Look at that tiny house peaking through the light

The sun's setting gold. There's a tiny ferry tutting across the harbour water, leaving a trail of white. I can see North Head illuminated, glowing because of the sunset. Rangitoto looms in the background like a guard. There are sails and cranes and buildings and people, and in the far far distance, little houses peeking through the light.

The sky's this indescribable colour of grey and blue and cyan and mauve, tinted with a blush of that fading brown. Like the whole world's awash with some nostalgic sepia. I can't help staring at that tiny boat sail back and forth, back and forth. There's someone standing at the balcony window opposite. There's someone walking along the road outside. All these things. All these people. This is the world. This is what being alive feels like. Friendships can break, love can fail, family can leave and people can pass away, but what will never disappear, are the clouds that drift past your patch of sky everyday. The sea that sparkles under the setting sun. The people that keep on walking, the boats that keep on sailing, no matter how you're feeling today; no matter what problems you're facing.

The world will keep on spinning without you, and that's the excruciating beauty of it. The grandness. Your insignificance. How tall the heavens are above you, how deep the earth stretches below you, and then there's just little, unremarkable you. Born into this world maybe by accident, maybe by chance, but definitely not by fate. Think about it. What are the possibilities of you, this exact person, existing in this world? From birth till now, every decision, every choice and every split creating infinite possible futures, pasts, and people with the same name and same parents and same history as you, but are not you.

And yet, here you sit. This precise and irreplaceable version of you that exists nowhere else in time and space. You're allowed to sit and observe the world from your own little corner. Watch the clouds darken. The sun disappear. The lights of thousands of other homes flicker on. The clatter of plates, the occasional bale of laughter. All on a backdrop of stillness. Silence. A serene, serene night, and a low mumble of of the city as it finally settles down.

A tiny flag billowing in the wind; the tap-tap of my fingers on the keyboard. And the thing that makes it all so real, a cool breeze whispering across my cheek; on it I can smell the ocean and taste the salt; hear the laughter and feel the calm of the whole city.

Like in a dream. Such a beautiful, vivid dream filled with details you could spend your whole life observing and pursuing and still never reach the end. Wouldn't it be sad to wake up from such a dream? Wouldn't it be a terrible, terrifying shame if you never got to find out where that little boat went, what it'd be like to live in a little house peaking through the setting light, how the sky would look if you were flying through it separated by only a window?

If reality is only a dream, if life is only a passing gift that we've landed ourselves with by an impossible chance, then why not make the most out of it? What else is there? Incomprehensible nothingness and otherness. We only know this life. What do feelings and problems matter on the grand scale of things? Just look at the world. It's yours to explore, to see and smell and do. Why would you ever want to waste even a second of your life on unimportant feelings and other insignificant people?

Why would you ever want to end this wonderful dream early?

Speed of Life (see what I did there)

It's scary how fast life goes by these days. a day in a blink of an eye, a week in two. A year sometimes feels like you went to sleep on the 31st of December, only to wake up on the 31st of December a year later with the vague recollections of a very vivid dream.

I recently watched a video on Youtube explaining the whole "life is like a roll of toilet paper - it gets faster as you get nearer towards the end" quote. New experiences are always so vivid in our memory. The "firsts" of our lives happened in our childhood, making everyday when you were a kid seem like a journey, the littlest things traumatic, the tiniest surprises making you estatic.

But when we start to grow up, "firsts" become rare. There's not many firsts left for us to do. Or, more often than not, we choose not to take anymore "firsts". Because living inside your comfort zone is so damn comfortable right? Taking risks is.. well risky (brilliant vocab I have today), and being safe will guarantee contentment.

But contentment isn't happiness.. it's not that true, exhilarating happiness you experience in those brief and precious moments of your life. Why do people strive to be happy? Because it feels good I guess. But see, feeling good doesn't feel good if you feel good all the time (I can't help that my brain is coming up with such amazing synonyms). Happiness can only be truly appreciated if you've experienced hardship and stress and sadness and anger on the road to happiness.

