it's not the end yet

As I write this I am ready to go home. I have a laptop perched on my lap, crowded around a small table in Starbucks with Karu probably writing code on his laptop (I can only guess) and Zitian trying to make a rabbit out of beads. It's been a long time since I have been comfortable enough to write, let alone write a blogpost in such a public space. I'm not sure I'll ever go back to being as comfortable with writing as I was back in my early teens, when writing was sometimes literally my sustenance. But there's no better time to start that journey than now (exactly because there's no time sooner than now).

It's been a year since I moved to Sunway to pursue pre-tertiary education. And while the programme itself isn't exactly stellar (one of my favourite pasttimes is regretting not taking the risk to do IB and instead cowardly doing A-Levels because it was familiar), the journey has been amazing. I was placed in a very fortunate class; I say fortunate because these classmates of mine have turned out to be some of the most amazing people I've ever met. In the first days of class, I singled out classmates I'd found to be particularly interesting or intelligent, and hoped we could be friends. A year later, I am so proud to call them some of my closest friends. I am still constantly in disbelief over this pleasant turn of events.

In the course of a year I've had the honour of experiencing some of the most bizzare and epic, and just plainly lovely lovely lovely moments of my short life so far. These moments are both achievements and serendipity that I'd never been able to imagine previously. Just to list a few: going out with the whole class because we simply enjoy the company of each other, going out with a stranger, driving in the highways of KL at night, and of course, photoshoot journeys. Each of them is probably worth a story in its own, for which I am so grateful to have had the opportunity of being involved in firsthand. It's a little upsetting to think that soon we'll be recalling, or even telling these stories instead of living them.

Since borrowing my cousin's car for three weeks, I've been increasingly aware of the surreal quality of my time here in completing this programme. I dare say it's not at all unlike a really long holiday. Where else would such incredible things happen in besides a holiday? It's probably because I am all too aware of the ephemeral quality of our times together, no matter how infinite they seemed at the moment. I'm reminded each time we pack our bags during breaks to go home that our lives are only intersecting for the briefest of moments, and this intersection is ending soon. Wishfully speaking, it would be really great if time could glitch and we could stay 19 for a while longer, lamenting studies and being confused about the future together. But I know that with each bus ride for home, the end of this chapter dawns closer and closer. And with that, we move on.

that one time i went to KL alone

Since obtaining a car temporarily (and I cannot stress enough that it is ONLY TEMPORARY because news seem to have spread around about my current status), I have been feeling a lot more like myself, partly because I feel a lot calmer at the thought of having a car at my discretion, ready for me to leave the hostel anytime I like, and also partly because I finally have the freedom to entertain every single whim of mine.

I'm the most self-serving person I know.

Anyway, it's been fun bringing my friends out, but I decided that it was time for me to do my thing alone. I've never driven out alone in KL before, because of the many horror stories I've heard regarding women who get kidnapped in parking basements, break-window robberies, flat-tyre scams and the such. But despite all that I felt that I needed to go out alone to finally live the freedom I've always associated with having a car. I needed to prove that the freedom is indeed tangible. 

When my craving for pisang goreng wasn't able to be satiated in the past week after driving to several locations, I decided to drive to the one place I knew definitely would sell pisang goreng: KL Sentral. The search for these deep-fried banana goodness would eventually become the theme of my journey, and humorously, or otherwise, banana fritters would become the symbol of my freedom. 

On Saturday morning I woke up with a purpose. Equipped with metal knuckles in my pocket and distrusting eyes, I set off for the Federal Highway.

It felt pretty amazing driving on the sparse highway. It always feels amazing, but being alone it felt differently so. I parked my car at Pavillion because I felt a lot safer there (also my cousin works there so if I felt threatened I thought I could ask him to walk me to the car). Then I got out of Pavillion and walked to the monorail station to get to KL Sentral.

 

Ironically, I now realize, the walk to the monorail station, and public transport, probably proved to be more unsafe than parking my car in unfamiliar basements. Either way, I survived the ride from Raja Chulan to Tun Sambanthan. Irritatingly I had to get off one station earlier because this teenage dude who was with his friend kept staring openly at me. I felt pretty freaked out and walked out of the monorail station so quickly you'd have thought I was being chased.

The pisang goreng wasn't too far away, but it was still closed. I went into the coffee shop and ordered a bowl of Peter's pork noodles (apparently it got rave reviews). And it was pretty good! I finished everything: soup and all. I looked outside and saw that the pisang goreng stall was already opened.

Pisang goreng has never been more meaningful. Being right in front of the pisang goreng stall felt like everything in my life before has amounted to this: testing the waters of freedom and entertaining myself driving all the way to the city to grab a couple of banana fritters. I'M NOT EVEN EXAGGERATING WHEN I SAY THAT WHEN I STOOD THERE, I FELT THE INTENSE FREEDOM OF BEING IN FULL CONTROL MY OWN DESTINY. I FELT LIKE EATING BANANA FRITTERS, SO I GOT MY OWN ASS OVER HERE, AND NOW HERE I AM, ABOUT TO BUY SOME FRITTERS. I CAN DO ANYTHING AFTER THIS.

The moment I held this in my hands felt very pivotal.

With my banana fritters in hand, I walked to NU Sentral as a new person. I found some pedestals which also functioned as my seat where I gleefully and buoyantly ate a banana fritter while people watching. I kept the other fritter and checked out my new favourite shop, MONKI. Nothing I fancied was on sale though.

