Some kind of philosophy.

After an insanely unhappy day at work, where I obviously gave so much and got so little in return, I stood in the shower and reflected.

This came to me: "work hard, live harder".

Workhardliveharder.Workhardliveharder.Workhardliveharder.Workhardliveharder.Workhardliveharder

I chanted this five times in the shower and felt that the next step was just about living up to it.

I've worked hard, no doubts about it. No one sees it, no doubt about it. I'll keep at it, definitely. Next step, live hard. Play hard, party hard.

Be less concern about what they think about me. Shake it out, shake it up, live it out!

And so, this is building resilience. This is transforming angry tears into a reminder. A reminder to live a hard as my youth will take me and leave the old hags to their game of hide-and-seek.

Fathom

I cannot fathom life without Mr X, it's possible, just incredibly difficult.

Sometimes I wish he knew why I choose to run away from talking about our future. It feels like once we talk about it we are on a countdown till the end.That's why I constantly play hide and seek.

Bestfriends, version 2

They don't truly leave you :)

Friendship takes a lot of courage too, never knew that till couple of days ago. The results are just spectacular.

After countless sleepless nights I took a leap of faith, the passage was rocky but I had a safe landing.

To many more jumps like this one in our friendship.

On repeat.

Sometimes I make the same mistakes over and over again, and I don't understand why I make them either.

But for your case, I think it was a case of priority, you put yourself ahead of everything else. Time and time again we repeat the same argument and to frank, it's getting kind of boring and irritating to me. I don't teach common sense, I can't be teaching you how to act your age, or to act as a proper person all the time.

And I've decided too, I can't be always that forgiving. Second chances after second chances I've realised that instead of learning from your mistakes, the second chances have affirmed your decisions to push boundaries and leave me to fend for myself.

One day a little bird flew by and dropped me a message. It said this isn't what I'm looking for. I concur.

Best friends

Sometimes you try your best but in the end it's all about letting go.

On departures

I'm holding you close and tight in preparation of your departure. In due time you'll be as free as a bird, but please don't forget the girl you left behind in Singapore.

Inbetween

We are heading to China in about 5 hours, an unofficial grad trip and a good opportunity to see how well we hang together.

Back during our trip to Hong Kong my over-independence showed when I decided to venture off to grab my last minute shopping leaving him to watch TV back in the hotel (I thought he would prefer that but I was wrong..) and again in the morning I went off for breakfast without him as he looked so tired, and I needed to deal with my growling stomach (again, he preferred company to sleep so I was wrong again).

Well, in between HK and this trip I can safely say that I've accomplished quite abit in my academic pursuits. For one, I'm over and done with the Final Year Project (FYP), a 9-month long research on crisis Management. Crisis Communication has brought me far, or so I hope, from the conference in New York, presentation in Miami, meeting X out of that class,   FYP friends and maxing out my read-O-meter for journals.

Internship will start officially in June, that's when I can dump my school gear and slip back into my corporate skirts, 6am alarms and media monitoring.  The last part is tricky, sometimes I still can't believe that I am going to be doing media monitoring (AGAIN) in my 4th internship.

Dumping reality, I jump back into X. So we've been together for 10 months and I found the perfect description for the whole idea of us. I guess reading does take you to place, and for me, it was like time travelling.

Back to the first date, back to how I refuse to tell anyone I was dating this guy for fear of jinxing it.

 

Somethings never change, he will always be that elusive jackass who refuse to have a picture taken. It's fine by me.

"If you want a boyfriend to brag about, it's not gonna be me," he said in an ultra serious tone one evening. I laughed. Things I love about him, so god damn private. And in strange way this privacy keeps me very safe.

and so, onward to China!

Imagine me and you, and you and me...

no matter how we throw the dice, it had to be.

And here's Easter's little surprises:

Reincarnation

X: if there's a next life, I want to be a guy.
Me: ok...i still want to be a woman in my next life.
X: then we'll have to be together.

Cheers to those 15-second conversations that head nowhere.

Like Blood

, the disappointment flows through my entire system.

A strong dull energy engulfs my senses.
Over on the other side she must have laughed, or even mocked my comprehension of the question.

I can't let go because it was the simplest question I had to tackle, the first step, and I failed at it. This is the most unwilling defeat, in my entire life.

I simply can't sleep.
Everytime I close my eyes, the silliness of my own voice floats back into my ears. And I can see it so clearly, everything I've done for the last couple of years had easily prepared me for the job. "How are you different?" she asked. Yet, I gave her the lamest answer, and I despise myself for that.

We don't get second chances, at least not here in my world.

Someone you use to know

Somewhere in Singapore, Ms Y tells someone about you. That in her eyes you were suave, stubborn, bad-tempered yet charming. She would tell them how you stole her heart and how you broke it too. She goes on and describes your three years together, army, night cycling, chocolate buffets, sunflowers and trips together. She made plans for you to be her one and only, a future together, a home, a flat to be specific, children and dogs even. You disappointed her.

