Provocative and evocative

Baobaobao 2

2012-01-26T08:23:00.002+08:00

I don't know what the hell is getting into me. See usually I am very collected about myself. I go out, attend to my own stuff, come back home, rest and get ready to conquer another day. I don't report to anyone and I don't have to take care of anyone but myself (which is relatively low maintenance) I can't sleep on selective nights, which is fine by me. I get work done, I'm happy.

I cannot structure my life around someone else's. I get worried when you don't reply instantly (like I sometimes am guilty of, but apparently I am a hypocrite that way) and giggle like an idiot when I receive funny messages. I don't actually have any feedback to stunningly sweet compliments, which disturbs me because it makes me feel like I am made of straw.

I don't know what to do. One minute I feel like maybe I should get over this fear, but the next I'm convinced this is all going to hell. You tell me that I should stop being scared, or stop worrying, and I trust you, but it's not making much of a difference now is it? My head works all the time, sometimes when I wake up an idea is fully formed in my mind.

I can't break up over something that never was, but I do not want to lose out on the nicest thing that's happened to me.

Baobaobao

2012-01-25T00:53:00.000+08:00

Realised next week is portfolio day. I just realised that the perfect cure to my restlessness must be this. I enjoy the rush, the packed schedules, the messy balancing act, the quick kisses and book-reading on the commute. My life is oddly enough back on track despite it being messed up. Maybe it's my natural state.

London Art Fair

2012-01-23T03:14:00.002+08:00

Which is more meaningful - poetry or art? prose or poetry? modern art or traditional art? Who's to say the seemingly unwavering standards of our time will never change? Who knows the answer to - "what is love, what is the future, what is time, and what is place?"

Need to figure out these uncertain times. I don't know what to do for you.

Things I wish I'd said

2012-01-19T07:21:00.002+08:00

Wish I'd told you I was genuinely touched that you'd earn that half a million for me.
Or that I'm sorry if I appeared upset, and that I really wasn't.
That I'm not right for you, I know it and I can see where this is going.
I hope I'd be brave enough to confess that I've always wanted someone to take care of me.
I wish I let you hold my things for me.
And that I don't really care about what people say when it comes to things like this.
I'm just used to doing things my way, from the rulebook, from what I know will work.
I wish I had the guts to kiss you. I'm not dispassionate, you see, but my mind's always working and I am horrible at multi-tasking.

02

2012-01-18T23:49:00.000+08:00

17 February.

We certainly met under odd circumstances, making me forget whether I wanted to be like you or vice versa. Currently my mind is still unchanged, though I'm really scared I'll give in at some point of time. I wish we hadn't done that. I'd hate to hurt anyone, and I know that once I start feeling things again that it would have to fall apart. I'm pessimistic, spoilt by circumstances, fresh, worrisome, paranoid, inexperienced and susceptible to so many things. I don't even know why the hell it adds up to anything at all. I want to tell you to find someone and leave me here where I belong. But I can't, because somewhere inside me I don't want to. I didn't realise there were so many things wrong with me, and it makes me sad. You make me happy, though I don't think I can do the same.

I always knew I was not made to take responsibility for myself, or to fall into a pattern, a system, a properly functioning friendship or relationship. I wonder if you can hope for that to change inside me.

Heart Vacancy

2012-01-16T20:13:00.000+08:00

Back to my room, working on the installation piece for my project. I'm not sure if I did the right undertaking - so far it's all rationalised in my head but then again, I'm always wary that what I think might be radically different from what others see. Another issue is that I have apparently ordered prints of too high a quality for my other project - I'm vigorously soaking, washing and scrubbing my prints but they're still picture-perfect. I know conceptually it's alright but visually I do not want it that way.

I just want to break out of this emphasis on how things look - sometimes I forget what I'm doing, so in the moment trying to make things look "right". I trust in my judgement of aesthetic, but I think my head is too small to think of both simultaneously.

Now that portfolio day is right around the corner I'm getting quite tense. What should I put into my portfolio? I have half a month more to sort everything out and prepare for interviews and stuff. All over again. So much pressure. But you know what? Part and parcel of uni life, once you start learning to ride it out it gets almost fun. The worrisome part is doubt - why am I studying this?

I do not like to tell people I'm an art student, as much as I love to tell people that. Is it ironic? It's not that I'm ashamed - on the contrary I cannot be more proud of believing in my subject with such conviction and passion. It's just that people inevitably ask the same things, "what art are you into?" - a question that requires a long answer. I am into the... entire study of art, for none can exist without the other forces? People think of me as either a rich kid who can afford this, or a craaaaaaazy girl with insaaaane ideas, or just another hipster who wants to fit in as much as she wants to stand out. And I am all, even as I am none of those stereotypes. I just refuse to fit into a mould.

Thinking of the different deadlines makes me want to crawl back into your bed and continue spooning into the chilly afternoon. I've never really fallen asleep while being held by anyone, but I can imagine getting used to it... but not now, I'm just getting started over here.

Could have gone the other way

2012-01-16T01:33:00.003+08:00

I could have loved earlier, forgotten, had a different dream, which may have come true. I could have studied harder, been more of an overachiever, gave into my passions. I could have been born with a lack of self-doubt, which is the most crippling of all traits. I could have been a student of the sciences, armed with the conviction of a right and wrong. I could have been a better person, a better girl, a better student, a better artist.

The evidence of my failures lies in the successes of my personality - I am the very environment I infect, the festering, growing pile of words that have become me. I triumph in the need to verbalise everything about myself, that narcissism, egomania that characterises me. It is because of this yearning of love that I cannot spare any time in actually indulging in it. I indulge in the making, in the un-girlish pile of work that has become the present.

I could have acted upon instinct, but the very reasoning of rationality has meant that I have made use of him, not the other way around. It's sensational and I am merely amused, for once there's been something else that excites me more than that of which has preoccupied my mind. It was an experiment, with conclusions, the thoughts that map out my head more defined than ever.

In time you might realise that I know these veins under my skin only to be an illusion.

I found a coconut in Tesco

2012-01-12T08:40:00.003+08:00

The pressure is apparently starting to get to me, in a half-celebrated manner, because I miss this stress. I do love it as much as I dislike it. I can't get half-assed to wear colourful clothes, or the extra layers that are meant to keep me warm. I'm working all day and getting nowhere. I keep thinking about things like the BA course, teaching, jello shots, sex and what time will I actually fall asleep tonight? Also, I get antsy at people and wish that I can just put all the people who annoy me into a small cramped room and force-feed them viagra mixed with laxatives. All the pent-up claustrophobia, sexual tension and bodily functions will get to them in time and I can then send that little room up into space via airhooks, and never see any of them again. When the aliens take over our solar system they will shake their heads sadly as they find the residue of some charming human misjudgement, an orgy gone out of hand in an exotic space high up above the atmosphere. I do love fantasising.

This, apparently, is how my mind deals with pressure. (Portfolio day is so close! Should I still apply to Slade? They do have an awfully inconvenient portfolio handling fee which I am reluctant to pay for.) I also deal with it by random cravings of exotic fruit.

I learnt something today. Cars are to women what boobs are to men. I'm not sure about the ramifications of such a discovery yet, and admittedly I got this information from a Hongkong guy I don't trust entirely.

There is a man

2012-01-10T21:19:00.001+08:00

There is a man on the dome shaped structure outside and I have no idea why he is there. I am doing a project exploring "the concept of place, home and belonging to a physical space through attempting to define the relationship that people have with their bedrooms."

Brunch

2012-01-06T17:49:00.001+08:00

With two boys at my service. I'm on my way to world dominance. Breakfast is an important meal.

About Nice

2012-01-03T01:02:00.001+08:00

Completely and utterly derailed from the main purpose of this blog - to tell people "what I've been up to". Instead I've been indulging in little paragraphs of words for words' sake. I should be in fact be talking about less useless things. On the new year's eve I saw the fireworks, almost got groped, lost my phone in a crazy crowd of people and ended up not sleeping in my own bed. Just part of my glamorous life here. Inconsequential and far less interesting if you were in my place.

My first meal of 2012 was pizza, followed by 11 hours of sleep and then Nando's. I am starting off the year brilliantly though - planning to get an upgrade to my iPhone, wrote a personal statement and finished off the ucas stuff... But about what I was doing before that.

I took a holiday to Nice, a city along the coast of france. The cote d'azur, if I'm not wrong, refers to an azure coast - a perfectly apt description. Once you reach the coast it's endless, and endlessly beautiful. There's something perfect about a horizon that is untouched by boats and whatever things we put on the sea in the name of exploration and civilization.

We were quite lucky to have a hostel that is so near the coast and very convenient, in all regards. Explored a few places in the 5 days but the one thing that impressed me the most was that effortless preservation of culture and that seductive sense of place that the mediterranean coast conjures up. I don't know if natural features are necessary, for the harbour with all its glamorous boats was equally stunning.

Maybe it's the sun, really. The sun and a lack of structure, the exoticism, the lulling sound of french.

The Antiques Market is every Monday morning at the Cours Saleya, within the Old Town section of Nice. The stallowners are mostly very nice folk, telling us in broken english how to get to le chateau... The old town in Nice is not spectacular, but charming. There's a reason why I wouldn't say it is stunning, or magnificent, only because it's more of an alluring place than particularly in-your-face.

Eze Le Village has a little medieval town atop a hill - winding little roads that are impossible to not get lost in. We walking around the empty streets, vacated by the summer tourists, had good... sandwiches and continued on our way.

The Casino at Monaco is stunning - we didn't have to venture in to know it's altogether a different paradise. We took a bus down from Eze into Monaco - the little country doesn't seem to be on its own as much as just a rich little extension of France, full of glamorous women and extremely attractive policemen speaking french-laced english. Hmm.

We ended up just standing at a little viewing deck and staring out at the sea. There's not that much to do in Monaco really, unless you've got lots of money and enough freedom to play with it. But the view is enough. There's something about being on a cliff and looking down at the sea. My friend remarked to me that there's something lifechanging about attending a funeral, and I was reminded of looking out to sea. It's kind of like a little death somewhere within you.

Went to Antibes, walked around the Old town as well. We had a lunch somewhere as well - every single time we sat down to eat the food was invariably delicious. In the middle of December, as well. I realised the reason why it didn't feel like winter was because the plants were in full bloom and everyone was still energetic. Makes a big difference. Not that London is worse or anything - this place is still amazing.

Went to the harbour while trying to walk to the old fort... Looking at so many boats, no idea if that feeling is jealousy or ambition or just simply a sigh of unacknowledged desire. Maybe it's that need to marry a rich guy, or maybe it's the need to earn enough money to buy one for myself. Not in this lifetime, I've given up on that. Now all I can love is that very perfect reflection in the water.

Cannes, city of the rich and beautiful people. Nothing to do but sit at the beach and talk, to an endless expanse of sea. The thing about France is.... that you should bring someone you're in love with. It's not that much worse without, and it's good to go your first time alone, but afterwards you want to be infatuated with someone the same way you loved the view.

*****

Used to do an inner cheer when I see a hot guy. Now that I'm in art school, I do the same, just to see a straight guy. Life does change doesn't it?

*****

5iliconeator by Calvin Harris.

New year confessionals

2012-01-02T07:19:00.001+08:00

I was in love with my best friend

I cannot stop worrying no matter how hard I try

It's driving me crazy that I might be a bad teacher

I didn't know Nanyang had AEP

I wanted to be a lifeguard when I grew up

I want to write a novel but I am scared I use too many pronouns

I want to write a novel but I am scared I have no ideas

I love my dad

I often pretend not to care about what others think of me

(Though sometimes, bless me, it's actually true)

I want him to leave me alone

I still like ponies

I lied in my interview

I am jealous of her, and I will not stop

I want desperately only to stop being infatuated with you

I lost two firsts in 2011.

Nothing will ever come in between us

2011-12-29T03:43:00.002+08:00

Found some photos from an earlier album taken while a friend was visiting. 3 days more till the new year. I've fucked my hair, fucked my freedom, amongst a couple other things.

Found a way to indulge in listening to people I'm not supposed to like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF0i7_NcnlA

Covers.

4 days to new year

2011-12-28T11:07:00.002+08:00

Four days till the new year. Which mandates a period of mourning, as well as of quiet reflection. I know these words/actions sound expressly morose, but they are holding in such a bright burst of sunshine within me. 2011 has been a great year. I bade farewell to 2010 with salt in my heart rubbing up against the chasms I had created for myself. It was a terrible year, I know it now, that I'm as much to blame as anything ever was. I was silly, young, foolish, and quick.

I don't think I've grown older, you know. I think I've just done the one thing I never had the guts to do... I stopped caring. And no...! It's not a bad thing. It's a beautiful thing. It's so... amazingly uplifting and I've never felt my heart soar to the tunes of that winding song in my head. I'm really happy at the moment, so content, so mellow, like the notes I used to pull across the string of my instrument.

Can the year get any better? I have started school which I love so much, I've been able to listen to people prattle on without getting affected, I've seen so much since I arrived, I've become myself - not someone new, or different, but just comfortable in myself.

There are loose ends, of course - I will never be perfect, but I know it so deeply within me that so long as I am content, nobody's opinion should matter as much...! I still don't know if art is useful to society - but is it relevant? I know it is useful to me, I know it is what I want to drive myself to study, to indulge in, to do. I know it makes me happy, makes the people around me jealous but happy...

Another loose end is that of people. I have confessed, I know, I am aware, that I have not been a good person when it comes to maintaining these relationships. One day I'm sure I'll feel bad about it, but why now? I've spent so much of my life devoted to friends and making them happy, I think I deserve a break, and this suits me so well....

The one thing I wish I might have done is confessed to a certain number of things. Every year at this time I tell myself I should have just told some people how wonderful I find them, how enamoured I am. This year I've fallen in love with things more than people... but still. I wish they knew how much time I spend thinking of them, conjuring them up in my head.

I know nobody else will come close, but I can only hope, in my little sliver of a heart, that one day someone shall love me as much as I have come to love these physical objects and obsessions around me. That no matter how fucked up I get, there's constancy in affection. I know you do in return - it suits me fine that it is left unsaid. Better this way.

Do you know what I have been up to these three months? I can't possibly sum it all up for you. The sun sets and rises every day to the tempo of my whims and fancies. I control this, I hold the dainty little key that unlocks my head. I hear the cogs inside my mind settling and turning and humming the tune that I cannot recall. I feel love strongly more on the tips of my tongue than in my heart. I cannot get sick of saying "this suits me fine" because for once I'm not lying.

I don't need to get drunk to feel anything, I cut my hair now because I want to, not because I get tired of looking at the same me. I know that people spend so much time and effort "finding themselves" and I know that it is impossible. I want to cry, never because I'm sad, but because I can feel happy.

Room

2011-12-15T00:51:00.001+08:00

I miss this sense of place - I forget that it is real, tangible, an expanse of green that is now only in my mind. It is me, it is a place, a physical map forgotten and eroded. 3 months. That's all it takes to stop remembering.