 

KL Sentral now officially has three of my favourite things:
1. Banana fritters
2. Pork noodles
3. MONKI

 

 When I was tired of KL Sentral I decided to head over to Kinokuniya. To get to Kinokuniya I had to go to KLCC, which was just a few stations away from KL Sentral. But the crowd in KL Sentral annoyed me so I left the LRT Station and walked back to the monorail station where I came from. To my dismay I hadn't studied the routes properly so I found out too late that there was no monorail stop at KLCC. Too lazy to walk back to KL Sentral and tolerate the crowd, I took a monorail to the nearest stop possible. While it was physically as close to KLCC as I could get on the monorail, I still had to walk one kilometre in the sun (I walked using Google Maps as my guide). I don't think the walk was any more comfortable than squeezing into crowded LRT trains, so I'd probably do the latter next time.

Upon arriving in Kinokuniya I realize I actually have nothing I wanted to buy. I walked through the aisles and then left to go shopping. After awhile I got bored because I couldn't afford anything, so I walked back to Pavillion using the interconnected walkway between KLCC and Pavillion. Normally I would keep my ears open for potential threats, but I felt pretty safe on the walkway (probably because there were so many other clueless tourists around) so I blasted my favourite electronic music on my wireless headphones and walked through the crowds feeling awesomesauce.

I reached Pavillion and found out that my cousin hadn't turned up to work that day. I definitely should have called beforehand because parking proved to be cry-laughingly expensive.

isolation by beauty

Threw flowers everywhere, put afternoon playlists on maximum volume, and got the self-timer going. My favourite kind of chillout.

