A response to an e-mail my mother forwarded to me:

A couple of days ago, I was sent this e-mail by my mother. It was forwarded to me from my mother's friend:

To refine Gold, intense heat is needed.

The Gold ores are heated to their melting points. Gold melts at 1102 degrees C.

When the material is melted, borax or soda ash is stirred into the crucible to bind with the impurities. 

The liquid is poured into a mold, where the larger impurities float to the top as slag. The more dense gold sinks to the bottom.

When the mold has cooled, the gold can be broken off from the slag.

Returning from the Wake for Guan Teik's mother last Sunday.

I could not help but to reflect on these two sentences:

""The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, 

       but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.""

The effect of mourning to the soul, 

is the same as the refining process to the Gold ore.

It stir up deep seated fear, insecurity, guilt and suppressed emotions.

These toxic emotions, 

like the impurities in melted gold ore, come floating up to the surface When we mourn.

They must be confronted, dealt with, detoxified, separated and thrown away.

Only then, we can be made pure in the spirit.

Pleasure to the senses,  

will only temporarily numb our pain, and 

momentarily deflect our attention from the hurt that is buried deep within.

They remain lurking in the dark recesses of our soul, 

ever ready to leap out and haunt us when triggered.

Gold, in order to be made pure,

must go through the furnace of fire.

Our soul, in order to be set free,

must endure the process of mourning.

A wake.. though it is a gathering to honor the dead. It is very much...

A wake up call for the living.

Here is my response.

Dear Mum,


To say that fleeting happiness was something foolish to relish in would be to state that it is foolish to crave the happiness that comes with chasing dreams. It would be undermining the warm feeling you get in your stomach after you have had a good meal. It would be dismissing the smiles that are put on your face when you get a hug, when you live, laugh, love, play, all the things that, while quick and temporary, are etched into time forever.


Even if these are things that we won't remember for eternity, these moments are also the ones that we hold onto when things fall apart, when the glass walls shatter and the mirage breaks, when we are thrust into the claws of adversity. These are the things that keep us going when we are alone at night and empty inside; these are the pieces of the puzzle that motivate us to chase something better, chase something more. It would be naïve to assume that when you wake up the next day it'll be happiness and sunshine; but some day, the rain will subside and you'll see the edges of a rainbow.


Before that though, it's the knowledge that things won't always be bad that keeps us going. Yes, we might have deep fears instilled within us of death and dying; what would it be like to not exist? What would it be like to fall asleep one day and not wake up the next? Muslims believe that the soul stays conscious within the body even after you die- what would it be like to be trapped in a coffin, that lifeless contraption of metal and wood? Thoughts like these are what make people turn to religion for the answers, an assurance that in this world where nothing is permanent, at least the last fibres of your being will be lasting; somewhere up there, in a hole in the sky. But what many don't realize is that the thought that we might not last a lifetime doesn't mean that our legacy won't.


That's why we do irrational things, silly things that might not make sense at a given time. Finish a novel. Write a play. Talk to our siblings. Hug a friend. The small things, the brief moments that put a smile on your face, the little things that add up to make a person human. Every word that spills from your lips has the potential to lighten someone's day or darken their whole life, and a general principle that I try to hold myself to is to make my mark for at least one person while I'm still here. To change things for the better, even if it's just to make myself feel good.


I'm in a foreign country sloughing away at a course I hate. Sometimes, I miss my parents, I miss my bed. But what keeps the fire burning is the fact that in three years, even if I might not see it now, it'll be worth it in some way or another. Even if all I learn is that law is a stupid course and that I should never force it onto my future generations, at least I had three years to learn it, and three years to experience the city of my dreams. London! It might be a childlike naivete that keeps me holding on, but my hands are still there, and I'll stay there grappling for something better. Even if you are motivated by sadness or fear, it is the light at the end of the tunnel that makes people slog, isn't it?


And it might be a cliché, but let me end my message with the age-old statement:


"Life isn't measured by the number of breaths you take, but the number of times things take your breath away."

So. What's your take? What do you think of life and happiness?

What do you think of life as a whole?

Stress-

Is one of the worst things that I could bring upon myself.

Funnily enough, it's one of the last things that anyone would expect me to feel by looking at me on the surface.

THE PHOTO MEME.

1. Take a picture of yourself right now
2. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture...
3. Post the photo with no EDITING!

Because this blog isn't quite my blog until it has a photo of myself on it.

