crystal cha jing ying

The beauty of now

2011-07-31T21:16:00.002+08:00

Life is a funny thing. Lived forwards, it can seem chaotic, uncomfortable, and painfully slow. But somehow time washes the not-so-pleasant away, leaving the beauty behind.

In the UK, I didn't think it was possible to miss a place as much as I missed KL. I now know that it's possible.

I didn't think I'd ever find myself missing it. All I saw, for most of my eight months there, was how much I was missing back home. But looking backwards, time did its funny little tricks, and I am struck by how beautiful my time there was.

I find myself, again, wishing I was back in a place that feels familiar - although ironically, it didn't feel familiar at the time. Yet I know that going back is not the answer. Things won't be the same again. I'd have to adjust all over again, and I'd find myself missing other familiar things here.

Such is life... and such is time. It gives past memories a makeover, transforming them into beauty. Yet it's the very thing that keeps you from living the same moment twice.

I think that means we need to be more careful about the time we let slip through our fingers.

We can't hold on to anything in life, that's for sure. But we can look past the chaos and unpleasantness of the moment and see all the beauty the present contains.

Maybe time works this way because if we got all the good and beautiful things in life at one go, we wouldn't be able to fully savour it or know what to do with it.

There's beauty in the past, in memories. There's beauty in hope for the future, in dreams. But the only beauty we can really hold, touch, taste, experience... is that in the present.

So always keep a little bit of the beauty of the past and future in your heart, but don't let it blind you to that of the present.

Because there is always something beautiful around us, I believe. At every single moment in our lives.

Sometimes I'm scared to embrace the beauty of today, because I'm scared I won't have room in my heart alongside so many beautiful memories of the past.

But the heart always makes room.

Sometimes I live so much for the idea of a 'better' tomorrow, that I look back and regret not fully appreciating yesterday, by which time it's too late to go back.

Be present. This moment, this day, is all you really have.

See the beauty in it.

Slow down.

Cherish the little things.

Savour the good things.

Remember that everything will pass, the good and bad.

But it's your choice which to focus on.

"Life is short. Break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile....

...Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain

See you later :)

2011-07-30T10:16:00.003+08:00

I find that I'm not so scared of goodbyes these days like I used to be.

After 21 years on this earth, life has not failed to disappoint in that it always brings the people I need into my life.

Not necessarily those I want, though.

But if I am a better person today than I was a year, two years, five years ago (and I think I am), then those people must have been good for me. The ones I've had to say goodbye to - maybe they weren't what I needed at that point in life. And those goodbyes had to be said to make room for new people to walk in - people who were there to teach me things, to help me grow, to make me stronger, and, sometimes, sometimes... to slow me down, remind me that I'm human, and open my eyes to how beautiful life can be.

Life has also taught me that some goodbyes are not really goodbyes (more like 'See you later's). With some people, you can go without talking for weeks or seeing each other for months - but when you finally do, it's like all that time and distance never happened. If people are meant to stay in your life, they will. Even if you have to say a few goodbyes along the way. But they'll always be followed by the next 'Hello'. :)

So here's to goodbyes. The ones we need. The goodbyes that make room for better things. But also, the ones that don't last. The temporary goodbyes that show us how much the ones we care about mean to us.

And here's to the hellos that will follow. To new faces... and if you're lucky, to warm, familiar ones all over again.

The Giving Pledge

2011-07-29T12:52:00.001+08:00

Inspiring words from The Giving Pledge:

"More than 99% of my wealth will go to philanthropy during my lifetime or at death. Measured by dollars, this commitment is large. In a comparative sense, though, many individuals give more to others every day.

Millions of people who regularly contribute to churches, schools, and other organizations thereby relinquish the use of funds that would otherwise benefit their own families. The dollars these people drop into a collection plate or give to United Way mean forgone movies, dinners out, or other personal pleasures. In contrast, my family and I will give up nothing we need or want by fulfilling this 99% pledge.

Moreover, this pledge does not leave me contributing the most precious asset, which is time. Many people, including -- I'm proud to say -- my three children, give extensively of their own time and talents to help others. Gifts of this kind often prove far more valuable than money. A struggling child, befriended and nurtured by a caring mentor, receives a gift whose value far exceeds what can be bestowed by a check." -Warren Buffet

"I am the son of a plumber who practiced his trade in the South Bronx. I am the first generation American born in my family as well as the first to get a college degree. My education is largely public school based -- public grade school, high school and college all in the Bronx. I had a short stint at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business where I earned an MBA and this opened the door for me to Goldman Sachs. I joined the Firm the day after graduation as I had a National Defense Education Act Student Loan to repay, had no money in the bank, and a six month old child to support. I had a near 25 year run of happiness and good fortune at Goldman Sachs. The last 19 years at Omega have also been years of happiness and good fortune with a few bumps along the way. While I worked hard, I must say I had more than my share of good luck.

Toby and I feel it is our moral imperative to give others the opportunity to pursue the American Dream by sharing our financial success. The case for philanthropy has been stated by others in a most articulate way and in words that have impressed me: In the early 1900's Andrew Carnegie said “He who dies rich, dies disgraced.” In the 1930's, Sir Winston Churchill observed that “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Well before all these gentlemen expressed their thoughts, it was written in the Talmud that “A man's net worth is measured not by what he earns but rather what he gives away.”" -Leon G. Cooperman

"My mother raised my brother and me in a European immigrant community in downtown Los Angeles. From the time I was two years old, it was just the three of us. We didn’t have very much, not even a TV; however, we did not realize that.

One Christmas, when I was six years old, my mother took us to see the window displays and decorations in the big department stores in downtown Los Angeles. It was a big treat for us. We saw puppets that moved and trains that circled... It was really special and added to the Christmas spirit, but it didn’t cost anything.

That same year, my mother gave my brother and me a dime. She told both of us to hold half of it and put it in thebucket near a man who was ringing a bell. We did, and then we asked my mother why we gave him the dime (at the time, a dime could buy you three candy bars or two soda pops). My mom’s reply was, “This is the Salvation Army that helps people who are really in need. Remember boys, no matter how much you have, there is always someone who is more in need than you. Always try to give, even if it is a little.” Needless to say, that stuck with me in my adult life.

Now my family and I have the privilege to help people and make the world a better place to live. This opportunity will not be passed up. Living is giving. I won’t deprive my family of knowing how good it feels to help those in need with some of the basics we already have…food, shelter, care and a future." -John Paul DeJoria

"Both of us were fortunate to grow up with parents who taught us some tremendously important values. Work hard. Show respect. Have a sense of humor. And if life happens to bless you with talent or treasure, you have a responsibility to use those gifts as well and as wisely as you possibly can. Now we hope to pass this example on to our own children." -Bill and Melinda Gates

"...the reality of great wealth is that you can't spend it and you can't take it with you. For decades, I've been committed to giving away the vast majority of my wealth to causes that I'm passionate about - and that my children are passionate about. And so I am enthusiastically taking the Giving Pledge, and nearly all of my net worth will be given away in the years ahead or left to my foundation." -Michael R. Bloomberg

"The three problems that concern me the most are the threat of nuclear annihilation, climate change and the continuing growth of the world’s population. Sometimes these problems can seem overwhelming, and when they do, I remind myself of a conversation I had many years ago with Jacques Cousteau. I asked him if he ever got discouraged or worried that the problems he was working on were insurmountable. He looked at me and said, “Ted, it could be that these problems can’t be solved, but what can men of good conscience do but keep trying until the very end?” At that moment, his very words inspired me to want to do even more." -Ted Turner

"I was also informed by the great novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, who once told a story that seemed to capture my situation perfectly. He and Joseph Heller were at a party given by a wealthy hedge fund manager at his majestic beach house in the Hamptons, the summer playground on Long Island where the rich and famous congregate. Kurt and Joe both had made their marks by satirizing life’s absurdities – Kurt with best-selling novels like Slaughterhouse 5 and Breakfast of Champions, Joe with the incomparable Catch-22. During the course of the party, Kurt looked around at the surroundings and asked Heller: “Joe, doesn’t it bother you that this guy makes more in a day than you ever made from the worldwide sales of Cach-22?” Joe thought for a moment and then said, “No, not really. I have something that he doesn’t have.” “What could you possibly have that he doesn’t have?” Kurt asked. “I know the meaning of enough.” My father often said the same thing." -Peter G. Peterson

Note to self:

2011-07-25T00:13:00.002+08:00

Don't put your life on hold.

Don't be afraid to feel.

Reminders of things that matter

2011-07-21T11:07:00.000+08:00

There is much I want to write about.

There's Bersih 2.0, and the subtle undercurrents, beneath all the drama, of a newly-sparked passion for our country among my oft-dubbed as apathetic generation.

Or a recent series of wakes and funerals I've attended and how it often takes sudden and unexpected events like these to slow us down and put things into perspective. (Why do we gather and spend so lavishly - and regretfully - upon someone's passing instead of having used that time and money to celebrate them while they were still alive?)