Tragedy of the winter holidays

2011-12-14T07:58:00.000+08:00

School has ended - I finished a project on mapping physical representations of London against a mental manifestation based in memories. Also fell ill with sore throat for a fleeting day, went to Fabric and danced till 4 in the morning, and sent my friend off to France to continue his holiday.

It's getting cold, not deep through to the bone but skimming over the sensitive parts of exposed skin. It makes you paranoid, makes you secure when you're indoors and turns you into a soldier when you're out. The clouds roll overhead lazily through the azure skies yet the wind hurtles down at you. It's not war but a game of chance, mostly. It's still beautiful, but now it's violent.

I want to make things right - and mostly when I set my mind to something I make sure I do it damn well. I am, right now. I'll write more when I feel less tangled and fucked.

Inspiration flows through your veins

2011-12-07T01:40:00.001+08:00

Winter, taken near Deptford Market

17th Century map of London

Map of London

Ballpoint pen drawings

Typographer Sean Freeman

Fashion photographer Wendy Bevan

Frida Kahlo

Keep your eyes wide open, boy. These months are cold as his icy eyes but you're my hearth. Temples rubbed and fingertips smoothened just to see if your nerve endings are still fired up - I think of you and realise I have nearly forgotten what you look like. I am too busy these days, I cannot see you, and I shall not. Now it is so cold, I stop thinking, and all I know is how brightly the ink shines beneath the light, how seductive the nib flows over the page, blessed with indian ink.

It is ludicrous we spend so much time thinking of love when it's the swift stroke of a pen, the dip of a brush, the swell of a blot that is accidentally magnificent. If you took all of this away from me I'd break down. I have forgotten what it's like not to enjoy drawing. For a couple of years I hated myself for this, and now it's the reason why winter is warm around me.

Fearless, you are the charm in my pocket, the inspiration that flows to my fingertips. The first part that my heart cuts off flow to, but the one thing that keeps me alive.

My art project this week is a continuation from the last, it is going so well I'm actually amazed. I don't want to touch it any more because I think it's perfect how it is. Come Thursday we have critique and I am excited. I don't know why I thought I might have survived not studying art.

Gelatin bullets

2011-11-30T19:39:00.001+08:00

I wish I can make you feel better. Come over here, it's beautiful. The skies are blue today.

Eat your heart out

2011-11-27T02:43:00.001+08:00

FYI: I've started to dump all my proper, London-exploring posts at another blog: http://hanqinghanqing.blogspot.com. That's where I skip the bullshit and jump to the explaining and good photos. Mmm.

One of my friends says he finds consolation in cooking. Sometimes like today when I get stuck in for too long my mind starts wandering but the thought of food cheers me up considerably. Same as previously I'm not actually upset, just... thinking. Ambivalence? Not quite it either. So I decided to compile all the food I've cooked. Cheers x

Pan-cooked salmon with cream cheese on the side, baby carrots and beans boiled in water. Salmon has to be salted, or alternatively buy the marinade in Sainsbury's.

Salami with brie, blueberries and feta cheese. Don't have too often or your heart vessels will probably complain. Good comfort food though, take when feeling down.

Fruit salad - oranges, nectarines, apples, brie, salami, a scoop of yoghurt. Breakfast food - surprisingly filling and keeps you going.

Sandwich with cheese and blueberries, toasted and then microwaved. Fruit salad - walnuts, mandarin oranges, pear, cream.

Cucumber and chicken cooked in sweet and sour saue mixed with egg. Chinese egg noodles.

Tiramisu made with sponge fingers soaked in chocolate, grated dark chocolate and a mixture for cream.

Mascarpone, double cream, sugar, red wine. Mixed up to the consistency of whipping cream.

And then sprinkled with love and longing.

I've realised that I don't put enough effort in maintaining friendships... I've been getting a bit passive with some people and I don't know if it's a good thing. Been feeling a little like the cold winter air's frozen out my heart even further. Can't feel much, I just type happy crap and cross my fingers dispassionately hoping it sounds normal. Don't even feel upset that I've forgotten most people.

If anyone's reading... just come and talk to me, I swear I still wanna be friends. I promise I'm a good person. This sounds pretty desperate but I can't phrase.

Drawing

2011-11-24T08:08:00.001+08:00

Nothing beats drawing - the pencil grinding against the sheet of paper can send you over the edge. It's immediate, it's nearly irreversible, and the secret is to ride the highs and lows and trust your instinct to keep you steady. You alone know it can't go wrong (or when it can) and you alone will feel prouder than a parent.

Fill your crown with rumours

2011-11-23T05:29:00.001+08:00

Sooner or later things change. The sun sets earlier, my friends think I'm nicer, in my heart the devil stirs from hibernation. I love the smell of fresh sunshine, because it reminds me that I have 9 hours to feel alive before the night takes over again. Sometimes it feels like the sun is afraid. This week I am in illustration... Somehow got sorted into this pathway but I'm considering changing back to Fine Art.

Walked by the Occupy London movement outside St Paul's. Lots of people. Yesterday I went to see Battles at HMV forum with Calvin, had an excellent time watching the drummer and a cute photographer. But in all honesty the music was good... not addictive and catchy but like a huge overdose of adrenaline served on a silver platter. We had kebab later and met a creepy dude.

I think... there's something wrong with me. Can't shake off the feeling. I'm not sad or down or anything, just heavy hearted. Maybe it's winter, but I don't think so. I love it when the weather gets gloomy, but not when inside of myself the fog comes over. I have a few extra thoughts - mostly that I've gotten out of my own control.

Sunday with fog

2011-11-20T16:51:00.001+08:00

I know this sense of guilt well as the palm of my hand. Come by sometime and talk.

2011-11-19T23:40:00.001+08:00

Bet you didn't know that in ancient civilisations virginity is "the principle of the sacred union between the male and female halves of the personality". In other words, a virgin was probably a courtesan/prostitute with manly independence who didn't belong to anyone.

Oh fuck me.

(not literally, you know. As an expression. Like "thank you, modern religion, for screwing us over")

4 Hours in Heaven

2011-11-19T17:48:00.001+08:00

Music good. People gay (and straight too). Dance floor right-amount-of crowded. Drinks cheap. Entrance free. No residual guilt/horror. Just what I needed to get me through the winter. I think I'm far from being a clubber (or as yenjin would spell it, crubber) but there's something good about loud music and strobe lights. How was it invented? It's like a portable Disneyland for us who miss childhood but can't fit into the entire Adult landscape.

Maybe I'm bored. Maybe I am just re-discovering my lack of moral standards. Drawing lines just to cross them. I have breakfast in two minutes with Calvin and YY and all I want is to sleep more. Can't! Get up (ha ha). Or else I'd have no food.

There's a small corner of my brain wondering if what I'm typing actually makes sense. I really want some buffalo's cheese and salami on ciabatta. Where are my old friends??

Disappearing Acts/Stockholm Syndrome

2011-11-16T19:14:00.001+08:00

Am I normal in that I get so devastatingly bored in the daylight? Time passes so slow as the sun travels across the sky - I want my room always to be shrouded in darkness. Through all the devillish things we do. I'm reading a book about Group Material, having ploughed my way through half of The God Delusion and an issue of Timeout already.

Finished Another Book Today

2011-11-16T03:38:00.001+08:00

I finished Just My Type today - a book about typography that's got me absolutely enamored. Is this not one of the most delightful combination of my passions - words and design and theory and art all mixed into a beautiful discipline that takes so much discipline. I finished it with a cup of ginger tea and the soundtrack to Drive - all in all a wonderful evening.

(Calvin isnt back from school for dinner and I got a bit peckish, so I must admit here I had some brie too, but all that does is alleviate some of the guilt and make me smile a little wider)

The above photo is interesting for many reasons (Let's approach this like I would a Primary School oral examination) In the top right hand corner is a photo that is clearly used for a display photo - edges cropped tight into a circle with a girl who is being rather narcissistic. Below that she has a few documents related to school - "Diagnostic" being her foundation pathway. On the bottom of the screen are programmes she frequently uses - "Monies" being quite amusingly highlighted. Why? She probably spends her money but gets guilty about it. In her Skype conversation she has typed "Bryony Lavery", the name of a playwright whose plays she just watched the other day at Queen Mary's. Why is she telling her friends that? Which brings us to her friends - she's got three of them in a bright place, all cute as buttons but somewhere 13 hours away by plane.

My friend told me today he misses home - and I felt like someone has cast my heart out of lead as I deadpanned that I haven't. I know I think of people, I know I think of Block 640, but I stop thinking of them as my own. Matter of fact, nothing really is mine at the moment apart from my ever-whirring head and the physicality of my own being.

I wish YY lent me the book on typography earlier - I am absolutely in love with it the same way that I'm in love with the Sherlock Holmes books and the Sherlock series. (Here's the one thing I want to say - I am smitten by the BBC version of Sherlock, and I think everyone should watch it. It's beautiful, it's fantastic, it's stylish but timeless, modern and sophisticated, and the story so fluid. Is it possible to be attracted to an asexual man? Not him, no, but the way in which he is London and London is him. I'm in love with this city, you see)

The thing I was trying to say, but didn't manage to get to - that I do love typography so, like the way I love the way German sounds. People say it's dense and careless, but I love how angry it sounds. I love the subtlety about typography - the history between the lines, all the unspoken taste and finesse about it. It's a precise craft and not something I will ever be good at, but the parts I know, the history, the theory, the way it sounds in my head, are inarticulate attempts at grasping it.

At risk of sounding brusque and insensitive, I sometimes fear that I care more for this place than I ever did for a human soul. Perhaps out of novelty, perhaps because it cannot love me back.

Samskyeti

2011-11-15T19:58:00.001+08:00

The most potent of all magic are songs which make you cry every time you listen - they are of sadness, of pure delight, of emotions softly rising exactly how you feel them in your heart. You're no longer hearing, but listening.

Sometimes I Wanna Disappear

2011-11-15T06:19:00.001+08:00

Please plastic soul be the heavy lullaby in my mind, singing you off to sleep, singing me off to a goodbye. The trees are bare here, like naked bodies clutching their residual leaves to their stick thin selves, a semblance, like I am. The kisses I blew you yesterday expire within a few hours - please reply. RSVP, toss me a note tied to a rock clatter against my winter window.

All for you, all for you.

Pattern and clean space - I'm not OCD, I just fight that part of myself inside which is. I need not clean because I talk myself out of it/ are you a relusion or a delusion? Pattern, pattern, perfection, pattern - the best things begin with the letter P. Pork, pizza, panties, piñata.

Say it now before I choke it out of you, grasp your throat and jerk you higher, asking you, hissing in your ear asking if you hear me now. Be terrified, be horrified, just be surprised I did not do this earlier (or act it). In another life I might have been born dangerous and sexy, but in this I am merely filled to the brim with too much anger when it suits me, and too timid to act. Oh darling you know I love you so.

So much that when your eardrums wear out from this, and you limp over, I will take you in, and love you.

I have started to write differently, and I don't know if this suits me. I used to give a fuck, now I have forgotten how to. I told you I'm not someone you want to care for, but that does not mean I can take care of myself. It's because I'm all fucked up, right here, over the left side of my chest where there is nothing. And I like it when you guys know I'm fucked up there.

Hey, do you remember once when art was just something I'd do to get attention? I would do it because I knew I was good enough to - all those fools messing around with math and making their parents do their art, stupid buggers couldn't know that I was good enough with my math to do my own art. They paid, over and over again. When I was 10 I proper had enough of a revenge on all the idiots who thought I was some scared kid from China.

I began to like myself then, and that's when it all goes down the drain. Sit round, hear me out - when you start loving yourself you begin to believe for a moment that it all revolves around you, the little sun, the supernova all ready to go boom. And then you do, and it's brilliant for a moment before it turns into a black hole and you collapse in your own lie.

Today it's what drives me, it's what sustains this silly hole that keeps sucking in things, collapsing in upon myself. You don't want to be my friend and my lover if you knew the truth, so I'm determined you shall not know. Yet here I am - I like confessing for the attention, all for it.

You know this ends when I stop breathing - this is my life, I see the world in colours now and I bully others before they can lay a finger on me. I know why I cut everyone I meet, I know why I can't give compliments before preparing myself. I ask you what's wrong with me to get your perspective, but dont be dumb enough to think I'm too stupid to figure it all out.

Luv, be kind to me here. Forget what you've read, it's all in my head anyway, I'm just playing and fucking with you. Luv, be kind.

Printmaking

2011-11-13T20:08:00.001+08:00

I wonder when my korean friend will finally get my english. Ill communication and the same birth date has formed the basis of our friendship thus far. Languages are all flip sides of the same thing, but why are there so many ways to say one thing? Why do we not mean what we say?

Purposeless

2011-11-13T08:53:00.001+08:00

The sadness swelling inside of you - I can feel it through your sighs and weary arched back. I know that you hurt because I can see you smile. I know the pain that stealthily snakes up your heart and impales you against the cold wall - I know of fire and rage and violence but nothing as violent as the stillness of sadness. The tears winding their way into a river against your skin, the moment they form a precarious droplet on the blade of your chin, as they slice their way through the open air - I want you well, I wish us peace.

You tell me if this hurts as much for me - it must too, to be anonymous, to be unnamed in this life, to be stagnant and still and unwavering. You have your moral highs and I am always about where it is dark and damp and where such things do not matter. Why is it that two entities so attracted must always be playing the game like dancing scorpions... you know I like you and not this, so come along, convince me, throw me down or hold me close.

These moments I know I'm dull, hopelessly diminished, morally faulty and such a terrible person - people can't be born evil but I know they can become so. Sometimes I feel the poison cursing through my blood and I know I shall forever be - I just want to know why this is dysfunctional, why we can't work. I want badly to be hurt so deep that I can break out of this rut. I want to draw, trace patterns in your surfaces, and cut deep whenever I want to.

What You Want

2011-11-13T08:24:00.001+08:00

If your heart isn't mine by the end of tonight, sue me for mine.

Yesterday night we went to see the Grayson Perry exhibit events at the British Museum - glass overhead in geometric tiles forming a dome against the pitch black of the night sky. The light was muted, the girls were decked out in dresses too beautiful for the streets, it was a carnival and an almost-cacophony of voices. I got myself an omikuji and watched YY as he drew some characters on a paper ball.

Afterwards we went to a bar to meet some friends - new friends from Manchester, I remember. A greek guy who called everyone darling and an english guy who toted a huge overnight bag. Soho is full of rainbow lights and dashing young gay men (why do they always look so good?) and we wandered once into a bar where all the bartenders were hot men nude from the waist up. Or were they? I didn't venture near enough to the bar to see what was going on down south.

Madame Jojo's was great fun - sixties swing music and guys old enough to not hit on you, the cutest DJ ever who probably would not look out of place tending to her garden of geraniums. We had dinner at Chinatown afterwards, when everyone was hurting for food to fill the void left by loud music and dancing. Some guy told me I am cooler than Rihanna - he has the prettiest blue eyes ever and asked me to eat with them but he looked like a turtle in his vest.

We had a good meal, and I fell asleep on the bus back and became the hero when I woke up in time to snatch Calvin off the bus with me at the right spot. As we were walking through the doors five drunk guys burst out of the hall yelling and laughing as they ran off into the dawn with a soundtrack of fire alarm. Two guys made out behind me, and we came into a crowd of pyjamas.

