Week 38: Pieces of what?

ok, i'm not going to lie. lately, i've been wondering about the person i've become, and on rare occasions, i don't even feel like myself anymore (having no fingerprints helps HAHAHA oh i love my fingers). the other day when i had some spare time, i started thinking about random shit and i came to the conclusion that it is very easy to lose one's self. i'm not talking about feeling 'lost' per se, rather, the disintegration of one's self. however, if you want to read an article about feeling lost, please head over to stephen's blog - he wrote an EXCELLENT post regarding that topic to which i highly recommend you read because it made me feel super emo after i read it =( and i'm generally a rather emo individual already but his post managed to amplify that feeling in me. i even added a 'sad face' emoticon up there so you know that i, and his post, mean business.

anyway, i'm not sure if this extends to the general public, and most often than not i find that i'm the only one feeling this way because when i tell someone about it they look at me all weird and go, err..are you ok, mel? but enough of that.

as i was saying, i'm beginning to feel that i'm losing little bits that are ME. i often find that every time i meet someone new (male and female ahem), i give a little piece of myself away to that person and in the process, adopt a little piece of themself into me. as the bond between me and each person that enters my life strengthens, i lose more of myself because it is channeled into said person, and i take upon myself more of what is them.

does this mean that i am weak-willed and easily influenced by people? i'd like to think not. it is not difficult to absorb the person to whom you have a close relationship with. i listen to their secrets, i know their stories, i become familiar with their past, i am here in their present and i hope for their future. and since i have so willingly exposed and opened myself to who they have been, what they are now and what they will become, i'd like to think that they're doing the same for me. and that is how i lose myself, because i give myself away to them; my secrets, my fears, my longings - and also how i become them; a recipient to all of the above.

i am a conglomerate of little pieces of everyone i meet.

yet, as long as i am with them, i feel like i am still whole. an apple tree is only an apple tree when its branches are laden with fruit. the moment it is stripped bare from its yield, it is no longer identified as an apple tree; rather, it is a tree just like any other as there is nothing to indicate what it was before. i am like that apple tree. my friends are the apples with which i have invested growth hormones, enzymes, nutrients, energy and sunlight in the form of my joys, my fears, my sadness and my secrets. and when they go away or disappear from my life, i lose a small piece of what makes me me - and i am only left with what they have passed on to me.

there is only so much growth hormones, enzymes, nutrients, and energy i can invest in new apples after which i become completely spent. and that is when i stop bearing fruit and i become, just simply a tree riddled with scars on the branches which the apple stems have left behind. and this is what is happening right now. i feel as though autumn's around the corner even though it is very nearly summer now.

as easily as i can make new friends, i have come to realise that i can lose or let go of them as easily too. when that happens, pieces of me get lost in the undercurrents of the lives in which we lead. and when every single piece of me is dispersed and gone, i will become no more; just a conglomerate of everything that has been.

and so to end this rather 'WTF?!' post, i present to you a picture of a bruise.



i got this baby at Little Bay after i fell unceremoniously and embarassingly on the rocks. i can't help that i bruise easily.

Week 37: BRAGGING RIGHTS!

[Edit: ok i remembered what i wanted to say, just when i was about to fall asleep but i was too lazy to walk out to type it out. what i wanted to say was *drumroll* i am so lazy that when my body is dying from dehydration as a result of a night of binge drinking, i'd rather frantically swallow whatever saliva that i can muster instead of getting out of bed and getting myself a cup of water...no matter how much my body is screaming for H2O, if the bottle isn't by my bed then tough luck, it ain't gonna happen!]

if you knew me well, you would know that i am extremely lazy. i am so lazy that i'd rather buy $8 take-aways from the Thai restaurant near my place just so i wouldn't do any potential washing up (eh? ya, i'm too busy to cook nowadays, or so i tell myself). i am so lazy that i'd rather eat muesli and yoghurt for dinner than have to go down and buy $8 take-away OR cook. i am so lazy that i would only do my laundry under desperate circumstances (read: no more clean underwear sigh). ok. i had another 'i am so lazy that...' sentence that was REALLY GOOD but i lost my train of thought, and now, i can't be fucked to remember what it was. if i remember, i will write it below as a post-script.