But there are only so many hours in a day, and other priorities and obligations to attend to, that by the time I sit down to write about these things, other events will have taken place, and the experiences of today a faded memory.

So instead, I will just be thankful for today's reminders:

Of the things that matter in life - friends, family, and a place to call home.

And to live each day with passion and purpose - a life that, in the face of the unexpected, will hold no regrets from yesterday.

Be the change you want to see in the world

2011-07-20T14:20:00.005+08:00

One passion I have developed in recent years is environmental sustainability, sparked by a growing awareness of environmental issues. This awareness came from a variety of sources, including:

Writing and researching for a monthly environmental column in a magazine I used to work at;
Working on my company’s sustainability report as a trainee last year;
The movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’;
The sprouting of community and church environmental efforts around me;
Working on a business proposal for an environmental website as part of a university project;
Various prominent awareness campaigns including Earth Hour and The Plastiki Expedition; and
Amazing environmentalist friends like Naz, who runs Green-Eyed Monster Blog.

All the above ruined my blissful ignorance of the state of our world. Life would never be the same again. Learning about a floating rubbish patch in the Pacific Ocean comprising mostly non-biodegradable plastic that spans an area the size of Texas and keeps growing because we keep producing plastic, looking at images of beautiful marine life trapped in discarded plastic rings or covered in thick oil, and watching, with my own eyes, coral reefs diminishing each time I revisit Malaysia’s East coast islands since I first started snorkeling as a child… is nothing short of heart-wrenching.

I realize, though, that I don’t talk about this passion enough, perhaps because I am averse to preaching without practicing, and I’ve always felt I was simply not doing enough.

Nobody needs to hear another overbearing sermon about how the earth’s resources are limited and we need to take care of it or risk harming ourselves and future generations. But we see the signs of human greed and irresponsibility everywhere, choking beauty and littering our streets. We know, intuitively, that there must be some better way to live. We know we could use some change.

I’ve long been inspired by Ghandi, who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

I want to change. I want to talk about things that matter to me – but first, I want to be able to do something about those things before I talk about them. To do that, I need to realize that in the long run, small things matter.

This week, I started with the simplest of steps – finding a box to recycle paper at home. Hopefully, in addition to reducing my environmental impact, that box will serve as a visual reminder to use paper (and the rest of my resources) sparingly and generate some extra income for the people involved in the recycling process.

I have also started reading ‘Walking Gently on the Earth: Making Faithful Choices About Food, Energy, Shelter and More’, a thoughtful book that reflects on how we can make wiser, better, intentional, more beneficial choices about living our lives in a way that allows us and our earth to flourish. Hopefully this book will shed light on more ways we can take care of the earth we live on and ultimately, take better care of ourselves.

Another particular area in which I want to challenge myself is to eat less meat. If you would do one thing and one thing only to reduce your impact on the environment, it would be to eat less meat. Nothing else, not even transportation or energy production, causes as much carbon emissions as the meat industry.

I love my meat. Thanks to the effectiveness of diets such as The Zone and The South Beach Diet, which promote eating generously as a whole but consuming more protein and minimal carbs, I am a serial meat eater. But benefitting myself at the detriment of others – I hardly consider that a benefit at all.

I don't have a defined action plan, but if I can skip meat starting with a day a week, to perhaps every alternate day, that's a good start!

I'll close with a challenge, inspired by a witty tee shirt slogan I've been seeing people sport lately - "Everyone wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change."

What do you want to see change in our world? What's ONE thing you can do differently to be a part of that change today? This week? This year?

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination

2011-07-18T22:19:00.003+08:00

I've been quiet for awhile. Well, by my standards at least. For someone who blogs every other day, a week without a new post is a substantial hiatus.

When I'm not blogging, it usually means I'm busy living. And this week, I have been living. The few times I did find myself staring at an empty text box below the words 'New Post' this week, I was at a loss for words to type out.

Because the thing with living is that it's pretty hard to process, to grasp, and most of all, to write down when you're caught in the middle of all its craziness. The lessons, the appreciation, the understanding for what we've gone through usually come in hindsight. Often, we only realize or understand what we've lived through after we've lived through it.

I think I've just been thrown into the middle of one of those crazy OMG-how-did-the-week-just-fly-by, sleeping-late-and-waking-up-early seasons of living, laughing, crying, loving. And I think I'm ready to face it.

After coming back from the UK absolutely drained, this past month and a half - spent giving myself time, spent paying attention to myself, spent being honest with myself, spent giving myself a chance - has been good for me.

I've come to realize that most of the time, when I tell myself "I can't", what it really means is "I won't". I won't risk failure or embarrassment or even worse, mediocrity - I won't even try because those risks are not worth it. I don't really mean "I can't" because I don't even know if I can or can't, because I've not even tried.

It dawned on me how much of my life was spent telling myself "I won't", masked by excuses of "I can't", "It's not my thing", and "I'm not good at that". I realized if I kept having the attitude of "I'm not a corporate person", "I'm an artsy person; I don't fit inside a system", and "I'm hopeless at understanding business and finance" - even before giving any of the above a chance - I was going to make myself miserable for the next three years.

I've also come to realize that I'm more afraid of success than of failure. If you've failed, as long as you've tried your hardest, then you can simply shrug it off and say I tried my best, but I guess that's not my lot in life. With success comes recognition - and scrutiny. What if... what if there are people who don't think I deserve my success? What if there are people who are jealous of me? What if there are people who try to steal my successes from me... and what if they succeed? What if I can't handle everyone looking at me and evaluating my success? It comes down, then, not to a matter of failure versus success... but a matter of self-worth.

As Marianne Williamson famously put it:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. It is our light more than our darkness which scares us. We ask ourselves – who are we to be brilliant, beautiful, talented, and fabulous. But honestly, who are you to not be so?

You are a child of God, small games do not work in this world. For those around us to feel peace, it is not example to make ourselves small. We were born to express the glory of God that lives in us. It is not in some of us, it is in all of us. While we allow our light to shine, we unconsciously give permission for others to do the same. When we liberate ourselves from our own fears, simply our presence may liberate others."

But these epiphanies mean nothing if my perspectives and actions don't change. So I told myself to stop telling myself "I won't" and give myself a chance. And while succeeding - really succeeding in life - scares the crap out of me, I've decided to give it 101% - everything I have in me and whatever more I can muster. To be scared, but to do it anyway, scared and all.

I'm a big advocate of facing your fears. To overcome my fear of heights and wobbly knees, I turned to Skytrex and Genting Theme Park's Space Shot. To overcome my fear of reptiles, I wrapped a python around my neck. In the future, I hope to go for a night dive to overcome my phobia of dark water, which I blame on my parents for letting me watch JAWS when I was a tiny kid. But these fears aren't as crippling as things like the fear of failing or succeeding.

Often, we don't see our avoidance of those things as fears. It's easy to address a fear of insects or lizards once you acknowledge it as a fear and take steps to overcome it. But as long as we don't admit that telling ourselves "I can't" really means we just don't want to, and that sometimes, we don't push ourselves enough because we don't really think we deserve success, then we'll never be able to overcome those mentalities.

Overcoming a problem starts with admitting there's one.

Namaste.

(Note: I discovered the above word while writing a review for a Northern Indian restaurant. It is a reverential greeting associated with several Eastern religions, most famously Hinduism, but I believe its essence transcends religion or culture. It means "I honour the divinity within you", or "the light in me respects the light in you". Beautiful.)

The sweetest words I've heard all year

2011-07-12T12:08:00.006+08:00

The past week has been an eventful one. What with the Bersih 2.0 rally, Thailand's first female prime minister (and a gorgeous one at that) being voted into office, and of course Rupert Murdoch's News of the World phone hacking scandal.

In the middle of all that, I received some other news, which, while certainly not as significant as the above, was the highlight of my year so far.

After what has been an eventful and challenging journey, I can finally say that I'm a graduate. And not only that, a graduate with first class honours.

Was it a smooth ride all the way? No. Did I feel like giving up along the way? Constantly. Were there times I felt I'd blown the chance at a 1:1 degree? Definitely, when I managed to set a personal record for my all-time lowest grade received for a module. Was it worth it? Yes. Absolutely yes.

If I had to pick one thing university taught me, it would be that there's no shortcut to success. For a straight-A student who breezed by daydreaming her way through school and college, and pretty much being good at whatever she found herself doing, be it editing, designing, or working as a barista at Starbucks, I found myself in a very different world the moment I hit university. A world in which talent and personality were just not enough. Going twenty years of one's life without really having to question your ability and being given opportunities to do things you're naturally good at doesn't really teach you a lot about the real world and the determination, discipline, and hard work you need to thrive in it.

And that is what I believe my degree is worth. Not a fancy piece of paper or a ticket to a bigger paycheck or my module grades, but a primer in Life: The Real Deal.