Life is short because time flies. Time flies because what is time? It's all in your head. A set of mutual memories shared between a few people. Our brain records these memories and learns from them. If you don't do anything knew, the brain doesn't have to do much work to process what's just happened. That memory will just drift away and be lost among a whole swamp of murky happenings. Only your firsts remain vivid inside your head. They're milestones of your life, right?

To make time fly, easy. Do the same thing every single day. Soon it'll be almost robotic. You'll wake up to find yourself at work, not remembering how you got dressed, brushed your teeth and walked in a daze to the office. But it must have happened because here you are, exactly where you've been everyday at this time. Are you happy? No. But are you sad? No, you're not sad either. You're content.

But to make time slow down? To remember the vivid recollection that was last night, the exhilarating rush of adrenaline that was last night, the uncontrollable smile of true happiness that's the result of last night; well that's a bit harder. How can you constantly keep yourself on your toes? Doing new things, taking more "firsts" and creating more "lasts", making life feel longer and richer and fuller and grander...

Oh man I'm so hungry..

I need to

1. Stop buying things / spending money / buying things for the sake of spending money

2. Stop spending money just because I can / just because there's no one to stop me / just because if I was a Sim in Sims Social my 'social' and 'fun' meter would glowing red with an unimpressed and highly disapproving frowny smiley face next to it

3. Stop raging at that real estate guy (if he replies - if not then continue to slander him with obscenities)

4. Stop thinking about food (ideally the allocation of brain functionality between thinking about food vs.other should be at a ratio of 1:9 respectively. The current ratio of 8:2 is dangerously high and poses a threat to mental health / well being / ability to function normally

5. Stop writing this pointless and extremely unrealistic list because if I don't sleep within the next 45 minutes I'm going to end up as one of those Sims who scares away all their friends by accidentally-on-purpose insulting them due to PMS and a lack of sleep (also since I didn't have time to shower I'm going to smell real bad and have a posy of those virtual Sim flies buzzing around my bum)

So I want to talk about China

I've been too lazy to blog recently. Plus since I got back from China life has been so monotonous and repetitive and materialistic and lazy and safe and devoid of emotional turmoil/philosophical enlightenment, that 3 weeks have merged into one giant long day of haziness. And most importantly, since I feel so useless these days, I wanted to make sure I'd blog about something important. Something meaningful and provocative and good. Today I was feeling reminiscent of China, and I think I found something.

When you walk into a new country, sometimes it's like nothing has changed. Sometimes it's like everything is different. The ground you tread on is a dirt road, the sky above you is a murky grey, the air around you is crisp and stale at the same time, woven together with a tinge of sickly sweet. The 'sickly sweet' is a result of the mid-afternoon sun beating relentlessly on those few unfortunate mandarins that have fallen off from their branch a little early.

That was one of the most valuable experiences I gained on this trip around China. The feeling of bicycling down a country lane past fields of green, acres of not-yet-ripe mandarin trees, and an endless expanse of untainted silence - occasionally harmonised with a few bird calls, the 'ring-ring!' of another bicycle bell, or a steady tutting sound fading off into the distance as a scooter makes its way home.

Of course, it isn't a lost paradise. Even amongst the pandora-like mountains of Guilin, where the scenery along the Li Jiang river is so insanely beautiful it becomes surreal and my eyes at first refused to accept what it was really seeing, there are ordinary locals going about their harsh daily routine to make a living: Sons born along the river spend everyday rowing gondolas for money. Women wash clothes on the banks. The grandpas sit quietly inside century-old stone cottages, feeding chickens, cows and fish eagles. The grandmas sit outside with giant bowls of silk worms, spending the whole day peeling off silk to sell. The little kids run around the streets, playing with sticks, chasing chickens and drawing shapes into the dirt.

