sweet dreams are made of these..

simplyeuphoria : you never try, you never know!! says:

i had the craziest dream last night

simplyeuphoria : you never try, you never know!! says:

i dreamt that you called me, and demanded me to fly down to new zealand like PRONTO

simplyeuphoria : you never try, you never know!! says:

and i did

simplyeuphoria : you never try, you never know!! says:

and we went skiing somewhere on some island

simplyeuphoria : you never try, you never know!! says:

and we had durian when we finished

simplyeuphoria : you never try, you never know!! says:

HAHA!!!

 

 

 

and do you want to give your heart away so easily

i read through a magazine today, the first one since i came. it’s a magazine because the centrefold had pretty dresses and shoes and sunnies scattered around, colours red orange green black with prices and where-to-get-it-froms. and i miss my dresses.

i miss warmth, heat, sun that makes me glad i’ve got the perfect dress on today and shines and i smile to myself as i walk down the bricked path towards the admin block under the shade of our stately trees. i miss my dresses, most of which are hanging clammy (such a horrible word to experience) and forlorn and (royally) taking up all the hanging space in my little two door(ed) wardrobe.
brackets parathesis curvy lines.

other things i have been doing-
friday nights have been the best so far. i tapao dinner and rush to catch the last number 18 to ramsey house, a wonderfully cosy sofay cafe place that masquerades and leads a double life; in the day it smells of coffee and business, other times it has our laughter and chitchat.

i’ve learnt the meaning of chitchat here; it’s an awful lot of words with the person who happens to be standing close by or who has walked up. chitchat means grabbing the first topic that comes to your mind and going from there, after the mandatory how was your days have been exchanged. i have learnt to ask in reply. there are a lot of smiles and nods in chitchat, not all of them worth that much. perhaps there’s a secret hope they hold- that by acting interested, there is a chance that feigned interest will turn real. perhaps. i don’t know these things. but chitchat is fine enough with icf people, i feel comfortable with them.

so we chit and chat till various times pass. last week it was ten, this past friday it was midnight. i get sent home, and check out what’s happening in dirty helen.

last week it was spontaneous wrestling in the lounge, where i jumped in and got thrown so much my piercing came unloose and slid off my eyebrow. i’m amazed, and thankful; amazed that the ball bearing could turn so many rounds against the carpet (where i was being tossed around) when all my daily attempts to remove it have failed, and thankful that it slipped off the way it did- it could have so easily caught on someone’s button hole and ripped out.
this week karaoke was still going on when i got back, so it was spirited yeowing of beach boy’s aruba, jamaica, ooh i wanna take ya and grease’s summer lovin’, had me a blast, all the way down to backstreet boy’s all you people can’t you see can’t you see and most horrendous of all is our memory of enthusiastically participating to HIT ME BABY one more time! accompanied with equally embarrassing hand actions. i suppose we had our own mambo night.

almost done.. did i write too much? just-
oh, a final question. how does skype work?

there is just one life

i would that there were time enough for me to speak of, and extol the experiences of grace, of spirit, of love. to admit to failures and stumbles, where i’m sorry, i couldn’t echo the line there’s no need to complicate our time, because i’m still trying to reconfigure it all.

but there is something else, there always is that great and grand line, that sings hope and all that makes the heart soar and uplift the mind, the line to trust and put my faith in, that. there is a one day, there is a betterness, there is a higher throne

a not-girlfriend

April is in my mistress’ face
April is in my mistress’ face
My mistress’ face

April is in my mistress’ face

and July in her eyes hath place

July in her eyes
her eyes hath place

Within her bosom
Within her bosom

Is September.

But in her heart But in her heat but in her heart her heart

A cold December

But in her heart But in her heart But in her heart her heart her heart

A cold december

this thing called time

a beautiful teacher, as beautiful as the two katy had, where

“There are two teachers in the school,
  One has a gentle voice and low,
And smiles upon her scholars, as
  She softly passes to and fro.
Her name is Love; ’tis very plain
She shuns the sharper teacher, Pain.

“Or so I sometimes think; and then,
  At other times, they meet and kiss,
And look so strangely like, that I
  Am puzzled to tell how it is,
Or whence the change which makes it vain
To guess if it be – Love or Pain.

lessons i have learnt, sometimes little, sometimes simple. and sometimes, it’s really a matter of expecting these lessons, so that when it comes, i am aware. aware is a complicated word, but it fits enough. but- i promised photos.

eeps. i didn’t realise they’d come out like that. i’ll try again on another place, or something.