anyway, as i was saying, i am a very lazy person by nature. if it requires effort, i'll take a raincheck. unless i am in an exceptionally good mood. or if it's something that actually inspires and motivates me, like post-processing photos or alcohol, for example (Ed. - However, lately i've been slowing down with the picnik as well as any inclination for ROH hmmm). hah, no la, i was just kidding about the latter. so, we have now established that i was probably a sloth in my past life.

when it comes to education and my studies, my true nature never fails to shine forth brightly. to be honest, i don't think i've ever studied the way TPL, Hongz and WK did. sure, i studied i.e. i read through my notes a week before my exams, but i have never studied, you know?

throughout my primary school years, i do not recall a single instance in which i studied, not even for UPSR. i would go to school, pretend that i was the pink Power Ranger (up to standard 3 la please after that i matured sigh), come home and do whatever homework that was required and then plonk myself in front of the tv set. yet for some miraculous yet possibly unholy reason, i would often come out pretty much tops in the school even though i was adopting this slacker sort-of lifestyle. notice that i said, 'pretty much tops' and not 'tops' because i have never been top in anything but that's not to say my grades were shabby because i'd consistently be in the top 3 every single year during my primary years. chewaaahh bangga. who cares aiya primary school was easy like fucks la.

when i went on to high school, this same attitude continued. i studied only when i needed to i.e. a few days before my exams. my parents gave up on me and declared that they were disowning me because they would return from a hard day's work to find me sitting in front of the tv with my feet propped up on the chair watching Nikelodean or MTV (or, God forbid, Lizzie McGuire) while TPL pored over the Fokus Pelangi Sains Tingkatan 3 Buku Rujukan (or Sasbadi. sometimes she brings both to school). they would wring their hands and exclaim SEE TPL!? WHY YOU NOT STUDYING LIKE HER?! THERE'S NO HOPE FOR YOU!! (ok, i made up the last part, but i'm pretty sure they said something along those lines). but, try as i might, i honestly couldn't be fucked. i was in a very comfortable position. i mean, i wasn't in the top 3 anymore...i wasn't even in the top 10! but i was in the top 20 and that was good enough for me HAHAHA who cares la wtf i'm one of the top 20 students in my school which had about 600-700 students in my year so that means i fall within the 97 percentile. i can live with that. and i did it without compromising tv time (and my soul)!

then when i enrolled in SAM, Taylors, i realised how inadequate i was. in some incredible twist of fate, i ended up being in a class full of smart people. for once i felt like i had to keep up with the Jones'. when Ms Logesh, our Specialist Maths teacher, passed around a piece of paper asking us to write down our Trial SPM Add Maths score, I LIED ABOUT MY SCORE! i wrote that i got A2 even though i had a B3 because everyone else had written A2s and A1s and i felt intimidated and didn't want to seem like the class dunce. bah. throughout the first quarter of the year, i tried to keep up with the brains but it was fucking stressful la! i'd work really hard and come home and revise and shit AND WHAT HAPPENED i fail my first 2 common tests and mid-sem for spec maths. that was when i realised this studying thing wasn't meant for me and i started hanging out at Club 7 and The Rack playing pool almost every other day after class. sorry mom and dad, i know i said it was raining damn heavy in subang hence i couldn't come home early but really i was playing pool with Andy and Wilson. and in the end, i didn't come out too shabby. my final TER score meant that i was within the 93 percentile (YEAH BABY!) and that was enough to secure me a spot in USYD doing marine science. saved once more!

ok you probably get the idea now. the same happened in university. not much studying = alright grades. perhaps i was just lucky...who knows?!