I was tired and reached my door just as the bell died away, and fell into my bed, surrendered to sleep.

---

It was suggested to me later that day/earlier today that perhaps I simply attract these people to me, as though I can't help it. Perhaps I can, it's just that I have never tried not being odd enough to talk with drunk Moroccan strangers, or flirt with you with my eyes closed. Perhaps art is one of those things that singles out people to haunt - it captures people and makes them odd, off-kilter, heart skipping three beats in between the thuds.

I was talking to a friend about London changing me/him/us. I kind of forgot. But in some ways I am glad that I have come - I now know it's not a sin to talk about things, to think about things in ways that do not ring with continuity of everyone else. About culture, sex, literature, society, views, liberation - there's a list in my head that does not quit.

---

Borough Market on a weekday - I bought two egg tarts from a french bunch of people. Je t'aime.

You're not my hero

2011-11-08T23:31:00.000+08:00

This morning I was at a beautifully dreary street lined with autumn leaves drenched in the rain from yesterday. I answered questions and immersed myself in a culture of being here. Lately the skies have turned to grey and since Halloween the days have been getting shorter. Always I am feeling slightly more grey - the colour is seeping out of everyone's wardrobe in the shimmering rainfall.

But I am left feeling more hopeful anyway. I know why we escape the cold, but in a sadomasochistic way it makes me feel braver and more pleased. I wonder if the world on your side is at a standstill too - here it makes pause and people are moving slower, or faster, depending on whether you're moving forward or backwards in this crazy crowd.

Dear _____, it has become like a cloud here. The other day I went out merely for groceries, spending the rest of my time in bedroom slippers with a throw around my shoulders. I have discovered brie and cooking amongst my interests, and I will soon be good enough to be a good housewife, if not a trophy wife by virtue of my pink and green locks.

The other day I fully realised that given all my life goals I should never be in a relationship - or a fully functioning one - for it shall neither please nor aid me. I am wondering if my life should always be like this - it always feels better when I don't have to report to anyone, and when I can still make you fall in love with me.

Winter is coming and it feels resistent to going - have you ever heard that story about pomegranates? That Hades tricked Demeter with six seeds from a fruit and forced her to stay in the underworld a month for each seed, and that's why we have the four seasons, because her mother on earth misses her so.... I wonder how it is like to be a mother. It might have been brilliant.

By the end of next week I'll be on another portion of my foundation course - this year has been amazing for many reasons, getting results, getting into uni, getting a scholarship... everything has been about making things happen... first time in art school, first time living on my own, first kiss, first pot of tea.

I have a new found addiction to Sherlock Holmes - bought an entire stack of books by Sir Conan Arthur Doyle and I have been reading obsessively, soaking in it all. I love how "excited" has taken on a new meaning in our times.

This Friday I need to bring 5 things that matter to me.

This is where love is

2011-11-05T06:16:00.002+08:00

Once again there arises circumstances in which I doubt the infallibility of my plans - I have been obsessive and I want to know everything. What if I had not accounted the emotional quality of this trip? I want independence as much as I want you - I knew it was a mistake to trust in a tryst, on a whimsical one-note romance.

And now that we can no longer call this simple I have forgotten a time when I am single-mindedly focussed on the future, the pathways we navigate of life which dictate us in revolving circles that tighten around us with every rhythm. Who'd knew? Come back soon or drive me out of my mind. You have no idea what I've been up to and I need to tell you, lest this all comes to naught and I forget I promised.

In a few years time I'd be with everything that was once comfortable - but for now I cannot fathom how it ever was. You have been a love-mark that lingered too long, and now I am tired, today I am forgotten in myself. I draw my own dead eyes in pencil when I think of you and I can tell that I am conflicted inside, because of the vacancy, the unable occupants who cannot muster up the courage to make an appearance.

It is not true that we women need a life that is filled with disaster to be good artists - we can equally be the equal of men with a whole soul, a complete life. Why is our identity that of a troubled missus whose beauty shines through her scars? (I just want for myself a Diego who will remarry me for himself, who is selfish in that he loves me for my imperfections)

I have always wanted to be a good person - and unquestionably I have strived. I have worked hard. But I want to tell you one thing, listen up close now. I think I may be grown up deficient. What else accounts for that neediness that pervades my existence...? I need reassurance, I need the insults and comebacks like I need you.

If you were here you would know that every single person I have fallen for here have resembled a shell of you. The difference is that I really can't remember their names as well as I can yours. Or can I? Memory is a rose-tinted lens whose only aim is to remember the good bits.

Banksy is from Bristol

2011-11-02T22:29:00.001+08:00

“Graffiti ultimately wins out over proper art because it becomes part of your city, it' s a tool; "I'll meet you in that pub, you know, the one opposite that wall with a picture of a monkey holding a chainsaw". I mean, how much more useful can a painting be than that?”

Spinning Slow Motion

2011-11-02T01:17:00.000+08:00

The air is visceral around us.

I apologise for the lack of posts... haven't had my laptop around me and I just returned from Bristol. It was a really nice break from London and I was almost getting used to the place. Jiangyue's hallmates are absolutely lovely and nice and Bristol is ever so gorgeous in the sunlight that we were blessed to have.

I think sometimes we attribute so much importance to one thing that in retrospect it never lived up to expectations. Do we feel sad or regret that it never did - or do we just realise expectations weren't meant to be fufilled? The skies are turning dark upon me earlier each day and we can feel winter through our bones now when we are outside.

Sometimes the sun deceives us by pretending the day is going to run normally, and like a fickle-minded child it changes and weeps a downpour. London, when I am back in you I feel like I'm in a cradle of sorts, a soothing croon, a semblance of something I am more used to.

You make me aware I could have grown up someone completely different - but I did not. Maybe that is what has set me apart till today.

Happy Birthday To Me

2011-10-24T04:38:00.001+08:00

I had a fucking good birthday. <3

Steve Jobs

2011-10-20T08:10:00.004+08:00

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. "

There is this article floating around Facebook right now - what seems to be an ordinarily overlooked article shot into face by the people "sharing" it. And while nearly all of the people on my feed seem to be in agreement about it there was just something that didn't sit right with me. I couldn't really pinpoint it - but I felt ridiculously irked by the tone, the content, and (I'm admitting it) the smug look on the author's face beneath his 80s haircut.

I must profess to be an Apple fan, but I'm not one of those who sheds tears when Steve Jobs dies, or when a new iPhone is released. My friends probably know I love my iPhone, but there's a reason behind it - my dad gave it to me in a turbulent period of time and it has always reminded me to work harder. I have no personal feelings about the company, but I am attracted to the products because they have seldom let me down, and I am a highly visual person so the smooth edges are sexy to me.

In all honesty, I can see why people would think I'm biased - my thoughts are often bimbotic and shallow when expressed because my views are so strong and unjustified in my head. Also I have an unhealthy attachment to my phone and laptop.

But I assure you, I know what I'm thinking regarding this article. Typically, I would nod my head sadly and agree that we are an easily excitable race. Technology has taken the joy out of reading and taking things slow (I am a notoriously slow walker, a slow eater and I've just spent two days at home reading a book about dialogical art pieces) But I have always - and will always think of Steve Jobs as a truly remarkable man.

I believe the author has mixed up greatness with niceness - both are subjective and hard to be determined in the first place, but cannot and should not be mixed up. The great people in mankind's history have never been subjected to as much criteria as they are today - we know that Leonardo Da Vinci was a great man, but was he a philanthropist? Is that even relevant to his innovation and visionary ambitions?

Why do we need our great figures to be people who have contributed to the world by some selfless standard of philanthropy anyway? The mourners of Steve Jobs regard him with respect because he excelled at his field - he led the way with meticulous attention to quality and design instead of bending to industry pressure. It's not a question of his achievements, really, but he was truly good at what he did.

Why does the author seem bent on blaming us, the populace, for regarding someone as a great man? He seems so cynical of our ability to critically distinguish between greatness and mediocrity, yet he himself makes strange loose connections between completely different things (really, CEOs and Indian politicians, really?)

He says he is not questioning the success of Steve Jobs, but making a critical commentary on society's "belittling" of greatness, yet he ends off claiming that Steve Jobs promotes certain "noxious" ideas... After reading the article I just felt generally confused and dazed. The writer seems to be in a similar state throughout - and I am just wondering if all along he was using the name of a recently-deceased well-known individual to provoke and raise attention.

It was a shoddy read because many parts just seemed like ill-informed arguments for arguments' sake. In today's unstable world, we really do not need more people to come along with poorly-constructed thoughts. I'm kind of sick of such notions already.

To much contemporary art that continues rehashing the same concept of "what is art", wailing like infants in their cribs just pissing me off. I wonder when we will stop being critical of everything and anything, just because we want to be a provocative species.

(Un)emotional

2011-10-19T06:13:00.000+08:00

This was my last week project. I'm a bit too lazy to explain so I'll just plonk down some random rambling words I had jotted down in my laptop and call it a day. Au revoir fellow humans I am off to cut my hair myself.

"I felt that a pleasing resolution would be the end product itself... not just my moodswings, but the emotional development of many people. I want to contrast our emotional complexity/instability with a structure that is stable and singular. It is a state that everyone undergoes..

I enjoy the process... it's almost daunting and scary for me to approach people, asking for their emotions, because I know how sacred feelings are. There's a sense of artifice in collecting these faces but it is a hurdle I am already reconciled with.

At home I took the teacher's advice and tried out acrylic paint. Aesthetically it pleases me too. It kind of gives dimensions and I am already very fascinated with the eye... It is indeed the window to the soul and the first thing I always draw. That immediacy intrigues me.

On Thursday I will stitch the panels together, and then apply the paint... And do some collage. I love how the horoscope section in Cosmo is so sappy and full of dead unemotional words. "

Talking Across Forevers

2011-10-19T06:07:00.002+08:00

"Your birthday is coming. We will celebrate for you remotely."

I had a day to myself so for my art project this week I decided I really wanted to write a letter to you. You're important to this week because you're a rare person I hate almost as much as I love. You're the colour of muted green which seeps through walls, you're that alluring azure on a sheet of feather which threatens to fall.

I wrote a long letter for you, I sampled from love letters from Google because I did not know how to tell you I felt. After the first page, it became a lot better and I wrote for you what I have always wished I have had the guts to say. I know that you're dripping sunshine in my eyes, but I've always known to mistrust leprechaun gold.

The weather is what most people ask me about. It's gloves soon, it's scarves now, except when the sun is shining, and then it could almost be sandals. I am a cautious sort of person so I avoid taking risks. Your heart is always in my pocket.

Dinner for three

2011-10-18T06:09:00.003+08:00

Had dinner with Calvin and YY... tonight was chicken rice, meatballs, mussels and chicken. So fucking good. I fell down the other day, pretty sad about the busted up knee - it's kind of at the same spot I once scraped the skin raw. But this weekend should be fine. I'm pretty excited. I'm going to be 19.

Fine art this week again - I haven't really hit onto a good idea yet, but I want to keep working at it until I do. My professor said "If you don't do anything, you end up with nothing". Got to stop stoning then. I read a book about Alexander McQueen that belongs to my flatmate/// I want to have that kind of work ethic, working endlessly, tirelessly, until I get somewhere.

Settling Into London

2011-10-16T06:08:00.000+08:00

Settling in feels like a pair of Ugg boots. Nothing spectacular, you can't tell much, but it's like a wonderful cocoon that hugs you close. I've picked up a few habits here - tealights, drinking tea, sleeping on my back, hanging scarves up as I come home. They are little reminders that I am learning everyday, how to learn things over again.

I think and I talk about it a lot - Settling In - as though I have conscious choice over it. But truth is that from Day One I hadn't thought so much about how I was going to get used to this city as much as I just went ahead and plunged in.

I am grateful to MOE because I am truly carefree at the moment - I have a monthly budget but I am only a burden on my future self. I make fun of the institution but I love the structure, I love how they feed me morsels of money and I love having a future ahead of me. Friends, you must know I never planned on being a teacher - but plans are sometimes made to fall apart. If I could chase my dreams, I would be a superhero with a fuschia cape.

Today I went to Kensington Gardens with Leona, and then we went to Portobello Market. Both are really inspirational places and I'm so happy to see her again. I now have a lot of photos of me in London, looking all jazzed up and good.

If I could tell someone how to do this over, I guess I'll just say that feeling homesick is a fucking waste of time. You should get your life sorted out - know how much you can spend, know how much you're going to contact people back home, know who you're going to be in this new place. I know I'm lucky because I don't have a lot of people that I miss, but the one or two I do aren't going to prevent me from living.

Bring clothes hangers, bring some home food, think about a laundry bag, get all your tesco, boots, whatever cards, think about the interior design of your room, buy books to read, bring pi pa gao, have people to talk to, don't be afraid of talking to people...

Making out with the reindeer

2011-10-13T07:50:00.002+08:00

Today I watched The Tempest at St Giles... I have friends in PDP now (performance design) and I am actually slightly envious - it is wonderful to think of theatre as a cross-disciplinary art form, so demanding, so complicated. Music and words and literature and art... Listening to the words of a dead playwright from the mouths of modern actors, visually ringing across the space...

But then again, I'm loving fine art week so much... it makes me remember why I loved this subject. I've always said I'm into art, but I never knew why, and I couldn't verbalise that little ticking inside of me that speeds up when I see pretty things. Art isn't all pretty, but I love the grotesque bits in the same way, so titillating... Does it sound strange and pretentious?

Forgive me but I have found my soulmate in something intangible, and I can't think of much else I love more. School gives me so much meaning and art and design and all things visually astounding have given me life... I really hope that everyone can speak for their interest in the same way that I can, because then the world will be brilliant...

My thought naturally trail off in this manner, and now I'm just thinking of the people I met today. How can people be so different? Why can they talk about such singular, unfunny things for such a long time...? Why can't they see that colours were made by nature to be worn as clothes and as a smile? I am thinkin that maybe I am too harsh on people.

After all I cannot put everyone on a pedestal and always stand below. I should truly believe sometimes that I am indeed brilliant.

Slough Over Weekend

2011-10-11T08:22:00.002+08:00

This weekend I was in Slough with Lukkie, a chilled laid-back end to assessment week. Slough is a small town outside of London... few things to see and do. Back here in London it seems like people are walking so much faster than before. I'm back in school and ready to be good.

Beauty Behind Ashes

2011-10-07T03:02:00.003+08:00

The amazing thing about being abroad is that my room belongs to me already... the first few days were odd because I never felt like I was truly here - that my room had belonged to me. Belonging - it's something we always, always want, so important, so integral. And right now, with a beautiful set of watercolours laid across my table I know who owns all these things.

I'm truly independent because I take responsibility for myself - my throats hurts like a motherfucker but I can only take care of myself.

I don't know why I am here though - I draw and I **** around - is that the only components of my existence here? I can't have this in the 6 years following, but I don't know if for these 4 years I'm an angel or a delightfully terrible person. The world is far more beautiful behind my eyelids than it ever was with my eyes wide shut.