Girl, Explorer

Hey, where are you?

~~~

I'm home for the weekend and I shot some pictures. It feels amazing to be going outside and shooting self-portraits again.

another sunday afternoon

Yesterday I spent the afternoon hanging out with Joanna whom I got to know through Neopets. My younger Neopets-obsessed self was one day bored of her old guild, quit, and went guild-surfing in the forums, and just happened to randomly join Joanna's guild. It was a pretty cool guild, I kid you not. Me and Joanna became friends somewhere along the lines of banner-making and petpage-designing. Fortunately our online friendship went beyond the scope of Neopets, although we stopped keeping in contact until last year when, upon coming to Sunway, I remembered that Joanna used to go to Sunway as well. So I searched up her blog, left a message, and met up yesterday. It's amazing to reflect on how that one click of a link from way back in the past has led to the pretty awesome meeting yesterday.

Our conversations in a cafe led us to SS2 where I bought some velvet backdrop for my pathetically-limited studio shoots. And so today I shot some self-portaits.

so restless

I haven't been blogging for a while, aside from the usual photo posts, which I'm beginning to suspect are cover-ups for not producing any piece of proper writing. It's not like I don't want to, or that I don't have the time. It's just that sometimes the thought of opening up this Blogger window and seeing this huge block of space waiting to be filled up with my words is positively scary. Tonight, however, I don't want to be stopped by the fear of trying to write, and then failing to produce anything decent. I try not to think of the large gaps of time that punctuate my writing process, when my fingers would slow down, and gradually words disconnect from mind, and it's another painful session of being so close to grasping the right words, but at the same time not close enough. Tonight, I want to, no, I really need to write.

It's silly I know, to be afraid to write. But I sometimes annoy myself when I write. Even now, as I am typing this, I feel like what I'm trying to say and what I actually am saying run parallel. I've been writing about writing, and have been sounding painfully pretentiously poetic in the first paragraph. But I digress. There's something more pressing at the moment than going back and correcting my pretentiousness to sound less pretentious (which is actually also pretentious? and what's wrong with being pretentious anyway?) What I actually want to say is this:

I feel so restless.

It's been that way since I came back from school three hours ago. My entire being feels heavy, and I can form no clear thought addressing this feeling not unlike a mixture of helplessness/ pessimism/ frustration like there's a swarm of bees in my head. I sit in front of my laptop, tabs flitting between Tumblr and FaceBook and the Atlantic, a book next to my phone open on WhatsApp, but I am doing nothing. I am accomplishing nothing, and that thought annoys me. Sitting here isn't too bad, but I feel annoyed at myself as the digital clock at the bottom right of my screen glides across the hours so smoothly I don't notice it.

I should be studying but I can't with this state of mind and I am annoyed at that. My head is saturated with flitting thoughts and fragmented ideas of what-ifs and the occasional party-pooper university application worries thrown into the mixture to add masochistic interest. In the end I am thinking of so many things that all of them surmount to nothing. And if I haven't made myself clear on my stand on that, I am very annoyed at all this lost time.

I recognize this feeling of restlessness. It's boredom and frustration, and it's the feeling that has characterized my life so far with stories of impulsive pursuits. It's been toned down over the years, but tonight it seems to have made a comeback, and a strong one at that. It's something I probably can't shake off until I have gone offline and gotten out of this place and done anything. There's a problem though, it's nearly 10PM which means if I got out of here right now and anything happens to me it's going to be my fault.

All I want to do is shoot and shoot and shoot, not the gun variety, although that doesn't sound half-bad right now, but the camera variety that ropes your mind firmly to the present. I'm thinking something messy and clean and terrifically artistic, thoughts that relieve this restlessness just by being there: a prospect to look forward to.

So what I can do is let the fireworks go off in my mind, and try very hard to grab a fragment of the firework that I can work into an idea. And hopefully when I grab one it'll take me across the sky with it, ending in a pathetic streak of an averagely manifested idea that can never seem to rival the original display. In the meantime I can only pace the ground, restless. 

everyone should be a feminist

Amanda once asked if I considered myself a feminist.

I think I've always identified as a feminist, but today I am sure of it.

Incident #1:

Michelle and I went out shopping one Friday afternoon, and we shopped well into the night. As Michelle popped into Forever 21 (which was like our tenth stop) I decided to wait for her on the bench outside the shop. I was feeling a little worn out so I sat on the bench and zoned out a little, eyes directed at some indefinite destination, gaze unfocused and thinking of nothing in particular. So there I was, alone and female, the combination of which screams for street harassment.

Obviously the harassment came. I didn't see it coming, but I understood why it came the way it did, despite being in a crowded mall on a Friday night.

From the corner of my eye I noticed a middle-aged Chinese guy with hair down to his shoulders coming my way. I purposely continued averting my gaze and pointing my pupils away from him, hoping that my ignorance will bore him and eventually drive him away. But no, he came closer. As he walked towards me he made it very clear that he was staring at me and wanted me to notice him. He came so close that I could grab a fistful of his hair and yank them without much effort if I wanted to. I could sense him right next to me, too close for it to be an unintentional position. I fleetingly looked at him then went back to my unfocused gaze again, planning to give ignorance another try.

At that point I was ready to attack; adrenaline pumped and poised to defend myself should he attempt anything. I was hoping that it would not have to come to that. If it did, I would be alone in it, despite the swarms of people around me. The fact that the old fucker attempted to annoy/ intimidate me in the midst of the crowd already reflected the inability of crowds to act as deterrence.

I tried my best to look disinterested, and pretended he was just a pesky fly that flew too close. That fucking insect. He noticed me ignoring him, muttered something about my oblivion towards him, and then walked away, unhappy that he failed to do whatever it was he meant to do by invading my personal space.

When he was gone I was reeling in disbelief. I was just sitting there!! I was wearing a freaking T-shirt and my hair was all messy from a whole day of school! I wasn't making eye contact with anyone! All of which I was entitled to do, of course. More than anything I was annoyed that it had to happen in a place that was supposedly safe. I mean, what's safer than crowds? If even crowds aren't safe anymore, where can we go?

I think we deserve at least a place to feel safe. Despite being alone and female. The combination of which shouldn't mean anything more that. 

Incident #2 (The Trigger Incident)

In the restaurant where I was working there was this table of three Japanese middle-aged men. There was some unhappiness about the waiting period for their food to arrive, so I was in charge of their problems. I handled their table for most of their dining period, and when they were done with their food, they came over to the cashier where I was standing and

1. tapped me on the shoulder

after which I turned around, like oh it's you what's up, like yeah I get that kind of touch was meant to get my attention

and then Fucktard #2 fucking touched me on my waist. 

Again this happened in a restaurant full of people.

