Went back to KK for some necessary admin and a visit, and also intended to pick up my books that I'd left behind -- only to discover that they were not there. I have lost them. I don't know -- I might have taken them out and then left them somewhere else not in the department; my notoriously bad memory is so unreliable. I made a shout-out to my speechie team to see if anyone knew where they were, but no one does. A whole bag of wonderful picture books that I love, like Have You Seen My Hat? and The Big Ugly Monster and The Little Stone Rabbit. The more I think on it, the more aghast I feel.

I know they are things, material things, and most of the time, it doesn't take long for me to get over lost items. But a whole pile of books, bought precisely because they were beautiful picture books; ever since I had a Kindle, I have only allowed myself to buy picture books and the very occasional reference-type book. Basically most of my favourite picture books were in that bag! Oh gosh, I think I might cry. This is so sad. All of the content of that bag easily amounts to $200+ too.



guhhhh. I was telling M earlier as she helped me hunt around the department for them; this is one of those cases where you say, they were not yours to begin with... That's why you've lost them.

😭

Happy Ramadhan!

okay let's go!

I'd saved this for quite some time 

and meant to post it in occasion of my birthday.

So here it is although several weeks late --

I have to make a separate post to separate my content -- haha.



It's a great day to be a fan! because like I said last year, guys,
BTS wasn't done conquering the music scene.

They've done it now and 

broken (Asian and kPop) barriers at the Billboard Music Awards!

This KPop band just made history at the #BBMAs pic.twitter.com/om9mebSkgE

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) May 22, 2017

Ohhh, I feel so vindicated as a fan.

And so proud to have known them before they crept into mainstream like this.

These boys are awesome as I've harped on time and again.

I read an illustrated guide of Soren Kierkegaard -- it was both comforting and depressing, haha. Comforting because, thank goodness, these existential questions are so human, and the greatest minds are plagued by them. But also depressing, because how sad is his life, ohmygodddd. And the more I identified with him, the more depressed I felt. Apparently, he was nicknamed the Eeyore of Philosophy.

It wasn't that his life situation was sad -- it was more that he failed to reconcile his thoughts with the state of the world, and it brought such misery to him. (What do they say, unhappiness is when your expectations and your reality are out of sync?) And because he was trying to sort out and figure out the best way to live life, grappling with philosophical decisions, he appeared to the outside world to squander his chances at a "normal" life.

He was concerned with what it meant to be a true Christian, or essentially a true human being i.e. what does it mean to be one self? He kept railing at larger society for being Philistines or part of The Crowd, who have avoided all self-conscious reflections about the sort of life they lead, and so content to be absorbed into the everyday world of marriage, career and respectability.

"Such people may often become very successful citizens -- but for me, they aren't mature individuals." They are contented members of the "public" but lack any real personal freedom, because they have allowed others to decide how they should live.

And this, ohmygosh -- what does it mean to be an authentic woman -- resonated with me.

Being a Muslim, I like to think that Kierkegaard, as with Confucius,

would have found greater solace in Islamic philosophy, which does grapple with all this.

From what I understand, Islam recognizes these states in people -- we have our Kierkegaard-types who contemplate Islamic concepts to mind-boggling degrees, and we also have our old-wives-type, content with following Islamic rituals carefully and busy with the living of every day life in accordance to stated laws. Both of these groups, if I recall correctly, were approved by the Prophet s.a.w.. And maybe that's it, eh? It's not about one trumping the other, is it?

As I asked my dad once when I was much younger, why then don't we all live as ascetics because they are so well-praised and strivers for spirituality? He then had me understand that, there is not one ideal, there are many.

Still, Kierkegaard was right though: for you to be free, you still have to choose; you still have to find your specific ideal. And there lies the struggle, I feel. Oh, the wonder and pain of life. 💟

I had a super and happily productive day today -- 5 kids for therapy, 2 IEP parent meetings, and I fasted the whole day and practically had no break for about 9.5 hours straight, just working. Then I had a great dinner with L, catching up about work, life, kdramas (super fun to discuss dramas with her!). Finally left for home after dinner, feeling accomplished, and grateful (especially for knowing yet another amazing lady), only to be accosted by my mum about where I was and yet again, about my disappointing lack of a worthy social circle, apparently. Why are you not out with a boyfriend instead? Why do you not have a boyfriend?