Lessons in learning I won't always get to do things I like, but that doesn't mean I have to hate what I do;
that community and collaboration, no matter how much of a lone ranger I may prefer to be, is crucial to navigating a world built on complex, intricate relationships;
that getting - and staying - motivated is something that you have to fight for, not something that drifts your way;
that failing is inevitable but it's not the end;
that keeping your eyes on the bigger picture is the only way to move forward;
and that simple things and the occasional distraction and indulgence keep life beautiful.

As always, I couldn't have done it alone. One of my favourite quotes, by St John of Salisbury, goes:

"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."

So this is the part where I take the time to say thank you. To the mentors and tutors whose lessons expanded beyond the classroom, in particular Dawn Johnston, Ben Young, and Andy Price. The opportunity to learn under your guidance has been a tremendous privilege. Thank you.

To the friends who kept me going and saw more in me than I saw in myself at times, especially Mabel, Nazila, and Justin. You are gems of friends. Thank you.

To all the ones from home whose notes and little packages kept me going through the homesickness, thank you.

To my family, for believing me in their own unique ways that I don't appreciate enough, especially my youngest brother, whose letters and writing have been a quiet, but very real source of strength to me. Thank you.

And of course to my sponsor, YTL Corporation, for seeing something in me to bestow on me the opportunity to do something I had only dreamed of till then, and the individuals who made it happen. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. A dozen 'thank you's, silent prayers, and all the best hopes and wishes go out to all of you mentioned above. You make the journey worth it.

The girl of his dreams

2011-07-08T00:43:00.005+08:00

via delacroix

Maybe as she lays her head on a tear-stained pillow for the 135th night - alone - and slips blissfully into a world more beautiful than the one she came from, a world with him in it, he wakes up.

Maybe the moment he wakes up he wishes he didn't - wishes he could go back to his dreams, where he found her.

Maybe he gets out of bed and puts on a shirt and goes through the motions of daily life, passing literally hundreds of girls everywhere as he commutes to work or to college and back - some of whom catch his eye but he knows will never catch his heart.

Maybe sometimes when he looks at them he wonders if he'll ever find a girl that understands him or inspires him like she does, and maybe sometimes, if he thinks too much about it, it makes him sad.

Maybe other times he steals a glance at every girl he passes, hoping he'll find something to spark a recognition.

Maybe he wonders if he really met her, or if she doesn't really exist. Maybe he gets tired of trying to find her.

Maybe sometimes, he gets so tired, he allows himself to be distracted by some other girl - if only to stop thinking about her for awhile.

Maybe sometimes it works for awhile - and he forgets about her - and then the slightest thing like a beautiful smile, a brush of skin against skin, a kind word, a gentle gesture from some other girl reminds him all over again of her.

Maybe somewhere down the line he realizes he can't ever forget her, even if he tries. Maybe this thought scares him. Maybe this thought gives him hope. Maybe it makes him want to keep searching harder.

Maybe the next day, as she wakes up, he gets into bed - alone - and escapes into a world where finding her is not so difficult, a world that doesn't seem to limit the time and space between them like the one he came from.

Maybe the last thing he remembers of his time with her in that world as harsh sunlight pulls him back into this one is falling asleep with his arms wrapped around her, and maybe the memory is so vivid, so fresh, that the empty space between his arms and chest is startling and jarring.

I will get to know the way my skin curves around my bones

2011-07-07T12:15:00.004+08:00

(via shipwreckedinthedesert)

The start of a new chapter in life, of a transition from what was to what is - always takes me a period of reflection before I finally feel I am ready to embrace the new opportunities of the present.

And this period of reflection often brings with it the ironically familiar surprise that somewhere along the way, I've lost sight. Of who I am, why I'm here, of where I'm going, of what I want.

This new chapter of transitioning from academic life to the working world has been no different. Yesterday I learnt a new term that up till hearing it, I had no knowledge of: "quarter life crisis". I might be going through one of those now.

I'm not supposed to be so jaded at 21, or at least that's the vibe I get from most people I talk to, but since when do life experiences move in a linear pattern anyway? We live, we make mistakes, we get tired, we give up, we pick ourselves up, we learn, we move on... and the process repeats itself over and over again.

I've been in this place many times before. Different chapters, different friendships, different loves, different questions, different struggles - they were all documented somwhere, on some blog, out there in the great vast web. Because of this I've been able to look back and see how I've grown, made mistakes, learned from them, repeated a few more times than I should have, but picked myself up again.

It gets harder each time, it's true. I find myself becoming more guarded and wary of not making any mistakes so I don't go through the painful process of trying to pick myself up from another one the older I get. It happens to all of us as we grow up. Maybe it's not such a bad thing, as long as we don't wall ourselves up so completely we stop growing altogether.

So I guess this is just another one of those parts of the story where I get to start from zero all over again and redefine what's important to me in life and what I want out of it. Notice I said, "I get to". Not I don't have any choice because I don't have any cooler, more kick-ass plan figured out for my life than working a corporate 9-5 job or because there seems to be an hopeless dearth of good, single, passionate men left in the world, let alone my city.

Because I still believe that life is what we make it, and how we choose to see it. I could spend the next three years telling myself that all I have to live for is getting by with just enough, working off my bond and otherwise bumming my life away, waiting for the-powers- that-be to hand me my life's purpose or my perfect soul mate on a silver platter, since I have neither the freedom, opportunity or finances to do anything more exciting, like backpack solo around the world or open a coffeehouse.

Or I could see these three years as a gift. Time given to an intense, unpredictable, impatient, emotionally-voilatile go-getter and overachiever to slow down and let life catch up with her dreams for a bit, to enjoy her youth before it slips out of her grasp, to figure out what she really wants - what 21-year-old her wants, not what precocious 15-year-old or idealistic 18-year-old her wanted. To have her faith in humanity and hope in God restored again before she goes rushing about with the notion that she can make the world or someone else's life better.

To find the courage to face the demons she's been running from and the truth that all this while, her noble ambitions and aspirations have been nothing but attempts to prove that she was better than everyone else, and that those attempts stemmed from a deep insecurity. The truth that all her 'fearless' efforts at loving people she knew were not good for her stemmed from never really believing she could be good for anybody. The truth that the reason she secretly hated authority and the church and men was because she had been hurt by people who represented all of the above and refused to believe that maybe those people didn't represent those groups accurately. The truth that the reason she didn't have good things in her life to celebrate was not because she didn't believe they existed, but that she didn't believe she deserved them.

There's so many things I need to work on. So many things I want to work on. But if I had to pick somewhere to start, I would pick fear. I watched Green Lantern last night and although yes, it was hardly anything to shout about, what struck me was the overwhelming, total destructiveness of fear. I think mankind's greatest threat is not World War III or global warming or tangible things like that - I think our greatest enemy is fear, and the greatest battlefield is in the mind.

The most deadly, totally-consuming things are not bullets or guns or radiation or toxic waste - they are fears.

The fear that I don't matter.
The fear that nothing matters.
The fear that my life will always be this way.
The fear that nothing will change.
The fear that I will be just like my parents.
The fear that my children will be just like me.
The fear that nobody cares.
The fear that I can never bring myself to care again.
The fear that things will get worse.
The fear that I can never pick myself up from something like this.
The fear that life is a mistake.
The fear that I am a mistake.

Fear creeps in silently. But it is potent and will-crippling and mind-numbing and soul-searing. Even anger and hate, in all their explosive fieriness, stem from fear at its very core.

And only courage can overcome it.

As Carol tells Green Lantern Hal, it's not "that you are fearless. It saw that you have the ability to overcome fear. It saw that you are courageous."

Living takes courage, because living is dangerous. It's easier to survive.

It's dangerous to keep trying, again and again, for what you want. when you risk looking a fool. It's easier to settle.
It's dangerous to care because there will come times when caring will hurt. It's easier to not give a damn.
It's dangerous to change because it will be uncomfortable, difficult, and you might slip back into the same old rut, reinforcing your fear that nothing will ever change. It's easier to resign yourself to the status quo.
It's dangerous to hope because you risk disappointment. It's easier to accept the way things are.
It's dangerous to believe your life has meaning, because you will have to chase down that meaning, and when you find it, defend it at all costs, because there are those who would like nothing better to steal it from you, so they can continue surviving safely, conveniently, and comfortably, but fearfully, through life. It's easier to give in to your fears.

I'm getting tired of letting my fears dictate my life. I know I've been in this spot before and said things along this line before, but I'm not going to let the fear of making the same old mistakes and the fear of nothing ever changing stop me from deciding, again, that I'm going to let go of things that hold me back, I'm going to live my life, I'm going to find out who I am and what I want, and I'm going to colour and paint in life's meaning for myself.