I am good at drawing, I've got a delightful sense of aesthetic, but somehow I cannot shake of the nagging feeling that I am far from good.

Not a Big Deal

2011-10-04T23:48:00.003+08:00

Solve Sundsbo/Lips or the Edge of Reason

In Singapore

2011-10-03T00:05:00.000+08:00

When I was very young, before I was born, before I was formed, my parents found a country that was very safe. It was small, and beautiful, where the skies rolled into the seas around a little mound of land in the middle of the waters. There was no danger, so without the permission of my unformed soul we had gone down and settled.

I hear now that we had so little money with us, we were nearly broke. I think I can trust that it really happened. The place was so safe, it reeked of unhappiness. I forget now, but I remember being unhappy. Nobody was nice to me but I really wanted to be nice. I had wrapped birthday presents for my classmates but I was late and undressed, untidy, like I always was.

How is it that a little girl of 5 can wear the wrong shoes to school? In my mind's eye I was smiling but inside I couldn't feel. I loved two people and two only, because they loved me too. I had the wrong everything - for god's sake I was in the wrong place. When nobody can understand your language you feel out of place. I know I was bullied by a large boy - I forget how or when. I know my parents had to go to school to fight him off me. But it does not work.

(Sometimes I wonder where he is and I hope that he had been decapitated for humiliating a little girl in school who couldn't speak)

Growing up was such a chore - do I remember those happier times, or were they just constructed out of colouring pencils at home I wonder. I had a very boring life, or so I thought, before I start realising my darkest secrets were shameful ones that I have never told anyone (until now). I was not a bed-wetter, nor did I speak with a lisp. I was shameful in that I was born in the wrong country and raised by the wrong people.

I was a princess from where I came. I wanted people to know that every single person could be loved and special. And it's a silly thing, I now know, that people have the right to be loved.

In Primary school we had to take the school bus. Nobody cared for 23 October, nobody cared that I had moved house and that I was living somewhere that seemed more like a home than the dingy flat we once used to have. People did care to somehow fuck up my life, I suppose. I had a best friend who disappeared, another who was never mine.

Someone had tattoed my grandfather's name into the wall where we used to sit and wait for the bus. I didn't know it at the time, but now I do and all I want is to go back and find the bitch who did it. I didn't know why all of a sudden nobody wanted to talk to me. I was 9 and I don't know what to do about my neighbours who would taunt me for the ride back home, and to school.

When people make meowing noises from the backseat of the bus, behind your bowed head, you begin to imagine the problem is with yourself.

Isn't it ironic I never cried, I never blamed anyone but myself? I couldn't think because... I suppose I could call myself stupid back then. My neighbours were a pair of brother and sister - the brother is my age and the girl was younger. She used to talk to me, I remember now that everyone did too. The slanty eyed girl - her name was yuemei, I'm sure of it - she used to play too.

Overnight, as one semester shifted into another, it seemed like everyone had begun to hate me for a reason I can't fathom. I don't think it's my surname, though I've tried telling myself it is.

I've tried always to like my surname, but I don't think I ever fully did. I can hear their voices in my head, I can hear them say things that are too mean to repeat to myself. I can hear things I've done wrong. How can children with the kind eyes of dolphins be like sharks?

In Secondary 2 I tried to kill myself, but I was too stupid to know how.

In Primary 5 I felt like dying, once, because I thought you had stopped loving me, because I ran away from you downstairs at the playground. My friend wanted me to stay, and I thought by doing so she might like me.

In Secondary 4 I cried on a bus for the first time. I learnt how to gain sympathy, by telling people. I learnt it made things better. But that day I also learnt that when nobody replies, it kills you inside and scars forever. I am quite scared to go back to Singapore.

Why do I feel so scared now?

I'm not coming home

2011-10-02T16:14:00.000+08:00

I feel like the heart pumping through my veins can be felt if I lightly touched a finger to the shirt I was wearing/ like the sounds in my eardrums were not of whispered screams but of my own nerves on end.

How has your weekend been? I'm fine, I've been doing reading in my own little room and going to the Tate modern with a friend from my hall. We has dinner and did our laundry while watching Big Bang Theory and a stream of people going out to the Fresh Pints party.

(I'm a responsible girl, see - my friend is coming down from Slough and I'll have to show her around today)

London is absolutely amazing these days when it's been warmer. The other day I went with my friend to Westfield and we bought so much clothes... I have a gorgeous pair of boots from Dune that I cannot wait to have a photo taken of. When it's all sunny like now all you want to do is smile and bask in the sunlight.

I've been eating vegetables a lot lately - there was that purple cauliflower, those kangkong... I am getting better at Pasta but I haven't found time to cook rice and fry rice for myself.

I feel like I talk about this an awful lot but even though I do not miss Singapore I miss you. The funny thing is that of all the people I talk about I rarely mention you because I don't really think about you that much. Is it possible to not think of someone and miss them an equal lot?

Don't get your panties in a bunch - I don't feel for you. There's just this sad you-shaped hole in my immediate surroundings.

It's physically impossible to feel sad in a yellow coat

2011-09-29T16:55:00.003+08:00

You wake up in the morning and the first and only thing that matters is that today is a better day than yesterday - some things happen and it's not like you can stop them (or perhaps you can in theory, and then everything goes awry anyway) Here the weather is perfect and I love school and I love London, but bad days still come and go.

The only thing that's changed is that I can no longer call on anyone the way I used to. I have kind of learnt to be more open minded, but still to be doubtful, even more than I've ever been. I don't know if suspicion is an attractive trait...

I'm busy organising my room today, because you're kind of gone, and also because if I had to go to Graphic Design anymore I think I will be so confused by my future. Will it so happen that I find something I'm really good at, just to have to let it go again?

A purposeful life is all I've ever wanted. It's idealistic, but it's also such an uplifting thought. 6 years of teaching, I really want to get this right.

My 100th Post

2011-09-24T06:59:00.000+08:00

When you appear in my dreams you bring with you a sense of bewilderment and it makes me forget who I am, in my dream, because it is my dream, I am losing control, so save me from it all because you have not stopped being my sunshine and all I want is to know I am loved, and not by way of a message dropped right before I got on my plane - I want to hear it for real and know the people I love love me back (I hate that I love you has become so cheesy and romantic, I wish I could be able to find a replacement phrase to tell people when I like them and adore them) You speak to me about things that I like too, words that I enjoy, sentences that make so much sense to my senses. I have nobody else like you because nobody takes me seriously. One day I'll stop trying to be tough all the time and I'll learn it's okay not to know certain things. I know a list of words that keep me safe, I know things and my ideas are bouyant. It's my 100th post and we should all celebrate. I need to be more descriptive, I need to put up more photos, I need to be brave and most of all I need to stop setting standards for myself, geez, this isn't as hard as I'm making it out to be.

Here's to another million more posts. I want some pappardelle. x

Were Here First

2011-09-24T06:46:00.000+08:00

Sometimes the sun shines so brightly you forget you're on another side of the world - are there things that remind you of things you have lost? I point out absences instead of presence here in my mind - I see gaps in the city that should be filled by you.

Mostly I forget I'm here with my name in tow - I have not tried hard to reinvent, but I have been fearing the end of it all when I have to fall back to where I came from. Is it not weird that as art students we are subject to the ugliest of souls? I want to make pretty things with my blackened heart - it might be ironic.

The sweetest smelling of all is the laundry - fresh out of the washer they are delightful and fragrant and they smell like happiness - that is if happiness had a smell. I always wished to know what it is, but it escapes me. London feels like velvet (maybe I am merely thinking of the finely shredded grass) and it shines like diamonds.

I do not want winter to come, for then I shall be subject to everything that might make me sad. I have done a very, very good job of being happy thus far. In fact, I have not felt sad save those moments post-alkohol, I assume, since I forget what I have been saying.

I don't think I've told anyone how much I miss you though. Or that once upon a time I had learnt to love before I forgot again. This is a good place to start.

California White Zinfandel

2011-09-23T07:46:00.002+08:00

White wine and a book about a teacher and a child who collects flies.

I've been candid with my life, haven't I? I've always tried to move on. In the bright sunshine here it's easy to forget details that become hazy with memory. But the thing about the weather here is that it changes so quick - clouds overheard come cast with dreariness so fast. In the blink of an eye, after an 11% alcohol and no reply, I grow despondent.

I wish sometimes I might hear your voice at the end of the line. I'm much too proud to tell you to call. My life is good here, how is yours? In the daytime I am brave and excited to head out but come nighttime I have nobody to talk to and too many words that nobody can hear.

I want to draw again like I used to - as a child we do things without worrying. I can recall the one picture I have drawn for you as a present - sealed with a kiss and smothered with age over these years. I want you to forget I was born to be happy, born to be yours. When I used to hold the pencil and let it flow...

Today, this week, this month I sometimes get insecure about my drawings. I the daytime I am fond of them and they please me. When I'm like this everything is wrong. You're wrong.

I just want to draw like the rush of wind again, I want to feel the tip of my pencil - I want to get paint and I want to forget that I cannot draw. You ask how I am, and I cannot find the words to tell you how exuberant I feel.

3D models made for classes.

Stars in your eyes

2011-09-21T08:31:00.000+08:00

Even if I shall forget - there is nothing more beautiful than sunshine on earth, of golden light through windows, streaming like invisible ribbons. They hold your heart in glittering fingers, and in the faraway you forget and lose yourself in the now and current.

I'm afraid we're losing it - I'm afraid we've forgotten what it means to work hard. I need you more than ever now, to agree, to come along on this - to follow my lead. There are things the heart says that the body shalt not follow, and in love this is true.

I want to see the sunsets as beautiful as your mind, I want to know the sunrises that shines upon you. I want to feel alive and forever, to feel permanent. Wishing to understand, to perceive, to interpret the real and now and physical.

I should stop existing in academic terms, I should cut myself some slack. I want sometimes to be nothing more than a stream - impermanent and mapped as insignificance. To throw my head back and know the sound of the universe through listening to her heartbeat.

---

Today I went to Chinatown with my friend and he brought two other Singaporeans - it was quite fun and we sat around outside a bar talking about random rubbish. Party going on downstairs, so I joined in the fun and watched a guy giving oral sex to the vacuum cleaner. Also I need alcohol cures - just get it outta my system quick. Now.

2011-09-18T05:43:00.000+08:00

The bee is not afraid of me,
I know the butterfly;
The pretty people in the woods
Receive me cordially.

The brooks laugh louder when I come,
The breezes madder play.
Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists?
Wherefore, O summer's day?

Emily Dickinson

Draft for Assignment

2011-09-18T05:31:00.000+08:00

It can perhaps be said that John Cage is one of the greatest artists of our time – his works are recognized for many reasons, with lasting impact on various art fields – music, dance, art. He is an artist who is fascinated with calling attention to the overlooked, thus challenging the viewer to open his/her mind. Every Day Is A Good Day is an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery that showcases a graceful collection of watercolours, drawings and prints.

Stepping into the gallery, one sees his various works in a seemingly random arrangement on the walls – the space is small and intimate, and the placement of the different works forces the viewer to constantly alter his/her point of view. The exhibition is curated to reference the theme of arbitrariness in his works.

The second room is a multimedia room, where there are videos about his work playing and benches on which people can sit and listen to excerpts from commentary about his work. The exhibition manages to bridge the two broad sets of his works brilliantly – the videos complement the themes expressed in his artwork and his artworks seem to be an extension of his previous work with music and sound.

In his many drawings and watercolours Mr Cage has depicted what feels like the mind-scape – perceiving our physical environment with heightened awareness of the details.

One cannot discuss the work of Mr Cage without bringing his seminal work, 4’33 into the discourse. His vivid watercolours and paintings are composed minimally, the absence of detail calling attention to their subtle texture and random marks, just like how 4’33 calls attention not to the music, but to absence.

Is there perhaps, then, an element of cheekiness in his work? When 4’33 was first performed, the art world was in an uproar, with a fellow artist even proclaiming that Mr Cage should be “driven out of town”. Yet the exhibition seems to suggest that his work is not the result of a desire to provoke or interrogate, but to simply hint at the possibility of the open mind. There is a sense of structure in his work, a precise deliberation that ...?

Perhaps 4’33 has gotten so famous (or perhaps, infamous) that we have forgotten what John Cage truly believed in. The exhibition highlights the work of his later years – delicate ventures into artmaking that is informed by an awareness of the subconscious and a love for challenging ideas of beauty. In his works he seems to be probing into the human psyche of judgement – he believes that if our minds were truly open, then there would be neither good nor bad – every single day can be a good day. There is something beautiful and calming about that idea.

At the end of my visit, watching a video entitled “I Have Nothing to Say and I am Going to Say It” proves fascinating insight into the mind of Mr Cage. He is a humble artist who is truly enamored with life. To him, art should imitate nature at its highest form – drawing attention to the beauty in the overlooked.

---

So many words (nearly 500 already, shit.) - I think I have decided already to review this exhibition. Tough choice between Ishigami, The Power of Making, Pistoletto - that is, until I went to the Hayward, saw John Cage, and changed my mind completely. There's just something about a man that has a great idea that continues to influence generations.

---

An artist statement idea - I am concerned with our pursuit of the constant.

Of Mindless Ramblings

2011-09-17T04:52:00.000+08:00

The sunshine in this town is beautiful - the trees too and the breeze. I must have forgotten what its like back home, and it upsets me, but not as much as the thought of one day leaving. I'm here as a tourist - meant to be forgotten, made to be ill-remembered. We're impermanent, reluctant, and always late.

I want one day to be surrounded again, to start to feel lonely. I have not yet - and it perturbs me because I am always lonely. I want to be forgotten, yet at the same time I want to be recollected with tinted lenses. I want to be your one golden girl, my only triumph. I fear that in the distance your thoughts are with someone else (that is not me)

Being a foreigner compounded with the knowledge I was at home in another place is a wonderful irony - the hypocrisy lies in my wanting to belong to both equally.

--- of colours.

The skies here are blue at times and it is piercing - a warm blue that looks like your eyes though they're brown, instead of the blue of the people here. I have a friend with green eyes - like glass marbles on a autumn day, kicked back shots of absinthe. The skies here do not have depth - they are flat sheets of azure, marbled with clouds that hang in the sky.

The buildings here are a warm brown, they're sometimes duller than most and I berate them silently in my heart because I want my city to be happy. In Singapore we dress our concrete in colours, slicked on to the sides of buildings. Here they were made this way, a scruffy city that tries to present its best front.

The rain here is a shade of grey, like a coat for the sky, it is on in a flash and it drops weightlessly on the ground. My clothes get stained dark easily with water, because I have neglected, out of vanity and ignorance. But the rain is stunning sometimes, it's scarily cold, but it floats about like snowflakes in the air, dancing in the gloominess.

The people here are mustard yellow, sometimes wonderfully quirky, sometimes dull. The seasons are changing and I don't know if they will still be in fashion. They are brusque, promiscuous and wildly funny. I like them but I don't like myself for liking them too much. But some are wonderful - I can genuinely love them.

--- of you.