You called her decent, you said communication had become obligatory towards the end and you said getting together with her could be said as "convenient".

.

Although sitting through stories of the ex-gf is painful, I am ever so grateful that you tell me about what's on your mind when it comes to her. Your friend S told you she made it to become the company's top performers. You said leaving you was perhaps what made this success happened for her. I sat quietly, stared out of the window and tucked my hands under my thigh. I was trying to take it as a normal conversation, and for you, it probably was. Somehow this grown-up world defined by money and success seems even further away from me. I bit my lip as I struggled not to encourage contact, at the back of my brain I was thinking "tell him to congratulate her", but my mouth only formed the words "...have you...congratulated her..?". You said you probably would, I kicked myself for asking. *mental note to self - Don't encourage contact.

What did you make of my silence in the car I wonder? Did you sense my silent rebellion? I doubt so, and you rattle on half in effort to fill the silence, half maybe to comfort me.

"S asked me if I regretted breaking up with her, I said No," you added. You said there comes a point in the relationship whereby couples meet each other because they have to, not because they want to. It was like that for you, with her. I looked at you, and all I could think of was that it must have been the novelty, it worn off for you. I quickly shook the thoughts out of my head.

I meekly and in an off-tangent manner said: "My heart still skips a beat when I meet you." You laughed, and for a moment the conversation ended.

Yes of course, insecurity is the root of this evil, but here I am as a student, dutifully spoilt by you monetarily till I got use to it, till I feel like I need to break away. I was living the life/the relationship you had in the days of Ms Y. Sometimes you tell me, for better or for worst, I am your karma, because I reminded you of the days you spent as a student.

At this point of time, I can only guess that the insecurity goes away as age catches up, as I transit into the next working dimension and as we prove to be able to weather storms together.

Until then, Ms Y and her stories, will stay as a little prick in my heart. A prick that digs deeper everytime I try to pull it out.

And so, I wish for Ms Y to be just someone you use to know.

A case of bad intuition

When I was 15, I remember meeting someone I strongly felt I was "destined" to be with. Funny thing is, we barely got started and we never worked out. Since then (a whopping 8 years) nothing ever felt like anything was "destined".

Fast forward to 2010, somewhere in October I agreed on a casual lunch with X. Funny how I remember it so vividly, air-conditioned school canteen, Japanese food VS Gong Bao chicken, my favourite blue pants and a pretty bad conversation on prawning. There was no instant chemistry (so unromantic), and I even remember praying "please don't let this dude have any funny ideas", since I was heading to the US 3 months later and for the first time was TOTALLY not in a romance-seeking mode. I proceeded to look at his phiten necklace (titanium ugly chain that supposedly relieves backaches?!?!) and immediately failed his sense of style (or lack of). Unknown to me, he was failing me in the style department too. HAHAHAHA Some kind of perfect symmetry.

Right there and then, my intuition told me this was yet another case of a "one-time offer". Therein lies the case of bad intuition, cause when I was dating the guys that did't work out my intuition kinda goes into shutdown mode and "i-don't-give-a-damn-not-gonna-churn-out-an-intuition-for-you-lauliangtong". Well, there was something there I guess.

Maybe I was quick to judge (as my besties always point out), terms like overbearing, egoistic, self-absorbed and even silly and transparent, were actually my first impression of X. MCP was an ideal description too (sorry!).

I never knew how he felt about that lunch, except that I had hideous pants and was super chatty. What led him to ask me out for another date, to want to see me again, to start texting me, that is pretty unclear to me.

Yet despite my initial assessment of him, I never quite said "no" to him the entire time we started something. Well, unless you count the time I turned down his offer of lunch after crisis class and not wanting to start anything prior to leaving for the US.

.....


Last night I sat beside him in the car, a long quiet drive out of Marina yacht club, and I re-lived those moments. How fast we've pass certain stages of a relationship, honeymoon (so definitely over though I honestly still kinda wish I get to see him for abit every other day), and now enter this phase where we constantly get to know each other better, sometimes for better, sometimes for worst. I often wonder what kind of couple we are.....

We hardly take pictures together, we fall into routines easily, hold hands like we can't do without it, constantly jab fun at each other, surprise each other, fight and makeup, makeup and fight, get bored and start a fight, laugh at stupid fights and vow never to go to sleep angry at each other...the list goes on. I do find that we are bad at being a public couple, taking pictures together is a rather awkward affair for us.

So, after all's said and done, I find it funny that my intuition about guys have never been accurate, and X is the best example yet.

I am...

dating an elusive jackass.

Safety.

I've long assumed safety with being at home, with my father/mother/brother/grandmother's hug, snuggling up in bed with my favourite book (essays in love by alain de botton) and my diary sitting under my pillow, drinking my mother's soup...

Lately I have found a new (hopefully not transient)kind of safety. There's this wave of warmness that surrounds me and its hard to resist. Arms that tell me "relax you're home", "we're going to make it through", "dont worry, there's nothing to be kan chiong about" - a touch that renders me....helpless.

