joie de vivre!

live, love, laugh. (:

think of all the places we could be

Tuesday, June 24, 2014 || 8:02 PM

The sheer futility and normalcy of life: there are moments when I read or see something that makes me realise just how so very little any of our life paths can deviate from another's should we choose to stay in this little island. It feels like this place is but a collection of almost homogeneous lives which follow the path of study -> work/maybe start a family -> die, and the monotony of this very thought brings out in me a great feeling of frustration. I know no society in the world is absolutely perfect, or perhaps my notion of the Singapore society as I just opined above is terribly flawed or myopic, seen through the rose-tinted glasses of one of the privileged. Still...among the friends I've discussed this with many have agreed, and not a negligible proportion of them have expressed their deep desire to leave this ostensibly oppressive Singapore system which seems to direct all of us to a uniform path through life. I do empathise with their points of view and similarly wish to...what? Stray from the pack and pursue an unexpected track? Travel the world? (good gracious yes please) Just leave Singapore and live in a different country, one where I feel less pressured to be the very best in everything I do or else, one where there is less widespread discontentment with The System? Yet it will be incredibly difficult, for me at least; while indeed I've had 'experience', if you will, with being away from my dad and my extended family for a stretch of time, moving permanently overseas beyond Asia will undoubtedly make me painfully homesick >< Not to mention having to adjust to the new culture (pretty sure I took at least 3 years to adjust to Singapore when I first moved here haha), and then what if I become equally dissatisfied with the state of matters in that country?

There's just so many things about what I'm going to do with my future that I need time to think about, but A's sigh... T_T

darling don't you ever grow up

Monday, June 9, 2014 || 7:46 PM

I crave for a lot of things.

I crave to be alone, for days when I can curl myself up into a soft chair by the window and immerse my being in alternate universes rendered by books, listen to music and feel that emotional connection (albeit one-sided) to the singers and their lyrics, think about life in all its delicate intricacy and incomparable beauty and pen these thoughts down for keepsake. I find that we as human beings tend to overcomplicate life and happiness: people toil their asses off for years for material gains, personal achievements, satisfaction, and of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting all these. But far too often, I see people losing touch with the simple joys in life and dare I say it? let a little bit of their humanity slip away in the rat-race that life in a first-world country has become for many of us. Just a few days ago my mind wandered to the issue of holding grudges - truly one of the most useless things a person could do in my opinion >< That is, of course, not to say that I don't hold grudges of my own; I am only human, after all, and there have been moments where I have felt (perhaps unnecessarily) resentful or jealous of another for an extended period of time. But when I thought about the people I used to hold grudges against and the reasons behind these negative sentiments, I realised how so very pointless harbouring these feelings were - in most cases these were trivial issues, and in all of the cases I could do absolutely nothing now to change the outcome. So...why??You could blame it on human nature I suppose, and our inherent self-seeking tendencies that drive us to feel jealous of those who have what we desire but ourselves do not possess. Hmm haha regardless, since I've come to the conclusion that holding grudges is basically an instrument of torturing and poisoning your own head and heart, I've decided to try my best to let go of those I still hold, and hopefully not bear any more in the future. Doing this can only come to good after all :) (hahaha ok not quite sure how I strayed so far from my first sentence but never mind)

I also crave for genuine friendships, for love. For infinite stretches of time being around my companions, drawing contentment and joy from theirs. And I can't deny that the notion of romantic love doesn't draw me in at this age, because it does. But perhaps it is for the very reason that I am attracted to the proliferation of romantic poems and descriptions of love that I see online (haha ok let me just emphasise to my perhaps more ship-loving friends that it is the idea of love that I'm attracted to and not an actual person in my life!!!1000% 没有 ok T^T) that I've decided not to get into a relationship for a few years at least, just because I feel that especially at this age where the phenomenon of shipping is far and wide (urghhhhh sigh) and almost everyone is looking for love, it...basically doesn't really bode well for the future of the relationship haha. I know I'm skating on very thin ice here, because indeed there are lucky couples who survive from their teenage years to adulthood and marriage, but I'm guessing there's only about 20% that actually do? So yeah long story short, I think it's true that paradoxically, one is only ready for love when one stops looking for it. Until then I'll just continue to entertain my romantic notions of The One (God willing I even have One that is... ^^;) living his life out there somewhere, oblivious to my existence - hahaha ok I should probably stop now before my gross side comes out heh ^^;

