after all, i never let another teardrop fall

Tonight I counted and I have flown back and forth from melbourne something like fifteen times. That’s a lot of goodbyes. It’s my final semester and still I can’t seem to be able to leave without some part of me staying here. Dreading going back, loathe to stay here and in between is what? On the night before a flight all the traces of my past goodbyes, the ones that have meant something and the ones that didnt, hang in the air as if weighing it down.

Malaysia is like a landscape bleached of meaning. I remember all those nights flying into KLIA and looking out the window to watch the lights come in — it didn’t matter if I was sad or happy or ambiguous, I looked at the lights all the same but this time around I didn’t bother. I just wasn’t interested enough.

And the thing is, it’s not Malaysia that’s changed, it’s me. I can still hear him say it, You’ve changed, he said, accusingly. I wondered then why I always felt incredibly guilty when anyone said that to me. The recrimination in his tone sent me into a downward spiral of fear because I didn’t realise then that it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him. And so, desperate and afraid, feeling love slip out of my grasp (as if you could hold onto something like that by sheer force of will!), I tried to deny it, to explain it away, to somehow convince myself and him that I was still the same person he fell in love with. And in a way i was, but in a way I wasn’t either.

I searched for new meaning in this place I’m supposed to call home but these few days have only served to show me how divorced from the past my life has become, how far away it seems, especially after all the things that happened this semester. I’ve changed, it’s what people do.

‘It’s not the way we say goodbye that matters, it’s the way we spend the time between hello and goodbye.’

–august 07

disaster is not beautiful

I would change everything for happily ever after.

— www.punkndisorderly.com

silence like a cancer grows.

I hold my chopsticks funny.

I only eat chicken flavoured maggi mee.

Black BMWs turn me on.

My favourite postcard has a picture of a girl on it with her mouth stapled shut. Underneath it the card demands how much longer am I going to be seen and not heard.

I have a need to be heard.

I hate cleaning my hair out of the shower drain after I’ve washed it. I know its my hair, but its still gross.

I constantly feel guilty when it comes to my parents — in my own eyes, I can never be a good enough daughter.

Manicures last like, two seconds on me.

In my Aussie kindergarten class photo I am the only kid who looks like she was tortured into taking it.

I am addicted to mint flavoured green tea. No, it doesn’t taste like colgate.

I miss my cousins — a lot. Not as individuals but as a group.

I have never managed to keep a living thing alive. Even the tortoises I kept as a child survived because my mother remembered to feed them. This does not bode well for any future offspring I may have.

When I was a little bit younger I used to say ‘when’. Now, I say ‘if’.

When I completely lose my perspective and the world spirals down into a small black hole, I will unfailingly see something or someone who reminds me exactly how lucky I am.

I can think better when my hair is tied up.

I clean the house to a playlist of ABBA songs. It makes me work faster.

I don’t sing in the shower. I tried it once and ended up swallowing a mouthful of shampoo.

I think Batman is cooler than Spiderman.

life is for leaving town alive

I’ll be away for two weeks so check back after the 16th. =)

coffee + mother + the lights of baillieu + oth in reverse

I come to the page seeking something. I lay the ink across the paper in an attempt to define myself. I seek a comfort and solace that people have failed time and again to offer. I am looking for redemption and reminders. I hope that between the black words and cream pages I can spin out a version of me that I like in my entirety, but so very often I can only find some bits that satisfy. I am left with the feeling that there is so much that is lacking in my character. And yet, I am proud of quite a few aspects of the internal workings that is me.

Sometimes I scroll through my old blog posts, not out of some self-centered vanity or even particular regard for my words. I do it to remind myself that you could add all the elements of the life I record here and plus it with all the ones that I don’t, you could mix the the bad habits (read: alcohol) and good ones (read: addiction to bookshops), you could factor in everything that you and I know about the me that is leeyee (and sometimes olivia) and you would still not get to the sum total of who I am.

The beauty of the human condition is that we are not mathematical formulae. We don’t make sense. We are complex. We are flawed. All the things which I sometimes forget in the moments when I attempt to demand some kind of abstract perfection of myself, on nights when who I am is not enough even for me, I forget that we are so much more than the sum total of who we are.

all we can do is keep breathing…

What if the seasons were reversed and life grew in winter and died in spring and ripened in the fall and was harvested in summer?

What if our circadian rhythms were programmed in reverse and the world slumbered in the daylight hours and went about its business during the night?

What if we gave birth to our parents?

What if time stood still instead of marching inexorably on?

What if we were paid to play and punished for working too hard?

What if 70% of the Earth was land mass and only 30% was water?

What if cheating were applauded and honesty was ridiculed?

What if we were all amnesic and every single day was a slate wiped clean?

What if you were me?

words have left us so alone

I have a knack for unearthing embarrassing high school stuff (see: Hawaiian dance) like this:

http://pub11.bravenet.com/forum/927840566/fetch/127245/2

Lol. Peng, you are so going to get a kick out of this. How is it still around?!

almost lovers aways do

I am completely incapable of doing any work at home. Things I did today instead of writing my neuroscience essay:

Walked to Gloria Jeans for a large latte (in anticipation of all the work I was going to get done)

Picked up books from the library and saw someone and realised tht life really is quite a joke.

Washed the dishes and did laundry

Opened Word for Mac and sat down, stared at empty screen for about ten minutes, listening to Broken by Lifehouse

Online window shopping for half an hour, blog hopped for another half

Watched Young and Dangerous 4 and 5

Walked to convenience store for instant ramen

And now I’m blogging. This is ridiculous!

life should be an episode of friends

I’m beginning to think that the neatness of my apartment is directly related to the state of mind which is in turn correlated to the status of my heart.

And the apartment currently resembles a bombed out disaster area.

Pieces, pieces everywhere and I only have two hands to catch them all.

time hates love

So it was decided between the two of us over msn. I will name my first three children pertama, kedua and ketiga.

And instant oats tastes damned good after a week of eating things that were either too salty or too sweet.

I’m listening to I’ll stand by you, the girls aloud version. Because 45 seconds in is a line I thought I would never have to forsake.

‘And so does distance.’