22 years of my life, and this is the first time a stranger, with no blood ties, has warmed my heart with his brand of safety.

Dec 10, 2011

5 Months into a relationship, I decided to come clean.
No more skirting away from the issue.
No more pseudo-single status.
Just me and My own Mr X.
so, we decided that maybe Facebook can help to proliferate the message.

Perhaps I'm truly tired of the dating field, I DO love new friends and new conversations, but I don't want to pretend I enjoy a conversation that serves to bring me towards something romantic. One Singaporean guy is enough.

After countless brushes with various Mr X(es), throw in a spoonful of disappointments and a dash of heartbreak, it finally worked. Now I constantly remind myself of "death by complacency" and well, generally put quite abit of effort into this new "thing" of mine.

I realised - A relationship, like cooking, follows the same mantra (5 from my list of many HAHHAHAHAHA):

1) Need for Patience
2 months of courtship, 6 months of emailing/skype, another month of ambiguous dating.
Misunderstandings, fear and the idea of the future kept us apart.
But he was patient, I was patient. We had patience.

2) Overnight
As much as overnight food mostly taste bad (I do love braised pork left to simmer overnight but...), arguments should never be brought/kept "overnight".

3) Too many cooks spoil the broth
We need two people in a relationship, nothing more, nothing less. X kept his distance from the girls, and I guess I can only do the same.

4) Fresh Ingredients
Be it a pack of monopoly deal, a new hiking trail, new way of holding the same hands, new dishes at an old restaurant, revisiting places that matter...in a crude way, same shit different smell HAHAHAHA. But still, the beauty of innovation and reinventing.

5) Secret Ingredient
Keep a part of yourself safely stored away, and share absolutely everything else with X.


and so, I continue on this new journey. Carefree and happy.
Ever-ready.

Death by overpromising.

and by skipping gatherings, being busy with school, bad memory for dates and wanting too much me-time. Im fast turning into a figure of solitude, a tower of unreliability, and generally friendless at the way things are going.

when the going gets tough

the tough listens to Yamagata.

I know what is breaking point.
When laughter blends swiftly into angst and then confusion. I go back to comforts like Yamagata's old albums to get me through the night. They help me stare at my projects/endless essays in wide-eye wonder. "So for those of you falling in love, keep it kind, keep it good, keep it right. Throw yourself in the midst of danger, but keep one eye open at night."

Occasionally, I do wish for comfort that is more substantial. Soothing words, but these things rarely come about at the right time.

well, the silver lining of the day is that H offered to evaluate my paper and help me get into SPH? (or that was how i read it). Well, of course after that the class got to laugh at a "grammatically incorrect, overly enthusiastic (!!)" email I sent her on behalf of the class to get a deadline extension. HAHA journalism classes are really the only thing that keeps me going nowadays.

Love and other impossible pursuits.

You know how that famous English Patient quote goes?

"I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocently…but all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur."

I've always imagined love (there is just no substitute for the word love) to be exactly like this. It recalibrates your entire system, from your heartbeat right down to your fingertips. Well, I imagined. But alas, the truth is, its better than that. Stronger, richer, and even more uncontrollable. So we have the highs, but we can never escape the lows.

Perhaps this is the very irony of life, the balance of it too, the yin & yang.

But as with this beautiful relationship I see an end (hopefully I'm wrong) of another important aspect of my life - friends. I feel people drifting away from me, taking on shapes and forms that I could have taken if I were still single. Time allocated for my atoms to jump at a love one proves to be bringing down other aspects of my life. And I wonder, friends at different stages of life, should we not get together and celebrate the diversity of our differences instead? Have I been neglecting that aspect?

But as we grew older, we all grew impatient (at least I did, and regretted). Stories that use to enrich your lives seems to no longer be the case. Everyone fights for the microphone, everyone fights to broadcast, and I wonder - so who's listening now? And yet when it got around to the most important conversations, those that require guts and risk, the microphone sits plugged in and untouched. Why do we not say the things that matter most to us? because we are afraid? because we dont want to gloat? or are we simply afraid of hurting one another?

Excited conversations have been reduced to one-liner messages, a bunch of missed calls (and unreturned calls too) and a bag of emotions put aside, waiting for their opportunity to see light. Meetings, once spontaneous, are now but a wait to get into schedule books. Now I play back the tapes of recorded stories from long ago, repeated stories of our lives and gossips, hoping to one day catch a "live" show again.

I sit amidst my unfinished research papers (yes, I know school works seems like a convenient excuse but it is valid), analysing why this open wound of friendship doesnt heal.

Guys, I miss you.

Need for warmth.

Finger tips that yearn to graze on the skin of another. Hands that only remember the warm fleshy palm of another. linked arms, coincidental linking of thoughts. Sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, linking worlds, connecting hearts. What exactly is this need for warmth? and Why does the search never seem to end?

3 Big "O"s.

Not even orgasm mind you. But has it boiled down to this?

Outwit, Outdo, Outperform.

Really, the pathetically competitive stage of things.