tadaima

back in SG! feeling both happy and sad -- actually feeling quite happy to be back and see familiar faces and places, but also very sad because: Scotland!!! :'( I miss you already. Yes, I have what they apparently call DSL: Deep Scottish Love.

wrestling with the 1600+ photos I currently have (crazy, right!), and my annoying Mac OS that's making all the transferring from one medium to another difficult.

but here's a prelude (to the full album that I'll hopefully get to working!):

Tulips at Keukenhoff, Amsterdam

This is one of my favourite photos 

because a good photo is a combination of preparation and opportunity!

Near a clog-making factory in Amsterdam.

Staffa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Off the coast of Scotland. 

Though we didn't manage to spot puffins, 

the whole isle itself was just awesommmmme.

Just look at those rocks (i.e. hexagonal basalt columns). 

The Quiraing on Isle of Skye was breath-taking! 

(My sister is in the picture to give a sense of scale.)

The last time I was there with E, the weather was misty, which gave another totally cool effect, 

but this time: the clear weather gave superb views from every angle. 

Gosh, just beautiful, really.

---

A bit unrelated but I just have to blog about it: on the plane journey home,

I caught a Japanese movie -- seems to be a pattern, doesn't it?

When I returned from Spain, I remember raving about Bokura ga Ita that played on the plane too.

This time, it was Orange, another growing up movie 

that left me in tears throughout the last third of it.

Like I said, trust the Japanese to make the sweetest, the most nostalgic, 

the most heartbreaking, growing up stories. 

This manga adaptation is about a girl 

who receives a letter from herself ten years in the future. 

The older version of her tells her to do things different so that she will not have regrets.

It's definitely about love, but it's also about friendship, and sacrifice, 

and just being there for the people you love, so that we all know we're not alone.

Fare thee well, Isle of Skye

I'm afraid this will become a habit or something -- coming here to this beautiful, beautiful corner of the world to get away.



We had a day on Skye today, and I revisited the corners I saw 6 years ago and they are still jaw-dropping and amazing. I don't think anyone could get tired of seeing the views in this place. It's too bad I can't seem to navigate my way around my phone to post any photos properly on blogspot. Not that any photo can do any justice to the beauty.

I'm back now in the tiny fishing village of Plockton (nearby Skye) and this place is seriously tiny. There's like what, one winding street, three restaurants and that's it! Haha. And then we just have an endless array of houses and cottages -- one of which we're staying at -- and the peaceful blue sea.

If my feelings were colour I think it'd be blue-green right now. A sort of calm bordering on melancholy. Which is... as I think on it, probably my default colour.


you know the feeling when your heart has made a decision and your brain is only just catching up? here's another one of mine: I'm coming to see you again, Skye! I don't know when and I don't know how, but this goodbye isn't forever......

I wandered lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 

When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host, of golden daffodils; 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine 

And twinkle on the milky way, 

They stretched in never-ending line 

Along the margin of a bay: 

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced; but they 

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: 

A poet could not but be gay, 

In such a jocund company: 

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought 

What wealth the show to me had brought: 

For oft, when on my couch I lie 

In vacant or in pensive mood, 

They flash upon that inward eye 

Which is the bliss of solitude; 

And then my heart with pleasure fills, 

And dances with the daffodils. 

William Wordsworth

Hi! Posting while in transit in the Western Isles of Scotland! (:

I thought I wouldn't appear here at all for weeks but then... Why not!

The highlands are too gorgeous for words.