I was going through a comprehension with my Tutee yesterday and we did a passage on tattoos. 

I've wanted the words "just breathe" tattooed on the back of my right shoulder  since 2010. The same font, same location. So I guess it's pretty safe that I didn't want it in the heat of the moment.

2010 was a tough point in my life. It was the period where something really drastic happened and that led to me changing quite a big part of my life and myself. It's something that I haven't felt comfortable enough to speak to anyone about up till this day and tbh I don't really know if I will ever divulge this. Anyway, it was at that moment when I felt so down that the inspiration for this tattoo came to me. 

The tattoo was inspired by the translation of the Chinese characters 呼吸. That was what my grandmother used to say to me when I spent several nights crying till I nearly got a panic attack and she would just hold my hand and say those words to me. 

Tattoos used to be a religious symbol for tribes. Now, it has become an extension of body art, of self expression and a need for individuality. Many have told me not to get the tattoo because of tattoo regret, but I don't know I'm really inspired to get it now. Maybe one day I will

25 sep

life is good. :)

driving was fun today i had a different instructor and he played pop musics while we drove.

i got to drive out myself and i cleared my module pretty fast

getting more confident driving now (Y)

the uber cab i called came super fast and i reached school in time to catch up with stats

managed to submit my stats assignment and got full marks for cognition quiz :D can i get a whatwhat bc cognition is such a tedious module

spoke to nicky and managed to get some htht in despite being in school

it's my official chinese birthday today so i get the mianxian w the red egg which doesn't really taste different from regular egg but it's cool because maybe it's been blessed or something idk actually

HTGAWM SEASON 2 IS FINALLY OUT TODAY WAHOOOOO

and i finally understood what's been getting me down lately. i might finally have a solution

all in all, t'was good day :)

Let everything be ok

Just breathe

Self-updating

It's the second week of school and it has been thoroughly exhausting waking up for morning lessons everyday :O zzz (my face when my alarm sounds and wakes me up from my lalaland)

I like being busy though. I like having a routine and being organised. It distracts me from the now, and when things get stagnant my imagination runs wild and I find myself drowning in a pool of insecurity and self-deprecation. Still can't come to terms with the fact that I'm now a year 3 psychology student. The past 2 years of learning has been fun, but I admit that I've been able to kinda slack off in class and still score well. Now year 3 is the make or break year. I attended the honors talk by one of the Australian professors and it's so competitive :O The amount of people getting accepted is only 50-60, with 8 of them being from Singapore this year. At this moment I really want to attend honors because it's gonna be an adventure and one of the things I yearn to do most since I was little, to study overseas. Everyone that went on exchanges had pleasant things to say about them, and I would want an opportunity to stand on my own feet in a foreign country and indulge in these learning experiences that seem to apply to every country. To meet new people, to taste new food and probably get into trouble.

But another part of me is pretty reluctant to go. Much of it stems from the fact that I'm in a stable relationship and I'm so afraid of what one year apart can do to us. Just the thought of leaving him for 9 days to Mexico City made me so sad. I cannot fathom how I can survive one year away. Maybe these insecurities will fade away with time.

Dance-wise. Production is coming and it's pretty fucked up. I shan't say much but it is. It basically should be the subjects of a learned helplessness experiment because it so much embodies every aspect of the psychology theory.

I'm going to volunteer at IMH this Saturday. My friend recommended me to the supervisor and I'm both nervous and excited about it. Hopefully helping other people will help me find some meaning in my life. God that sounded so hopelessly depressing. What I meant was that maybe it can provide some direction in what I'm meant to do to help people in the future.

Untitled

I have been doing some self reflection lately. 

These last few days/months, attribute it to mother nature's blessing of PMS or a lack of direction in my life, has been riddled with self serving questions. With that comes an overwhelming amount of insecurity of what the hell I'm doing with my life. 

I don't know if I'm making the right decisions or selecting my priorities correctly. But that's the beauty of life, it's filled with so many options and opportunities that come a'knocking on your front door that you never know if there is an ideal answer. One of my biggest personal obstacle is the inability to dissociate myself from the past. Everything that has happened from 18 September 1994 to this very day molded me to be the person I am today. And while I am still on the journey to figure out who this person is, I live in the past.

Episodes from years ago replay in my head and I can't get over certain paths I've taken but I'm glad I made those choices. 

This feeling of insecurity and uncertainty is shrouding me from enjoying what my peers my age are enjoying right now. I like being ahead of my peers and gaining an advantage to what this big scary infamous "real world" is like, but other times I just need to let my hair down and be totally irresponsible. 

