Chinese New Year round the corner. I am so not looking forward to it. Well, besides the fact I get to see my grandparents and get lots of money, it’s pretty mundane. And I don’t like seafood and steamboat.
(Yes, I know this looks like a completely incomplete post, but never mind! I will make it up another time. There are lots of events building up and when the action’s over, my reflections are gonna come up in a jiffy! 
)
Hey ya’ll… What’s rocking in the world of bananas and homework sums?
Feeling in the mood for music today (wait, I think that happens everyday), so… I am finally going to post a vid for you here.
It’s the best example I have of how professionals make mistakes too. How, in the land of stagelights and mics and flashy-sudden fame and glory there are moments when things go wrong too… But hey, you’re only up there in the lime for awhile, so make the most of it right? I sure will. And yeah, laughing stuff like this off is the best medicine and entertainment.
Seeya.
And she wonders when
The colours began to twist and bend
Into the repetition of ceasing to be
An absence, yet present so she can see
Still the faded lines and faces
Of myriad people, splintered places
Words on paper, meaningless
Sun and moon, light on darkness
Dark to light; and on again
With no beginning and no end
The things that matter gone without trace
Lost somewhere in the wild, unprotected space
Where nothing survives; she has left behind
Half her soul and all her heart, cannot find
The lifeline that will pull her back to shore;
No choice but to wait out the storm, chilled to the core
Till she drowns in the emptiness that she has become.
© Copyright.
I think that firstly, I am really grateful for many of the experiences I had this year. I watched a live band for the first time (KEANE), I learnt what it was like to lose old friends and gain new ones, I had lots of camps which have definitely enriched my outlook on life… I am most grateful to my family for supporting me (this year has been the toughest for me so far), for my friends and the many letters and notes that I have received, simple exam encouragements… It is in times of sadness that I take them out, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the words you have written. They mean alot to me. My church and school choirs: I have developed my voice and stage presence and gained so much from the passion and love that you have put into music. When school was difficult, I always found comfort and a sanctuary in singing with all of you; somehow, the words, the music, the lights and stage and brightness will never be as important to me as the blessing I have found in the people who sing with me. A choir is not about one person; alone, we are nothing. Together, we shine. And I hope that 2010 will bring us closer together yet. So…
The beauty of emotion, I can only express in the beauty of words… This one’s a toast to the year ahead, and a reflection on the year past, as I stand here on the brink of a new beginning.
Somewhere along the line
You’ve got to sort it all out:
The colours and hurts and blames
The people who change
The things you lose
And the memories you gain.
The falling sunlight
On moonlit shadows fade away
Where the mind wanders
And loses itself somewhere.
Dusty passage of time
Smiles uncertain right or wrong
Or real or fake.
I guess we’re just figurines
We stand all by ourselves
Waiting for someone to come along;
But everyone has legs of stone!
We want approval
We want success
We want fame and glory
We want everything there is to have.
The world is funny that way
To tempt us so.
But tears are rain
The pent up pain
Of not getting what we give
Enough is insufficient.
And smiles
Are often the plastic painted faces
Of mirror image and false reflection;
Because we wonder what They think
What They say…
I guess we should wonder less.
Instead, laugh more
Laugh much much more
Laugh!
This time I promise myself
I will show Them the constellations
The infinite universe that they revolve around
Greater than Their tiny revolutions.
And maybe figure out
What the hidden words behind those lovesongs
Really mean.
I want to know.
I want to learn.
I want to be free
To love and hope and have
A little faith.
And pray once in awhile
Because I like to believe
That someone is listening.
Live a little.
It’s the one thing left that doesn’t come with a price-tag.
One-month Anniversary
In Loving Memory Of
Dot
Lost on 24 November 2009
Dearly missed and remembered by her owner and best friend.
I’ve always wondered why
You were the only one who would:
Listen to me cry
Watch me laugh
But never say a word.
And strange how my whole life
There is no moment I recall
That is not filled with your face
Your comforting silence;
Here now is the wall.
You are somewhere on the other side
While I must linger behind
To carry on
To forgive them
To hope:
Only this then
I hope you’re happy
I hope you’re being taken good care of
I hope I may someday see you again.
I love you.
Thank you for listening to me.
… then why can’t I paint you?” – If by Bread.
This is the moon as seen through the telescope in the observatory. If I zoom in on it on my cam, I can see the pockmarks and the lake Tranquility (which is one of the blueish spots)!
