Whilst discussing which movies to include in our movie marathon:-

me: There’s a movie out called ‘La Lingerie’!
james:  Sounds like porn. Count me in.
me: “This story is about four young women. Their lives and their loves tied together by a common thread – lingerie.”
me: What a flimsy excuse of a plot

Spring cleaning. I guess I could call it that even if it’s actually what I do every summer. Usually, it’s a full day job. I tear apart my room, and then reorganize several things so that there’s just enough space for the new things I’d accumulated throughout the year. My room usually ends up looking a heck of a lot neater, albeit with telltale signs of a lazy shift-and-stuff job.

It was easier those earlier years. Every time I came across something I couldn’t bring myself to throw away, I would be able to convince myself that it would come in handy sometime next year. This time, however, I couldn’t do it. I’ll be leaving in exactly a month from now and won’t be back home for a year. I won’t be able to bring much over and even so, what’s the use of high school textbooks? That’s like child’s play now. So, basically, I can no longer lie to myself. With that, Spring cleaning had somehow gone on for days. My room is still in a state of fashionable disarray and it shows no sign of neater pastures. Example: my door can only be opened to a sliver of about 3 inches before everything else behind it, be it my luggage bags or my clothes, jams it right up. Being the contented Taurus that I am, I’ve learnt to suck in my tummy and slip in and out of that 3 inch crevice. The good thing about this tight situation is that I haven’t heard my mom nag about tidying up since the jam. I guess she can’t get in.

I can’t complain though. I put myself in that position by being the obsessive hoarder that I am. I sat amidst the mess – old papers and projects I had done years ago, syllabi and criterion sheets with grades and teacher comments, crumpled sheets with amusing notes scrawled across them, even embarrassingly lovey-dovey poems and songs I had written dating back to when I was in my early tweens (You don’t want to know). They could possibly be referred to as my life’s work. Yet, there I was, volunteering to make the decision on whether to keep (and let collect dust) or to chuck. Neither seemed appealing or even, vaguely appropriate for what had been such fixtures in my world.

It was really a matter of “do-or-hoard-forevermore”.

…

My entire Extended Essay folder, which includes hundreds of pages of (expensive, mind you) research, numerous drafts and questionnaires, is now in a trash bag ready for recycling. I gave it some good company too – the Personal Project journal pages I had saved, which includes photographs and handwritten notes I had spent many painstaking hours copying out.

It may not sound like a lot but those two projects collectively took two whole years of my life to complete. That’s a big deal. I mean, if you want to start tossing, why not start off with a grand gesture, right?

They’re still in the bag. I left it by the pile of newspapers a day ago for my mom to look through. I’m secretly praying that she’ll decide to keep some of it, but somehow, she hasn’t gotten round to it yet and the wait is getting desperate.

It’s sitting right there in plain sight, probably saying, “Are you sure about this?”

Perhaps it’ll get easier later on. I really hope so, because it’s taking all of my self-control not to sneak that little black bag back into my room and to force it into that tiny space between the yellowing Sweet Valley books and the ancient speakers that haven’t worked since…ever.

So…today I did everything in my power to not touch my geography folder..and I must say, I have been quite successful, thanks to the wonderful world of bittorrent, blogs and facebook. Whilst wandering around Facebook, I came across this birthday quiz, which tells you about your personality and stuff based on the day of your birth. Snazzy.

_________________________

May 13th, 1990

Lucky Color: Crimson
Personality Strengths: Optimism, Bravery
Personality Weaknesses: Sarcasm
Successful Career Path: Academia
Sense of Humor Style: Raunchy

Description: You are a complete paradox as a person – innocent, yet experienced; fragile, yet strong on the inside; normal, yet unique; creative, yet organized; optimistic, yet realistic! Certainly a very interesting person – you possess several qualities that people often thought were mutually exclusive.

_________________________

Usually, I keep the applications I play with hidden, but having read this over and over again, I’m surprised by how connected I feel to the results. I mean, I myself have described myself (hm, awkward repetition) as a “walking contradiction”, so to see something else, albeit a preprogrammed application, directing the same analysis at me is jarring, yet also…strangely freeing.

omg omg. I can almost taste the freedom! Today, I completed the last of my biology exam papers, which means end of stressy, inappropriate giggle fests and over dramatic hyperventilation and unhealthy levels of coffee consumption. Four more papers to go, but right now, they are so far far away that my mind can only focus on what’s to come after:

26th May – Predicted release of the Inspiron 1535
…and most definitely the date I shall purchase my very first laptop – Yes, I know…it’s pretty sad that the release of a new laptop is on the top of my cannot-wait!! list…but have you seen that metal slab of hot sex?