Older kids have already left for school in a nearby town. When we asked a little boy for directions, he opened his mouth and told us in a mature and serious voice. He then turned around and carried on playing with his friends and some empty fruit shells on the ground.

People in beautiful places like this don't get to experience the beauty. One of the gondola rowers told me, the locals born into this place often curse the beautiful mountains for existing. They're too steep to climb, too much stone to grow crops on, too stubborn and dense to take down. The only thing they're good for is to look at. So the whole city of Guilin, all the surrounding towns and villages dotted around its many rivers, thrive on the flocks of tourists, laden with cash and LV bags and iPhones, to provide them enough money to send their kid to school so that they can grow up not slaving over manual labour for a living.

My dad said to the gondola driver, "You're very lucky, this place is very beautiful. To be able to wake up and see a scenery like this everyday, you're very lucky."

The gondola driver replied: "Lucky? We don't call this lucky. We think people like you are lucky, people with enough money to travel, to see places, to eat whatever you want to eat and go where ever you want to go."

And my mum said to me, "Look at this place. Look at how the people live here. What if you'd been born here? What if you had to grow up feeding chickens and growing crops, toiling day after day and never given the opportunity to leave or to be better. Isn't it unfair how people are born into different places? Some people are born here, where little kids start working as soon as they understand how; some people are born into a rich house with rich food and never know the true meaning of 'work' or 'labour'."

Isn't it unfair? Isn't it unfair that there even exists on this planet, people who are so fat that they are at risk of dying if they get any fatter? These people whose gluttony knows no boundaries, whose government feeds them, and when they're about to die, gives them an operation worth tens of thousands to save their pitiful life so they can keep on sitting and eating.

Compare them to the old grandmas who peel silk all day to sell; to the old grandmas who walk around the streets picking up plastic bottles and adding them to the big bag over one shoulder; to the old grandmas that swarm around tourist vans gently begging you to buy a flower wreath they weaved themselves for just 2RMB, their eyes filled with sincere pleading.

I know that there are millions, if not billions all over the world living in such undeveloped places, living in the past, living where such ordinary things to us are treated as luxuries by them. I also know that often, the financial situation of families can be so dire that they resort ro petty and cruel ways of making money, getting little kids to beg to invoke sympathy, even mutilating their own child so that they can horrify more people into opening their wallets.

But seeing these people and these places with your own eyes is very different to knowing. The faces of old people pleading me to buy their hand made flowers remind me of my grandma. It reminds me that they're probably a grandma to some kid, and unlike me, that kid might depend on his grandma's many 2RMBs to be able to eat something yummy tonight for dinner or to be able to get a new school bag. Even if these people are knowingly taking advantage of your pity, even if they're tricking you to pay more, ripping you off, even if there are far too many of them for you to be able to help, the truth remains that they need your 2RMB much more than you do.

The most painful truth about all this is that really, there's nothing that can be done to change the lives of these people. At least, nothing immediate, nothing on a scale smaller than a revolution, nothing that can be achieved without ensuing more damage or suffering first. The fact is that China, like India, just has so many people. So. Many. People. How is it possible to ensure all of them can live a decent life? You can't. China's huge. Massive. Compare it to New Zealand, this small, minuscule country with a history of around a hundred years, versus China, the Middle Kingdom that began developing over 5000 years ago, the economy, the culture, the language, the way of living, all thousands of years old. How do you change a way of thinking and a way of living so ancient, so ingrained into everyone there?

I don't really know what I'm trying to say. All I want is for those old grandmas out everyday begging tourists to buy their hand-made things to be able to live a life where they don't have to.

***

Li Jiang River, mountains of Guilin (image edited using iphone)

View from within an alley in a small village tucked away on the river bank

My dad's gondola raft rowing past a patch of houses along Yu Long river

View from my raft down Yu Long river. Surreal beauty. So tranquil. Water so clear and still, it's amazing.