Of course, the brilliance of the act owed itself to the subtlety of it: just a light, casual touch; nothing blatantly noticeable or anything. It was probably nothing intentional, and I am just making things seem more alarming than they are. I probably would have dismissed it as a casual act, but nearly a year of Internet feminist enlightenment has taught me otherwise. It might have seem casual, but the implications of it are otherwise.

Firstly, all touches, regardless of intent, are inappropriate if non-consensual. You DO NOT just touch your waiters/waitresses because there was some fuck-up with your order. You are not entitled to that. Secondly, the fact that you felt entitled to touch strangers says volumes about your attitude on women. I highly doubt you would have touched a nineteen-year-old guy on the waist like that. Thirdly, you obviously had no respect for my personal space. You would only feel like that because you do not regard me, or women in general, as deserving of your respect.

I glared at Fucktard #2. If eyes are the windows to the soul, he would have seen violence acted on him swiftly and justly. I was so close to punching him, but the crowd that was supposed to have protected me acted against me instead. I didn't want to cause a scene, because people wouldn't understand. They wouldn't understand why I was making such a fuss. The clueless Fucktards #1 and #2 wouldn't understand why I hit them. They were not worth saving. I saved instead my punch and swallowed it. Also, the fact that they were customers helped preserve their faces.

This whole incident stinks of oppression. It's like there's nothing we can do against Fucktards except ignore them and forget about it.

Two incidents in one month? That's not right. That's two incidents too many. That's madness. I refuse to live in a state of subtle gender oppression. I'm not going to let it pass. This is why I need feminism. Not so these Fucktards get wiped off the planet, because that's not going to happen. But so when these incidents happen, people would understand why the women are making a fuss, and help. So they're not alone.

It's the only way to get back at those Fucktards. 

Also it would be nice if the Fucktards get wiped off the planet.

correcting the narcissism

Recently I've accepted that I am average. I am not bound for the imaginary greatness that my child self was fed, and subsequently believed. As so it happens, and must have happened in plenty of other young adults, my rumoured ultimate potential turns out to be a short-lived prodigious phase. There is no illustrious life waiting as a reward for my inherent greatness, nor is there a limousine with a red carpet and a nationwide holiday celebrating my arrival on the lands of adulthood due to A Great Achievement That I Should Already Have By Now. There is no queue of editors waiting to sign a book deal of my autobiography or a hashtag of my name trending in Twitter. There is nothing ahead but a banal life of being an average adult.

It's crazy, how [my younger self] believed in the potential of herself and how greatness was simply that potential plus hard work. It's been a hard thought journey but I have finally arrived at the conclusion of an entire childhood of comforting (if somewhat farfetched) assurance: I'm going to be average.

I am still not okay with that.

How does anyone reconcile oneself with the hard, solid fact that oneself is average and a faceless statistic among the masses? How does one calm the angry misled prodigy residing within the present mind frame and comfort the depressed adolescent already ready to give in? HOW DOES ANYONE DEAL WITH BEING AVERAGE WHEN ALL THEIR LIVES THEY HAVE BEEN LED TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE?

I just felt like typing in caps.

All right, maybe I am quite angry with myself. I've seen that being average is inevitable, but I haven't quite let acceptance slide into place yet. I'm not sure if I ever will. I always believed that I had potential to do something great, and the reason I haven't yet is because I haven't had The Great Idea strike my mind yet. I told myself I'm ready, anytime now. When The Great Idea comes to me, like in a prophecy, greatness will follow. The Great Idea will free me from this temporary facade of being an average person bound for an average adulthood ending in an average death. The Great Idea will present itself and I will take it by the horns and share it with the world and the illustrious life and autobiography book deal will be mine.

Only I'm almost 19 now (a fact that scares me) and The Great Idea remains a hopeful prediction written by my prodigious self for the unquestionable greatness that must be mine. In fact I don't think it's ever going to come, at least not to my side. I've missed it as my years outraced the growth of my intelligence, and my prodigious self must be shaking her head with disgust and loathing, as I am left behind in this facade that has become real life.

As I did average maths questions I pondered my real life. For so long now I didn't think I would actually have to go through with it because it wasn't mine to live. Adulthood is for people who didn't get Great Ideas addressed to them. But I realize now that average is the way to go. Do the average thing: study, write uni applications, send them in, go to a uni averagely(if accepted), major in something average, graduate averagely, work averagely, be an average law-abiding predictable adult with pitifully domestic affairs and live the rest of life averagely.

Speaking of being a law-abiding adult, I find it funny thinking of my greatest regret as I turned 18 last year. I don't know what kind of life I had envisioned for myself as a child, but average has always been out of the picture, so ironically average is new grounds for me. Once I watched on TV that people who go to prisons don't get the luxury of pillows and bolsters, so that night I went to sleep without a bolster (which was memorably uncomfortable as I was always used to having a bolster) because I wanted to practice in case I got wrongly convicted and sent to prison. And then on the day I turned 18 I remember feeling a huge regret that from then on all wrongdoings will be tried under the adult court.

Back to being average. So yeah. Average. I'm having issues casting aside expectations placed by my own younger self. Maybe it won't be too bad being anonymous? I don't know, how do you accept this? I can't, I'm still fighting it, even though the earlier I accept it, the better will be my emotional well-being and the quicker I can get started with my average life.

But it's not possible. Complete, unquestioning subservience is beyond me. There's one way out of this averageness, and it's something I can see myself doing as a favour to myself and a kick to the God of Averages. It's traveling around the world. I've been obsessed about this whole backpacking business for years now and I see it as an itch that will never go away until it's been scratched. A huge adventure at last. At least I can grant my younger self that. If I meet her I'll be able to tell her that she will grow up to see the world. And it won't be the kind of polite unfair assumption adults make about you despite knowing nothing about you. And I'll warn her that being average will be unavoidable for the most of us, but we can find greatness in friendships and pleasant surprises and art. And that would finally be some kind of truth.

This is how you fail maths

This is how it feels to fail a subject you think you're comfortable with. It feels like shit.

It begins with thinking you're ready. It's you waiting to go into the examination room, calm and relaxed with your stationery in hand, not thinking about maths in general. You've been through this so many times before in class; and this is going to be another maths paper. It's not like Chemistry where unknown formulas can pop up in the middle of the paper, or Economics where there's hardly enough time to finish everything, let alone think. It's just plain old maths.

It begins with you in the examination room, laughing as your classmates crack jokes about the missing absentees. It's you opening the question booklet as soon as the invigilator resets the clock and announces the start of the exam. It's smooth sailing through the first question, and hitting an iceberg in the next. It's you feeling a little panicky, more disbelief at your own inability to solve the question rather than the level of difficulty of the question. It's your mind getting clouded, it's your calm washing away as the nausea of helplessness seeps in.

