last year, i was working in the same project group with a girl who had cancer. we weren't close at all and i only got to know her because we had to work together and she was in my class for that course. after a while, she started missing classes more and we had to take on some of her project parts, but she never failed to do up her parts and send them to us. she always dressed up and put on make up and she was pretty vocal in class, asking, answering question after question, and this was one girl class participation points wouldn't really have mattered to. she passed away some time this year or last, i no longer recall.

but i suddenly thought about her today and remembered that her msn contact is still on my contact list. how many months days hours has it been since she signed in for the last time? i thought about her and i wondered about her last months days hours since the doctors told her she was going to die. i wondered about the way she received love from her parents friends boyfriend. i wondered about how she loved them. her boyfriend. i wondered about her boyfriend and how he must have really loved her and the pains and the aches they both felt in those last months hours days which nothing could ever alleviate and how they wouldn't trade it for anything because it meant more months hours days seconds nanoseconds with each other. i wondered about how each waking hour appeared to her knowing she was going to die so soon. i wondered at the immensity of the ordeal she would have gone through and how that separated her from us, mere, ordinary students concerned with internships careers success magna cum laudes and how we would never know what it was to be her or her boyfriend or her parents or her brother or sister if she had any, well at least, for most of us. i smiled as i saw her msn nick a cute abbreviation for her name followed by "aka daddy's little girl" and i wondered about that. it's funny, we leave this world but when we do, we leave EVERYTHING behind, even our msn nicknames. traces of our existence strewn across the lives of others, people we met once, people we knew our whole lives, people we never met at all. i also wondered about the rest of my contacts on my contact list, some of whom whose identities now elude me. no, it's not an obsession with the morbid and yes, most of them are probably around my age but seriously, are all those people still alive? and i wonder about random blogs, facebook friendster whatever profiles we come across randomly, and it's just possible that perhaps some of those random ones you come across belong to people who aren't in this world any longer. i don't have a summary a conclusion or a point i'm trying to well, point out. but doesn't all this just make you...wonder?

there was this thing we did in queenstown called river surfing. you hang on to this board, try to latch on to the downstream current of the whitewater river and off you go! river surfing was pretty challenging for me. i don't know why but i felt paralysed in the flippers and kept getting sucked back into eddy currents. it was so hard to join the main flow of the river. and when i actually did, i would be cruising along just fine like a pro all the way until the guides made us catch an eddy current to wait for the rest. i hated those parts, catching those eddy currents. because 1. it was so hard for me to enter them 2. it was so hard for me to exit from them. by the end of the day, every muscle in my body had gotten a good beating and stayed that way for days.

coming home feels a bit like river surfing. the river is flowing as it should, as it always has been. and you are just thrown back into its flow. and it's a struggle entering into that main flow again. those eddy currents that pull you away. those eddy currents which don't let you come back. you're stuck between those eddy currents and the main flow and it's an agonising state of limbo as you watch your peers cruise by like pros. you try to kick harder but you're kicking wrongly and being pulled back even more.

see, when we look forward to coming home, we most often visualise images from the past and take comfort in them, looking forward to experiencing those moments again. and when we get back, we get a rude shock sometimes. because things change, people change, everything changes. and we find the real picture is vastly different from those we held in memories.

i was hoping for so much. i was holding out for so much.

as i always say, oh. well.

today's song is dire strait's "so far away". i love it! the starting bassline, the way the chorus comes in, the deep vocals, the instrumentals, the lyrics. it has this really classic, carefree, bittersweet feeling and like new order songs, brings me back to sunday afternoon drives. papa always plays these cds and the music resonates through the speakers straight into my heart. and when i called home just now, he told me that he had another version of eleanor rigby which he would let me hear soon and was listening to currently. i wonder just how many versions there are. i was looking for it on youtube and heard all sorts of versions ranging from pop rock to jazz to heavy metal and techno. amazing.

my last few days in dunedin, today will be my second last and i'll spend it with pravin who'll be touching down in dunedin in approximately 12 hours or so. can't believe it. my life in singapore is like a whole other world and it'll be so strange to have someone cross over from that world into this one. it'll be strange to see him walking the streets of dunedin, sitting in my car, staying in backpackers together. it just feels like it's been forever since i was here and yet, i will be home in about a week or so.