Old grandmas peeling a sort of vegetable by hand in a village

Mother gives her child a ride while doing work

Someone's door

Letting hand made noodles dry in the sun

Three person journey.

New goal

Hmmm I was deliberating whether to title this post as "I have a dream" or "A new hope", but I resisted (watching too much Big Bang Theory makes you come up with cheesy/nerdy puns I've concluded). But yeah with this year's results coming out, the subject of scholarships has been broached again by my parents. The computer science department is not without its rewards (as I've only just discovered, although it's still not as well funded as some other departments). There's a "Kiwiplan Scholarship" worth 4.5k that's rewarded each year to three students in their second-to-last year of study. For me that'll probably be next year (although I'm still doubting whether I can be mentally mature enough to jump straight into the workforce after only 3 years at uni...) and all they ask is a bare minimum GPA of 6, "excellent" verbal/written english, and enough charisma to convince them that you have problem solving skills, project management skills, interpersonal skills, keen interest and relevant experience etc. etc.

The main thing is that the recipients also receive around two and a half months of summer employment at the Kiwiplan company. They're even so reasonable as to give your two weeks of holiday upon request. And although working away the whole summer for two months+ (not being able to return home or go overseas..) it still sounds like a pretty good deal to me. As long as they do pay you and it's not one of those "voluntary work experience" internships that may look great on your CV but leaves you broke from paying accommodation costs.

I wonder how I can make myself proactive at uni next year. It's not like high school where councils are easy to get into and you do basically fat all for the whole year.. maybe AIESEC? I have to work super hard to maintain grades as well as not drop out halfway through the year like I kinda did with everything I joined this year. But why not, it's better than being a bum and wasting my time away playing facebook games and watching American/British sitcoms like I did this year (apart from Dr Who. Time watching Dr Who was time well spent)

Lol and I initially had the plan to fill my spare time next year with gym. Out of laziness I'd pick study over gym any day, cognitive exercise is so much less painful than any form of physical exertion.

Oh god I'm such a nerd.

Today

Woke up today on the right side of the bed for the first time in a long time. The sun was shining, the day was fresh, I felt so light-hearted and happy. Even though I missed my bus and had to spend ten bucks catching the airport flyer instead only to wait another fifteen minutes for the bus driver while he tinkered on his monitor and walkie-talkied his boss about how to sign into his shift, (huge breath) for some strange reason that still didn't ruin my day.

The feeling of talking to someone, gossiping and laughing after such a long drought of social interaction due to my unhealthy relationship with my bed (and occasionally cheating on it with my laptop), is amazing and so liberating. For strange some reason being back in Wellington just makes things so much more easier and straightforward. The things I was running away from last year seem silly. And for some strange, strange reason, today Wellington felt so much brighter and better than Auckland.

Plus I got my grades back! Well all but one (The one that I know I did worse in... but let's just ignore that for fear of spoiling this strange day). I got a pleasant surprise, I'm still suspecting it's a typo tbh, or, today's just a really, really good day. The results that came out only left me with one regret (because missing out on a grade by only 1% just seems much too unfair, I only needed to work that teed bit harder...), but other than that I've been so relieved and happy and carefree today, it makes me want to always feel this way.

NEXT YEAR EVERYDAY WILL BE LIKE TODAY :D FEEL HAPPY ALL THE DAYS!

Keep being happy! Go go! I can do it! Don't let things get me down, be brave, be strong and don't look back at the past, just concentrate on the future. Do it!

Lol even while typing these things already reality's sort of setting in, the blind euphoria's wearing off.

Dear Brain,

I'll deal with troubles and worries tomorrow, please please let today remain untainted, just this one little day.

Sincerely,
Heart

How to succeed in everything

So inspired by this post from Cindy's blog:

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[following excerpt adapted from 'The Genius in All of Us' by David Shenk]

Deliberate practice

Deliberate practice involves repeated attempts to reach beyond one's current level.

Deliberate practice goes far beyond the simple idea of hard work.

