on the other side of fence.

-courtesy of deviantart.com

freedom! The end of one year in architecture has come/ the release of the spring, the unleashing of tension, the backlash of suppression. hahaha. well.. right now it hardly feels like it. somehow, without the governing rules of what to do, when to do what, what NOT to do (because other things like work/ church commitments etc etc must be completed)... those rules are all gone, and i can do absolutely anything, anytime. so.. i'm abit stumped. haha. sounds stupid right. anyway, these two days have been fully slack. yesterday sini, chongji, yang and hazwan came to my place after their lunch at raffles place, and we played bridge. lol. it is PROVEN that anyone who partners with hazwan loses! heh. then we played SPEED and got all hot and bothered because there was all the frantic card snapping and shuffling. you know what speed is? no? nooob. :(
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today i went out with amanda heng and bumped into yuting in town. her exams arent over yet, and she's already found a job! from recruit express. hahaha. she said she needed to be "forward-looking." hilarious. yes, so amanda and i talked about alot of stuff, especially since we haven't really gone out in a loong time, and had loads to catch up on.
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two nights ago i had one of those dreams, i awoke because i heard a girl sobbing behind my right ear. but.. i don't feel like recounting it again here. if it's a spiritual attack, well, i'm not giving any more attention to you than you deserve. there's worship pract this friday. EUUCK! a fly landed on me. there's this magnetic force field which attracts all insects into my home. last night, i saw two of them mating in my backyard. the size of mini cockroaches. dad promptly used the yellow toilet slipper to return them to dust before they could propagate. "Hail, earth!" then, there's the MINI ants which is smaller than the . full. stop. at the end of this sentence. there's the lizards which sing their chorus every night after 2am, the light flies that buzz around our heads and nest in daryl's hair, the cockroaches which i kill periodically with the newspaper, the moth which camps on our wall, the mosquitoes which mum uses lemongrass essence oil to deter, and countless other unidentifiable species.
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ooh. i just ran 4.4k and i stink so ima gonna bathe. so many of my friends are falling sick, tis a bad sign, forsooth! get well soon. and all you people who still have exams.. post-exam freedom is a trifle overrated, don't worry!

the irony is

the difference between what God tells us, and what we tell God.

he says, "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." psalm 46

and we tell him..

-psalm 83.

and the difference between the two is 37 verses what we call humour, or perhaps, love.
(because only love can make up for the shortfall.)

when the divine sparks off contact with the meagre, there's a strange sort of exchange.

there!

monster of an electroacoustic analysis.

the words are monstrously big and gangly "spectromorphological archetypes"

the essay is monstrously long and tedious- 12 hours today plus 5 yesterday

ok, back to architecture construction- many many drawings little words. i like.

silence

In the silence you wait, you hunger, you listen. It begins to sound, a faint insistent ringing. The thirsty lap it up as water, their sole respite from the barrenness. Slowly. The dust gather back onto the ground from their wayward drifting, the wind tires of its frolics and is still. The sun retreats behind its mute, thickened blanket unseen, and in this desert of sound and being, is you.

.

you are poignantly alone, and strangely free.

seveninventions!

any more, anybody?

daring to be vulnerable

" two houses stretched apart on a hill"
medium: colour pencil on mounting board

is strength. i am cringing now because my dad just made me fruit juice- celery + apple but more celery than apple, tons more! i asked him how much celery he added he said 'one whole bunch'. no wonder. cos it was turning yellow already so he kindof dumped the whole packet in. celery has that uncanny effect of shooting up your nose and shooting down your throat and all you taste screams CELERYCELERYCELERY. but even though my face is cringing and my throat is shooting my heart is warm and fuzzy because dad rocks. he bought me chocolate this afternoon when he went to the petrol kiosk to top up fuel hahaha i am not saying this cos i'm bribed.


+
wellwell hello exams in 7 days. i'm gonna have to stay really focused this week and cut out whatever's not necessary, like bpf mentioned in the car ride,

'it's about saying no to some things.'
that really resonated with me. got that, buddy. maybe because the 'some' is vague and begs definition. what is the some i have to let go off? not only the things like meetings which i have to go for, but also the things which my clockhands clutch on tightly to, which will hurt in the giving up.

+
1/3rd of the celery pulp to swallow. i swam 28 laps yesterday, love it when the sun is out and the pool is empty. glorious! glittering! water is one of God's best creations i think. then we try to imitate it and come up with newater. the most irritating pool-poolers (like car-pool) are old men, then splashy kids. that time i was in the pool then this 30+ old man said, 'the weather's very good today huh.' i turned and wondered if he was talking to me and gave a weak "huh?" expression and swam off as fast as i could which is quite fast okay. he did look abit surprised la, maybe he mistook me for his wife or something she was somewhere else in the pool. but then, her swimsuit was like pink or something. and mine is a normal black! ok, enough.

+a burdened balance.

a pregnant silence looms larger

exhaling would spoil it-

so she holds her breath.

but soon the rotundness becomes the

belly becomes the barrier

and between both man and wife

cords are severed.

except that one, umbilical,

that holds her still, while her

doubts and discontent wrestle

and kick before her.

yet that one burden has become

her ballast, balancing her against the winds

that blow her backward. against the winds!

she stands perfectly still, windblown and tousled,

pensive and perusing,

skin taut and stretched, like a drum

prepared before a rousing arrival;

she holds her breath

amidst the wash of silence.

humanness.

