this would be me

i had a veritably brutal midterm yesterday . it was the kind where you stare at the question and vaguely understand what concept you’re supposed to apply, but don’t exactly know where to start or what you’re really supposed to show, and before you know it, given time is up and you’ve barely answered two [...]

THERE IS SO MUCH OF LIFE TO LIVE

you broke it! this unendurable bond for you are both man and scoundrel. do you now feel the advantageous dread of (not pain, but) l     o         s                    s?

while walking through campus today, i saw a little kid pummeling down the walkway on his plastic tricycle, tilted forward like a colorful torpedo!, as his dad strolled alongside. i wanted to quickly bend and take a picture, yet it felt disrespectful of the moment, so i just walked and watched. when we all shored [...]

on the first night of the halloween weekend, my roommate Piglet (she picked this pseudonym on her own!!), one of our suitemates Monkey, and i all got into a big fight. i had honestly wanted to just stay in with some soup and catch up on Grey’s Anatomy and post-midterms sleep, but the big buttery [...]

it’s just midterms. think of the weekend! halloween costumes, ice cream, shoe-shopping, and much love. silly things like midterms are reduced to such insignificance when considered against the greater scheme of things.

one of the gifts i got for my birthday (as you can see, i have abandoned the practice of chronicling my 21 gifts) was a stethoscope. a pink stethoscope, which the people close to me would know i have always wished to possess, if only for the sole reason of listening to this mysterious pulse [...]

we always walk into heartbreaking things, or slip into them. i was sitting in starbucks today with the usual mid-week brain cramp, staring into space, when a young blonde woman paused to rest in the center of my vision, and for some reason she brought me back to earth, and i caught sight of her [...]

this cant be what it’s like to chase happiness.

i wasnt sure if i should go on with this museuming of my birthday gifts, because things are different now, and perhaps it wouldnt be such a good idea to dwell. or memorialize. but everything was just so wonderful, perfect, and tangible. instead of the loud and wayward alcohol-infused surprise party that was supposed to happen, [...]

so i’m officially 21 and oldddddddd. it’s been a pretty awesome birthday despite the back pains, joint aches, blurry vision, and grey hair that have been creeping into the edges of my life. :) my birthday in malaysian time (but still 12pm on the 5th here in the US) began with me falling asleep in my macroeconomics [...]

when i went to Paris earlier this year, i stayed in a hotel opposite the famed pastry shop, Ladurée, the original home of the double decker macaron. i walked into the confiserie not knowing anything of its fame — just that it was swathed in pretty colors, had a long line of people spilling out [...]

i turn 21 in two days. some drama happened over the weekend, i canceled my own surprise birthday party, and my birthday in general was poised to look like a very upsetting and depressing affair — not to mention the severe emotional turmoil of realizing i’m actually becoming old — but right now all the [...]

as always, there was supposed to be a special post here today, but as always, i caught myself just in time before i tripped and fell backwards into my own naivete. at the rate this is going, this blog is going to end up completely perfunctory in nature and i will only ever write mechanically [...]

tonight’s my first all-nighter of the semester, spent in the library, in honor of the upcoming calculus midterm on thursday, and the 2 problem sets and 2 response papers due within the week. someone’s cell phone keeps going off in the reading room, and i am fairly annoyed because that person is not in the [...]

as i was crumbling, he came to my rescue; swiftly, without signal or shadow, swooping down to envelop me in warm, familiar sounds and heart-filling explosions. you are here, i exhaled with the last breath that clawed its way out of my throat, please dont leave me again i could not bear it if you [...]

just found some pictures of myself that were taken during my first week of freshman year when i arrived here last year: i feel so different. the biggest lesson that i’ve learned thus far is that nothing in college is chill, no matter what anyone says. i was truly an idiot to believe otherwise.

1. today, i saw an old lady crossing the street looking frail but grumpy. that made me think of my grandma, whom i miss very much :( i loved those 11-year-old days when she would take me on a bus ride to Genting, and we’d eat hot pei dan porridge together in that tuck shop [...]

red welts of semi-consciousness fleck my skin like gecko blinks, and i am bleakly wondering if i tripped or if i was dragged by the scruff of my contentment out of the shadow puppet cave, up the rabbit hole, past the second star to the right, and thrown here — here, corporeal, amidst these shiny [...]