For deliberate practice to work, the demands have to be serious and sustained.

Simply playing lots of chess or soccer or golf is not enough. Simply taking lessons from a wonderful teacher is not enough. Simply wanting it badly enough is not enough.

Deliberate practice requires a mind-set of never, ever, being satisfied with your current ability.

It requires a self-critique, a pathological restlessness, a passion to aim consistently just beyond one’s capability so that daily disappointment and failure is actually desired, and a never-ending resolve to dust oneself off and try again and again and again.

It also requires enormous, life-altering amounts of time – a daily grinding commitment to becoming better.

In the long term, the results can be highly satisfying. But in the short-term, from day to day and month to month, there’s nothing particularly fun about the process or the substantial sacrifices involved.

We do not – and cannot – know our own limits unless and until we push ourselves to them. Finding one’s true natural limit in any field takes many years and many thousand hours of intense pursuit.

What are your limits?

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There is no such thing as failure. Only success that hasn't been pursuited. And it'd do us all some good to remember that. If you want something then work for it. No, really work for it. Go above and beyond what's necessary, what's expected. Only then will you always be at your best. We've all only got one life to live (unless you're a Time Lord rofl). Why waste days of it being someone who's only a fraction of what you could be?

That feeling

That feeling of revelation and liberation that you get. You know? Like an epiphany but not really, because what has dawned on you is something that you've always known all along really. It's like you've been living life in a murky marshland swathed in fog and mud and other thick, dirty substances. They just ooze around your life lazily, trying to contaminate you with their nasty little tentacles. Corrupt you. But that feeling of liberation when for one brief second you see everything so clearly, as if the fog has lifted off the marsh and clear sunlight finally shines upon it and you realise it's not a marsh at all, but a beautiful lake of mysterious depths and clear intentions and a wondrous sense of rightness. That feeling is what I'm trying to describe.

Maybe that's why I like going gym so much now, because sometimes after you wipe off the sweat of all that pain and endurance gone past, it's as if life has been put into a new light. Your brain suddenly wants an audience with you. It takes everything that's tedious or troublesome or unwanted in your life, and it presents a solution. It was something you knew all along. You knew that was the solution. But you forced it into the far reaches of the brain, dismissing it. But now the brain dug it out, laid out the evidence, it need not even argue the case, the case had already been won, because it speaks the truth.

And the most important part of this feeling of liberation, is your own acceptance of it. Of what you need to do. Because it was so simple, why wouldn't you do it before? Your brain is now telling you in a tiny but righteous voice, life could be so easy and effortless and wonderful, if you only do what needs to be done in the way that it needs to be done, and voila. So wonderful a time life will present to you.

One can only hope that somehow, this feeling can be grasped and taken hold of for longer periods of time. Maybe there's some sort of magic that can keep the fog at bay. How to stop such contaminative tentacles of laziness, of greed and of the ever growing lure of the material world, so souless and meaningless? They wrap themselves around everyone. It's like a giant shadow engulfing each of us, a black oozing aura; disgustingly obese with sins. But we don't see it. We embrace. We feed and and love it and grow it.

But how do we stop it?

How?

?

Treasures from the past

I was rummaging through my old files and folders from ages ago, and uncovered an old folder of stories.

Reading some of them scared me a little to be honest. Most of them were from when I was 13, and now, as a supposedly mature and independent 19 year-old who's working her way to a university degree (and upon graduation, a job), I feel not only overwhelmed by the passion of my 13 year-old self but also of my lost ambition; of my unwavering conviction of who I was and what I was going to do with my life. I didn't let what other people think deter what I thought. There was so much bravado in my writing. So much melodrama and over emphasise and cliches, yet it's sad to say that I had so much more rhythm in my writing compared to now.