It continues with you flipping the booklet to the next page. It's your writing turning into scrawls as you're thinking at breakneck speed for the simpler questions so you can return to the difficult one with more time to spare. It's the clouded mind turning into a storm as you hit the next iceberg, in fact, two icebergs. It's anxiety surmounting as you run into a mind block. You realize it is useless, so you move on, at even faster than breakneck speed, to the remaining questions.

It's you finishing the last two pages in half the recommended time, cruising through so fast you can't remember anything about it after the exam. It's you thinking that with an hour left, there's plenty of time to mull over the three iceberg questions.

It's you feeling stupider and stupider as the minute hand ticks on and you're wrong. You're not getting any closer. Ok, maybe you've cracked one of it, but that one took ages. There are two to go, and time is running out. You're rotating the paper 360 degrees, as if a different geometrical perspective might be the divine intervention you need. You're trying out so many methods you could write a theorem about them. You're drawing so many lines across the circle that they start to resemble a complex work of art. You're sitting there hopelessly, and worse, helplessly, as you look up from the paper for inspiration, only to continue plowing through again as the clock is the only thing you notice.

It's you feeling like shit, not being able to solve what looks like easy questions. It's you writing and crossing out things that you think would help your cause on the blank spaces of the paper, only to feel sorrier for yourself. It's you feeling a sense of disgust and pity for this pathetic creature who cannot solve a Maths question. It's you being unable to get used to the idea of being Mathematically illiterate. It's your mind racing and blood pumping as the time is nearly up, only it is racing nowhere close to an answer.

It doesn't stop there. It sinks in as you realize there is no possible way for you to get an eureka moment within two minutes. It's you finally, finally giving up and leaving the answer paper half-filled. It's you using the final two minutes to look through the question paper, only to discover a question at the end that you have not solved, in the whizzing through of the final page when your mind was preoccupied by the icebergs. It's you feeling everything at once: stupidity and anger and frustration. It's you picking up your pen and furiously trying to think of the answer as the last minute draws in closer, only to draw up a blank to a question you can otherwise answer. It's feeling defeat and anger as the time is up and you hand in, for the first time in your maths academic career, a paper with two questions unanswered, and plenty of quick answers.

It was the only subject you were feeling confident about. It was the only thing you could do, and you couldn't do it.

on never wanting to do your best

At least I have given it my best shot.

Those words don't mean anything to me. I understand where the words are coming from; if you've tried your hardest and you still failed, at least you can rest easy knowing that you have done everything you could. But the logic fails me, I mean, how can you rest easy knowing you've tried your hardest and it still wasn't enough? That must suck even more, to me at least. Which is why I have this small confession to admit: I've never tried my hardest at anything, ever.

OK maybe that makes me sound a little lazy and unmotivated and before you start making the disgusted-twisted-mouth-and-double-chin face at me allow me a moment to clarify. I do try, and pretty hard for things I care about. But I don't give my hardest. It seems like it's important for you to do your absolute best. But I don't. I give maybe 70%, or 80% on a good day. I do this because I never have to give my all: in cello playing, in exams, in learning French, even in scholarships. Don't get me wrong, not trying my hardest doesn't mean I was screwing around. But I know ways in which I could have done better at the time I was actively pursuing my hobbies: I could have consistently read news in français facile, practised playing the cello a little more, gone on the Internet to read up about things beyond the syllabus to gain a more appreciative understanding. This hesitance of mine to go that extra bit could be attributed partly to laziness, but it's also insulation, a pre-emptive measure. At least if I fail at being good(and most of the time I do), there is this hypothetical possibility that I could have made it if I had given it everything I've got. And that possibility is like a beacon of light, a shred of self-esteem to cling onto in the darkness of failure. It's addictive, and it's unhealthy. It's also ironically cyclical, like all things in life are: not trying your hardest means you are almost certainly destined to fail, and failure means that you'll be looking for any mechanism that allows you to sustain the small amount of self esteem you have left, and this leads you to never wanting to try your hardest.

On Friday I had a conversation with the Dragon (Karu) and he was asking me if I was keen on pursuing photography in the future, and I said no, because it was not going to be a stable job. Even my response sounded lame to my own ears. Karu said (along the lines of),"I can't believe anyone would use job instability as an excuse for not pursuing what they like." His genuine disbelief hit me with an euphoric sense of hope. Suddenly, just maybe, I can do this. Maybe I am not bound for a 9-5 confining office job or to become a speculator of currencies. Maybe I can join the art people, like I dare allow myself to think about sometimes. Maybe, this time, it's the right time to try my absolute hardest. Because my response shouldn't have been job instability. Rather, it's a distrust in my own skills. So if I could change that, for starters by trying my hardest, maybe there could be a place around the creative campfire for me.

In fact, I'm starting to think that that is the only place I ever want to be.

on event photography

In my new life in school people have begun making assumptions about me, assumptions about what I think and what I like, based on their interactions with me in the short time that we have been friends. While these assumptions are generally harmless and even amusing (i.e. KF thinks that I think very lowly of him because he didn't complete his Maths homework when in reality I can't be bothered about someone else's homework and Taliza used to think that I am cold and emotionally distant) I have been thinking about one assumption that isn't quite as amusing as the others. This assumption most probably stems from seeing me physically with a camera almost all the time in school, and probably also from witnessing my affinity to direct swag shots with ease and enjoyment. This assumption is the assumption that I love photography. It is not as much an assumption as it is a fact; it is true that I like taking pictures. But then you start to assume that I love all forms of photography. You think if something involves a camera, I'd love it. Bug photography, landscape photography, macro photography. I must love them all, right?

I thought so too. You led me to believe that in order to love photography, I must love all forms of photography. You project this image of me upon myself, one in which I am the photographer you have in your mind. I bought it, for a while, until I come to the realization that I absolutely hate event photography.

In the two events that I have been asked to attend in order to become the event photographer I have never felt more miserable in my school life than when I am photographing people I don't care about doing things I can't relate to. In the events in which I am supposedly event photographer I feel terribly disconnected. In the middle of the crowd in the middle of all your fun I am like watching a TV series about the quintessential teenagers getting wasted in a party. I am on the outside. It's like my personality and humanity have been separated and I am only an extension of my camera.

After the first event I went to as event photographer I felt awfully shitty. I was bored being event photographer, having to stay in a room I don't care to be in until an unknown time, and yet I cannot leave because I accepted this proposition. You allow me in for free, on the condition that I take decent shots. I curse myself as the night drags on and my camera is full of half-assed shots I can't wait to delete. I'm trapped in this place by my interest in photography.