I tag anyone who reads this. Which isn't very many.

taken from PostSecret:

This postcard made me smile, because it's exactly how I feel. Not every morning when I wake up, but when I take a step back and evaluate the person I am now compared to the person I used to be... See, sometimes I miss home but there are the days where I look around me and think "Damn. I. Love. England." Especially now the sun is out and the weather is getting good, I can walk around in a sweater and jeans without having a throw a thick coat on top, and it's 8:30 pm and it's just nearing sunset...

Last night my grandfather called and asked where I was. Instead of saying "my room" I answered "home". It was a Freudian slip, but still, sometimes I do wonder whether it's that. That I've managed to find my place in the world, a home away from home. Even though I miss the hot weather and the good food, there are some things about this place that make it special. And even though I say I left a part of my heart in Malaysia, England might just claim yet another bit of it too. That doesn't mean that I won't be happy wherever I might go- it just means that wherever I step foot on, I'll always look back, smile, and remember the person I was at a certain time, at a certain place, and that that person enjoyed her life as it was.

This is me in England.

This too. Yes, it is fun rolling down hills.

And this is me back home. Bad photo, but it was the best picture in my Facebook archive that really captured the Malaysian theme, okay? But that's not the point. The point is... 

I'd like to think that I'll always be making memories, be smiling and laughing and taking too many pictures as I go along, living life not the way I want it to be lived, but the way I make it so that it is worth living.

tearing down my walls ;;

whispers, they spring from the blackness of the night to
devour all life, cheer, joyful thought, drag me
out of sugar and citrus fruits to a
lulling sense of hate. induce me into a
half-drunken stupor of selfishness, self-pity, selfish self-pity,
ill will and a strange urge to gnash my teeth into a pillow,
tear my hair out - spill my lungs out - bleed my throat dry of
words unspoken and feelings unthreaded into words

these thoughts don't mix with people, darling. they only scream when
i'm alone

there is a prize like a mirage, an image that seems to be within my
grasp, a snapshot of a future that i just can't see as real. and as the
days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into years, the
seconds melt into puddles of sludge. pull up your wellington boots,
it's time to go dancing in the rain, or is it not? prancing in a
thunderstorm will only get you struck by lightning, pelted by hailstones or
torn up by wind. besides, it's too late to go out now-
too late at night to knock on your neighbour's door
feel human skin brush against yours as you pull her in for a hug

take these pent-up thoughts of failure and
spit on them, someone

please, anyone ;;

[pull me into your arms]

and destroy these monsters

these welled-up pits of depression,thoughts of opression;
these nightmares that creep up, these
wolves made of wispy shadows, dreams that have been
held up on a pedestal then shattered like glass, these thoughts that
come to haunt me, gnaw at the edges of my being. these things that
never hang over my head, never stare me in the face

until the hour before the dawn

This blog has been...

Inactive for quite a while.

So while I scramble for final exams and lament about the sheer stupidity of Public Law, why I don't give a flying fuck about the British Constipation, why I only get upset when most of my friends are asleep or overseas and unable to give me a physical hug, and why my cosplay troubles are not being solved by the fact that I can't find a proper Namie wig...

Here. Have some anime opening/ending songs. Because I don't know what else to say here right now. Other than the fact that I'm stressed out of my mind.

it's just one of those days

Where you feel like life has shat on you, stamped all over your bowels and drenched your head in piss. Grotesque imagery as this may be, that's how you're feeling now- it's not that anything has gone wrong, it's not that there's been anything different about this day except the usual drone of normalcy. Yet at the end of it all something or maybe someone sparked a strange kind of fury within you, a negative mass of emotion that has welled up inside and is bursting to come out.

It's not like you can ask him, ask her, ask you? These feelings are spilling out like tomato sauce on fries, gushing from your heart like a woven string of lies. You want to give out your soul but you're afraid that it'll be hurt, you want to share your feelings but you're so scared of rejection, of hate, scared of fear itself that you're holding yourself back. You aren't the best of people... You aren't pretty aren't talented aren't awesome aren't bright, you aren't anything that you wish you could be even if people keep telling you that you are.

And yet you know that this is only temporary, that when you wake up the next morning it'll be all sunshine and butterflies and smiles again. You're not a depressing person but sometimes you feel that way, you feel guilty for being that way because there are people whose lives are worse than yours who face every day with a laugh. Which is what you do when you don't think too much... So why are you being such a whiny brat? Why can't you just accept what you have and run with the flow? Why do you hesitate, hold everything back?

... Why?