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Revelation

"A resolution which surprised herself brought her into the fields this week for the first time in many months. After wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret that lonely inexperience could devise, common sense had illumined her. She felt that she would do well to be useful again - to taste anew sweet independence at any price. The past was past; whatever it had been was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close over them; they would all in a few years be as if they had never been, and she herself grassed down and forgotten. Meanwhile the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain."

-- Tess, Tess of the D'Urbevilles (Thomas Hardy)

~~~


"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live"

A guitar song

Sitting by myself in the window seat at subway. A melancholic guitar melody strums from the radio and drifts to people walking hurriedly outside. I wonder if they hear it? The song seems to seep through me. I feel like I'm transcending the monotonous landscape of my dull surroundings and one of those people outside must have pressed play on a secret brain controlling remote while walking past. A ridiculous musical montage begins attacking my thoughts. I'm given no peace and quiet to wallow in solitude. I'm forced instead to relive ridiculously happy memories of us as the guitar strums on, suddenly so annoying and crisp and cheery.I feel like I'm in an Asian music video where the girl dwells in guilt of her rage at some hot boyfriend figure and then proceeds to reminense in a cliched flash back of their most heart warming moments; stitched together into a neat little montage by a soulful and tender voice humming over the light strum of a few shy guitar notes.

This is really ridiculous...the subway lady must have put something in my meatballs.

White flag

I won't go down with this ship
I won't hold my head up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

Will I go down with this ship?
Will I hold my head up and surrender?
Will there be my white flag above your door
I'm in love

Always will be

Hold on to your sanity

Lately I've realised that deep down, everyone's really screwed in the head in some way. Inside every single person lies a pool of insecurities they hide from the world. But the thing is, some people deal with it fine right?

There are some people who are like these strong fearless beasts, able to hold their head up high and proudly stalk through a sea of onlookers without even so much as blinking an eye over what other people might think of them.

But then, there are also those people who only pretend to act fearless, pretend to hold their head up and not care about such things when really deep down, it's slowly gnawing away at their conscience and sanity and eating them up. It takes away their confidence. Happiness. Reason.

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One day

One day, I will finish all my assignments early, like I always wanted to.

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Pride

Pride is a deadly sin.

Being proud is not something to be proud of.

Have you ever had that feeling of guilt washing over you like a huge, kick-ass tidal wave as you literally watch someone start drowning in pain right in front of your eyes? Whether it's just a small thing that's upsetting them, or whether you know you're hurting them by not helping, the guilt that hits you is almost as deadly as the damage you've caused.

What goes around comes around right?

The thing that stops people from helping, from showing their concern and their weakness, from being the one to back out of a fight first and forfeit their dignity, is pride.

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I MISS DESIGN

I MISS IT I MISS IT I MISS IT

Today as I was doing these ridiculous maths questions in the first chapter of my $200 dollar maths text book that I'd bought for a one-semester-long maths paper, I thought to myself: "Why am I doing this?" Why? I never liked maths, never will, and it's definitely impossible for me to even begin to like the boring and unsatisfying multi-choice maths questions I have to do for this course.

WHY AM I NOT DOING DESGIN?

Sigh. Because this is the practical and successful and foolproof pathway through life. Comp sci will guarantee a good, relatively high paying job upon graduation. It requires me to take out no student loan as the three-year-degree fits nicely inside my three-year-scholarship. Upon graduation I work, I earn money, I do whatever the hell I want, get life experience, save up, travel, explore, live... then BAM I'm rich and happy and still in my ripe early 20s.

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Night-time; insomnia; hungry; so hungry

It's 1:37am in the morning. Why am I still up? :( I did basically zilch study for MATHS108 today. Got another 3 hour lab tomorrow morning. Need to shower. Need to decide what to wear. Need to do MATHS108...

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Home

So I recently moved away from home to another city for university. I had been waiting for this change to happen for over a year. Waiting and yearning for it, for some sort of change and escape from the dull, monotonous and suffocating life I'd lived back home. I convinced myself to hate repetition, routine, familiarity, and instead to embrace change, excitement and unpredictability.

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