Then you invite me to the second event. Still convinced that the first event was an exception, I accepted once again, fueled by a sense of honour that you have thought of me for this job. Maybe it will turn out differently this time, and besides, I get in for free, and I am curious about this event. I show up again, and I feel the same misery creeping in with every shot I take. I find myself in the same situation: reduced. It got worse because this time you told me what shots to take. You weren't even looking at me, you weren't asking, you were giving instructions. You reduced me to a camera, an object. And then the realization sank in and the assumption was broken and I stopped feeling reduced. I didn't ask to be photographing for this event, I was only here because the organizer was my friend and she asked, nicely. I could have ditched event photography and brought my camera only to record moments with my friends. I felt annoyed. This is not high school in which you can get in trouble for not listening to instructions, so I decided to wave off your demanding requests. As you were talking at me, I tuned you out, until I couldn't hear you anymore. You were just a self-absorbed entity wildly waving your hands around as your mouth opened and closed furiously. You looked ridiculous, muted like that. It was a delicious feeling. When I blindly nodded and said I would do it, at an approximate time when your mouth seemed closed and your eyes filled with anticipation for a response, knowing full well I have no intentions of doing so, I felt freed. I felt again in control of my own camera.

If there's one thing I learned about my short miserable unpaid job as an event photographer it's that I remember more vividly why I ventured into photography in the first place. I do it not because I enjoy mindlessly releasing the shutter again and again and watching random images pop up in the display screen of my camera. I think that's what people assume. I do it because of two reasons: 1. it's my medium of creativity and 2. there are personal moments I need to remember long after they are gone. Both reasons intersect. And the problem with event photography is that they are too impersonal for me to find creativity within them.

And so here it is, my public resignation from being an unpaid event photographer. It's about time you acknowledge event photography for what it is: a job. You can't continue assuming that I will do it for free on the assumption (that I have proven wrong) that I like it. My interest is not yours to exploit. I will no longer be your voluntary photographer and I would like to maintain dominance over my own camera and where I aim it, thank you very much.

bellyn of all trades but a master in none

There's a reason I am afraid of the weekends, but Saturdays especially.

On Saturdays I wake up without a purpose, except to hunt for food. I wake up knowing it is still early and that there will be another day like this again, the very next day. I do some homework, look at the clock, watch Game of Thrones, look at the clock, then it's dinnertime. I am stuck in a little unit occupying a fixed volume of air in the fifth floor of an apartment five hours from home. In the emptiness of this little space my thoughts are amplified and thrown back at me at a speed so great they interfere and I am shaken as I realize that it is October and I am still purposeless.

I dread being asked the question: What clubs or societies do you join? because I cannot come up with an answer and my justification for my lack of a response comes packaged in self-hating weekends full of doubt and terrible uncertainty. Sometimes in the absence of anything corporeal to blame I blame the programme I am in for its exam-oriented structure. I keep thinking that I should have done IB instead, that I should have taken the risk and gone for it. But cowardice held me back and I chose to be on the safe, familiar road of academic rigour. I still regret it sometimes, envisioning how my weekends must be so interesting and productive compared to the hollow time warps I traipse through week after week from lack of anything interesting to do.

I'm thinking of university applications this entire time (since the beginning of the semester) and I stop myself every so often to review what I have done recently to be able to add it to my CV. It scares me each time I review it as I am nearer to my graduation date but my CV isn't any more impressive. I am terribly worried that I am not trying hard enough, that I will look back at this period of stupor with regret and self-loath. That the future me will wish to return to present me and had gotten my ass off my chair and gone out there and done something impressive. Organized a social justice movement, raised awareness on the ways that people can be subtly racist, shot incredible pictures, revived the dead MUN society, whatever. I can almost see that I will feel that way; in some strange way I am feeling what the future me will be feeling. And that feeling drives me to be very uncomfortable in my comfort zone. I am uncomfortably aware, all the time, of how comfortable I am at the present moment, and that this feeling of contentment will one day come back to haunt me in the form of rejections.

It's not like it's always been in my personality to join clubs and be consistently active in them. Looking back through the entire course of secondary school I have always been a solo winger, joining random clubs and quitting after a year because of a lack of sustained interest, which I know is a terrible thing to have. But I don't think my growth has been affected negatively because I failed to hold myself down to any club. I got to where I am today without the need to belong to any one club or a hobby for a long period of time to prove my 'dedication'. I'm not in an awesome place but I don't think it's too bad. I rather like who I am. In fact I think all this experimenting has made me understand what I like as a person and find out what I am fundamentally good at. I don't believe that being unable to belong to a club renders you somehow disciplinarily inferior. It's just that I have flickering interests, and that's because I am consistently growing as a person and I am slowly understanding what I like.

"So what do you do if you're not in any club and societies? Study every day?"

Alas, I can never miss being associated with the stereotype of the A-level student for being a failure at extra-curricular activities. Honestly though I don't study all that much. I study about three hours during the weekends and a few hours before a topical test and that's about it. The rest of the time I am filming and hanging out with my classmates at the bunker classrooms and going on social justice Tumblrs and playing Dota 2 (and recently League of Legends) and staying out until past dinnertime and loitering around school and reading and taking swag shots and thinking about my failure and scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed mindlessly and thinking of photoshoot ideas and taking unexpected road trips without guarantees of return transport and talking to new people and letting strange things happen to see what happens. I am collecting stories, collecting feelings and people inside a journal that will become the sword I wield against the adulthood that will soon swallow me.

I hate it sometimes when in the middle of feeling good about life I get struck by this reminder that my CV is still bare. I feel like it's such a silly worry; It's all about perspective; if I had something more important to worry about, this worry would immediately diminish. I've said this before but I feel like I can never let myself be truly happy. I have my euphoric moments in brief flashes, uncontained raw euphoria that's unbottled and untethered and it's wonderful to even have moments like that. But in idler times my mind always wanders to this one worry like a sick psychopath who only feels secure when tied down to a worry. It's probably because we live in a capitalistic society that sees your worth in a piece of paper, and I worry that my piece of paper will underrepresent me because all the things I do cannot be traditionally labelled and still be socially acceptable.