11 things I could use (more of) in my life

2011-07-06T16:25:00.002+08:00

Hunting for / photographing pretty things, breathtaking sights, and delicious food.
Slow conversations over slow meals.
Time to read inspiring blogs like laurennicolelove.
~~Good women. Passionate women. Interesting women. Courageous women. Opinionated women. Real women. I need to be reminded they exist.~~ Actually, scratch that. I need to be reminded that good women and men exist. Good people. Alive people. Passionate people. Kind people. Real people.
Seeing other people's scars, feeling other people's heartaches, and hearing other people's secrets - to be reminded I'm not the only one with them.
Spring cleaning and remodeling. Everything from my room to my thoughts.
Writing fiction and poetry.
Seeing, not just looking.
Hearing, not just listening.
Understanding, not just knowing.
Hoping, not just wishing.
Living, not just surviving.

6 to 12 is up to me.

But for 1 to 5, (and God knows what I have to say next is something I rarely ever say; in fact, I cannot even remember the last time I said it, in writing or out loud) I need you.

You matter. You're important.

Because just who you are and your presence could make a difference in someone else's life. Like mine.

Are you up for it?

Weary late-night thoughts

2011-07-06T00:55:00.004+08:00

It's been a long time since I've felt this lost and aimless... just a drifter, wandering about, trying to make it through from one day to another. Reading my old blogposts and journal entries feels like reading a stranger's - I don't know who that ambitious, driven, and passionate girl is.

I am nothing like her. I'm reluctant, fearful, doubtful, and the only passion I display these days is passive-aggression towards people who poke their noses too close, although likely with only the best of intentions.

The thing is, I know the difference between that girl and me.

She had things I don't... things I know I could use.

Like dreams and hope and inspiration and a listening ear and someone to be next to her as she cries and someone to fall in love with and people to believe in her.

Those things probably are out there, if I made the effort to look, or maybe even right under my nose if I opened my eyes, but somehow, somewhere, along the way, I lost the courage and willpower to look.

These precious things sustain our lives and without them, life is pretty meaningless - but after chasing and losing a couple dreams, loves, friends, and faith, it's gotten harder to open up to new ones... that could just be as easily lost.

So I choke by on stale breaths and halfhearted dreams even though I know something beautiful is probably waiting for me to let go of all these worn-out memories I'm carrying so I can embrace it

...but I don't know if I'm ready yet to embrace anything I could lose again, especially something that could be more beautiful.

The beauty of the human spirit

2011-07-05T23:13:00.002+08:00

After a monotonous hour-long ride on a droning ferry, I finally step foot on Tioman - to find it much more bustling and developed than I had expected. I am greeted by a concrete jetty, rows of brick-and-concrete budget hotels, and swarms of local folk goin about their daily business as in any other small town. With the vast sea at my back I almost wonder for a moment if I'm really on an island.

We set off through the village as I silently ask myself why we travelled 5 hours from the concrete jungle of KL to see more concrete, and if Malaysian budget hotels can be any more aesthetically unappealing. A few Caucasian tourists stroll past, attired in casual beach wear, and the place starts to feel a little more island-y. Upon reaching our place of lodging I discover that we are staying in, alas, another concrete building.

I only finally discover the magic of Tioman when we head to the beachfront for a briefing at the dive center.

We arrive at the beach, a stone's throw away from where we were staying, as the familiar, comforting smell of salt water drifts along on a warm breeze. Facing the beach is a rickety wooden bar, and mellow acoustic rhythms of Jack Johnson drift from somewhere inside it. Under the makeshift structure, backpackers and tanned bar staff laze around on hammocks, while some others connect a guitar and a bass to an amp before live, funky island grooves drown out Jack Johnson's croons.

Next to the bar is Ray's dive center - another small shack where a group of divers have just returned from a dive and are unloading their gear. You can tell who the seasoned old salts are by their tans - rich, dark, golden brown hues - and how long they take to remove their gear. Those two factors aside, one could easily mistake one of the dive students, an Asian Channing Tatum look-alike who filled out his wetsuit marvellously, for an instructor.

Yes, KL is finally starting to feel very far away.

***

I see the world and live my life differently from most people - something that I pride myself on, most days, when I'm not going through the occasional bout of self-doubt.

Ask me about accomplishments like getting my PADI Open Water dive certification, and I won't rave about the deadly sea urchins or huge sea turtle I saw, although it was certainly a beautiful creature. I won't talk about how cold (or in my case, not very cold) the water was or how heavy the air tanks were.

In fact I probably won't have much to say about the dives in themselves - even though all the things I took away from the trip wouldn't have happened if not for the dives.

No, ask me about my diving trip and I'll tell you about my life-long battle with eczema and skin allergies, and how the very things I love - sun, sand, and sea - are all things that trigger my skin issues. I'll tell you how on this trip, my skin flared up worst than it ever has before - to the point of huge, red, scaly blotches covering my arms, legs, and back and my skin feeling sore and bruised when rubbed against. I'll tell you how the battle against the itchiness and discomfort is nothing compared to the battle against the thoughts that everyone is staring at you, and that they think you're a freak, even if they're probably not doing either.

I'll tell you that the beauty that made me stop and catch a breath was not in any of the natural wonders of the sea in all their pristine perfection - it was in a crooked, genuine smile of one of the local bartenders who said, "As long as you have a beautiful smile, nobody will care how your skin looks."

It was in the time one of the dive center staff, a tattooed, ex-navy took to bring me to the local clinic to get some anti allergy pills after his working hours. It was in the way we hitched a free ride to a clinic, and how the doctors didn't charge us for the meds or consultation, not to mention dragging them out of their homes at night after clinic hours - because "that's small island life - everybody knows everybody", and people help each other out.

It was in the tears of a mother of one of the children in our group learning to dive, as she shared her story of her own fight against the eczema her son used to struggle with and the frustration of trying prescription after prescription from doctor after doctor to no avail.

Maybe I take the fact that I've gotten to see so many beautiful places and sights for granted. I've traveled Europe, explored tropical seas (well, as much as an amateur dive student can, at least)... but as I always tell people, "it looks better in pictures". Maybe.

But the privilege of meeting strangers who inspire and restore my faith in the human spirit - the privilege of having their lives touch mine for a brief, but profound, moment - will always be, to me, far more beautiful than any sights I can lay my eyes on. Such beauty goes beyond the visible - beyond toothy grins, tattooed arms, or generation gaps - to a beauty not just seen but felt by the heart.

The best things are enjoyed in private

2011-06-26T22:01:00.004+08:00

A year ago, I could barely jog continuously for 15 minutes without wanting to hyperventilate. Today, I completed a 10km run within the time limit I aimed for - a time limit hardly impressive for seasoned runners, I know, but definitely an achievement for someone with zero athletic experience for 20 years of my life.

I guess different people celebrate their victories differently - but I've never been the pump-my-fists-into-the-air, flash-a-big-grin, do-the-victory-sign kinda person. With all the achievements I've been proudest of in my life - graduating college on the Dean's List, getting a scholarship to the UK, or this run, I've never been an OMG-I-need-to-call/message-someone-and-tell-them-now! kinda person.

Rather than 'basking' in any success, I prefer to retreat, and have my own space and time to slowly savor what I've accomplished. And when people ask me about it I'm always hesitant to talk about it - maybe it's the Asian modesty thing but I tend to underrate my achievements - like not specifying how high I made it on the Dean's List, or how much the scholarship was for, or how fast I finished the 10k. Notice I still haven't. ;)

Because for me, having people tell me, "Wow, that's amazing!" (not to under-appreciate all the people who have supported me through my life in the least) means far less to me than the personal satisfaction of knowing that I beat not all those other people, but myself. The satisfaction lies not in exceeding other people's expectations, but my own. I've been blessed not to have encountered too many critics in my life. (Not to my face at least, but I guess having an apparently 'initimidating' aura helps. *laugh*) But there are plenty of people who maybe overestimate me a bit - who think, "Aiya you're Crystal what - for you so easy, sure no problem wan!" Like what is that supposed to mean - I'm not human also la?!? Lol.

The best part about challenging myself, beating my previous best, and exceeding my expectations, is that I know the effort that went into it. I know my limits, and I know how much further I've pushed them. No one else but me will truly understand how sweet that kind of personal success tastes - when you're striving to reach new heights not for anyone else but for yourself, to steal a line from L'oreal, "because you're worth it".

Still, even if I don't talk about it, these victories I've mentioned so far are kinda public. Even though people might not know the details or see effort that went into it, people will know something about it. But there are even more personal victories that maybe nobody else but a close friend or two will know anything about. Like deciding, each and every morning you wake up, to be happy. Like letting go of something you've been holding on to for too long. Like choosing to see your parents as allies instead of enemies. And things like that. Things too private to talk about but that take as much courage and effort as the public victories, if not more.

But the private victories - they're often the sweetest ones of all...

...just like romances. The ones you don't need to publicize and prove to the world how happy you are or how 'cute' you look together. That grow and evolve free of prying noses and public arguments. The ones you don't have to untag a million Facebook photos from after Facebook coldly declares you are no longer in a relationship. The ones no one needs to know about at all... the ones you take your own time and space, not that of other people's - to slowly savor it.