I had crit this morning. It lasted from 9am to 8pm officially, but personally I only observed about 5 crits the whole day. That's because I was third in line to present, and crits are incredibly _________ so I popped in and out (the latter more than the former) intermittently. As usual, there were the usual threats by Dr. E(vil) that some would not be able make it to second year, and the common warnings for us to reconsider remaining in aki. But we, like common labrats, will obstinately refuse to be forewarned, and will stubbornly clench onto the rails of the hamster wheel for all we're worth and continue the rat race. Why oh why? Because, like anyone swinging hard on a swing in mid-flight, it is easier to sit on until the momentum, the initial surge of enthusiasm and impetus dies down, until there is no more potential energy stored in the rope-and-swing, until there is nothing left for a swing to do but to stop. And only then, is it human to step off the swing. Haha. Holding on to something in full knowledge that it will die someday- is that noble, or more infallibly foolishly human, than jumping off despite the rocking fears of a scraped knee and a fractured rib?

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I have no idea why I am typing in full sentences and proper punctuation today. Perhaps it is an inert revolt against the lowercasetypologydisease that all architecture students succumb to. architecture with a small a. For a day, at least, at the end of crit, the end of submission, the end of Design in Year 1, that is today, I will deny all semblances of kinship with this dismal camp, which despite, or perhaps because of, its grating coarseness, superficiality, banality and futility has been eating into my time, my effort, my mental capacities, my lifestyle. I would like to disown you. But like any disowned relative I still talk about you too much. ---It ends here. The ribbon cutting ceremony begins.---

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On the whimsical side of things, why is it so hard to please someone? A father, a good friend, a spouse? It's not as if we do not know that all of us are equally frail, equally human in our disabilities and discontent, equally short-fused in our temper (some more equal than others, as George Orwell says), equally selfish in our pride, equally pained, and equally, insufferably, tenderly, vulnerable. I think the answer lies in our equal foolishness, and our equal tendency to hope. Hope leads us to unfounded expectations, by which we allow ourselves a suspension of disbelief; ignore the loopholes, neglect the limitations, hope against hope that hope will prevail. Why do we pile on the expectations and set ourselves up for disappointment? Apart from a foolish but rather adorable insistence on hope, we also have a conception of what is pure and perfect, which drives us. That same inborn idea of perfection which inspires the aesthetics of art, inspires hope and expectation. Humanity paints a picture of herself which she cannot match up to, and humanity alone dissolves her colours in her weeping.

unrelated jumbles

in a .... pensive mode. i guess. no wish to start work on any of my 3 essays due nx week. First things first, the biggest burden this past week and the greatest (effective) barrier to sleep has been aki design submission, which is over! i heave a sigh of relief, that is choked halfway down my throat.

feel like being in a rambling mode, which is all ive been today, if i did talk. had a relaxing time with xuezhen, sini, and the guys today at IMM. DAISO rocks! its a haven of the most useless (read: cute) things. good for fuelling creativity. junk. haha, was on a high after submission (which was at 4pm. i left my house at 4.15pm) high as in a drugged, drawling groggyness and stupidity. haha i hope they didnt take pictures. hazwan looked like he got punched.

ive come up with a list of things aki people can do / say when they meet:
1. bitch about tutors
2. compare the number of hours they've gone without sleep
3. compare bruises and cuts
4. bad complexion. (unless you're keyang)
5. go kukus after submissio. (xuezhen you really must master your same hand/leg march. and STOP giving me static!)
6. buy each other gagging sweets the size of mothballs. so huge and indissolvable we couldnt really talk for 15 minutes. courtesy of yang.
7. sit down. cos legs are wobbly after through-the-night drafting sessions.
8. observe the way the sliding doors/ walls/ overhead bridges /shopping malls are constructed.
9. play with AUTO the CAD. cat. as in, real cat! that sneaked into our studio and has been camping there ever since.
10. nothing. just stone it. either you're tired / busy / brainstorming / contemplating the passing of near-death experience / mental designing

haha. press on! two more weeks and its the holidays youve been DYING for. things to do during the hols!
1. check out upper cross street accessory parts
2. practice drawing- sketches etc
3. finish reading that book on the shelf
4. swim! bake! run! blade!
5. learn how to sew up something?
6. KOREA!
... okay this list definitely needs to be expanded. maybe i'll write a storybook. hahahaa. and find a pseudonym like lisa elto or freddy cadbury.

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n here's something i got out from my ODJ devotional. it's nice when God speaks.

Forget the dot. there is no dot. Some of us imagine God's plan for our lives being a central red dot on the dartboard of life. The area around the red dot is the gray zone where filth begins to creep in. Step out of line, and you're messed up. Out of the dot. Does God have an individual specific plan for each of us? A specific church to attend? A specific person to marry? A specific job to pick?

And the truth is: there is no dot. If you live inside the perimeters of God's will for you, the rest of the choices are up to you. And that's a relief because many of us have blown it enough earlier on in life to be off the dot. God did not dig some ditch around the red dot and let us fall in like dead birds as soon as we disobey. the original script for Prov 3:5-6 does not say "trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths."

it says, "In all your ways acknowledge Him and he will make your paths straight (or plain)." If we open the way for him to be in our lives, he makes my choices more apparent. Where are you leaning? On whom, and on what? Questions i ask myself.