I miss you so much, I want to hear your voice again because it reminds me that my heartbeat can still quicken after so long. I miss you a lot. Your absence pulls at me and it's distracting. But at times I can forget your absence, because my mind is otherwise preoccupied or because I've already found someone who reminds me so much of you.

--- of peabo.

I pray again that you shall keep me safe - I have made an allegory of you on my windowsill and I hope you survive the winter strong. Live long and fuck the haters.

Midnight and Forgotten

2011-09-15T07:21:00.003+08:00

Second night drinking in a row (I anticipate tomorrow will be my third) is actually quite a nice break from school - I spent my day out doing my assignments so it's nice to kick back and relax for a little while at our hall. I have a New York friend, an Irish friend, a Singaporean friend, a Turkish friend, a Polish friend...

I guess part of what makes London feel so great is the sheer variety of people. Today I helped a Pakistani girl settle in, and hung out with my Belgium friend. It's amazing, isn't it? I feel bad though because I have been neglecting communicating with some friends. But some things don't change, I promise.

I will never smoke, do drugs, or forget loved ones. Cheers.

Fireworks up there

2011-09-12T07:38:00.003+08:00

I was out at the Thames in the evening with Rebecca catching the end of the Thames Festival. It had rained a bit in the evening but by nightfall it was cool and the air was heavy with excitement. There was music and dancing and random guys with beers in hand and a holler up their throats. We crossed Waterloo bridge to get to the other side of the river.

The wonderful thing about London is just how alive it can be. In places the grass is green in the bright sunlight and there's nothing but faraway city sounds, but sometimes it feels like everyone's heartbeat is in sync with the city's. I'm not sure which London I prefer, actually, but it's a wonderful middle ground between the congestion of Shanghai and the vacancy of Singapore.

The sound of waiting is terrible - anticipation and desire and annoyance rolled into one. Two banks along the river Thames people are waiting for the first spark. And then it comes, popping and rolling and tossing about in the sky, the sound of gunshots, of exuberance that rings through the cloudless night sky. Can there ever be anything more beautiful? Is there anything more fascinating?

We all know fireworks capture the imagination of everyone as they ring through the night sky - they are what excitement is happiness is made of. And from my primetime view I understand why - they fill your eyes with wonder, you're trapped beneath a glittering sky full of hopes and dreams, and like a blanket it keeps you warm.

I want to collect something/someone/somewhere I love in this city.

2011-09-11T06:35:00.002+08:00

Went to Portobello Market today with my friend Angela. Portobello Market is along Portobello Road here in London - basically a long street filled with stalls selling everything from antiques to mexican food. It's near Notting Hill Gate tube station, a very near walk, and it's absolutely filled with people on a Saturday.

There was just so much to take in - I bought a beautiful red bag that looks kind of like a cambridge satchel - but more functional. It's just a wonderfully boxy, structured piece of leathery goodness. I love it. I also bought some small trinkets and accessories and a brooch I intend to mail to a friend. There were a lot of antique shops selling bags and books and everything in between - it was so fascinating to just stand and soak it all in.

As for food, the market is equally known for its foodstuff. It is, after all, a market, and there were stalls selling fresh fruits and vegetables as well as street food. We did go into a small bar/restaurant for some food. I love how the bars here are so beautifully decorated, and how much attention is paid to small details like presentation. There is a sense of orchestration about London, like an elaborate cabaret disguised as reality.

It was drizzling a little when we left - I had to walk through the light raindrops, but it's really worth it just to see the double rainbow in the sky - I saw it as a full semicircle, it was breathtaking and it felt amazing and alive for me to be here. These days I've relied quite heavily on photos and I haven't had enough time to think and reflect on my surroundings like I should be doing.

I hope you forgive me and enjoy my photos in place of words and thoughts. And for friends I have forgotten to reply, for people I have forgotten to love because I'm a few timezones away - trust that my heart shall always return.

Stitching Eyes Shut

2011-09-09T05:38:00.002+08:00

Today's assignment was a continuation from the previous days' - a lot of sketching and phototaking, progressing into making 3D models. I think I am far more comfortable with 2D surfaces. Perhaps a good thing instead of bad, since I do think that being more informed of spatial issues may broaden my mind a little bit.

I tried to manipulate the paper to be like an organic growth form, disorganised but not chaotic. I like the way the translucent paper interacts with the opaque paper in light, coming together. We were tasked to make aesthetic judgements instead of intellectual ones, so that was pretty fun for me.

Went back to Clerkenwell - such a wonderful little street, but I'm already thirsty for more London. I have a list of exhibitions I am expected to visit and in the end write an exhibition review, so I am pretty psyched for that. As much as I hate to admit it, I love my academic life. I am not yet at the stage where I can motivate myself to pursue knowledge, so being forced on my way is excellent.

Apres L'amour

2011-09-08T08:05:00.001+08:00

Today was my faux day off. As some friends already know, I have a three day work week, literally. No school on Wednesdays and Fridays, and I didn't have to cram anything. I went out today to Clerkenwell again to draw and find inspiration to finish yesterday's assignment.

And I somehow ended up at the same place as my friend Angela. We met on Facebook a long time ago, been talking here and there, and this is the first time we've met in person. I realised that I'm really such a Singaporean I can rattle off facts about Singapore. I know the small island as much as I am familiar with the inside of my eyelids.

17 years of island life.

We had a little snack at a cafe and I got myself a salami sandwich. Do you know how much I love salami now? It's such a wonderful thing, I feel like I've discovered salmon for the first time again. My flatmate gave me a slice and I just love it so much.

Speaking of love, I got myself a new printer which I am totally happy about. Converted, it costs 60 SGD, it looks good, works well, and my only complaint is that it's too noisy. But then again it sounds like there is a party going on downstairs, so maybe it won't be considered noisy at all.

Tomorrow is school again - I am excited.

This is Art Class

2011-09-07T05:06:00.000+08:00

Today was the first lesson I've had in art school and... I'm so happy to be here. There's nothing more wonderful than finally being in a school that does nothing apart from what you love. There's really nothing better than just having a pencil and a piece of paper and being made to do drawings of nothing and everything.

I wish school could have always been like this - no-nonsense and jumping right into things, getting outdoors and taking photos and drawing and... looking. All these requirements like a "reflective journal" are just corny versions of what I've always loved to do. I like collecting, I like reading, I like writing, so fucking much it's just so... cool to be tasked to do those things for school.

Education should always be this exciting. One thing wonderful about the British classroom so far is that people are so eager to raise their hands and answer questions. The teacher asked, "what is a reflective journal?" and students provided an answer ten times more detailed than what you would have forced out of a singaporean kid.

There's no fear, no apprehension, and it's so quick, immediate and efficient.

New Cross Gate

2011-09-07T04:55:00.001+08:00

London, by virtue of its difference from Singapore, can really only be expressed through photographs. Yesterday I took a walk around my area and just snapped away with my phone. The weather was good, there was a breeze and I gathered my sweater around me as I thought nothing of Singapore.

It's easy to forget I've only been here for three days because everyone here is so different. Where SG boasts a slightly contrived, over-emphasized version of a melting pot of cultures, London is truly alive with a million different heartbeats.

Still, I cannot profess to not being homesick. It's been, after all, such a short period of time. I think of people, of family, of friends, of my school, of my room, and all that I had called mine.

Broccoli Day Dream

2011-09-05T05:34:00.000+08:00

Cooked chicken today for dinner - had it with rice and spinach my flatmate had whipped up. Baby spinach here is actually far from the grossness of Singaporean spinach - so wonderfully tender and almost sweet. I had eggs and rice for lunch, and strawberries in between.

Today I took a long walk around the neighbourhood - checked out a park, walked to New Cross. I'm going to walk in the other direction someday and see where I end up. Day by day my life here is kind of piecing itself together - it feels quite lovely to see the future again, I hated being blind.

School starts tomorrow... let's just see how it goes.

2011-09-04T07:08:00.000+08:00

I'm in London! The weather is lovely, always wind breezing by and cooling the skin. It's not too cold and it's never too warm. The skies were surprisingly blue (all those stories of London being cold and grey...) I've settled into my hostel - room 28F! It feels amazing that I'm going to have this room to myself for a year - a place to call home.

From the photos this place looked like a barren torture cell but really it's quite spacious for me - the table is long and there are drawers and everything I might need. I still haven't figured out what to do for laundry but I can always do that tomorrow...

I endured a 13 hour flight through a fair mix of movies, tv shows and sleep, courtesy of SQ. Our nation's airline is really something amazing altogether - the attendants are the best ever, the food is so good and the weight limit seems to be nonexistent.

For anyone heading to UK, beware of the queuing at the border check. I pretty much stood in queue for nearly an hour waiting for my turn to go in front of the immigration officer. Was so scared my pick-up was going to leave me but there he was at the end of the crowd of people! Changi Airport is so much better and efficient than Heathrow...

Haven't had the need to introduce myself to people yet - I'll just see whether they can pronounce "hanqing" without making me feel like I'm talking to Mr Mackintosh all over again. I skyped my father when I arrived at my hostel - 15 minutes of showing him my room by bringing the laptop around.

Ah, technology, how wonderful you can sometimes be, when you are not sucking up my precious time.

I'll be Standing

2011-09-02T22:52:00.000+08:00

In the green room for the last time in a long while. Sudden thoughts of abandoning my wildest hopes and dreams to settle for sitting in my room forever. If I could I'll pack your heart with me as I go - I want to know what you're feeling every second of the day.

I want to know there'll never be anything between us. It's surprising that your words still make me smile. You'd have thought it'd have worn off already. This room means everything to me - or maybe it used to. The space where I have cried my hardest, felt at my worst and managed to pull myself together again. I couldn't study here because it held too many memories, but now I can't leave either.

This house is good because I chose it, a primary one girl with goodness in her heart and solitute in her head. When she was eight she had a brother and she wasted many years hating him with an unusual kind of sibling envy - she spent thoughts on wondering why she was cursed with having to set an example.

I chose this house because of one strange architectural oddity, the pillar in the middle of nowhere. I thought it would be nice to hide behind it. I have always thought it would be wonderful to hide. But somewhere in my anti-social soul I am the curiousest of cats (I am the proverbial one that's first to die)

Would you still be here when I get back from my vacation in Saturn? Would you have grown older, younger? Would you want me back here? So many concerns and too little time. I want to be that falling star in your sky, the one that you place a wish upon. I'll do anything if it makes you happy.

Give Your Heart

2011-09-01T21:16:00.000+08:00

Can you lie next to her, and confess your love, your love?

I'm a clean slate waiting to be reborn, waiting for you to gingerly wipe the years off me. I'm anxious to leave already, stunned by the thought of being lost. I hope everything goes according to plan and I hope that I shall have things my way. 13 hours seems short when I remember time spent with you, on the tethered edge.

I will always miss you, always. Held captive in my head you've been a source of solace, beautiful and electrifying. I wish I had held your love tight in my hand so it might not have slipped away so casually.

Here, placate me - remember always that we were the first to forgot. Be patronising, allow me to wallow in my deep end of misery, as well as drown in delighted sunshine. You've been golden to my rusty edges, cradling my shattered drums... and all I ask is to be let go of. I think I'm too far gone to come back as myself...

Have you set this game up so nobody will win? Guesswork was always my forte - to be inexact and indelicate so I would never lose to your impossible tricks. 36 hours.

My Favourite Poem

2011-08-31T00:11:00.000+08:00

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

e.e.cummings

2011-08-30T23:30:00.000+08:00

When it comes to me, I hope you might have seen that I can stand on the shoulders of taller giants and see even further. A few more days left and I cannot wait to start purging this friends list in my head - I would kiss your hand goodbye if I could, but more often than not I can't give the personal touch.

Lipstick marks on my hands and outstretched palms, my table is terribly messy, much like the clutter in my head. My luggage is the same my dad hauled to Singapore two years before I was born, creaky hinges and all, it's surprisingly sturdy and I just want to leave, this moment.

Now, I'm so wholehearted where I used to be doubtful. How was it that I was so unsure I can be a teacher? I'm so laughable... I'm so fickle, my head is like a jar of pickles.

This moment (I wish you were here) I have been waiting for for so long. I could never stop dreaming of this day, and when it happens I know I'm not alone, I've never been, and I shall never be, if I do not allow myself to be discontent. And I'm not. I'm so excited - there's nothing my heart is tethered to, no promises I have yet to keep.

I've been a nice person, a good person. I've done what I've said I will do. I attended to your whims and fancies long enough. I just wish that instead of your little hints you may look me in the eye and convince me that you will indeed miss me. But I am content for the most part, for I have forgotten what it's like to be drawn to you.

I'm double-checking my documents, packing my seamless underwear and pausing over the bottle of vodka.

I have thrown away my diary, torn up that letter, forgotten about my old sketchbooks. The friends who know me well enough assume I like the immediacy of the present and like the feeling of nostalgia. The friends who know me best know I hate my past and indulge in others' pasts for nostalgia.

Heaven-Made Smiles

2011-08-29T23:05:00.001+08:00

All those words - have you forgotten? Have you forgotten what it feels like to have thoughts spill out of your mind into my open palm? I'm strong enough for all of these already and I'm just begging, please, you don't have to be strong enough for the both of us anymore.

When I say I'm excited to go, it's with a strand of worry for you. I wish I would take you with me - you had seemed so free to my naive young eyes and now I'm the one who's meant to carry your burden on my open wings. I want to bring you with me as I run towards what I want, with all my heart - I wish you were here with me.

It would make everything better. It (feels like it) would make things magically better - I want to recall words I have ever said out of ignorance, of innocence and naivety. I had often felt stuck between two extremes - jaded with how I was stuck inside my head but young and futile when I had stepped out.

So few days left and I know I am so excited - I can feel it. Everything is hypersensitive though I have such a hazy awareness of a lot of things. For once I can see the future and that's how I know things happen.... I've got a lady's sense of intuition and nothing much else of a ladylike nature.

Of desperation, of horror, of slow-motion unfolding, I know a lot of those kind of things because you've held my hand through a few. I know what it feels like and the dull gnawing of my heartstrings has been strongly reminiscent. I hope that at the end I will be there beside you. Or inversely, you here with me. Let me have the honour.

Sunday Night Lights

2011-08-29T06:59:00.000+08:00

Losing one complete day to sleeping is kind of embarrassing so near to leaving Singapore for a very long time. My table is a mess, my luggage needs 15 more kg to justify that I'm actually leaving for a year, and my fringe needs trimming. Also, I need to go running - a lot - to make up for the Beijing trip.

TWO days prior (capitalised for horror that I've been snoozing for 20 hours) I went to the casino in the morning with my family, had chicken rice, met Daryl on the train, saw Bad Teacher with Wenbin, had dinner with Jowell, and sat around with AEP for a little while before watching Animal Planet with Suhuan and Lingxue.

And as though 18 hours of action wasn't enough, I spent 3.5 more hours talking with Suhuan about random shit. We two should never be allowed to be roomies. It makes me almost near miserable thinking about the fun we've had for all these years in Singapore, begrudgingly happy that I will miss this little island.

