of TWO, count ‘em, TWO blog posts.

What the hell is wrong with me.

the ephemera of every day

A complete deprivation of good coffee and cigarettes has robbed me of my life energy. My limbs melt away into folds of softness, all the air seems to be sucked out of the room and I am left grasping weakly for inspiration that just won’t come.

As usual, the closer it gets to december, the more anxious I become. Every time I write the date I feel a jolt of surprise and then, an inexplicable sense of depression, of time passing irretrievably by. Chasing time, yet again.

“We may all have stopped smoking, but we continue to burn”
Luc Sante

what the heart wants

I struggle with the concept of home.

Malaysia, Melbourne, Beijing. My mind spins. Each place means different things to me, differently loved but equally special. Only, they all have one thing in common — because I love them all, I can never love them completely.

Loving many people and many places means you are always missing someone or somewhere.

And worst of all is that the person you end up missing the most is the version of you who is whole — the one who has not left pieces of herself on different continents, whose heart is not constantly yearning for somewhere else.

these are early days yet

If wishes were the wind…

I would like

- a metabolism that effortlessly burns every calorie I take in instead of a body that conserves every spare scrap of fat as if I was starving it. Which I am most assuredly not.

- the perfect pair of black skinny jeans because I am pretty sure that they don’t exist.

- a very tiny and very ugly pug dog that I shall proceed to name Pretty and who will express inordinate amounts of affection when I return from a boring day’s worth of classes. hey, some kids have imaginary friends, I have imaginary dogs.

- a photographic memory because apparently that’s the only way to learn chinese characters. hel-lo, you need an average of 800 to 1000 memorised words to read a fricking newspaper for gods sake. is that not ridiculous?

- an oven. seriously, do you have any idea how boring it is to be confined to stovetop cooking? oh how good were the days of baked chicken and stuffed portobello mushrooms and chocolate chip cookies. not that i ever baked chocolate chip cookies but that’s besides the point, I would like to at least have the option.

- a totoro soft toy to sit beside my brand new dancing gizmo plush toy that canadianboy got me. its a token of love when someone buys you something they think is hideously ugly just ‘cos you’re obsessed with it.

seven years went under the bridge like time was standing still

In my dreams a storm is coming.

My back is against a wall, except it’s not really a wall, it’s a person whose face I cannot see. Whose smile I remember, whose warmth came and went in real life but in dreams….in dreams he was the wall to my back, the peace to my turmoil, the whispered comfort in frightening dark.

The problem with having a wall to your back is that you get used to it and when the wall crumbles you are left trying to stand on your own again.

i know the cost of a losing hand

I used to love you.

You shaped the way I think, the way I dreamed, the way I learned how to be as a person. I have the sweetest memories of you and me, as well as the most painful. From the safety of hindsight, I can now see all your faults in sharp relief but I also know that you were funny and loving and complex.

You brought out the best in me, but when it ended, I found myself saying things so ugly I never thought I had them inside me. When it ended I got really really drunk and stayed really really drunk for a really really long time.When it ended I didn’t know how to pick myself up again and move on.

You were quite simply the most important person in my life.

But you are not anymore.

The point is that I loved you, and I appreciate and will always appreciate the impact you had on me.

So I would really like it if you stopped fucking around with my life without even being in it.

this post is called ‘a canadianboy in kl’

He talks about finance a lot and he’s mildly obsessed with environmental policy. He gets rowdy when he’s drunk and then passes out on the floor. He sleeps spread-eagled, hand on heart and all over the bed so that I get no space. This thing between us, I don’t know what it’s future will be but it has so much presence that I can’t help but smile and follow it.

Getting lost in kl city in the middle of the night. A hand holding mine while I drive. Bak kut teh and shisha at rasta and too much johnnie walker in a bangsar club. Aston villa beating liverpool three-one and his ecstatic jubilance. Chilli crab and his beloved aloo paratha and saag. Lazy afternoons doing sweet nothing. The view from luna bar on a quiet sunday night. His criminal misuse of malaysianisms that by right should land him in verbal jail.

I wonder if this is where I thought I would be when I wondered, six months ago in beijing, where I would be today.