shanny and i were just reflecting today sometime in the middle of our bimbo tai tai escapade (hey it's possible alright!) today that we might be thinking right now about how we wish we had done so many things earlier or more often or both. but we agreed that it was not really about that. the fact is, things always feel different in the last few moments. every moment takes on a different, more brilliant hue. there's a sense of urgency, revelation, intensity, a certain burst of energy and life, and no matter how many times you've touched the mimosas and watch them close as you stroll on the fields on your way home, no matter how many times you've held the hand of the one you love, no matter how many times you've sat at the same spot staring out of your window at the cars and the trees and the clouds and the people each day, these moments will still feel different when you become aware that those moments may be one of the last ones you'll have.

we were also thinking about how the most intense and extreme experiences are necessary in order for life to progress. we might be mothers one day and we might have to experience labour and the pains of childbirth to bring another life into the world some day. i can't imagine it and yet, it's universal. everyone will have to die one day, and what is more extreme than death in this life? just think about it, as insane and intense as these experiences may seem, everyone must and will go through them. you can choose to skydive, you can choose to bungy, but you can't choose to not die, which is way scarier and more thrilling than any other activity you can conjure. and no coward or hero can ever run away from that.

i know i keep getting all emo and blogging about goodbyes and the last moments and life and death. it's just that these moments inspire me the most, they awaken something in me, they teach me so much more, they put music in my heart and paint all sorts of colours i've never seen before but continually fall in love with. and i want to share this with whoever i can. grab hold of these moments, think about the awesomeness and fragility of this beautiful transient existence and what a miracle each day, each breath is. no matter how boring you feel your life is, no matter how sad an existence you think you lead, no matter how hopeless your future may seem, no matter how mundane your days have been, look beyond it all, be thankful for each and every moment you are presently in. (i really believe that a joyful heart is one that is sincerely thankful.) and love like there's no tomorrow. love like your heart is on your fire and you could just explode from it.

well, i haven't been updating much recently and i doubt i might in the near future since i'll be leaving dunedin this sunday for good, after which i will be roadtripping with pravin and shanny. and soon, i'll be back home. people keep asking me, am i sad to leave? i have this to say. i'm happy i was here. i'm happy i'm here. i'm happy i'll be home soon. i don't wish anything different from what is given to me now. in fact, i'm grateful and i trust even more that i don't have to wish things to be different at all, ever, simply because i know that i'm always given what's best for me. love always wants the best for us. and i trust completely in that love. and if i ever forget, which i so often do, please be patient with me and remind me. shake me up and pinch me silly if you have to, just don't ever let me forget.

all the lonely people, where do they all come from? all the lonely people, where do they all belong?

the beatle's eleanor rigby has been playing on repeat in my head. i wake up in the morning, walk to school for my pricing exam and i'm singing, "all the lonely people, where do they all belong?" i'm walking around after my paper, waiting to pass henry back his book, i'm singing, " all the lonely people, where do they all belong?" i come home, watch the notebook, clean my car and take a nap. and in my sleep i'm singing, "all the lonely people..yadda yadda.." and then i'm on the way to church and i'm still singing it and so it goes. then after supper at a jap bar after a night of jazz at robert burns, we are about to walk to the car. but i hear a bassline which i can't resist and follow the music as though it has cast an invisible spell on me. a band all dressed in black is playing outside lemon room at the octagon in the crisp, cool, midnight air. the old fogeys here dressed in black leather jackets and jeans holding beer bottles and cigarettes in their hands are a world apart from the old fogeys at robert burns which make you feel like you've just entered a scene from the notebook plus (quite) a couple of years later. up till the next moment, the song is perfect but unrecognisable. i sit on a bench and listen as the lead sings the last few lines of the song which brought me there, "all the lonely people, where do they all belong?"

continuities

nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
no birth, identity, form--no object of the world.
nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
ample are time and space--ample the fields of nature.
the body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,
the light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
the sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
to frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
with grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

- walt whitman