Be young, impulsive, spend money on shoes, splurge on concerts, meet new people from all over the world, have unprotected sex, take joyrides, go to cafes, skinny dip, club hop, keep a diary of all my adventures like I used to. 

 

Why you should read instead of watch

With the omnipresence of various television programmes and movies to satiate our need for visual entertainment, how many of us still read?

By reading I don't mean scrolling through the neverending feeds of social media, reading about why a certain clothing brand is the best, people's unyielding arguments online or about a friend's latest shenanigans in a new foreign country. I mean pick up a book, sit down in a coffee shop and just let the world around you drone into this blur. When you read, you teleport from the place you are at into this fictitious wonderful world. A world which you conjured, where the trees can be blue and the stream flowing a baby lavender. Where pigs can fly and the sky's not even a limit. You can step into a closet and find yourself in a winter wonderland called Narnia, travel through time and places, and possess any powers you can ever fathom.

Reading lets you escape into a world where the most magical things can happen. You are the owner of your imagination, and the places you travel to are limited only by the parameters of your imagination - which runs infinite across galaxies.

Reading feeds your soul, your creativity. It fuels your lust for wonder and excitement. You watch as the black and white combinations of words on the page transform into a picturesque scene. The author tells one story, but you interpret and view it as your own. Different people can look at the same words and see distinct images. You see what you read, and what this ability to change what someone writes into moving images in your mind is amazing.

It's the best gift I have ever discovered ever since I was reading Enid Blyton as a little girl. As a young child the fertility of your imagination is discovered as you dive into the experience of creating your own little world, a little bubble to escape to, everytime you pick up a book. It's a world which you create alone, but you never truly are. You're surrounded with mystical creatures, heroes, villains and talking animals. You witness magic, enchantment and wanderlust. This sense of power and awe that one experiences through reading is probably the reason why a movie has never been better than the book. One can never find a series of motion pictures put together by the best director, characters depicted by the best actors/actresses Hollywood can buy, better than the scenes produced by the spinning wheels of one's imagination.

It's a lost art, with ebooks and online articles and the glamorization of visual entertainment. Put down your movie tickets, iPads and handphones. Pick up a book.

Metamorphosis

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”

― Plato, The Symposium


I read this some time ago, but it came to my memory only when someone mentioned it today. I adore Greek mythology, tarot card readings, magic and most pseudo sciences as much as the next guy. When people speak of romance and relationships, terms such as the ultimate search for one's "other half" has been stereotyped to be the shiny pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This mystifying idea of someone that has been allegedly created for you, that is specifically engineered to be your perfect fit in a puzzle, is one that I ascribe to. Now. Whenever someone gets out of a relationship and feel terrible, most people's comfort to the unfortunate soul is "don't worry, he/she probably wasn't the one for you. Your soul mate is still out there somewhere"

I read this article, a hypothesised world that every human being had an electronic bracelet embedded on their wrist, much like the ones in the move In Time. But instead of stating the time of your death, counted down to the exact moment you will make contact with your soul mate. In the story, many people didn't want the ruined novelty of having fate tell you exactly when the person you will spend the rest of your life with will surface. We wish to have a hold, a sense of power, over our destiny and with that comes the need for free will. Especially in affairs of the heart, where the soul is deemed to be the main reason that distinguishes human beings from other species. Our soul is what makes us us, what differentiates from us artificial intelligence created robots (as evident in the movie Never Let Me Go - but I digress).

I wouldn't say that I grew up in an incomplete environment - despite the fact that my dad was nonexistent for most parts of my life, my other family members more than made up for it. I was nurtured in a caring and supportive environment, with sufficient food on my plate and more love than I could ask for. I am lucky. One thing that stuck with me through childhood was viewing my parents' relationship transform from a small crack in their marriage to a dilapidated building crumbling to pieces after being struck by an atomic bomb. At a young age, I witnessed my father hitting my mother, my mother crying and hiding the fact that my dad was on the edge of walking out on us from the children, my father cheating on my mother with one of their friends and my mother doing everything she can to make up for the fact that while my father was alive and well, he did not exist in my world.