I guess I will, as obstinate as I am that I can't find an art education here that will make me happy. Of loneliness, I guess I'll only feel truly alone when I'm somewhere by myself. Watching the sunrise by myself is a wonderful affair - it feels like I'm on the verge of school again, anticipating the late night studying.

Nobody knows, but I'm so envious of all my friends already in school. I kind of feel like one of those homeless hippies who haven't been given direction and a pile of readings. I need a timetable, a set of materials and directives to feel at home (has the years of education really done that to me?)

Perhaps one day I'll push myself over the edge and be forced to eat my words that I enjoy studying, but right now I cannot wait to go to London, just because I'll have something to do again. I had a dreamless 20 hours, or perhaps I just forgot what I had thought up in my mind.

See, even my dreams are boring me right now.

Oh Dear, you're so lost

2011-08-26T22:30:00.001+08:00

I've been packing, and so far I have 20kg more that I can bring. Yet I'm already quite tired of packing and I don't want to bring much else to the UK. I suppose I might bring some more memorabilia.

One week more. I hope everything comes to fruition, I hope my heart doesn't stammer when I have to leave. In my head is an envelope of letters I'm not going to write people, full of words works in progress, halted because I am self-conscious and because I care.

A, I hope you know how important you have been to me. We haven't really known each other well for long and I regret that, but knowing you're there makes all the difference to me now and that's what matters. I couldn't have imagined it would come to this, and I wish you all the best. I thank you for adoring me, for proving I'm wrong, and much more.

B, you've been such a constant that learning to let go is more important to me now than wondering if you had loved me as much as I had hoped...? Of everyone in the world you're my most kindred spirit and time spent with you is worth golden daffodils. My highest hope is that I'll find someone like you in London.

C, I hope I've been wrong about you. I imagine your future almost as much as I think of mine. I hope you get only what you deserve... but I honestly cannot stop thinking about you, as hard as I try.

D, your smile is like wild flowers, and it's absolutely adorable. I feel sad when I comprehend how lucky I am, and I feel exhilarated when I see your future fall into place. I know good people get what they deserve in the end.

E, the countless years has never diminished your beauty on the inside and out - a cliche term by all regards but I think it suits you fine. I'm excited to find London with you. I feel like we've always been on the same path even though we haven't the luck, the fortune to have talked enough these years. But I hope you know I will always, forevermore love you as the best of friends.

F, we should stop sending each other messages. I enjoy the long conversations but it feels wrong.

G, to a group of the most... awe-inspiring people ever, I think back on our days in dark corners, with aspirations for the future and I am sometimes almost literally moved to tears. I believe in the eternal and the everlasting when it comes to our friendship. I am grateful for being nudged along the right path, of finding the right people.

H, you're absolutely wonderful! I do feel like the flip side of the same coin as you. There are things I have learnt in our short period of knowing each other that I will keep close to my mind at all times, to remind myself.

I, I believe that if we sat down and calculated the odds of meeting each other, we would be amazed either way at having met. I'm very grateful that we have, and your words have never failed to put a smile on my face.

J, you are the... future and I hope you will find your way to think critically about the world, and about yourself, and discover that you're absolutely amazing.

K, I stopped liking you, for anything you have tried to be. And giddily I realise I have forgotten what it's like to think constantly of you. It's liberating, and you deserve someone nicer.

L, I love it when we can sit side by side and make stupid, funny comments about the same things for hours and it never stops being interesting. I know we're on two sides of a fence most of the time but it's wonderful just because you never stopped being a magnet to me.

M, recalling days we spent being study buddies... I am so, so, so grateful we got to be such good friends. I like your laugh, your inane thoughts, your... complete and authentic self.

And that's it, I suppose... I'm finishing up a cross stitch I bought on the last day of my Shanghai trip, it's a lovely little chinese pattern with the word 福, adorable and everything. It's painstaking. With a soundtrack of Augustana and Onerepublic, it's hard to believe anything can go wrong to prevent me from departing on time.

Thinking of China

2011-08-26T10:35:00.000+08:00

"You have to be able to observe life as if you were a camera all the time, constantly looking at light and the way that things are placed and the way people hold themselves. You need the ability to see something in someone or something that no one else really sees and be able to bring that to light. Basically, you have to be an obsessive crazy person."

Ryan McGinley

Forgetting is Beautiful

2011-08-26T00:43:00.000+08:00

It just occurred to me that I won't be here any longer, and not just in a physical I-won't-call-this-room-mine way anymore either. Kind of in a sense that I'll soon be leaving myself behind, a nice clean Singaporean me who hasn't yet known how it's like to push my own limits and forget how to live.

There's one thing that people are fixated upon and I am too - on drinking.

In Shanghai my grandmother (奶奶 nai nai) always chastised my grandfather (爷爷 ye ye) when he would let me drink. The Beijing uncles were impressed at the number of glasses of wine I'll down, and my nai nai will fret from the other side of the table. I'll smirk into my drink to infuriate the two 老人家 and it'll all repeat.

I know of people violently opposed to alcohol, teetotalers by personal choice, or influenced by a family member who has lost a lot to the liquid. I know of artists who die alone apart from their bottle of absinthe, and I know of creative professionals who need their addiction to continue being creative.

I've been fascinated with it for a while. That feeling most people tag onto alcohol - a "warmth" that glows up the throat? I don't know about that. To me it's just some form of escapism, if you might allow me to call it that. It's not a very pathetic usage of the term really, it's quite literal.

I've known pretty long how to be myself, the rules of which are firmly spun in my head. I do A so that people might think I'm an A kind of person. Sometimes I forget that I have a personal choice in the matter. It's frankly quite scary because it makes me feel rather insincere and inauthentic.

And when things go wrong, and when I can stop controlling every facet of my choices, it just feels liberating. There's no warmth about alcohol, really, and instead there's this cold, numb thudding that I can feel in my heart. There's no glow, and rather the lights dim within me and I can finally stop thinking of why I am here and what I am doing that makes me me.

From the heart - sometimes I wish I were a scientist.

I know I hate the subject, but in all honesty it's been bad teachers who have made me hate the subject. Listening to great scientists talk about their passion for it - Richard Dawkins cannot be any sexier - makes me feel so connected and alive. It gives me a sense of purpose, of authenticity.

I recall that a friend was surprised that someone taking Art like me should be an atheist. He proclaimed, "I thought usually science people might, you know, figure out that there is an explanation for most things and then give up on God." Is there sense to that? I am an atheist in the same way I love Art - I was born into it, and then I consciously, critically chose it.

(My parents explained to me that I was born into a Chinese society which is secular. My grandparents explained to me that I should "believe in Mao Zedong" when I asked who we believed in.)

I don't think there's anything wrong with believing in Art and evolution at the same time. I think it's of even greater beauty that we evolved so highly that we've broadened our horizons to find importance in something as impractical as Art.

I'm tired now, and maybe it's the alcohol talking, but I feel wonderful today.

Thinking of Fearlessness

2011-08-24T19:35:00.000+08:00

Things I am not afraid of:

Leaving people behind

No longer talking to once-precious friends

Forgetting I ever belonged to Singapore

Leaving behind the things I have collected

Being broke in London

Starving to death on the streets somewhere

Failing at the one subject I truly love

Losing some luggage in transit

Not being able to find my way to my accommodations.

Losing my belongings

Losing my mind

Things I am afraid of:

Not seeing my grandparents when it matters

Not knowing where to buy the brand of pads I usually use

Not being able to cook

What Missing Feelings

2011-08-24T19:31:00.000+08:00

We talk of love often as a feeling, an emotion, but it is so distinct from other "emotions" that we feel all the time. We feel happy, we feel sad, angry, and frustrated. But love is something else altogether. We don't feel love on its own, barely we feel it alone.

It's more of a motivation rather than a feeling per se - a force that drives, rather than staying around to linger for tea. It's active where many emotions are reactive, and it's so complex.

I suppose it feels like a quick shower of rain with a sparkling rainbow, a clean slate. I suppose it feels like the fleeting footsteps of an invisible monster tiptoeing through dewy grass. I suppose it feels like a cauldron, hot, burning, and spilling over the edges.

It must be here, and it must be now - the immediacy so damning, so quick to kill. It strikes and holds on in a vice-like grip and... it caresses too, the lilting touch of a lover, of forgotten memories back to take revenge on an ailing mind. We choose to forget faster than we ever could have recollect, for it was so much easier to let it flow through the cracks between outstretched fingers.

Countries with histories stretching far back, yawning through time, they all stand small, insignificant when we talk of love, of the one ideal that history preoccupies itself with, that literature is enamored with, that art is smitten by. Theatre, music, and the spinning dances, we've asked ourselves many questions trying to get at the one answer. Of love, we cherish, we love.

It's at the heart of our hearts, indelicate and brusque with our sensitive selves. I'm listening out, keeping my ear cupped for news of you. I do know (or hope) I am worthwhile - I hold that as fact to my quivering valor. I am afraid I will be naught.

Feel Sad Parade

2011-08-24T14:13:00.001+08:00

I’m nearly 19, two months short with fire in my eyes and stars burning in my heart. Two weeks with my grandparents is hardly enough – we fill the silence with silent words, with beautiful memories worn to the touch. I’m reminded I hardly know anything about the world.

I feel like I’m always reminded of that – we in our teen years are subject to the drawn out lamentations that we think we know too much. It’s true. But I believe I know enough now, as every time we are reunited I feel wiser, more powerful even in my weak heart that makes me a youth.

I’m sure I know plenty now.

I know that my future may be divergent from what I’ve wanted.

I know of love, of wonder, of wise words, of captivation and adoration.

I know of filial piety, of advice, of legends and myths.

I know that love is powerful beyond measure – that it leads people to kill, pillage, or become better than they can be.

I may not know the full extent of things – I know not why there are stars in the sky, why people must live and why they must die. But I know this – that so long as I have you in my heart, I am safe, and nobody can hurt me. I know I’m good, something I’ve fought so hard to pretend to claim, only to find it stashed in your heart.

I know I am loved, and I know why the sun rises (to shine on you) and I know why the sun sets (to let you fall into slumber).

It’s been long since I have felt loved, but I don’t think that was the factor that made your love for me great. It must be because nobody else knows that I like my soy milk sweet, or that I like the strange chinese burrito 10 minutes away, or that I like my cabbages sour. Nobody can predict me with such accuracy, but above all, I have never let myself become predictable to anyone else.

I know of plenty of things, but I can hardly claim to know more than anyone else. I believe in many things, and tantamount that you shall live to a great age, just for my sake, just to be by my side, just to make me feel loved like I have for 19 years.

I will continue to try my best to be good, I will be respectful and respectable.

I haven’t carried you in my heart in those dark times, and I try hard to push the memory of death and darkness out of my head – I’m sometimes selfish, ignorant, and persistent. I’m sometimes not the person I ought to be, and I do not seek forgiveness because I know you have never faulted me.

Please let’s not ever say I strayed because you left me. I strayed because I forgot. I forgot that your love was unconditional, and that it was kind and blind. I was silly, and it fled my mind.

There are no words in the world that I can arrange my gratitude in, no language that can hold my meaning in its tongue. But I know you understand. I know plenty, but not enough and yet I know the meaning of holding hands, of hugs, of tears shed curled in a blanket.

I know the meaning of a withered old woman with hands pale, who cannot stop crying when she holds my hands and praises me. Her hair sparse and skin waxy, and yet her joy is happier than I have ever been.

I’m afraid one day my grandmother will go the same way, and for a while the world doesn’t exist and all I want is the impossible.

I know plenty now – that time cures all but is lethal too, that love solves and problematizes equally. It’s not a lot, but I want to learn.

2011-08-09T09:41:00.000+08:00

Bye, Singapore. And happy birthday, my wonderful country, place where I've called home. You're the repository of my heart's contents.

2011-08-07T23:21:00.000+08:00

I've been trying to document my last Singapore days and nights and nothing shows the sense of oddity, of displacement as much as this photo does. The lowdown - See the red and blue plastic bags? That's my fashion magazine collection, and I've just given it away to two guys. Didn't think of it till Kaeyuan asked, but I've been buying magazines for three years already. (That's half of my bond)

Actually I wonder if it's the last time I'm seeing either of them, but that's something I wonder on a daily basis nowadays and it makes more sense than having two grown to-be men stealing the epicenter of what made my room feel like the home of a girl.

Going overseas makes me feel so relaxed or something equivalent - I've been giving away things I've spent so much effort hoarding, my room feels less like it belongs to me and it feels emptier each day. At intervals I stuff things back into my closet from my luggage and I feel like bringing an empty case to fill with beautiful things of a new place.

But yes, the oddity, the strangeness, the je ne sais pas of finding myself giving my belongings away (Belongings is an interesting word, it implies I belong to these objects as much as they belong to me) It's strange to understand that in many days' time, I no longer belong to my room and I would have left this treasure trove of things behind. Things that I once protected and curated obsessively.

Print materials, corks from bottles of alcohol saved over many trips, rings, letters from people, brochures, random how-to booklets... as days pass I just feel less attachment and I cannot wait to leave. I fear I'll feel the same sense of broken-bridged-ness with people. Over time I've stopped typing out long letters and text messages, and as the days grow shorter, my heart grows lighter.

I tell people they should come to London, but it's so... perfunctory. I want my city to myself and I want, for once, to feel stranded.

2011-08-06T21:24:00.001+08:00

And it goes like this

Take me by the tongue and I'll know you

Kiss me till you're drunk and I'll show you

I've got the Moves Like Jagger

I know people need caffeine rush, the feeling of power and noon surging through their veins. I never liked the bitter taste of coffee - it tastes like defeat and it tastes like surrender. I want to continue all the way, all day long, that sexy edge between burnout and hard work. Been scribbling and writing furiously when I haven't been out attending to this or that.

Yesterday was TSPC, today was an entire conference, followed by reading, and writing... and then kind of crashing into 3 hours of sleep. Or something like that - the sun was still up last I remembered. He told me he was a sadomasochist, loving to overload with work. Sometimes I wish I had held a finger to my chest and said hell yes me too.

We all know what's bad for us don't we? I know it feels terrible when I continue to keep a hold on everything with such diligence and hard work - rope-burn, it cuts deeps and runs for miles when I start losing control. But what doesn't kill you make you stronger. Why go into caffeine when the best rush of all is knowing how taxing your work is?

Tonight my expedition is mapped out, and I'm going to embark. I can almost taste my September, the salty bitterness like ashes to dust. Oh gosh that feels good.

2011-08-06T18:05:00.002+08:00

You're a screaming match at death silence

A head of hot air and words worthless, hanging

You're an alarm at 3am

A pointless discussion with empty promises

You're a failed memory, a jumpstart terminated

A forgotten mistake, an ill-advised fiasco, fluent and aloof

You're hated, despised, terrifying

A terrified child who had forgotten what it's like to be loved

You're the voice inside my head when I break

A roll of clear tape wrapped clumsily around a gushing wound

You're the hands that hold me close, clasped, interlaced

A sad song ready to play

You're perfect, beautiful, like sunshine

A perplexing lullaby that lulls me to sleep with tears on my lashes

You're my love in a small box, locked within Russian dolls

A key that I swallowed

Whole

2011-08-06T17:28:00.000+08:00

It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.