All of us in the reddish lights. Behind us is one of the huge telescopes there (I took the moon pic through it). It looks like a cannon, no? Our guide built it himself. Unbelievable.
The inside of the observatory. The screen and chairs were where we sat while waiting for the sky to darken and to watch a short film about Man’s first trip to the moon. Really cool.
Shelves and shelves of astronomy books and magazines. The sheer passion.
The three telescopes out on the porch. The other two were given by a close friend of our guide’s. The high fence around keeps light from passing cars out, so that it’s dark enough to appreciate the sky.
Well, I said I’d put up my photos eventually, so here’s everything from the observatory. I have tons more from the rest of the trip, but they can wait for awhile.
I hope you like this Aisyah. Thanks for making me smile.
Okay, when I said that I’d try to get Internet access, I didn’t think it would take this long. As you probably know by now (for anyone who actually bothers to read this nonsense), my “liveblog” idea has crashed and fallen in almost Hindenburg-like disaster.
Well, since I’ve only got this lousy old-fashioned computer, completely devoid of broadband in a tiny (but lovely) town called Katoomba somewhere out here in the country, I’ll try to fill in everything that’s happened this week briefly. Pictures will be uploaded when I get home, because as I said, this is an OLD computer. And I can’t use my laptop for some reason.
Hmm.
So, there are just two major things that really stick out in my mind here, I guess I’ll talk about it. The first is terribly tragic (it still makes me feel like crying) and the second is wonderfully fantastic (oh the irony…).
For those of you who know me or have slept in the same room/dorm during school camps/trips, you may know that I have a very good friend.
Someone I keep close to me.
Someone I usually keep secret (it’s somewhat embarassing).
You see, I have a bear. A small, cloth bear, tattered and worn, put into my tiny hands when I was first brought into this world, and never let go off since. Her name is Dot, because that’s the pattern of her original cloth body (now sewn over with two other layers of cloth). And the somewhat embarassing thing is that I can’t sleep at night without her, despite my age and maturity and other facts of my life that deny that I should have a comfort object.
I don’t have a bear, I had a bear.
On the very first night after we arrived in Sydney, we stopped to stay at an inn called The Log Cabin in a town, Penrith, where my parents stayed in exactly 15 years ago on their honeymoon. We were in high spirits, it being the start to our holiday, so we settled in, unpacked, had afternoon naps, and once it was dark, slipped out for dinner. There were two entrances to our room (we got one in a corner), the front door which we locked, and a screen door that opened out onto a lawn. This lawn was facing a large gate and low fence that were next to the main street and the huge Napean river that ran next to the inn.
We thought we’d only be out for a short while, so we locked the front door, left our room in its untidy state without locking the bags. and didn’t bother to check the screen door. We, of course, assumed it was locked, because we hadn’t opened it.
Tragedy struck when we returned, just in time to see the screen door ajar. I shall not describe the utter sadness of it all, but suffice to say, I have lost one of my best friends in the world (to, as the police said, druggies), and it felt like somebody had died. Here’s a list of what was stolen:
1. $4000, most of the cash we brought.
2. My dad’s office Blackberry.
3. All the cables, chargers, plugs.
4. Two of our three toiletry bags.
5. My ipod and my earphones.
6. My sister’s sketchbook and her grey file.
7. A book, I am the cheese by Robert Cormier.
8. Our medicine bag.
9. Dot.
I can’t remember if that’s everything, if there’s more, I’ll write later. Anyway, that’s alot of stuff and there was lots of drama, police called in, fingerprints dusted on the door, me breaking down and everyone fussing, but you know, like what my Dad said, “It’s nothing we can’t replace, except for that bear.”
Oh god. I’m going to blub again. Hang on a minute…
I’m alright now. Of course, we’ve gotten cash again after a few phone calls back to sort out credit card issues, and the essentials such as toiletries have been replaced. When I can upload the photos, I’ll just put up something for Dot here. It’s been hard sleeping without her, and I try to, but I keep thinking I’ll wake up and it’ll be back to Tuesday morning, before we checked into that beastly inn. Or that we’ll get a call, someone saying they found her.
Funny how your whole life changes in just an hour. One dinner, and it’s upside down.
Well.
You know what? I think I’ll stop here. Maybe mull over this some and try not to wish so damn hard that she’ll come back.