Mind you, the above picture does not do it justice…seeing as how I am obviously a genius at dimension alteration.

30th May – Graduation and the Graduation Ball

1st – 6th June – Koh Samui, Thailand

9th – 15th June – Pulau Sipadan, Malaysia
SCUBA DIVING!!! Technically, the trip will only be until the 14th (since we’ll be crashing in KLIA before grabbing the early morning flight out of there), but ya know, it looks better this way.

23rd – 27th June – Singapore, Singapore

Pretty amazing, huh?

…and if things go according to plan, July and August will be pretty darned fantastic too. /crosses fingers. I remember obsessing over what I would do over the summer throughout the year (procrastination ftw), going so far as to fill in forms for a particular coral restoration project in Philippines which involved learning to scuba dive. I’m glad that at least one aspect of that fantasy will be fulfilled, and if I’m lucky, another might resolve itself if I spot a whale shark or two whilst snorkeling in Thailand.

All in all, Summer ‘08 won’t be letting me down.

Frustration. Fear. Failure.

I’m getting frustrated fearing failure.

You know those Armageddon-type, ah-zombie-uprising, omg-its-time-to-quarantine-half-the-population, omg-life-as-we-know-it-is-over movies?

My favourite. genre. ever.

I mean honestly, if I used all the hours I spent rewatching ‘Day after Tomorrow’ doing something else – say learning how to cook or something – I would be quite the master chef, rather than the slacker and master-of-all-lackluster-skills that I am now.

Anyway, what I’m coming around to is that…I have a strange fascination with living life and living it before everything ends. I’m constantly questioning myself about what I want out of it, and that’s perhaps why I’m so anal about where I want to go and what I want to do. For almost 18 years, it’s like I’ve been walking around, repeatedly bumping into walls already weathered by my imprint…actually, 18 years is probably an exaggeration, because I would say I had quite a wholesome childhood, you know, shooting at escaped crickets with bb guns, sleeping in trunks of cars and the like. Now, I’m just constantly fantasizing about being some kick-ass heroine who stops the world from imploding, having a secret ninja life or a vampire boyfriend or something equally implausible.

It’s actually pretty hilarious thinking about how my actual life would look like if it were translated onto the big screen. No doubt it would be one of the huge box office flops. You know, those movies with one, maybe two settings, with people sitting around a table talking philosophy? Perhaps something like Lost in Translation, which was a god awful movie, with the dullest of pallets and the most drone-tastic script. Probably wouldn’t break the bank though, seeing as how most of the movie would just consist of me walking from my room to my computer several times a day.

For all I boast about how I’ll become a free spirit and how I’ll never accept a 9-to-5 job, on a scale of I’ve-conquered-the-world-and-can-die-happy-now to holy-hell-i-suck-at-life, I’m probably tipping off the edge of sucking at life into the abyss of well..having none.

Boo.

An hour and 30 minutes to my first exam!

I went to bed “early” last night – well, around 11 – and spent the whole night stirring in bed, thinking about Durham and Bristol, and then, having these strange mathematical equations repeat themselves over and over again in my head.

Then, I woke up about 30 minutes before my alarm and spent that time stirring in distress yet again.

So. Not. Ready

Perhaps I saw it coming and that’s why I’ve been in an especially weird funk lately. Perhaps my mind sort of knew that something unpleasant must have happened since (till this evening) I still hadn’t received my last letter even though its close to May already. My mind subconsciously started yearning for some form of mourning, and yesterday, I got some mopey Mariah Carey songs to tide over that strange numbness I was feeling…even though I really had no clue why I was feeling so down, especially since the prior days were spent being overly enthusiastic about life in general.

So, today marks the end of my journey on the US undergrad road of complete and utter depression. I would love to say it was a journey with ups and downs, but to be honest, the only joy I can remember having had through that entire experience was from my misguided and foolhardy obsession with a school completely out of my league. Pathetic, no, that the one moment of clarity I’ve had in my 17 ( almost 18 ) years resulted from illusions of grandeur and silly confidence?

Anyway, good bye shoddy path of potholes and tripwire! I won’t be missing you.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

- Poem, The Invitation by Oriah Moutain Dreamer

“He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he hid himself to conceal the truth…all that was open. And he judged of others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy and under the cover of night. All personal life rested on secrecy, and possibly it was partly on that account that civilised man was so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.”

- Quotation from Lady with Lapdog by Chekhov