But that's just me questioning opposing beliefs to defend my inability to be in any club. At the end of the day I understand that nobody gives a shit about romantic justifications. All that matters is in the lines written on a piece of paper. And that is why there is always a fear at the back of my head, that my refusal? inability? to comform to the model of the ideal student will find its way to get back at me.

starfucker | and i miss my car

I take it back, the part where I said that the weekends are a chore. They are not, not when it means staying up until 3.39AM with 15GB off-peak internet quota and doing maths and everything is crystal clear. This dead hour of the night when I am supposed to be sleeping feels like a stolen time capsule where I am momentarily invulnerable to the routine of normal time flow. I am listening to Starfucker's old album and I am reminded so much of a better time, barely three months ago, when I was still back in the island, freshly released from the clutches of SPM and so free and so young. I was driving around the island, the sea almost always in sight, drifting in and out between old townhouses in town, stopping at chic boutique cafes to grab an overpriced snack, calling up friends, making plans and going on mini island road trips. And Starfucker would be playing on high, further extending the illusion of my invulnerability behind my steering wheels. I could go anywhere, I could make a split second decision and drive northwards instead of back home. I was so free, as long as the petrol column was at a safe level. Sometimes I felt an overwhelming contentment as I sat in the car in front of the line, stepping on the accelerator as soon as the lights turned green and feeling myself propelled against the seat for a brief euphoric second. In those moments I felt the most free and youngest; I saw not only my whole life in front of me but felt it and lived it.

I think I've always known that those days will eventually become symbolic of my own idyllic youth, and maybe that is why I'd almost never removed Starfucker's music from my car radio. I'd kept it there until the very end; their album coming back into the speakers after the hundredth song or so. I think I had always wanted to encapsulate the ephemerality of being young with my car. And I found out today that Starfucker has done it for me - without my conscious knowledge, and brilliantly.

Vagrant

Today is one of those rare days when I feel a bit sad and reckless and need to do something impulsive to kill the negativity before it sinks into my system. Which is why I am glad now that the worst I did was midnight swimming and chilling out in the college's main entrance by lounging across two benches.

It was too bad that the news came during the walk to catch the 1D movie in 3D (which I have been looking forward to due to the lack of access to Tumblr for my daily dose of 1D). The news, in one swift and clean blow, tore down all the foundations we've laid over the past week for the founding of a Photography Club in our school. The news, in one easy and solid sentence, wiped our entire pro-tem committee members for the writing of the constitution irrelevant and jobless. The news, in one conversation over the phone, made me not want to go back to my hostel (despite it being a really long day with an intense Economic lesson and a class test for Chemistry) and face myself and consequently what I've failed to do (again).

And so that explains how during the One Direction movie I was screaming like the quintessential fangirl but I was doing it more for getting rid of the toxic building up in my mind rather than getting excited over the appearance of Louis Tomlinson. And how after that I followed Austin, Michelle and Zitian to Nando's and during that time I managed to procure two free tickets to the ensemble performance tonight held in our university hall. I was not interested in classical music at the moment, but I took the tickets anyway and walked back to college thinking I could sell them then at least my day would have been productive. When I got to college though I changed my mind because I really didn't want to go back to the hostel yet. I might as well go to the concert. Then it occurred to me that I have no one to share the second ticket with so I called Huimin and invited her over. She said OK. While waiting for her I lay down on the bench. For the first time in a very long time I felt a sense of calmness and tranquility that comes with you being totally comfortable with being thoughtfully alone with yourself in a very public area.

About 50 minutes later Huimin arrived and she said I looked like a vagrant. And I think that that reflects what I was feeling at the time that I looked like a vagrant: I felt like a wanderer, an observer, momentarily disconnected. I was in my own bubble, not thinking about my course of life and my relative uselessness to society, but rather, simply existed as a product of thoughts of the present. I was also thinking that I could extrapolate this experience and spend one night in the college just for the heck of it.

Anwyay me and Huimin went to the Mozart on Silk Road concert at the University Hall. We had balcony seats which were more private than the formal seats directly in front of the performers. And then Huimin said this was the most civilized thing I have done: attending a classical music performance and I agree with her. It was pretty much the epitome of civilization; being able to verbally appreciate the fineness of art in the presence of so many socialites. And it would have been civilized if we had quietly listened to the passages but of course not, yours truly has never been a civilized person. We were more akin to your typical teenage assholes who made stupid commentary and talked about how one of the performers look like he is wearing a helmet on stage and how one of the pieces sound like we were riding sheep into the sunset.

But we stayed the whole way through and when it ended we walked back to the hostel because I couldn't delay doing laundry any longer. While waiting for laundry I went swimming at near midnight and it was an exhilarating experience. I had Janice texting on her phone and Huimin trying to sing in the soprano range to the same songs over and over again by the pool. I was alone in the whole swimming pool under the dark sky and I felt free. Until I stepped on something in the pool that suspiciously felt like a tangle of human hair. I got so disgusted that my mood was killed.

I might have been running the entire day, but eventually we had to come back to the hostel after laundry. In my room where I am now there are no more distractions and I am faced with myself and my failure but fortunately I am so exhausted I cannot do much thinking.

A completely unnecessary post

About time for the obligatory pictures of yours truly prancing around the room in the afternoon.




Maybe I should get a life (and join some clubs that actually want me)?

Free writing

I sit here in the company of myself, back in my room after a month away, and I am trying to write, anything, anything at all. A few themes have floated past my head recently: tokophobia, growing up with patriarchy, domesticity, coming back home and the sibling pact I made with my brother, but it seems like I can't go beyond the draft room. A suspicion arises: I can't write, as my flow of thoughts is blocked. And then I think that a writer's flow of thoughts is like the sewer, and as the sewage water of thoughts gushes past the drain accumulates slime and clotted rubbish and human hair and dead rats and the like, and this calls for a decluttering of the drain through posts like this: free writing, we used to call it, me and Joelyn back when we still roleplayed and occasionally one of us would hit a writer's block and the other would be super frustrated that the roleplay cannot continue with one of the key contributors ill like that. Then we wrote freely, lightly and unstoppable and uncaring of grammar and unfiltered, just letting the words out through under your fingertips like your regular detoxification at the spas. And did it help? I like to remember that it probably did, which is how we have archives of embarassing plotlines and pre-teen expressions of scenarios that will never happen.