Seasons are changing

And waves are crashing

And stars are falling all for us.

Playing songs at maximum and holding my fingertips, trembling, to the keys. Times like these I know that other people were made to content themselves with the society as we know it - noble jobs serving the public, a "thankless" vocation - while I was made to wonder whether the stars in the universe look as beautiful when I am asphyxiated.

I typed into my Twitter that I will miss S(inC) because this is the last time I'll be going for such events, I promise... Proudly raising a hand when asked, "Who here thinks they are apathetic?" just reminded me that I'm a shallow soul rattling inside my casing, absorbing all these important one-liners to pick up intellectuals.

The Intelligentsia. The Inner Circle.

I am concerned with things internal to all these issues - not about our aging population and the need to have more babies but the intricate workings of my head, wondering if I'm real, if I exist, if I really mean these words and whether what I'm feeling is really love or lust. Sometimes I feel almost wild when I look forward to the future, like I'm on a leash of time and I just want to take the leap.

And when I have to let go of a dream of being a designer it's with such soft caresses... the lilting touch of hesitation and innocence and beautiful, pure happiness tainted with regret. Art - I'm used to it, a raging ball of fire in the pits of your tummy, throwing punches into time and context. There's beauty in the rotting and decaying, the messiness of Art.

Why do I draw so beautifully whenever I feel like dying?

So cautious, tiptoeing around a canvas, a piece of paper... I feel like when I'm happy I'm controlled and I want things to be a certain way, and when I was sad I could just... let the lines flow as freely as I can ever let myself. There must be a reason why artists always sink into themselves, or alcohol, sex, drugs. Sobriety, it's boring, and I never want to be boring, for it's worse than being dead.

The spiritual death, it must hurt more than physically dying.

2011-08-06T00:28:00.001+08:00

There are things you can give your heart away in exchange for - and money is one of them. But there are also beautiful things money can't buy.... and ultimately you're stuck in a conundrum where you want everything you can't have. Gratitude and Passion - two things we want to have so badly.

---

Went for the rehearsal really early in the morning, sat around, did nothing, and went through one entire rehearsal. Totally extended lunch at Astons with Wenbin, Jowell, and... gosh, what's his name? Finally, the actual Teaching Scholarship Presentation Ceremony, followed by a reception. And to end it all, a dinner with a bunch of the bitchiest guys ever and ever-pretty Rebecca. (my friends would be appalled to read this summary)

---

Tonight I was talking to my wonderful fellow art scholars and this one guy going to Imperial for Mathematics. It was a wonderful day plainly because I finally realised that connection between art and science - there's a shrewd methodology to art as much as there is aliveness in science. I knew it, but I never fully realised how significant it is.

It does take people who are serious about academia to make me feel challenged - fast paced conversations, multitude of names, strange social circumstances to navigate and wonderfully phrased questions, I'm thriving off today. Sometimes I like knowing I'm not a cold-hearted bitch but just someone who can't answer her own questions well.

"Is there any value in removing an artwork from its context? Discuss."

Like my friend Joanne I couldn't find the right words when cornered, but only through writing we find the answers. The holidays have been so wonderful to me that in fact, I might have let my head rust away with romanticized questions. What happened to the questions that really cut your heart up and force you to spit out an answer?

I'm going to be as kickass a teacher as I can be, barely a waste of a second, with the right words and right everything. But for now I'm tired, let's go off to sleep.

2011-08-04T22:49:00.000+08:00

Here's a glass of champagne and cheers to:

Art exhibitions
Friends
Hwa Chong

ART EXHIBITIONS
It's interesting because I went to see the AEP exhibition at NLB, and then back to I Have A Room With Everything - both really familiar settings (one school, one home) Yet while the former makes me want to stick a finger down my throat, the latter makes me feel... so comfortable. Literally a room with everything - a wild collection of print materials curated in a curious manner.

Thinking back to the salad days of academic artworks - all the familiar themes of grandeur tackled in a myopic manner. I saw at least three artworks about destruction, at least four about technology. And then the next exhibition makes me skin tingle in another way - design is so clever, so intelligent, so intuitive in the way that amateur art is clumsy and stupid.

FRIENDS
I think I've known my friend for 2 and a half years. Recently I found out I could have known him for more. One of the things I'll miss in London is the collection of habits I've formed around my friends. This is my movie-going, photo-taking friend. I also have a soft-toy-hugging friend and a busy-with-everything friend.

I'm sure I have much closer friends, but he's kind of an odd person so it was a touche all the more in my head that I'll miss the random movie dates and oddly resonant taste in certain things - shops, books, pictures, brochures, post-cards. But still, I only tell the people I want to stay in touch with, to stay in touch. And that's a fact.

HWA CHONG
Saw some more Hwachong people while at the exhibition, and saw some of my classmates and teachers at the AEPE today. People always said Junior College memories will stay with you, your friends are forever, and et cetera. I've never really doubted that, but it's all really hammered home by actually seeing familiar faces you just want to hold close to your heart.

HC is a bittersweet place, we mug as hard as we play, we cry as hard as we laugh. The amazing thing is that after a smooth-sailing week this is the one thing that made me realise I had to get out of my people-hating, anti-social slump. I complain I don't belong to either Shanghai or Singapore, but I've always felt like I belonged in Hwachong.

2011-08-04T22:31:00.000+08:00

Some habits are really hard to let go of - like spinning my phone in my fingers waiting for an important text message, refreshing my inbox (before Gmail would update itself with a number beside its icon), filing my nails down to a more rectangular shape, or to grasp my elbows when I get nervous.

Some habits are really easy to let go of - thinking you're the best thing that's ever happened, for example. The superlative, it gets so old.

I've forgotten what it's like to see sunlight in your eyes, to hold back a smile at the silliest gestures that prove I've won. It's been a really long time, a few years that seem like decades (do I really feel this old?) I wonder where you are, what you're going to study, and whether you might still think of me. I must confess you don't cross my mind often, but recently you do.

See, there's this girl... and I've always felt a bit inferior...

And recently we have been back in contact and I can't tell her just how much it kills me to admit we've always been on the same cosmic path. You're ludicrous, and I've passed you by, but I still turn and walk backwards for a few steps to see you... settle. This is a strange place I'm leaving behind.

I wonder if I should have stayed in Shanghai, whether I could have protested when my parents dropped me in this wonderful Disneyland with a Death Penalty, unable to speak any of the languages that rolled off others' tongues. I wonder if the first 12 years of my life after migrating should have been so deadly awkward, that when I finally found a semblance of belonging, I shed who I was so quickly I forgot I used to be someone else.

They say everyone's from China, but usually they fall into two groups - people who still belong to China, and people who belong to elsewhere. This never belonged to me, a crazy world where so many unspoken rules are meant to be followed, where my heart was allowed to fly with string attached.

Yesterday, I dreamt I witnessed a murder. I forgot who was killed, but I had come up with the plans with a guy I knew for a long time... And at the last moment the tables turned and I watched someone die... and I sat by myself, dead calm and quiet, till lunch break. And I walked calmly out to the cleaning lady and told her I think someone just murdered another.

I'm an olive branch, I come in peace and that's all I want.

2011-08-03T21:26:00.001+08:00

Can you hear that Ba-dum Ba-dum, thudding lowly? Is it your heart beating or is it just the loud music kicking against your eardrums... Microphone moist with your lips, you're crowdsurfing and the world is at your feet. Feel the heat, pounding away against the slick floor, you're a horizontal pole-dance, an inch away from the crevice. You hear your phone drop, it shatters against a rock far below, and guess what?

You don't care. A careless toss, a carefree look, we're meant for each other, you're meant to throw yourself off the edge and join me far below, with my drunken half-smile, crooked to the right and eyes ablaze with the future.

This is what I imagine love feels like. This is the present.

2011-08-03T12:10:00.001+08:00

Listening to Phoenix while I'm tapping away on keyboard keys and writing random things down in my sketchbook... Universe, can't you keep your eyes peeled for me? I'm a girl from Singapore, who is eager to attend your institution... I want to see stars in my sky and hear your hot breath at my neck, my beck and call. I want to be chased, instead of leisurely picked up while grocery shopping.

Too much inertia - I can't make myself excited the way I could be last time. Can't get out of bed, or participate in a plethora of activities that tick the items off my to-do. I need to pack art materials, kiss my soft-toys goodbye and hold you close to my beating heart. Sometimes I envy you for being dead.

Girlfriend, no, your girlfriend is drifting away.

Today I watched Up In The Air (George Clooney, is, as usual, such a charming actor) and kind of felt sad at even at the end of the film I wouldn't understand why Ryan was so upset that he wasn't in a committed relationship. I'd love to live his life - spend my days on a plane, travelling, seeing things, and meeting people... and spending barely a month at home...

It's precisely the reason why I freaked out the night before I had to sign my scholarship agreement... teaching is like marriage in my mind - when I always said I wanted to fall in love with my career, I wanted to fall in love with something exciting, challenging, and always, perpetually shifting. I don't want marriage, I just wanted that fiery affair that ends with a flying kiss and started with a lucked-out glance.

I imagine if I could work in design that I'll have a new project around every corner, but I am so fearful of being tied down with a school, with people. Look at me - I'm terrified, I'm a mess. I'm so afraid I'll screw up and I think I might. Maybe 2010 might happen all over again, and I'll be in his shoes.

We've always had an unspoken pact - we wanted to be exciting, to be loved for that. We wanted to hate commitment because we couldn't even figure ourselves out. And see where that has taken us? Now that you're gone, too, I can't hold the fort by myself, and I'm too scared to find someone to do it with me.

Tattly

2011-08-03T11:06:00.000+08:00

This is really a wonderful concept - totally fallen in love with Tattly, a temporary tattoo store.

In other news, today I'm supposed to be packing but everytime I get down to it I feel so... immensely sad, so right now I'm just going to lie around on my bed and pretend I don't ever have to leave. Of course, intermittently, I realise that I AM sick of Singapore, so I get out of bed, stuff new things into my trunk, and continue moping around.

2011-08-02T19:53:00.000+08:00

Today I can imagine sleeping forever, luxuriating in the softness of a blanket around one thigh, hand under the cold pillow. Somehow I'm just so tired at the moment...

What I think about when I'm on the brink of sleep:

Whether my Visa will process ASAP

The feel of your hair

Recurring dreams I can't escape from

Cotton candy machines

War

The prevalence of printers in the world

Peace

Love

Beauty

Why vehicles must be so noisy

Sunshine

The universe (as according to the desktop image on a Mac)

The strangeness of words (say Casualties over and over until it melts into hatred)

Scared to Admit

2011-08-02T01:29:00.000+08:00

...that maybe, just maybe, feelings have crept up on me. So shadowy, and subsequently timid. I never did really look closely (I think when I discarded my spectacles a lot of things went out the window) so when I realised I did care, a lot of things fell apart. I no longer wanted to leave, no longer wanted to pack everything I loved into my luggage case.

Because you know as well as I do that once I leave, my heart goes with me, and I don't think I'm bringing my old heart back - I'm determined to find something new, brilliant and beautiful that I can tote back and put into function, and discard the original shattered one. I feel all torn up already, so old, so jaded. I can't wait, can't wait for London. So why am I feeling so attached? I resent you.

Remember last year when I'd hiccup with tears and let myself sink? I felt it overflowing, outpouring, disastrous like a dam broken, and damn was I broken. I felt the world spin, everything crash and burn and I felt sunlight like fire burning the surface of my fingertips. Feverish, I was dependent and very much needy. I kept a long letter urging myself to move on.

I think I did a good job of that. Sometimes I remember the long scratches down my arms and legs and neck and I manage to convince myself I was hallucinating. This year was beautiful - it was brilliant like a million suns and I felt like I was on the wingtips of my heart aflutter. Can you imagine... I forgot 18 years so quickly, I deleted my only archive...

I always thought the solution was something like Friendship - a word that is at the same time filled with wisdom and immaturity, used by lots of people and understood by the few. I've learnt that friends help you up but you're the one that keeps walking.

And one step in front of another, and more, until I think I've walked a marathon or two in my heart. I'm back at square one, so in love with the world I feel the strings in my chest wearing thin. I need a change of scenery, I need a new culture, new people, new friends, new lovers. I feel alive and in control, but sometimes I feel blind too, like I'm walking a trail with arrogance across my eyes.

Don't you feel Alive? I want to scream at everyone who passes me by, I want to write it out on endless beaches. Don't you feel so happy to just be Conscious?? I write a lot of sad words because off the top of my heart nothing good lives forever and sometimes I just need to mop up my mess with words and more words. But inside I burn on a fuel of elation, my battered heart still soars in the open universe.

I feel a seed within me of hope and love and all that jazz. Do you know what it's like to love someone and be loved back? (I don't, but I figure it feels like this) This feels like warm milo down your throat, this feels like the afterwards of alcohol, warmth spreading, without the jagged cuts that crept down to your lungs.

One day, they say, I'll find someone and I'll be less cynical about love. But I want to tell them I know what it feels like. I've felt attracted to people, I've been in the beginning baby steps of love. I know what it's like to hear your heart in you ears and feel it in you fingertips. But it's just that I know nothing compares to what I feel when I see something beautiful, and when I understand that beauty... it's heavenly.....

I can feel my nerves vibrating like the string of a harp plucked a second ago. I can feel a smile on my face that's impossible to hold in. I can feel my fingers straining to reach out and touch it... And to the eyes - the most wonderful organ in my body, it's the only god I'll ever know.

2011-08-01T22:39:00.000+08:00

Things I need to do in London:

Get a phone plan which allows me to travel with internet
Look up at the sky and try to spot the hints of blue
Buy a backpack that is waterproof
Harden my heart and be more resilient
Study my soul out and wear it down
Get used to the British accent and use it proud
Dye my hair another shade of colour
Get colourful notebooks
Scavenge art materials

And last but not least, kiss someone who isn't a girl this time.

I'm so envious of that sculpture, The Kiss, where a couple is mushed up against each other, forming a complete cuboid, lips tender. So abstract but at the same time so fascinatingly visceral - they don't pull apart, and they're so unabashed about their act of completing one another. I'm not envious because I want to one day press my face against someone else's - I just want to feel like I am so completely essential to another. I want to belong to someone the way a pepper holder fits against his salt counterpart.

At least that's how fairytales end. One day I'm sure someone will come riding over a hill to rescue me from the living. Maybe he will be wearing a cute tee shirt and fascinating shoes, but he might also be in a black hood holding a scythe. I'll stand and smile either way - capture my fancy or harvest my soul, I'm fine either way since they feel the same.

The first kiss I'd ever received - I went through shock, horror and fear in a split second and then (successfully) tried to compose myself. I no longer do strange misleading things.

2011-08-01T21:51:00.000+08:00

No amount of begging, whispering, hoarse screaming gets them to stop, raw are our throats from pleading, clawing at desperately thin strings to grasp control. I hate it when from here in this deep pit we see a sliver of sky, them high-tailing the heck out of this world. I'm losing it.