I think Facebook lies sometimes. Often, more things are happening not when a person's Wall is abuzz with posts and updates. More things are happening when there are long absences between posts - when real life is being lived, when more things are being enjoyed... in private.

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights. -Muhammad Ali

See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls. -Mother Teresa

Live in the sunshine, drink the wild air. -Emerson

2011-06-22T21:34:00.000+08:00

I'm a health nut. Not so I can feel good about myself and smirk silently at all those fast-food addicts, late/insomniac sleepers, yo-yo dieters, morning sinus sufferers (okay, maybe a little bit so I can feel good about myself).

Mostly, it's because my body treats me so much better when I treat it well. When I've had a nutritious lunch, it doesn't give me that midday OMG-what-the-heck-am-I-doing-working/studying-get-me-into-a-bed-NOW slump. When I regularly wake up at a consistent time, my body allows me to fall asleep at a consistent time (or maybe that should be vice versa) and I don't look hungover the next day. When I don't overeat but allow myself regular indulgences to keep from binging, I find myself stressing less every time I step on the scales. If I forget my daily dose of cod liver oil, I'll be stuck talking like Donald Duck and going through packs of tissues to deal with my sinuses the rest of the day.

So it's not about being anal or obsessive - it's simply because my body works a certain way, and is governed by certain rules of science and biology, and when I follow those rules, I spare myself a lot of unnecessary discomfort and inconvenience.

Emotional junk food

I take measures to take care of my physical health because I notice and experience direct cause-effect relationships when I do or don't do so. But I hardly so much as stop to think about the same when it comes to my emotional health.

I mean, isn't it more or less the same thing? Just like fast- food, the thoughts and experiences that are tasty, attractive, easily accessible everywhere, and well-marketed and slickly packaged makes us feel good while we're consuming it... but too much of it after awhile... you're smart enough to figure out the rest.

The more I thought about it, the more I'm convinced so many of the same rules apply to our emotional health. Like rest. If we take regular breaks to just rest and recharge our souls, won't we keep from burning out emotionally? Yo-yo dieting, emotionally, is like getting hyped up over inspirational talks or conferences that fire up our emotions but, unsustained, they come crashing down the moment we hit a dull or rough patch.

And just like cod liver oil, taking small, consistent doses of stuff we know is good for us - be it five deep breaths, 30 minutes of exercise, hugging someone you love, or sitting down to a home cooked meal - keeps us from discomforts like stress, tiredness, and loneliness.

For me, it's always simple when it comes to physical health. Avoid the stuff that's not good for me (occasional indulgences allowed because I'm not a robot - as a wise man put it, "losing balance... is part of living a balanced life") and load up on the stuff that is. Why is it not so simple when it comes to my emotional health?

For years, I've stuffed myself with fast-food experiences, entertained people and thoughts that left me emotionally drained, and gotten hyped up about one new passion after another... all of which, I reasoned, was in the name of 'life experiences', which was part and parcel of being a writer. All the people I let in that I shouldn't have, I made excuses for and told myself they were part of 'field experience'.

I sometimes look at friends who take their youth for granted and are willing to put up with sniffly noses, eye bags, and fluctuating weight because they either don't believe taking care of their bodies will make any difference or they are too lazy or too busy to make the effort to do so. And I think to myself they're missing out on so much - a tissueless, alert, and energized life.

You don't know what you're missing till you try it

Today I thought to myself - what have I been missing out emotionally? All those emotions spent on wishing I was someone else, in some other family, in some other circumstance, all the energy wasted on people who didn't deserve it, all the time frittered away on passions I was sure that "this time" I'd sustain, all the effort poured into "getting ahead", from getting out of the house to getting out of college to getting into uni just so I'd be faster than all my peers, all the daydreams of the future because "surely things can only get better from this lousy place I'm at", all the "flab" of insecurity I allowed to build up because I wasn't pretty enough, tall enough, popular enough, or whatever lame thing enough... what on earth had I been missing out on?

These last few days, I've stayed at home, working on pet projects I enjoy, including designing a magazine, attempting to teach myself French, and studying the PADI Diver Manual for a test this Friday, ate dinners with my family, turned down multiple social invitations that I'd have only accepted out of obligation, and spent lots of time with my brother. It's been an ordinary, boring few days. But just like popping supplements or getting a good night's sleep, taking care of emotional health can seem boring on the surface too. Hardly as exciting as being heartbroken or being embroiled in a bitter argument.

But these few days have felt so good. I've noticed as people grow older, spontaneous and genuine laughter becomes more and more rare, but in the past couple days, I've smiled much and laughed much. I've gone to sleep in peaceful acceptance of the fact that I've entered a new season of life, instead of soaking my pillow in tears like I did a week back that things were so different, the friends that had become my family in the UK were so far away, and I needed to readjust all over again. I've closed my Gmail window earlier in the day and left time to actually think (the last few posts are testament to that :P).

At any given point in time, I'm usually wishing I could turn back time or speed it up but this past week I've been happy to take each moment as it comes.

Just like people who've never bothered taking care of their bodies, they don't know what they're missing out on until they try it. Likewise, I never realized how much I was missing out on by always revolving my life around my work, studies, or some boy or another. For the entire last month, my life hasn't revolved around any of the above - a state I have not been in for years. And damn, how much I've been missing out on.

Unending new horizons

2011-06-22T10:58:00.002+08:00

"It feels strange the first time. Your mask, your awkward gear, a bit heavy. You ease into the water and your face slips below the surface. Inhale; the air comes with reassuring hiss, and for the first time, you breathe underwater. Your equipment transforms to light and agile, and you're free like you've never experienced before. With that first underwater breath, the door opens to a different world.

...scuba diving means rising to new challenges. It's one of those rare activities that delivers adrenaline and intensity, or serenity and peace. ...diving grows with you - there's always something new to see, somewhere new to explore, some new way to enjoy the experience."

"If you live life on the edge or find pleasure in a pure adrenaline high... you should be a PADI Diver. Whether exploring the secrets of a sunken wreck at a nearby lake, venturing through hidden underwater caverns, or experiencing close encounters with fascinating species in exotic corners of the globe, you'll find adventure on every dive - and meet others who share your quest for unending excitement."

So are the words that the PADI Open Water Diver Manual opens with. I was hooked from the first page.

One month in the city, and I finally remember what made me so excited to leave home for a foreign land. (An excitement that was very quickly dampened by the ridiculous cold and culture shock, but that story has already been told plenty of times.) The city is beautiful, if you stand and look from a distance. When bright lights twinkle, the noise of motorists commuting down highways blends into a low hum, when there's time to sit at a sidewalk coffeehouse and people-watch.

When you're caught up in the rhythms of the city, however, life moves at an almost frightening pace. When you examine it from a distance, as a tourist marvels at an unfamiliar land, without letting its pace seep into you, then the city is a fascinating, soulful place. When the city gets under your skin and into your veins, however, things become clockwork and routine and frenetic and soul-sucking.

I know, because it's happened to me. And after spending a year in a small town which, as much as I complained about it, forced me to slow down and take life at a more natural rhythm, I'm afraid to get so caught up in the competitiveness and materialism and workaholism of the city that my soul has no room to breathe.

Traveling has become an addiction. The feeling of motion, the unfamiliarity of new sights, new lands, and the reminders that the world is so much bigger than my little bubble of comfort and that change is the only constant in life - all of these keep a sense of wonder and awe alive in me. It keeps my hunger to learn more about the world I live in alive.

Sucked into the city's pace, all one lives for is the next paycheck, the next purchase, the next promotion, the next status update in social standing. So much is taken for granted, and so much is complained about. The world is a very small place for people who don't even notice the sunset they drive past on their way home from work every single day.

I'm a city kid at heart. Born and bred among and in tall buildings and bright lights. But I don't want that to define and limit who I am and the way I live my life. Even if I don't always get to travel across land I want to always be chasing new horizons, whether in stories I read, music I listen to, or new skills I learn. I want life to always be an endlessly fascinating exploration of the unknown and to open up to me like a beautiful flower. I want a life that is vast and diverse, so vast and diverse that I'll never be able to say I'm bored or tired of it.

I want a life that, like diving (or at least as PADI claims), always holds something new to see, somewhere new to explore, and some new way to enjoy the experience.

Dear Tioman island, I can't wait to kiss your shores and swim in your seas six days from today. Keep them pretty for me. Love, me.

A well-ordered life is like climbing a tower; the view halfway up is better than the view from the base, and it steadily becomes finer as the horizon expands. -William Lyon Phelps

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend or a meaningful day. -Dalai Lama

What's your price?

2011-06-19T17:52:00.001+08:00

The thing about returning to a familiar place after you've been away from it for some time is that you come back seeing it through different eyes. The same goes for people you haven't seen for awhile.