FYI, I made my parents book an earlier flight back. So I’ll be in on the 2nd instead of the 7th. We all felt pretty blown after what happened, you know, a bad start to the holiday and what-have-you. Plus, I need to see familar faces, hear familar voices.
The second thing, which is in high contrast to this, is that just two nights ago, I went to a star observatory 22km from Cowra (another tiny town)! I don’t think I’ll ever have an experience like that again, and I’m really blessed I have because most people never do. 
What do you imagine a star observatory to be like? Well, whatever it is, I can tell you right now that’s not it at all. It was way out in the middle of miles of open countryside, dark and lonely, resembling an abandoned warehouse more than some high-tech building. We were the only ones there (you have to make an appointment) and it was $7 each (a real good bargain). So we went.
We stayed 3 hours. For seven bucks!
I’ve got the pictures, they are absolutely stunning. I took some through the telescope. It’s difficult to describe it without seeing it.
You know what it’s like to read about tales of fantasy, full of words about how the “stars were diamonds nestled in black velvet” and “the moonlight showed the way” and so on… It paints such beautiful pictures in your mind. But you close your book and you sigh and you never imagine things like that exist. I always thought that without electric lights, it’s too dark to see anything!
But no. When it’s completely dark, the stars shine bright. And the moonlight is almost blinding. You feel like some nocturnal animal with piercing eyes and large black wings, the wind stirring your hair, and the sky completely ablaze with lights! Our only company were the quiet man who shared his knowledge of entire galaxies millions of lightyears away, and his silent cat. I am very grateful to him. He loved the night sky very much.
And peering through the eyepiece, your eye becomes a magnifying glass, sharpening, bringing the Milky way or Orion close, close, intimately close, touchable… Gazing at a green-blue nebula through the glass, for one moment, there it was, flashing across yet to me, moving infinitely slow and precisely in a celestial orbit, all flaming rock and charred dust, I smiled and made a wish, for the first and probably last time, upon a star…
Everyone was jealous, I was the only one who saw it.
Our quiet host then said something almost heartbreaking in its beauty.
“You know, our sun is a third generation star, and it’s made of heavy elements which are what make up matter. The first generation stars, well, they’re made of nothing but helium and hydrogen. So they’ll never have life in them. It’s only when they exploded that the heavy elements were formed to create second and third generation stars. So if you think about it, since heavy elements are what make up stars and also what make up matter, then you’ll know that deep inside us, somewhere in the hemoglobin that makes our blood, we have star stuff. Stardust runs in our veins…”
I’ll be back soon with more on stars, lost property and life in general. For now, wish me a safe trip and I hope to see everyone soon.
Love.
Tonight, I shall be aboard a plane headed out of Singapore.
Tomorrow, I shall be taking my first step into Sydney, Australia.
Over the next 2 weeks, I’m aiming to keep a “liveblog“, in other words, I’ll be posting photos and lots of word antics on my time in Sydney! Live! That is, of course, only if life is kind and permits me to have internet access wherever I happen to be staying (it’s going to be free & easy!)
So look out. Here I come.
Shoving aside about five things on my to-do list so I can sit down and type this up is good and bad, depending on which way your head is turned.
Somehow, I feel as if my whole life has been a quickly unraveled reel of film with no time to think, feel, and savour. I realised yesterday with gray-tinged, somewhat-incredulous-yet-bordering-on-depressing finality that I only have about slightly over a month till school re-opens. History repeats itself: I have not as yet done anything I wanted to, or planned to do during the holidays.
Strangely, studying and school choir practices have been snatching away my opportunities to pick up the guitar, meet up with my friends, write some songs. Falling back into the routine of limited computer use, a schedule of classes in preparation for next year, I wonder at how easily my holiday hourglass runs dry.
Hypocrisy is this: saying one thing and meaning another. It’s the second to last week of November, and I’m still going back to school. At least have the decency to admit that it’s not, I repeat, not holidays yet. Definitely not in the natural sense.
Success is one thing. Over-working is another. Without rest, I’m afraid your success next year will be heavily compromised by students who are so tired that they cannot meet your high expectations.
Just so you know.
Exams are OVER!!!
Finally! I can do all the things I’ve been thinking of. There’s so much, I don’t even know where to start…
Freedom is very, very sweet to taste. It’s light and soft. It is worth all my hard work and pain and sweat. Yes it is.
Well, for now, I’m just going to put my feet up, lean back, and close my eyes in pure serenity.
Ciao.