 

in other words, my mind marked the month long anniversary of my transition here by dreaming, last night. we do not put much significance into dreams, but mine was clear enough. last night, i dreamt that i got married.

marrying was fun enough, i suppose, although my marriage was combined with a wedding dinner. it seemed to me that my marriage, for some reason i could not fanthom, was an arranged one. i did not know my groom; although i chatted with him like i would have meeting anyone new. i suppose we got along well enough for the marriage. i recall that my husband (!) was a career focused man, so wealth was not going to have been a problem. we were hurried to the upper deck after the ceremony (did i get married on his private yatch?) to watch his surprise for me, fireworks on water. i was happy, but pensive. my wedding was attended by so few. did no one else know that i was getting married.

i’m writing with a rainbow in front of me, and an airplane flying out of it

 

this was the closest photo i could find, although my airplane was flying in a different direction. in any case.

i have been spending much of today in the library (i’m there now, and it was out of the windows in front of me that i saw the pretty picture), if only because it is the warmest place in wellington i know. i am cat-like these days; i seek out warmth, and rub myself against it. i snuggle up to heaters in hall, run my hands along warm walls and almost- purr when washing my hands in warm water. even if the idea of a cat purring while washing hands is quite funny.

my legs are aching, my mind is playing amazing grace. my heart wishes somewhat that it was on that plane going home. not that i’m homesick; thankfully, i am not and haven’t been. perhaps it’s regular contact with everyone back home that helps more than i know. either way, it’s the food i miss most. people everywhere have been telling me that durians are insanely cheap now, and i am terribly upset. i thought i didn’t miss durians, but phone calls about durians and facebook wall posts are having an adverse effect on me. if i were back home…

but i’m here, with aching legs and a mind still hearing echoes of us singing amazing grace. amongst other things, yours truly has actually joined the hall choir. not that i think i’m any good, but it has opened up a bigger hole in hearts, and now ben, sarah and i have started singing sounds and words, even in the dining room. what i was thinking of though, when i was back in my room last night, is that i miss singing with my brother, and he playing the guitar.

aching legs are no surprise, just the results of inter-hall netball and my first ulty session on monday night. i enjoyed ulty.

alright. on an unconnected note, i am full, and classes are starting in ten minutes. i hope alan allows me to go vegatarian tonight. pumkin pie!

where are my words

enough of stories

Reflections: I’m still in the settling phase, I have been since I came. At first it was settling in new zealand the country, now it’s settling into uni.

To tell of all the spider webbed connected factors I am currently setting in place would take too long, and too much of me. I tire more easily these days. How do I expand my energy here? Mostly, living with the weather, and finding words.

The weather is pale and washed out- funnily enough, the precise words I predicted before I came. How do I say it- the sun is weak, and ignored. I would say ignoble. Not that it is unappreciated. It is, but the sun has no strength here. So new zealanders live with a pale sun, and winter- winter is as winter does; washed out. Everything is cold, translucent, less tangible here. A little more dead, a little more ghostly.

So, hullo rachel of singapore, enveloped in this uncertain and dreaming place, slow down too. Filled within and without by this atmosphere, withdraw into more of yourself, your eyes curtained by a silken fringe, bangs slowly growing like tendrils unfurling gently, unseeing.

I’m also fighting to surround myself with words, pull them back from the swallowing sea, claim and struggle for them as mine. The weather works against me; it swamps my insides, nudging words out, staking the vacated space. Maybe one day I will dissipate as a nymph, a dryad, an immaterial, damp, girl-woman. But for now, these days, I have words floating around my head, just out reach of my waving, searching hair. The words that have been unjustly evicted, I have nothing as replacement. So I shrug helplessly at my room mate sometimes, and apologise for my inability to fill in the blank in the sentence I wanted to say. What I should have told her was, I have lost the words, they have been kidnapped from me, but I will eventually get them back.

Surely though, by the end of a fortnight, I will be more certain, more definite. And consequently, more articulate. Articulacy, or the measure of one’s volume of word tenants one has, is affected by confidence. No wonder Guildenstern panicked, and was flustered, and Rosencrantz could never comprehend.

A what’ztheword for it: I have here with me three factors, fragiledly linked. One, assuredness is in a causual relationship with articulacy. Two, understanding follows neither. Therefore, none of them are actually attached.

Guildenstern was inarticulate because he understood the absurdity of the situation, and desired reassuring. Rosencrantz was articulate because he was calm, and he was calm because he had no understanding. I hereby conclude that the analysis of language is a fool’s job. We should all just speak it, and make it up, as we go along.

I miss the library back in nus. I am proud of it, proud of the red carpets, the vibrant colours that snuggle around the panels and surfaces. The library is well planned, and the staff truly aware of the temperance and needs of the young. So they are smiling and brisk, and do not mind us taking food to eat at the Red Room. A lounge, really. We have a lounge in the library, and voluptuous sofas everywhere.