I had the opportunity (albeit a rather sad one) to catch up with a whole bunch of college people whom I have not seen for a year yesterday. Sadly, though, what drew us all together for those couple hours was the funeral of a former college mate who took her own life.

Just standing there, observing the people who have been a part of my life for three years of college, while hearing about the circumstances that led to such a tragic death, made me think about what we live for.

Some people live for their partners - to a point of obsession, that they can't imagine life without that person. Regardless of how that person treats them, regardless of the other people in their lives who care about them. And other people put up with jobs they complain about just for the perks and the money.

Listening to the conversations that took place that day, I couldn't help but ask myself, "What about me? What do I live for?"

The thing is, whatever you live for, you live for at the expense of other things. There is always a price to pay for choosing whatever you believe is the most important in life. "So what's important to me?" I asked myself. "What am I willing to sacrifice other things for to have?"

Is revolving my life around one person worth the price of losing my entire sense of self?

Is money and convenience worth the price of my freedom and happiness?

Are those things worth it? I've asked myself those questions so many times. When I see couples on the street or hear about another friend who just got attached. When everyone else is on their iPhones, laughing at some inside joke going on in some WhatsApp conversation that I am oblivious to for the fact that I don't own the phone "everyone has".

And at times like those, it's easy to think yeah, they're worth it. It's so easy to get caught up in what "everyone else" is focused on. Especially as a fresh grad, it's so easy to fixate on career goals and the glittering prospect of finally earning your own cash and actually having real purchasing power. Or on finding 'the One' to settle down and make plans for the future with.

A popular mantra for my generation is that life is what you make it and you choose the life you want - but I don't think anyone deliberately chooses to prioritize money over genuine relationships or even personal wellbeing - it just happens as they go along. No one makes a purposeful decision to become so obsessed with another person that life without them warrants taking their own. Things like that happen gradually and slowly, and you don't even realize that what you are allowing your life to revolve around has changed you.

I used to be so certain that I wanted to settle down by my early twenties, and that KL was where I wanted to put my roots down. Living in the UK made me even surer of that, because I didn't enjoy my time there much, aside from the friends I made and places I got to travel to. I was certain that KL was where I'd left my heart but now, actually returning to it, I'm not so sure anymore.

It dawned on me that my time in the UK, even though I resented much of it, had changed me, without me realizing it at the time. I spent so much of my time there fantasizing about being back home while I was slowly but surely metamorphosing into someone else - someone who doesn't fit back into the places that the old me used to.

And this new someone - unlike the old me who used to be so sure of what I wanted - doesn't have it all figured out. For once, I have no idea what I want.

What I do know, though, is what I don't want.

Today, after church, I drove myself to lunch with the regular bunch of church friends I used to hang out with - except this time, I drove myself - alone. Unlike the many times I hung out with this group of people in the past, there was no one I needed to follow, or wait for - no one whom I had to accompany or who had to accompany me out of obligation because that's what you do when you're with someone.

It felt so good. And no, I'm not being one of those bitter single people who are all, "Look at me, I have so much more freedom than you attached suckers". I'll admit, it gets lonely. Very. Especially on nights when all I'm craving is a hug or a back rub or just someone to spill the thoughts in my head to. But loneliness is a price I'm willing to pay, for now.

And then I drove myself home instead of staying out all afternoon with friends. The old me, as long as there was company, would stay out as long as she could, just to stretch the boundaries of freedom from parents. But now it's a choice - I'm no longer staying out just to get away from my parents' watchful eyes at home or just to see how much trouble I can get away with. Those days are over and done with, and my curiosities on those matters more or less satisfied. Now it's a question of is this actually how I want to spend my time?

Today, my answer was no, I'd like some me-time this afternoon. It's been a hectic few weeks meeting up with people and working on a side project and I want some time to myself, to think, reflect, and process this whole period of transitioning back to life in KL. Right now, I'm under a cooling fan, in comfy shorts and a tank, listening to the soothing sounds of Arms & Sleepers, finally having some time to think and write - and I'm glad I chose to carve out some time for this.

Everything has a price. Question is, is the price worth it?

Is the convenience of some easily replaceable physical intimacy or a ever-ready listening ear worth the price of the time, space, and freedom to discover what I actually want in a relationship, or for that matter, if I actually want one right now? Right now, it's not.

But this freedom to say, "I don't know what I want, but I'm taking some time to find out" - it's worth the price of the lonely nights. Choosing to spend my money on people I care about and things I enjoy doing is worth the price of having an outdated phone or wearing budget store clothes.

I won't say I'm 100% sure of what I want to live for and devote my life to. I won't say I know for certain where I want to see myself in a couple years or what I want to be doing. As for what I want in a relationship, I'm even more clueless. But I know for sure all the relationships I'm seeing as I look around are not what I want (although I'm happy for those who have found what works for them). I know I haven't found a place where I want to put roots down. Or maybe I just don't want to put roots down for now. And that's a start, I guess.

(P/S - Why the purple umbrella? I guess it's because I've never liked the color purple - until now. I find myself liking many things I never used to, and it reminds me that I'm changing and growing. Plus, the solitary figure speaks to me as well.)

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Vlog: Junk Open Mic @ The Bee, Jaya One!

2011-06-16T14:08:00.000+08:00

Had the opportunity to perform at Junk's Open Mic session held at The Bee just yesterday night. Big thanks to Junk for the opportunity and @leviasher for the recommendation! :)

For those who couldn't be there, here's the video! Enjoy!

Also, a big thank you to Min for being my guitarist / backup vocals for the night! :)

Finally, thank you Thomas, Zim Sen, Gal (via Skype), Jer, Christina, and Elena for coming and supporting and cheering us on! :)

Paris, je t'aime

2011-06-16T13:53:00.000+08:00

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson (Photo by Mabel Tan)

This is a terribly overdue post - three months overdue, in fact. I had written a post about my first night in Paris some time back but never got around to writing about the other two days that was spent there. But better late than never, especially on stiflingly hot Malaysians afternoons like these, when flipping through pictures of Pah-ree in printemps (spring) almost brings me back to those mild, balmy days in the beautiful city.

But first, before I jabber on about what a lovely time I had there, here are two videos that capture the essence of my time there, for those of you who don't like reading lengthy posts (sorry about the inconsistent sizes - didn't realize I was editing in normal for the first one and widescreen for the second).

So yeah, as you can see from the videos, we visited all the famous landmarks - or at least tried to. Queues at the Louvre were too long, and likewise with the Notre Dame Cathedral. The only landmark we actually explored was the Eiffel Tower. (That one cannot miss! Been a lifelong dream - I have a thing for capital cities and tall buildings. :P)

But... you wouldn't have known that from the videos would you? That's the thing I don't get about people who travel just to take pictures / videos of all the 'famous' places they've traveled to just to show that they've been there, and they're so cultured and sophisticated and worldly now.

Don't get me wrong - I don't think there's anything wrong with taking pictures with famous landmarks (heck, I do the same) or following trends... but if people's motivation is to show how cultured and educated and well-exposed and well-traveled they are by visiting popular places or wearing trendy clothes... I think it's pretty pointless if you're not also exposing yourself to new experiences and new ways of seeing the world at the same time.

"To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson (Photo by Mabel Tan)

Because photographic evidence that you've been somewhere does not mean you've experienced the place. And the only way to really experience a new place - or anything new in life for that matter - is to put aside your expectations, put down the camera for awhile, and get wonderfully caught up in whatever it is you're experiencing for the first time.

My highlights of Paris were hardly all the famous landmarks, although they did make for good Facebook pictures. ;) Rather, the things that stuck with me and that I left with vivid memories of are things like:

spending the first night in Paris in some random bar located down a quiet little street and observing the stark differences between the British drinking scene and the more discreet, yet lively Parisian scene.
waking up at 6AM to a deliciously cool morning and the glorious smell of coffee (I swear, if there is a heaven, that's what mornings there will be like, or at least in my version of it) and croissants and pain au chocolat. (If you ever meet a French person, you have to ask them to say chocolat (sha-cou-lah). I swear hearing it in French will make you fall in love with chocolate if you haven't already, the way it rolls off their tongue.)
walking down the street with Mabel on a Sunday morning and having a whole bunch of buff, well-built Frenchmen jog past and smile at us.
being called "mademoiselle"!
authentic. French. Food. (That makes you hear angelic choirs with every bite. I'm not kidding.)

Ah, so typical and clichéd, I know, to become some obsessed Francophile after a few days in Paris. But, in my defense, it was my entire experience there that I fell in love with - not to mention experiences with lovely people from the nation as well - not just because "the Eiffel Tower is pretty" (although it is), or because "French sounds cool" (although it does - but I personally think 'beautiful' is a better way to describe the language). Also, I know people who have been to Paris and said everyone there was snobby and stuck-up, and that the Eiffel Tower was nothing but a heap of rusting metal. It all boils down to perspective and the individual experience, which will vary from person to person.