ANYWAY, for my honours, i did a 180-degrees about-turn. i turned over a new leaf. fuck, i turned over a new forest! i've never worked so hard for something in all my life. i lived, breathed and slept sea urchins. i sold my soul to the Byrne Lab. i mortgaged my sanity to the climate change cause. i allowed eyebags to take up residence under my eyes for fucks' sakes! i worked so hard that my poor little beating heart was bleeding and i abraded the skin off my fingers, figuratively AND literally (if you ask me, i will show you my left hand - i have no more fingerprints on that hand now. world of crime, here i come!).

i studied like i never studied before. for the first time in my years of education, i actually watched the sun rose beyond the rooftops as i researched and read and typed out my thesis. i finally pulled what i have always referred to as the elusive all-nighter, something that i thought as highly-impossible and had as much probability of occurring as Big Foot walking in to McDonald's to order a soft-serve cone before it headed off to the Heritage Row on Jalan Dooraisamy. i did all this because i wanted that first-class Honours. i wanted it so bad. SO BAD.

which is why, come 29 May 2009, i will be graduating as Melanie Ho, BSc. (Marine Science) Hons. 1st Class.

woot baby!

even if it meant that, in the event that i lose my head and right hand and no one can identify my remains because my left hand is devoid of finger prints, IT WAS WORTH IT! fingerprint-less left hand or not, i can be a persona non grata or jane doe but do i give a fuck!? first class, baby!

p.s. ok no i still cannot remember what that 'i am so lazy that..' sentence was so i'm just gonna head on to bed. and no, actually, having no fingerprints on my left hand might prove to be a challenge when i'm renewing my malaysian passport...ah fuck.

p.p.s. i am not advocating to people who are still studying to abandon their studying habits and lead a lifestyle of hedonism. what i'm trying to say is that not studying actually worked better for me...plus i guess i was just lucky, and i am, by nature, easily satisfied. my motto has been and will always be (except for 2008 wtf) asalkan tak fail, sudah (translation: as long as i don't fail, enough).

p.p.p.s. in case you didn't notice, 1st class BABY!

one more hurdle to cross

after tomorrow, i'm all yours!


WHEE!

Week 36: The Finish Line

so this is it. to be honest, i was expecting some sort of fanfare, or angels' choruses, perhaps? no? asking for too much? i'm not entirely sure - i guess i was just hoping for SOMETHING to definitively inform me that, yes, you can stop now.

well, i had nothing of that sort. all i had was...relief? yea, definitely some sort of quiet relief. it was kinda anti-climactic actually. i know i'd joked with my mom that the first thing i would do was to buy a bottle of tequila from the bottle shop and finish it. by myself. but all i really want to do now is to curl up and go to bed.

talking about bed, i had a very bad dream last night. and i woke up with this overwhelming sense of sadness and dread - as though all my happiness had been sucked out. and the dream has been hanging over my head like a dark cloud ever since. although, to be honest, it has probably been hanging around for a long time now. perhaps i've been so busy the past few weeks that, cloud or no cloud, my days had to go on. but now that my mind is its own free person again - maybe it has decided to bring to life that previous gloom? i mean, dreams often DO become reality, right?

sorry i can't show you any photos of the finished product because this laptop has no card reader and i have no cable for the camera. but i can assure you that it is beautiful.

[ok i actually wrote on 23 Oct but i didn't post it up because i thought it would be highly inappropriate if i showed pictures of myself posing about in dresses instead of writing! however, in my defence i write better at night anyway and since i've completed ALL MY WRITING NOW i can finally unleash this without feeling guilty..ok who am i kidding no one actually fucking cares]

so, the story is: last saturday was a really good day for me. i had completed my third chapter leaving me with only 1.5 more to write up before i called it quits. the sun was shining, the sky was clear and the weather was a toasty 30degC. and since it was saturday, the Glebe Markets were in full swing! everything seemed perfectly coordinated for me to venture out for a stress-free day of mindless nothings - which was exactly what i did.

ANYWAY what i'm trying to say is that i finally did some shopping. and it was good. and i'm really pleased and happy with my purchases so i've decided to show them off (not in a show-off way but more of a just to share some of my happiness kinda way although i don't know how happy this would make you feel but ah...). and to mitigate the heart-attack my mom and dad is undoubtedly feeling right this very moment after reading the above lines, i will include the price of said purchases.



$5 I KNOW RIGHT?!



$5 for the cardigan and $5 for the blue slip underneath i am invincible.



$30...but we aren't complaining! or are we? hmmmm. no la actually i am not.



$20...not bad right?