There's this infinite amount of things I just happen to abhor - why do you fit so snugly in this category? Post-trauma, post-stress, you are still a wunderkind of our times, a peculiar flash of beauty in a drab world. Yet you tear at our patience, you're the worst friend by any measure, and the chariot still moves for you. Thud thud, thud thud.

I want to lose this all, let it fall behind - I want to be beyond amazing, and I want to put my foot down and say I'm Sorry, But Darling You're A Scumbag. There's these wonderful things I've always desired to hold with my own two hands, yet sometimes I step out of the way to give you a shot. You aim, you shoot, you fail. And then you shrug it off and claim it was on purpose.

What the fuck? I think it's high time I stop holding myself back - but there are all these wonderful adjectives people have tagged onto who I've tried to be - I'm sincere, I'm outspoken, I'm alive. All the while, I've been wishing I never had the gift of consciousness, never blessed to have a voice. Tearing myself down and building a new future.

I want a pet elephant, an exotic beast whom I shall paint with a million colours - exuberant, proud, and darling. It's a beautiful wasteland of my imagination torn to shred by my self-consciousness, a masterpiece of my own shortcomings. And I imagine I'm larger than life as I rip into my own pet elephant, coated with the delicate dips of my brush in concentric circles.

My cup's half empty and yours is half full. I hate that you're so wonderfully satisfied (possibly the best emotion in the entire world) and I am so needy, desperate, wanting of affection. Let me cling on for a little more, let me drink from your chalice, just so I may learn how to be whole.

---

Today we had a rehearsal and before that I went to get this... wig. For a relatively unimportant character with a guy studying literature and theatre (or something like that) I discovered I loved costume shops because... it takes surprisingly little to change a person. Car trip, lunch at Marina Square (which reminds me of you...) and Suntec Ballroom.

We skipped roughly an hour and a half of the entire proceedings - I admit I like the idea of being a renegade more than the act of being one - and talked about random rubbish. What a much better way of spending an afternoon. And then I went for dinner with an old friend and we parted earlier than I usually wish to part.

---

Things that remind me of you:

Colours (like a sandy, dirty beige)
Mos Burger
The worn surface of the side of an eraser.

Things that I still love:
Colours (a warmer shade of turqouise)
Salads
The perfect angles of a new eraser
Studying
London
Art

I'm on the brink of a 9 year long dream, and yet I can't continue feeling happy for extended period of time. The worry, it creeps up on me, unsuspected, damning, and so suffocating. All the self-doubt accumulated in words hissed out over dinner tables. When I grind my teeth and tell you to "stop it" my fear is barely audible - that you're correct even after all this while.

If you missed me at all, you'd call. You'll drop a note. You'll say, explicitly, that you would rather I stop disappearing. So why did I rig this all just to feel at the end that I should have left you in the lurch anyway? I'm scared - I genuinely am. I've barely had a month or so to process in my head that I am going to study Art.

It's terrible it's so crippling and hideous and I feel like I'm on the brink of something unknown. I might fold in upon myself like I did last year, or I may start loving to dive into the beautiful universe ahead. It's my call, really, but I can't help feeling like I'm missing something here. Will my future rip me apart?

I don't like confessing that I'm frail, I'm so damn brittle that I tread carefully around myself. I want to dissolve and be forgotten, as much as I want to make a difference. Being a coward really isn't hard. I should know.

2011-07-31T23:32:00.000+08:00

(click on the image)

"Show up and feel a part of something bigger than yourself... Make things that people can use to form something that stands for what they believe in. You ever see anyone with a macbook putting a sticker over that beautiful apple logo? NO. Everything they do says something about Who We Are. And our very survival depends on it."

It's so beautiful, the thought of good design changing the way people think and feel and... move. I just finished reading Born to Run - excellent book that combines so many different fields so effortlessly - anthropology, sports science, history. You know that feeling after you finish a really good book - of emptiness, of a rush of elation?

I'm having it bad.

2011-07-31T17:04:00.000+08:00

Words trickling across the mind, like drops of water fed to a dehydrated man. I feel like a good cup of camomile tea, a splash of brilliant red against vintage silk scarves... I want to ingest these spinning sentences, I love how they dissolve into my head and burn bright behind my eyes. I hope you can see them too as I offer them to your sunlight... Can you see my adoration?

The touch of skin against rough paper, like a trough of sand you can dip your lips into, kissing the essence of it all, feeling it swirl against your tongue. Ink on paper, ink in your mouth, a seductive other world you need to gather, but it's all falling dust. And the way the light hits in your imaginary world, it throws you off balance but you land on your two feet... They're just words aligned perfectly with what feels like love.

You are a photograph. A snapshot. Quick. Almost deadly. A bang to the head, out with flying hair and shimmers. You're my grainy lover. Through the lens you are small and beautiful and I can hold you in, but I don't know what to do with your corners - I shiver when I see you, tight, compact, elastic, sitting together in a Collection... Who put you together this way?

Throwing my head back and luxuriating in the feel of much-needed solitude.. when I spend too much time around people I need a second bath, but I'm too tired so I collapse and wake the next morning feeling like shit. I've stopped swearing but it doesn't help - I feel wrong, out of place, held down. My books have always saved me - words that smother me, jump over my skin and hug me close.

You've always delighted me with the glint in your soul, the melody of your un-formed words rising and falling the perfect lullaby. I must stop thinking, and Yes, I will offer myself to You. Conquistador, capture my heart, can you hear my silent wails? Do you know I want to fall apart and offer you my pieces? You're the only real thing to me, and once again I need your help.

2011-07-31T10:49:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I'm so angry at my father because he finds everything I do frivolous, and he tells "jokes" that aren't jokes, and the anger just boils and seethes inside of me until I lock my door and have a good cry behind. The worst part is... I have always looked up to him, and I've never stopped wishing I had the good mind to forget Art and study Law when it was offered, so I know his words makes a lot of sense.

But I feel like such an ugly, ugly person when he says such things - and my entire family just laughs because it's all true. I feel all... bloated with unimportant shit, as though I'm studying some rubbish that has no real-world application. And my scholarship really doesn't make sense, and it's one of the lowliest scholarships ever...

I hate being so average, with no great income waiting for me at the end of it all. And I don't like how my dad still controls my money as though it's never mine to begin with - and it's really not. Sometimes he says things as though I'm nothing more than a 7-year old kid who is into "fashion" and all sorts of fuckery. And at times I feel so angry I could just...

I think I've railed too long against a "normal" ambition and sometimes I look back and I really don't think it's worth it. My silly friends, they know as little as I do and say it's wonderful to work a job I love. It might be, if there wasn't always both your parents making jokes at your expense and undermining your love for the subject.

I feel like a pitbull, an ugly cow and sometimes something akin to one of those hideous totem poles in abandoned villages of wild people. I'm sick of my macbook already at hours when my father claims it's all some fashion statement, and I hate design with all my passion. I hate that it makes me feel so excited (what's the point of excitement?)

Why did it capture my fancy? All things I love go to hell. I wish this were teenage angst, and I let people assume so, but it's been 7 years since this started...

Long Useless Words

2011-07-31T10:40:00.000+08:00

I feel like deleting my Facebook but... (A) Photos and (B) The Hwchong UK group. I remember when I was young and I'd cherish having just one more friend, but the world has changed so much that they pile up... people upon people and too many names to remember.

I imagine we're all caught up in this virtual web, this crazy public schamooze where everyone has words to contribute. Yet it's all so unspoken... rules we must adhere to (i.e. don't keep posting on someone's wall unless you want him/her to think you're interested) We don't talk about such things, but even as we talk more, talking becomes a liability. Am I too forward? Too insignificant? Too much of a loner? Too much of a show-off?

Confession - I live off communication. I used to think it's brilliant, and I used to think everything I said was brilliant by extension. Apparently it's not so true at all, and not all that shines is gold. I'm sequins - I really am. I'm that faux-anything, and sometimes I feel terrible about it.

It's strange 2010 should have had such an impact on me... Thinking back on the past I used to be so fearless. At the very least, I didn't fear what people said about me because I wasn't around to hear it, and I was too blunt to pick up. Nowadays I'm so paranoid - I worry incessantly, I'm scared I drive people off the edge and above all I think I'm killing myself.

I'm suffocating with thoughts, I think sometimes about things like chloroform and cyanide and I worry about the people around me. I don't think I'm sunny enough - I don't smile at some people whom I should, and I am phobic of alienation. Am I alive or am I the victim of some scary plot by an evil, omniscient god?

We shared a love of sunshine, of the colour neon and pastel, and you were my lucky seashell. I forgot about you for the next years of my life, I forgot that you brought me smiles and lopsided grins. Now my memories are in black and white and I dream likewise, but I still pray you come back and mend my broken screen.

For some reason I can't type in happy words anymore - have you realised? I used to... post photos... and talk about them on my Wordpress, and share all sorts of wonderful things. And then I just simply forgot how to. I chose a skin that wouldn't make me want to do long lengthy posts...

Love Me Girl

2011-07-30T01:41:00.000+08:00

I was looking through my old facebook photos, untagging some pictures (I've gotten to the stage where none of my photos are embarrassing, but I want them in a certain sequence and I want nice colours, as though post-processing had made my memories fonder) when I realise I'm cherrypicking from my past.

I don't like the past because I think I was simultaneously two wonderful things I am no longer. One, I was carefree. I don't step into the bathroom and wonder if I will be alive 5 years later, or what makes my existence real. I didn't think, and consequently I didn't worry. Two, I was a genuinely nice person. I'd help if someone asked, I'll throw myself into friendships, I spread my love thick and didn't require much in return.

So faced with the competition of a lesser me that existed in the past - a dull girl with braces, spectacles, flat hair and a flat smile - I have to concede defeat. I have to own up to the fact that I hate who I've become, but I love my life at the same time. I love my once-red hair, the passing of the legal age, my ability to push people away as fast as I've managed to make them adore me.

Yet, yes, I hate who I am today... someone easily annoyed, who stands up for herself, who forgets that friends do matter in the world, and who doesn't realise that people do care... someone obstinate, who wants to be free and independent, but is dependent on her own lies that make up her life.

I think I'm a fraud - I tell people I hate you and then I go home to look at what remains, what I haven't stuffed viciously down the rubbish chutes. And I miss you, I genuinely do. Even though I see your face today and feel so nauseated, I miss the you I once had the delight of knowing.

Then again, we were different. I was complacent with my heart. It kind of sucks that I am no longer, that I make sure I double- or triple- check the lock on my chest daily before I sleep. I carry it around with me (and maybe you too, as e.e.cummings might say) so laboriously, because I hope that someone might show up at any moment and I don't want to miss him/her.

Do you know what I miss? The routine. The forest path I had to walk in my mind in the dark, this soft warm spot that I had gotten used to. I walked a brighter path for all my other friends, mostly. They were boring - and still sometimes do me in with their normal words and normal smiles. But you were dancing with scissors and I felt like I stretched myself too thin, like a ribbon you might chance slice through.

I once went to watch a few bands play with a friend. We sat on these giraffe-stools with legs dangling precariously, gazing at the members of a band holding their small fort on a crowded stage. Podium, really. And they had so little space, sometimes when they sang and/or played badly it seemed like a dying star imploding. And I watched on, ears lazily taking everything in.

They pour themselves into their sound the way I wish I could one day into an artwork - but I always felt like you were my masterpiece, made in my prime, when I was a good girl. Today I'm tired, I'm so devastated I can cry, but there's a flame alight in me that tells me tomorrow will be good. It's a little flower that springs into beauty - it says that my future is exciting.

I choose to believe it... and I want to toss you away. You are the stuff of old faded photographs, of the discarded parts of my life I choose not to show. What can I pack with me to London? You told me to stay in contact but... I don't know. We'll be studying concurrently, so different we are, I feel like we have stopped fitting together in the way we used to.

Why are we so obligated to fall in love and let the world fall away? I need my world, stabilized, I need my world as my shelter, I need it to be free of other souls, and that's why when I let you in you fought a way out, punctured my heart and left me feeling cold.

If I could be that girl in my old photos again... she will not think so much, she will be living day-to-day, she is self-sufficient where I am greedy, and happy where I am sad.

That's So Cool

2011-07-30T00:02:00.000+08:00

Goodbye, old Minolta lens. My new lens have arrived and they are legen - wait for it - dary.

Waiting for Superman

2011-07-29T17:00:00.000+08:00

It's times like these, in my room, door locked and lounging on my bed with Sufjan Stevens in the background, that I think I might miss home.

I wonder how many miles I'll have to walk before you can realise that I can take care of myself if you'd just give me some free rein. I'm so over-dependent, but I fear we have a transactional relationship... I'm scared of stepping out, but it's all a matter of desire, isn't it? We want what we can't get, and I can't get at freedom, and I can't get you.

I'm just in limbo, suspended, waiting for something to reanimate me. I want approval, nods, agreement. I thrive on habit, on the edge of being OCD, doing things over and over again until they fall right into place. I make up habits, sing songs that remind me of things I'm comfortable with. My heart beats to the tune of a finely calibrated timer.

How to Setup

2011-07-28T08:38:00.000+08:00

Are you dumb, deaf, mute, senile or simply stupid? Are you the answer of my waiting, the results of my toiling? Are you who I have been worrying for my entire life - the boohoo of "when I find that someone, am I going to like him?" You're a terrible mess and I'm a hell of a fuss - high-maintenance and low-tolerance.

29 minutes more.

I can't wait to get out of this town, and hitchhike my way to the next, and then to the one after. I can't wait to be worn at the edges, to spread my wings and fall carelessly. I can't wait for that dark stain across my heart, seeping, oozing, until it covers me whole. I'm afraid if I fly, I can't be tied down, and inside of me my heart shall strain until it tires itself out.

And then I'll leap into a romance that died before it began, have a family, pay my taxes like someone so excruciatingly average. I'll have your goals, your hopes, and your non-existent dreams. I'll die with enough money to be satisfied with, but I'll die nonetheless. I don't want to be alive for that future.

Have you... felt that strange sensation when you're waiting, and your heart races like it's all pumped with alcohol? It could be a text, an email, or anything more or less. Words, basically. A reply so cherished it's worth more than gold. Every Day for the past few months I've grown impatient.

Hey, Wunderkind Fiend

2011-07-27T23:48:00.000+08:00

You're gonna DIE, you're gonna DIE, you're gonna DIE.

I love that sign I drew up for myself - how amazing it is that a single picture can trigger off such a vast array of emotions - now I'm feeling angry, frustrated, stressed and yet, curiously, wonderfully exhilarated. I feel like the worn surface of metal, the taste of blood, paper worn down by flipping.

I feel like we're on the edge of war, a landscape of bloodshed and terror and... (does this sound like some terrorism shit?) beyond me again is ACADEMIA in Times New Roman or some other pretentious font like Trajan. And a chill wind blows, low over the casualties. We're too young to die.

I'm sorry - I recently replied to a junior's Tweet (ahh, you innocuous microblogging platform) and everyone's so worried - I just think back to the treacherous year and feel, well, brave. I'm courageous, I have the heart of a lion and the guts of Optimus Prime. Isn't it so unnatural to toss poor young people into this war?

I don't believe in a lot of things - but I believe in childhood... and I want mine back.