Best thing about free writing is that you've admitted to the fact that your current piece of post is subject to your whims, and this is how you are liberated from expectations, whether real or imaginary ones set up by yourself as a consequence of a swollen ego (like I feel the need to keep my posts either on par or improve them relative to my average posts and unless my regular posts are super-duper amazing I don't know why I keep feeling this hesitation when wanting to pen down certain things as if they'll be inferior to my previous posts what the). So after that little show of humility I am free to write whatever I want, without the interference of doubts and annoying stops in the middle of a sentence phrasing.

One thing I really miss is the easy confidence I've always had about writing, like I would open up a new blog post and thirty minutes or an hour later I would have a piece of post that I am proud of to have written (but that was years ago, nowadays I look back and I cringe). I think it would be really nice to have one of those nights where you can write anything and it would sound like something that would be quoted on Tumblr and get thousands of notes despite you not being a famous person. Those nights are rare and I haven't had any this year, which is probably why I have taken to photography, although it is not the main reason, definitely not. I don't know why but I feel a little less stressed when doing photography than I would if I were doing writing, maybe because I place illogically high expectations on my writing, while I am still a newbie in photography so I can post whatever crap that I think passes for photography and pull the "I'm new at this!" card if someone says a thing. But for writing I can't do that, I've been writing a blog since I was 12, and there really is no reason for me to find this so hard. It is frightening to find that I can't articulate ideas as well as I used to be able to, but if I were to take an optimistic approach to this view, it could be that the problem lies not with my writing, but rather my ideas have grown more complex, and I haven't adapted my writing to that yet. To make things worse I write less and less and rely more heavily on visuals to get the same idea across, although of course they're both different things and they both achieve different perspectives of what I'm trying to say.

With romanticism I find that it is a lot easier to write fluidly, fingers flying across the keyboard like when you're ranting about something that makes you angry, or excited, that makes you feel. I miss that, being able to romanticize things and visualize clearly in my head the very idea I am romanticizing and then directly transfer them into words, simple as scratching an itch. But the thing about romanticism is that it presents a heavily lopsided view; it is essentially just you projecting your own ideals on a single idea, and this is why it is so easy to write about them. If you've got your head cloud high in your romanticism there shouldn't be anything unsightly to pull you back to earth, and this is where I'm experiencing my writing problem: I've got too many unsightly things pulling me down down down until I drop my metaphorical pen and give up and do something else that doesn't require failure slapping you like a wet fish so many times. In the world I live in now, the sky is too clear and the earth is too near and there are too little clouds for me to write about. This world is too pragmatic and I stop myself at every sentence and I contradict myself in my head, and I find cliches to mock, and then the whole thing quickly becomes counter-productive. It is too much simpler to take photographs, where pragmatism stops at technicalities and not doubt.

That said I think we all need a little break sometimes and this is officially my holiday writing- quite apt because I am on holiday now. And I need to start embracing my blog as a safe place for me to write again.

A Wanderer in Thought

Wandering because I'm trying to find something else in place of a God.

Don't mind me

Nothing light or entertaining here. Just 800 words of unnecessarily disturbing myself.

What I Know About Myself

From the half year I spent with myself without the hindrance of going to school and external stress, I know I'm not a good person. My intentions are self-serving. I like hanging out with myself except at night when I think of the inevitable deaths of people around me and how inconvenient that will be to my emotional state. I think about their deaths to desensitize myself but it's hard. I get bored easily, of people and their squanders and of things I claim to love once upon a time. I zone out when you're talking and you wouldn't know it. I think love is overrated, maybe because I'm unable to experience it, or its meaning has been diluted by my many infatuations with material things. I think relationships are suffocating. I enjoy a high degree of freedom. I rarely have limits imposed on me, except by myself, and I'd feel smothered and angry if it were otherwise. I try not to, but I compare myself with people on my Facebook newsfeed and I only get jealous if they've been travelling, even if they've been to some place I've been to before. I dislike talking on phones. I prefer online chats at 3am, when the world is mine and I'm stoned from hours of listening to electronic music. I wish I can believe in a God so things would be less scary. I think of the ephemerality of most experience as they happen and when that happens I find myself assuming a passive observer's role. I empathize with non-living objects and imagine extensive eventualities for some of them as I throw them away.

I feel sorry for a lot of people, people I know, people I dislike because they have earned my dislike, people on the streets, people behind the counters. I feel like a lot of people are sad because they hate their jobs but they must keep working to support their family and they can't do anything else. I feel then that families are a great cause of misery for making them assume such responsibilities. And then I feel that they deserve it because they chose to get married, chose to have children. I wonder if they have quietly resigned themselves to accepting the lives they have chosen and if they're okay with it because they've managed to dull the fight within themselves through the years of routine. I feel sorry for them even though they could be happy, but I think that wasn't the kind of happiness they were seeking, it's the kind you've come to accept because it's the only one you've got. Maybe it's not like that, and I feel sorry only because I see myself in them and I would feel sorry for myself if I allow it to happen to me.

I think democratic choices in the non-political sense are a hassle and inefficient to obtain because so many people are misinformed and can't make a good decisions. I think non-intrusive benign authoritarianism is the way to go. I don't know what I'm going to major in in university and I wish people would stop asking because it doesn't have anything to do with them. I know it would kill me if I don't make it to an overseas university, because I've been waiting for that all my life. I think feigning polite interest is annoying and unnecessary in most context, like if you're friends or relatives. I always think I'm going to backpack around the world one day but I'm afraid I won't make it because of cowardice disguised under financial reasons. The idea of domesticity makes me laugh, but the idea of uncertain adventures makes me doubtful.

I'm eighteen now but I went to the bar before I was legal and I wondered if all those people enjoy what they were doing and if I will one day become like them. I see old ladies by the roads with a plastic bag hobbling painfully slowly and wonder what they live for. I wonder what everyone lives for, and if they would kill themselves if they one day realize how ephemeral and pointless it is. I wonder why people do what they do, and if they think they are good people when they're not, and they make selfish decisions like I do too. I wonder if it wouldn't hurt to realize that, but they're too nice to realize it because they can't live with themselves otherwise. I know it and I certainly can.

Grey Gray Grey

Today I moved my equipment outside, and it was a disaster. My camera's battery and flash battery had ran out and I still hadn't got any decent shot, natural light was setting fast and it was in a nutshell a disaster. I only managed to find one not too bad picture from the mess I made today. On a side note, I really like the St Peter's cross I drew on my left arm with a Sharpie.