Funnest travel buddies ever :)

But that's beside the point. People ask if Paris lived up to my expectations. It did, but then again, no amount of expectation could have prepared me for actually being there, breathing in Parisian air and soaking in the sights. Paris was as beautiful and elegant as I imagined, but not only that. It was double-decker trains passing by artistically graffiti-ed walls, street dancers / b-boys on every corner, and con artists trying to make a quick buck shuffling cups around atop cardboard boxes.

The reason I love traveling so much is because it teaches me so much about life. It teaches me to live freely, without expectations, that change is a constant, and that the more adventurous and courageous I am about the unknown, the more life opens up to me and for me. It teaches me that s**t happens, like getting pick-pocketed on my first day in Paris, but that I can still have a good time anyway. It teaches me that the people I choose to travel with, not just to specific destinations but on this journey of life, are all-important. The people I meet and let into my life shape me just as much as the experiences I have, if not more. (As lovely as Paris was, it would have been nothing without the company I had.)

As wise travelers put it:

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain

These shoes were made for walking: “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux (Photo by Mabel Tan)

Life is beautiful

2011-06-13T15:40:00.002+08:00

Being home has been, to say the least, hardly as great as I expected it to be, and while part of it is due to the fact that I probably saw it through rose-tinted glasses back in the UK, another big part of it is that while many things have remained the same, it's not the same place anymore. And I guess, to a large extent, I am not the same person stepping foot in it anymore.

The past two weeks have been weeks of:

being sick thanks to the weather,
eczema flare-ups due to the same,
awkward reunions with friends whom I've realized have changed, just like I have, but in a different direction from me, and knowing that things will never be the same between us again,
packing myself full with activity to 1) distract myself from the fact that old groups of friends are not quite the same anymore, 2) to make the most of this month before I start full-time work, and to 3) make new friends - which is a good thing, but which leads to...
being extremely tireddd and not catching up on sleep properly,
narrowly avoiding altercations with the parents over how they seem not to have realised that I'm a year older since I last saw them,
missing people who have been an important part of my life for the past year, and
a really stupid minor accident which will cost major bucks...

...just to name a few things.

But in spite of all that, life is still good. If there's anything that my time in the UK has taught me, it's that life can throw all sorts of things your way but you can still choose to be happy.

This morning, even though I'd dearly have loved to sleep in, I got out of bed, made myself an iced coffee, played some India.Arie, and closed my eyes and imagined the beautiful city of Paris in my head. And my heart smiled. Because what I've learned from long cold nights in the UK is that I can make it through bad days by being where I want to be in my head. Is that the words I choose to listen to and the words I say to myself matter, and matter a lot. And that coffee and good music never fail to make a day better, even if they are only temporary soothers - because they help get me to a place of calm, from which I can get to a place of inner peace and acceptance.

I've learned that crying is always okay when you're alone, and not doing it to get pity, but simply because you have no other way to express your emotions. That just because your problems aren't 'as big as other people's' it doesn't mean they hurt any less.

I've learned that on days people make you sad, it's even more important to make sure you make someone smile, because you'll never know how many people made that someone sad too, and because making someone smile almost inevitably does the same for you too.

I've learned that although on bad days, my first instinct is to run to someone else to fix things, the best person who can love me and make me happy... is me. Because not only do I know what I need, I have the capacity to make the choices to give myself what I need. To choose my thoughts carefully, even though self-destructive ones are always the easiest to entertain.

Finally, I've learned (and am still learning) to take life as it ebbs and flows. That sad days just make the happy ones that much more precious. That bad days pass, but so do good ones. To enjoy the good ones but to remind myself that the bad ones just mean another good one is around the corner.

La vie est belle.

As told by a hurricane

2011-06-12T13:19:00.001+08:00

As I've mentioned before, Tumblr is my platform of choice for my more personal, reflective thoughts whilst this space is kept more for lifestyle blogging. But since I've been getting some really good feedback on a short I wrote recently, I thought I'd share it here as well.

Fellow blogger Khairie even wrote an amusing take on the story, somehow managing to turn my handsome and charming 'Mr. Drizzle' into some renegade hippie. But he wrote something I really agree with:

"The only thing that matters, after all's said and done, is confidence. Be sure about who you are, and what you're doing. Traits after all, are only bad or good in someone else's eyes and more often than not, tells more about them than about you."

Regardless of how you read the story or choose to perceive the boy I wrote about, what stood out to me the most when I was writing about him was that above all, he's someone who's happy, happier than all the other people with 'good' traits that I know - discipline, drive, motivation, etc. I believe that no matter what a person's circumstance in life, even if they haven't achieved 'success' by the world's terms, if they've found something to be happy about... then it's worth getting to know people like that, because there are so few of them around. And their happiness and peace with life is contagious - being around them, you can't help but start feeling the same.

As for how much of the story is based on real life... I'll leave that up to you to speculate. ;)

As told by a hurricane

“If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” -Looking for Alaska

***

If people were rain, I was a hurricane - impossible to ignore, a force to be reckoned with, always on an adventure, never letting anything stand in my way, hurtling through life at top speed, never slowing down for anything or anyone… and he was drizzle.

Like the opposites of two magnets, our differences compelled us towards each other.

I was assertive and opinionated and impulsive and reckless and obsessive and unpredictable and wild. He was accommodating and congenial and gentle and easygoing and balanced and stable and mild. I could never sit still and he could laze in bed all day. I searched for answers, he was content with the questions. I was constantly thinking about what’s next, he lived one moment at a time. I was a big city, bright lights girl, he was a small town, seaside boy.

But don’t get it wrong. That didn’t make me any more of a person or him any less. The depth of a person’s character cannot be measured by its intensity on the surface.

Most people are drawn to the spectacular and exciting; they want something to distract them from the monotony of their own lives. Perhaps that’s why they’re drawn to rainbows and hurricanes; cloudy skies and drizzle are just, well, a little too ordinary.

But for a hurricane, excitement and chaos is the ordinary. He showed me a life that was different from what I had known, a life most people would call ordinary, average, and perhaps even boring. But as someone who had only ever lived life 100,000 miles per second, it was spectacular.

I packed my days with activity, fearing that staying put would kill me with boredom. But around him, it was almost too easy to do nothing. I don’t remember how the hours passed but I know hours felt like minutes doing nothing with him.

Read the rest.

Book review: Eat, Pray, Love

2011-06-12T10:41:00.000+08:00

This review originally published at GeekChic.me.

A few years before the movie adaptation catapulted the New York Times Bestseller into international fame, the book’s title caught my eye as I was walking through a bookshop: Eat, Pray, Love. Those three words alone seemed to sum up everything that was important in life to me.

At the time, I was a poor student with a budget that didn’t allow me the luxury of buying brand new books, but I swore to myself that someday I would find that book again and read it.

I settled for reading quotes from it off the Internet, until someone who knew about my fascination with the book bought it for me.

It’s taken me six months to read through the book – not because I don’t have the time or it’s boring – but rather because it’s jam-packed with profound, powerful, goosebump-inducing insights, and I needed the time to slowly savor and digest all of it.

Reading Eat, Pray, Love, is like getting to know a friend you can laugh with, cry with, and admit you don’t have it all together to.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s charisma, charm, and wit come to life with every turn of the page, and as I read along, I felt her journey become my journey.

The story is straightforward enough – girl meets boy, thinks he’s ‘The One’, gets married, only to find out that it’s not what she wants. The problem is, she doesn’t know what she wants.

After a divorce, she rebounds to another man, finds things are not working out either, falls into a depression, and decides she needs a major life change.

She travels around the world seeking gastronomic pleasures in Italy (eat), self-denial and devotion in India (pray), and finally, in search of a balance between the two in Indonesia… she finds, you guessed it, love.

The ending is predictable, the story is clichéd - almost out of a Hollywood script (no wonder Hollywood had to make a film from it) – but what makes it so wonderfully enjoyable is the refreshing honesty with which Gilbert tells her story. It’s the way she paints her struggles and questions of identity in so familiar a light that anyone who’s ever wondered, “What am I doing with my life?” will identify with her search for meaning.

And what makes her story so appealing is that unlike a Hollywood film, it’s real. Which mean her insights gained and lessons learned can be real for the reader too. Or not.

Eat, Pray, Love is a book you either love or loathe. A quick skim through reviews on the Internet finds critics and haters slamming her for being selfish in her quest for self-discovery. But anyone who has ever tried to be true to themselves at the expense of hurting and alienating some people will identify with her journey.

If you’re one of those who do, you can be sure this is a book you won’t read once through but will return to again and again. It is a book you can draw strength, courage, and inspiration from, but above all, the knowledge that you’re not the only who’s wondered if there’s more to life than settling for just ‘okay’.