Then again, I am generally proud of being in the national university of singapore. We have a beautiful campus, with spreading, dignified rain trees taking care of our greenery, ent-like. The buildings are unsystematic and short cuts are there fore one’s exploration. Prof Mendis scoffs and calls the university as built by “a mad dutchman”, but I fail to concur. There is wandering beauty in buildings that climb, corridors that are attached but mismatched, paths that lead into strange doors. Perhaps it is simply a case of an arts student going against an engineering professor.

an unconcluded conclusion

the bestest day

i am feeling tremulous.

i resolved yesterday, to leave off complaining about the boredom of this place, and learn to enjoy stillness and quiet. today, i have just spent what i think is the best.est day i’ve had since i came.

many musics. concertos after concertos, sitting out on the balcony, where i can see rolling hills not unlike the ones julie andrews climbed atop, singing the hills are alive, with the sound of music. and for awhile, they were. we started off with a trumpet piece by an eric american, and then onto tonal music, a scenary piece, appalachian spring, although i think the composer’s name might be aaron copeland now. in any case. such a wonderful fit.

we had more trumpet pieces, and then a very complicated piano movement by a russian dude “with massive hands”, according to sarah. then for some reason, the theme from jurassic park.

my favourites though, were the last two. a gituar concerto, and then diagro for strings, though perhaps i got the italian wrong. it’s supposed to mean slow. i know so little.
still. i really liked it. i did. i closed my eyes and listen with my heart, that moved and tensed and clenched with each rising score. we ended with a polish composition about war, sung by a british saprano that sarah didn’t really like. she did sound sad though. we were hours in the lounge, just listening.

the birds were the best though. they sang somewhere over the balcony. and were a pretty ending.

i had such, a lovely day. i would like more of these.

and here you go: the gray warbler

“Our most perfect winter and early spring weather comes when the wind blows directly off the snow-clad Ruahine Range, the nights are frosty, the days are still, the lake a sheet of glass, the blue sky cloudless. During weather such as this in early August, everywhere on the run may be heard the long, tremulous trill of the Warbler, rather like a cricket’s cry than a bird’s,” writes Guthrie–Smith.

“Presently, from some manuka thicket, a sombre plumaged little bird will emerge, light on some topmost twig, and pour forth to three–quarters of the globe — for in his ecstasy he nearly sings a circle — this faint sweet trill that heralds fuller spring.

“Although a plentiful species on the run, even in winter the warbler’s presence about the homestead is infrequent. During spring he is even more rarely seen; he has then, like all the native species, retired to breed in deeper solitude than a New Zealand homestead can afford, but though gone, he has not gone far away, and his faint song is still distinctly audible from the house.

“In some dark manuka thicket his pear–shaped nest is built, or deeply set in some dense branched bush. The nest itself is not unlike that of the British long–tailed tit, similar in the neat finish and feather lining, but our New Zealander has often a tiny portico above, or little ledge beneath, his entrance hole. The five or six eggs are sometimes almost quite white, sometimes they are freckled like a wren’s, with tiny spots at the thicker end. The warbler sits close, and often when feeling for eggs or young I have touched the old bird in her nest. The youngsters grow with great rapidity, and for some time after quitting the nest they may be seen all together, haunting the vicinity of their old home. Watching the parents and brood together thus in a family party, the young able to feed themselves, though still accepting food and all very merry and lively and busy, gives the impression that this last week of companionship must be one of the happiest episodes in the lives of parent birds. The cares and dangers of incubation are past, the labours of feeding and rearing over, whilst there still remains just sufficient responsibility to excite the parental instincts. The young, like children to whom each hour provides new matter of wonder and interest, are content in the exercise of their new developed functions, their facile captures and brief flights.

“Then comes a day at last when the warblers begin to think of their second nest, and again in early summer, as in early spring, couples may be seen playing and fluttering in the glades, poised in the warm air, and again may be heard poured forth at every stage of their courting tour that faint, sweet, tremulous trill, so unlike the note of any other native bird…”

half an hour to midnight

i have learnt to shrug my shoulders, and say, bo pian, just tahan. it’s true, what ben said. if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. cold fingers don’t bother me much now, not unless they affect me, like my typing now. i have to rely on memory of where the keys are, since i can’t feel them. or at night, when i’m going to bed. cold fingers in a warming bed are not exactly the nicest things in the world.

i have also become more fierce in my love for singlish. i am exasperated that these ang mos cannot seem to grasp the sentence structure of ‘then how?’, which seems to me so obvious, so plausible, and so logical. silly people.

dear wayne, if you’re reading this, please know that you’ve got someone here caring about you all the way from nz. rag is hard, and you being head is harder. this is from me, to say that i’m supporting eusoff ALL THE WAY, and that the other halls can forget about the shield. (I had to be politcally correct)

(:

it’s midnight, i shall peel myself off the computer now. slowly, slowly, saying goodnight and goodbye to various people, and rearranging my bangs now and then. they are now touching my eyes, and are quite nice. i would like to keep them, but then i am tired of looking like a perennial 16 year old.