Pot Lucks

I love pot lucks. Because I know I will be fed. Because I know that I can eat a little of everything.

I hate pot lucks. Everything that is good is usually bad. And for some weird reason, you struggle hard with self control.

I love pot lucks. You get to meet people and talk nonsensical stuff, and sit and lounge.

I hate pot lucks. You forget the clock and time suddenly becomes eel-like. Slippery as hell.

Tonight was a good night with roast pork, lamb stew, curried meatballs, carrot cakes. And for dessert, tiramisu, ondeh ondeh and putih hitam. I love the food. And I love even more that I exercised self restrain and control and manage to eat in normal portions. And even so, I still feel fat and bloated. And sluggish and slow.

Nevertheless, I am glad to note, I did gym (heh 4km only) and I did work (heh 4 lectures only). And tomorrow I will attempt to complete more. Tomorrow marks the last day of the sweet sorrowful anguish. Everything else will cease to influence for I know I am living.

For tonight, I will chase after the all-elusive quality sleep that I crave and yearn for.

Happy Birthday!

I love the term Happy Birthday as a greeting. And its’ so unbelievably hard for me to explain why. I am seldom at a loss of words to say. I have always been able to grasp my thoughts clearly, as stars are, in the true night-time sky. But for this one moment, I am robbed of all my adjectives and my mind blank and bare.

Oh! Just as well…

And I feel weird. The ease that I sit with, when I am without my words. I am surprise to find that I am still me and that I am still capable of laughter and conversation. And I am pleased, pleased that at this juncture I can still stand amongst all that is left and still whisper, ‘Yes!’

Borrowed Time

SO came and he went. Just like that. Time flies when you are happy and sitting with peace.

The past 2 days have been either graciously benevolent or unforgivingly cruel. Depending on the way you see it. While SO was suppose to have left yesterday, he only managed to actually and properly leave today. In between the confusion of visas, other crazily contradictory travelling requirements and needs, a trip to the airport and to customs was granted making us part twice.

It is a cruel cruel thing to make lovers part, not knowing the next time that you will get to meet. People lives change in a matter of seconds and for people like us we are compelled to maintain our lives the way things are, till another meeting is arranged. All to maintain a certain sense of familarity, so as to retain that ability to say, 'Hey look! Its still me!'

To look on this life from the eyes of the commuters travelling to work on busy weekday mornings, it must have been pretty bizzare to see the same 2 teary-eyed couple walking down to catch the shuttle to the airport. It must have been awkward to see the same girl walking back up again. Feels like some sort of a korean drama that has outlived its' novelty.

I cannot complain. I cannot lament. I am just returning to the way life was, as it was meant to be. Its unreasonably barbaric to demand life of the pleasures that we covert and yet not deserve.

And thankfully, I sit well with my grief.

Dictyostelium discoideum: Aggregate, Migrate and Culminate

Despite the crazy bustle of the past few days, I have the energy and mental capacity to contain emotions. I feel I have been chaffed raw and yet feel almost... incomplete. And I feel pure anticipation of the peace that tomorrow brings yet restlessly stagnant with regards to the pregnant wait that lies between now and then.

I won't even attempt to deny, that the reason for this discerning state arrives tomorrow.

And it is funny (yet again) how the heart hopes and long while the mind logically wait and calculate and the body expresses the unparalleled conflict in terms of racing blood and dizzying visual images.

But I am happy, truly happy, and at peace with the knowledge (or lack of) that lies within and beneath. I am happy.
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On a note of hilarity, in the study of the interesting life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum, slugs may stand on their foot to form a fruiting body. Phallic structures never fail to amuse and entertain a class of geneticists to be. Yes we are that geek.

Movie: Shall We Dance?

Beverly Clark:

We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet...

I mean, what does any one life really mean?

But in a marriage,

you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things,

the terrible things, the mundane things...

all of it, all of the time, every day.

You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it.

Your life will not go un-witnessed

because I will be your witness'."

Thats an extract from a pretty old movie Shall We Dance? starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez and oh boy did I love it. I never did catch it while it was at the movies and I cannot for the sake of my life remember why. Hadn't had the money? Hadn't had the time? Wasn't interesting enough? Fearful of wasting 2 hours of my life whittling away, starring blankly at a screen and trying to absorb the little nuances of a story that I know will never become mine? I have no idea really... a few weeks ago, I finally found the time, the money and the lack of fear to sit down and properly watch the show on the small TV screen assigned to each unit in this student housing complex and... oh boy did I love it!

I love how it gets into your mind and without you even know it, makes you feel as if you are part of the whole series of events. Makes you savour painfully the emotional turmoil and battle the moral choices that the characters had to make. And it is refreshing to note that this is a movie with no clear choices, no bad guy or good guy, no correct and wrong and in that small little sense it reflects the type of life we all lead. I mean come on... you make a million decisions everyday which does not really affect the overall quality of life that we lead on the individual level and yet collectively, can irrevocably alter the consequences of the lives around you.

That all said, I really agree with the above extract about how we all need a witness to our lives. When it was being said onscreen by the character to the PI, who was by the way hired to investigate Mr. R.Gere, I was startled to realise that though verbalised between 2 individuals who didn't matter to each other, it had amazing truth.

And it is all between here and there that we long for the admiration and devotion that only a fervent lover can bring and search for the deserving individual of our unconditional and crippling love.

Starting Again

Its funny how life is. Funny, my word and description for everything.

The flowers from SO hangs drying while the bouquet sit on the dining table, lonely and forlorn. How can something that brings me such show of adoration, decline to such a state of disarray and neglect.

Such is life, every mentionable has a place and time and it is just so that this is now and this is such and that my hands are fumbling, busy caressing the broken keys while my mind is running at a thousand miles a second... in all directions.

How can everything be moving and yet I am still here. Still, as in motion and time.

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It was dinner today. Simple. Silent. And yet perhaps one of the noisiest dinner I had with the company that I was with.

It made me remember the people who know me, without me saying a word. It made me yearn for the company of those who read me well and appreciate the walls that shield me from all those naked prying eyes. Grateful for all the assistance, both conscious and not, that rendered me to lead this life, though worthless in the eyes of too many and yet coveted in the minds of too few.

So much and yet so little was what it took for me to acknowledge this incomparably unfailing and yet diminishing passion.