Excerpt:

Giovanni and I have such a good time teaching each other idioms in English and Italian. We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say “I’ve been there.”
This was unclear to him at first – I’ve been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, this will bring hope.
“So sadness is a place?” Giovanni asked.
“Sometimes people live there for years, “ I said.
In return, Giovanni told me that empathizing Italians say L’ho provato sulla mia pelle, which means “I have experienced this on my own skin.” Meaning I have also been burned or scarred in this way, and I know exactly what you are going through.
So far though, my favorite thing to say in all of Italian is a simple, common word: Atrraversiamo.
It means, “Let’s cross over.” Friends say it to each other constantly when they’re walking down the sidewalk and have decided that it’s time to switch to the other side of the street. Which is to say, this is literally a pedestrian word. Nothing special about it. Still, for some reason, it goes right through me….

Yang Kee Beef Noodles

2011-06-11T01:05:00.005+08:00

The following is not a sponsored review.

One of the downsides of dining out in Malaysia is that restaurateurs are notoriously famous for skimping on quality control. So much so that we even have a catchphrase to describe the inevitable fate of most good restaurants - when its standard of food goes down the drain. "Quality jatuh already la," is a common lament of foodies who suddenly discover that things just don't taste the same at their favorite spots anymore.

Although I had braced myself for disappointment, my first taste of Yang Kee's beef noodles after returning from a year abroad did not disappoint. Just a convenient 10-minute drive from my house, the restaurant is famed throughout the OUG-Happy Garden area and beyond. And for good reason.

Throughout the years, Yang Kee's beef noodles has stood the test of time, and continues to be not just tasty but affordable.

My preferred noodle of choice is their handmade egg noodles - springy and firm, they are definitely a better alternative to the typical kuey teow or lou shi fun noodles commonly used in the dish. Although one of the highlights of beef noodles is usually the soup, I prefer the kon lou, or dry version at Yang Kee's because it is served topped with a special concoction of minced spiced beef, which goes wonderfully with the noodles.

And my meat of choice is just good and simple, plain ol' beef. I'm not the type for other fancy combinations of beef balls, innards, beef tendon, and so on, although they certainly are available and popular here.

My first bite of the noodles tasted exactly as I remembered it to be, although it could've been a tad less oily and salty. But otherwise, the minced beef was aromatic and appetite-whetting. The meat was soft and tender, and the soup full and beefy.

Another of Yang Kee's specialties is their yong tau foo, which tasted very freshly made.

All in all, for RM6.30 a bowl (ranges from RM5-8 depending on the type of meat and bowl size ordered), I'd say after all these years, Yang Kee beef noodles are still worth the visit and the money.

Restoran Yang Kee
No 52, Jalan Hujan Rahmat 2
Taman OUG, Off Jalan Kelang Lama
Kuala Lumpur, 58200

Opening hours: 8.30am-7pm. Closed on Mondays.
Sundays and public holidays: Open from 8.30am-4pm.

Plan b. @ Bangsar Village I

2011-06-09T14:06:00.001+08:00

The following is not a sponsored review.

I am a breakfast / brunch person. There's something about a warm, hearty meal and a fresh cup of coffee that makes it worth rolling out of bed in the morning for. Hence, I never turn down an invitation for breakfast, especially when it's a place I've never tried before.

Was introduced to Plan b. in the old Bangsar Village shopping complex by (again, unsurprisingly) fellow foodie and coffee lover @leviasher (who somehow knows where all the good hang out spots are). Barely open for a year, the place has already gathered much buzz among locals and on food blogs.

The rustic, eclectic interior design and interesting lighting pieces lend a very artsy, alternative vibe to the café unlike other cafés I've come across in KL. (With places like The Bee and Plan b., I don't know why I'll ever have a reason to visit Starbucks, Coffee Bean, or the like ever again!)

And their coffee? Definitely coffee worth waking up for. I'm an iced long black person, because I like my coffee like I like my life - strong, intense and simple, and because I can't imagine drinking a hot drink in this sweltering heat. My breakfast partner, however, is a hot coffee person, which worked out well because an iced long black doesn't make a very interesting photography subject. :P

Breakfast for me was a hugeeee turkey ham and rocket omelette with toast and for him, eggs benedict.

My omelette was soft, fluffy, and wayy filling - so much so that it lasted me all the way through dinner without so much as the slightest tummy growl.

Forgot to take down prices (because I'm that good a food blogger :P) but it's more or less the same price range as most coffeehouses around - RM15-20 for brunch and RM6-8 for coffee.

In a nutshell, yet another inspiring place to chill out and enjoy good coffee. Starbucks, it has been a long relationship and I've stayed faithful to you all these years, but I'm sorry, it's time for me to move on.

Opening hours: 8AM - 12 midnight daily

Check out Plan b. on Facebook!

Leave tonight, or live and die this way

2011-06-06T18:32:00.001+08:00

Every time I listen to ‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman (introduced by Mabel) I get really sad.

I’ve had the privilege of never really fitting in anywhere (although it’s only recently that I’ve come to see it as a privilege) because it’s allowed me to discover life on my own terms, to find out who I am without really letting my surroundings define me.

Having been home schooled in an American curriculum, speaking English as a first language, and being a Malaysian Chinese who can barely speak Malay or Chinese, I’ve always felt too ‘Westernized’. I never felt more Asian and foreign in my life, however, when I lived in the UK for a year.

But never really identifying with the culture and interests of people around me has freed me to sort of define my own culture and interests, drawing from that of those around me, but not just limiting myself to it. I’ve never felt the need to keep up with what everyone else is listening to, watching, wearing, or doing. I wouldn’t completely get it anyway, since I was never completely a part of any culture of the places I’ve lived in. That was just the way it was.

I got to define my life. I got to choose my interests and discover my passions without my culture telling me what those interests and passions should be.

When I listen to that song, though, I get really sad, because I look around me and see people everywhere who didn’t have that opportunity. People who have probably only lived their lives one way - the way everyone else around them does, or the way someone told them was ‘right’ - and never stopped to think if there was any other way to live it. People who have never questioned their value system and stopped to think about what makes them really happy.

The way I see it, most people’s definition of happiness is security. When people have what they believe will provide them security - be it wealth, possessions, property, or marriage - they call that happiness. But the deep-down happiness that comes from realising “This makes me feel alive” - I wonder if many people know that kind of happiness.

Because if you’ve only ever lived your life one way, then to explore, to court the possibility of change, which is essential to discovering who you are and what you really want out of life - it’s scary. So many people just follow the status quo and live scared. They live the way they’ve always lived, and while yes, they may avoid the risk of change and the dreadfulness of uncertainty and the anguish of doubting everything you’ve ever believed in - they will never discover how beautiful and magnificent and worth living and risking everything for this journey we call life is. They will never know how much life had to offer them if they were willing to reach out and grab it. They will never know the privilege of owning themselves and their decisions and of shaping a life they can call their own.

We all know people like that. People who can have entire conversations centered solely around what they bought or how they spent their weekend getting wasted. People who go to reunions just to show everyone else how much they have ‘progressed’. People who never have enough and always have something to complain about, but don’t want to do anything to change any of it. People who can say they are bored with life when they’ve only ever lived it one way.

Seeing people like that makes me so sad. Like a literal aching in my heart kind of sad.

“Leave tonight or live and die this way” - this is the reason motion is so important to me. Because whether it’s running or traveling or learning new things, moving forward means change - a change in my scenery, a change in the way I see things, a change in my ability, a change in the way I see myself.

I live for motion - it’s the reason I hardly have any branded clothes in my wardrobe and lived for years with a black and white cellphone - because I’d rather spend my money on travel than on things. It’s the reason I woke up at 7AM this morning to run even in this ridiculous heat. It’s the reason I always want to learn new skills even if I’ll never master them, whether it’s C-walking or making macaroons or video editing or playing the guitar and why I am drawn to controversial authors like Donald Miller and Malcolm Gladwell and why I’m taking a French audio course.

Because I never want to stay stagnant. I never want to stop growing and discovering and learning new things. I never want to become someone so unimaginative that I have the audacity to call life boring, or someone so jaded that I think I’ve seen it all. How can I possibly see all there is to see, or experience all life has to offer? Every day is a new day, and if I’m constantly changing, then even the sunset must look different every single day.

“Leave tonight or live and die this way.”

I didn’t want to leave Malaysia. If not for my parents and the fact that it would almost seem ungrateful to not accept the amazing opportunity that was given me, I didn’t want to leave. I would have rather stayed and stuck to the status quo. It was safe and appealing. Even abroad, if I had the choice to hop on a plane and come home, many times, I would have. But I don’t regret it. I’m glad I left, to see a new world.

And I’m glad I left that world, to come back and see this one with new eyes.

And even though I hate goodbyes more than anything else in the world, I’m going to keep leaving. Because leaving one place or one chapter just means moving forward to a new one. It means change. Means new lessons to learn. Means new memories to be made. Means new ways of understanding myself and this life I have to live.

So goodbye yesterday, and thank you for all you’ve taught me. But I’m not going to die the same person I was when I knew you. I’m moving forward, today.

"I think it happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. And so you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on." —Nicholas Sparks