Going back to the first kind of love I mentioned (eee not a very well-organised post haha oh well) - I find that platonic love is seriously underrated today?? Having true friends who stay by your side through the good times and the bad is...an indescribable blessing, to say the least. As much as I love my occasional alone time and periods of introspection, I honestly couldn't imagine living my life without friends - and I am truly blessed to have these people whom I wouldn't give up for anything in the world ^___^ <3 Haha this was intensified recently when I read The Kite Runner, an amazing amazing story about friendship and redemption that has crept its way into being one of my favourite books of all time :)

I can literally feel my thoughts getting even more incoherent than it already was at the start so haha I guess I'll stop here for now!Hope everyone's been enjoying their holidays~ ^__^

if the green left the grass on the other side

Monday, June 2, 2014 || 9:41 PM

Whee successful first day of sticking to my study schedule! :D Only 27 more days to go... ^^; I guess the most difficult issue I'll be facing this month will be finding things to look forward to, things to wake up for every day; I know the next month (the next few months leading up to the A's, actually) is going to be painfully monotonous, and the novelty of studying (I honestly woke up this morning feeling excited to carry out my study plan HAHA) will wear off soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. My June holidays are pretty barren as of now, and yes I do desperately need all this time to consolidate everything, but I must admit that the thought of having to discipline myself and sit down to study everyday is terribly daunting >< Currently in an attempt to recruit a study buddy living around my area haha efforts have been pretty futile though sigh :'(

OK YES pointless rambling aside...not quite sure why but I've been thinking about R&J for a fair bit lately! I'm starting to wonder if I am a lot more similar to Romeo than I once thought, which is really not a very comforting notion since he's often been described as a 'spineless wimp of a man' slash 'whiny little kid' by my ex Lit teacher... ^^; I guess I identify with his hopelessly romantic (hmm don't think this is the right term to describe him actually, but in my own defence it's been 1.5 years since lit!!! ;___;) side; if there is something that I'm pretty sure everyone who's read/studied R&J would agree on, it'd be that Romeo was in a kind of Petrarchan love with Rosaline (I'm 10000% convinced that he wasn't truly in love with Juliet either, hnnnhgn the memory of all his ridiculous antics coming back to me....T^T But this is one of the most contestable issues in the play so I'll zip it for now haha) and I suppose I understand the attraction? Love (romantic or otherwise) is a beautiful thing, and we as humans in general crave to love and be loved in return. So in this respect I do believe that there is a little Romeo in everyone, a Petrarchan lover who loves the idea of being in love, and enjoys the very notion of love.

I don't deny that I may be over-generalising things, that this is the point of view of someone who's had pretty limited experience in love, but in my opinion this does hold true especially among youths of our generation. Just consider the proportion of songs, books, movies today that are almost wholly dedicated to a market of people who want to hear about falling in love, heartbreak, new beginnings, or all of the above, and I think it's pretty clear what's on a lot of teenage minds at this point of time. Granted, the presence of so many of such artistic representations of love may be attributed to the fact that love is one of, if not the most powerful emotion that humans are capable of experiencing, and as such there is naturally a plethora of attempts to express this decidedly and frustratingly indescribable thing. At the same time...maybe it's human nature to so badly want to understand something that so many have tried and failed to comprehend over the course of the entire universe? So maybe we shouldn't have been so harsh on Romeo - we can't pigeonhole love, after all, and maybe his flings/feelings/infatuation (???two years of studying the text and I still don't know what he was doing ._.) with Rosaline and/or Juliet was just his own attempt at what he deemed love should be ^^

Haha ok to end of yet another very rambly post, a song I've been listening on repeat for the past hour HAHA (because Ed Sheeran!!!!):