I learnt of this process called triangulation - where when relationships between 2 people experience tension, they spread this tension over 3 relationships by triangulating a third party. Being the eldest of the 3 children, my mother chose to confide in my secrets of my father's affairs. Additionally, whenever my father wanted to make excuses to go out and see his "friend" who I was well aware was his mistress, I had to keep secrets from my siblings and mother. With experiences like this I was told by almost all the female members of my family to not trust any guy. Growing up in 10 years of girls' school fuelled this feministic mindset that all guys were bad and that they were not to be trusted.

So of course, this is accompanied by a few years of me using guys and hurting them, being afraid of commitment and ruining some of my closest friendships. Up until last year, I didn't believe that any one guy is enough for me to be both physically and emotionally satisfied with. I didn't believe in forever, and that I could be happy with just one person. Suddenly it was like I metamorphosed and the part of me that was always unsatisfied with relationships and filled with mistrust started to fade away.

Zeus was afraid of the power humans can have should they find their other halves. It took me a while, but I think I finally got it right.

Which wolf wins? 

"The one you feed"

Now I lay me down to sleep

In a paddy field, paddy cakes

2005 when mimosas were the wonders of the world

Broken shards scattered on the floor

Blood-soaked carcass on the lawn 

"With no hands"

Sing me a lullaby, a mellow one about raindrops 

Snowflakes that fall on my nose and eyelashes 

Tip of the iceberg, subconscious wallowing deeply fear

That light....the angle

Fish illuminates

I am drawn 

I am gentle

I am torn

No kindness

Not now

Up looking trees, uplifting skies

Zeus and hades both have eyes 

Which wolf will win

Which will prevail

Feed the one and it will not fail

Lucky

This is my first post of 2015.

Looking back on 2014, most of my posts have been highly negative. I guess this stems from the reason that it takes me a lot of anger and distress to channel all my negative energy into this ball of hot fury that results in me typing furiously on my keyboard, penning down everything that's on my mind. I write my anger out, and sometimes that's what I need to do to get things out of my system.

I don't feel any difference between 2014 and 2015. I mean, physically. The place I'm residing in, my friends, my family are all the same. So technically if all calendars were destroyed and there was no way to keep track of dates, I wouldn't know that we were entering a new year. But we celebrate the new year nonetheless, and I love new year's celebration. It's a symbolic thing, getting together with people you care about and bade the old year goodbye while welcoming the start of a new year. I like to leave behind any shred of regret or bad experience and embrace the warm and fuzzy feeling of hope another year brings. So now comes the metamorphosis.

I'm turning 21 this year. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but rather to society, as this is the age I legally become an adult in the eyes of the modern businessmen. Transitioning from a teenager to an adult, despite me not feeling a physical difference, can bring about psychological and mental changes. Perhaps my module this semester in Development psychology can shine some light on the situation. But I digress. Embarking on a new chapter/stage/phase in my life definitely warrants some reflection on my life thus far, which is the main objective of this post.

"Lucky"

The "" doesn't mean that I'm being sarcastic or anything. It's just what I feel summarise my life so far. While I do admit that living a good life still requires your mental and emotional capabilities, coupled with your ability to function well as a member of society, luck still does play a part. It doesn't insinuate that I've just had everything served to me on a silver platter, nor was I born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I used to think that I was a pretty lucky kid. I got to go where I wanted to, got to make wonderful friends, excel academically and in my CCAs, and life turned out pretty much the way I wanted to. Sometimes I think that it's a higher being or my waigong watching over me, protecting me from the "evils" of the world, or guiding the universe to be in line with a small girl's view.

I am lucky. And I don't mean that in the hoity-toity-I'm-better-than-everybody kind of way. I'm grateful for the people that have been/am still in my life, grateful for the family that always stands by me through my ups and downs, the genuine friends that care for me. And I feel that I haven't necessarily appreciated them as thoroughly as I would have liked to, so this year is my way of saying thank you. Thank you to every single person that has come and left their footprint in my life, as corny as that sounds.

These few years most of my problems have circled around grades or relationships. So now it's time for me to do them justice and give thanks to those parties involved.

I'm lucky. I'm lucky to have dated really wonderful guys. Every guy that I've dated was a genuine, loving and sincere guy and I couldn't be more thankful than that. I've never dated anyone who was a total jerk or player. They were charming in their own way. They displayed real care for others. They pampered me. They treated me like royalty, like how I imagined the Disney princes treated their princesses. They showered me with love and attention, and put my well-being in their highest regard. They were serious about me, in the relationship to make it last. Sometimes I feel that they love me more than I love myself. I'm lucky. I'm lucky to have met really good guys :)




So to everyone that have walked the path with me, thank you for making me lucky :)