I didn't have much energy to be upset at that point. But seriously: nevermind that I slogged the entire day or that I felt I had sat and talked with a person I genuinely admired. She is amazing. Partly for being an ISTJ-Yu-Jie-type person (haha) but also for telling me about her awesome plans for taking up fostering. And creating a centre for child fostering (especially for our hospital villagers as we call them! i.e. the abandoned kids in our hospital system). Nevermind all that. If I'm somehow not married or not about to, or I haven't gotten some guy smitten somewhere, there must be something wrong with me. I must be some sort of defective, weirdo woman apparently.

I am sick and tired of pandering myself and my sense of self-worth to this double-standard, unjust system, born of a man's world. I am done being made to feel inadequate and unhappy about who I am. Dear God, I am not trying to be ungrateful; I am working hard trying and fighting myself, to be a better person every day. But please don't take me to account for something I have no control over; I am not this typical, ideal woman that one is supposed to be, and it's been feeling increasingly like folly, to think that I ever will be.

Your heart knows the way.
Run in that direction.
-- Rumi

what a great way to start my morning.

Ohayo!

attempting to take the counsel of my years

When I've been silent for a while here, it usually relates to a simmering -- I have bubbling thoughts that need to be let out; but then I need the time to sit and ruminate and actually type it out. I clearly have difficulty finding the time to relate them here. Despite today being a public holiday, I still fail to spare the time. And here I am past 1 am.

It is infinitely easier to fangirl, hahahhh. My head hurts less. Literally, sometimes.



God, why is life so hard? Why is every day a struggle? Oh wait, I just had a heated discussion about this with my book club peeps over whatsapp the other day -- and it's cause we are meant to struggle. If you think about it, we actually don't think very well about anyone who doesn't struggle in one way or another in life (I'm sorry, but for me, an easy and immediate example would be American reality television personalities and how apparently vacuous their lives seem). And when I say struggle, I mean striving (not necessarily that one has to be suffering a scary affliction, although if one does, then actually, that immediately confers a very clear necessary striving on that person). If you are a human being and you're not working hard for something, one way or another -- forget other people -- you will soon despise yourself. There is something so intrinsically human about aiming and reaching for something.

And yet! Knowing this. Knowing that life is about fighting and striving (i.e. jihad, people, that's a literal translation). Why am I lamenting about how life is hard. What is wrong with you, S. Life is meant to be hard; embrace it. It is a striving to learn to be content; contentment is a higher status than patience.



Oh! I should mention that earlier in the week, a card via snail mail arrived from S in Melbourne -- and the birthday message was so lovely and beautiful, it made me tear; it's not too remote from what I've been rambling on above, I think I want to share and preserve some of it here in digital format:

Dear S,

Happy Birthday! I have no doubt that this will reach you slightly after the fact but nonetheless, I wanted to send you a birthday card to mark the occasion of your 30th.

Sure the number feels scary and also sad that we no longer are to be carefree twenty-somethings but I have no doubt that we will be the same crazy children we were when we first met a long time ago in a school near Orchard Road.

I hope that we will take the counsel of the years and become wiser and kinder people, but I also hope that we will learn to be kind to ourselves and forgive ourselves. I hope that we will continue to learn that the best thing in this world are those that money cannot buy -- good family, loyal friends, and the company of good people. I hope that we will continue to nurture our passion for life and our hobbies -- reading, music, and when we do indulge ourselves in more luxurious interests, experiences, or possessions, I hope that it will be with the knowledge that we are blessed to be able to do so.

Then she finishes it with:

Stay truthful, wise, courageous, and loving. Be happy, my dear friend.

-- S


I am so happy to have such amazing ladies as my friends.

Before I finally say goodnight on a decidedly happier note,

let me end it with one fangirl-ing piece:

this is my current earworm.
💚💜💛💙💗

Happy Labour Day!

And I'm back from a short getaway -- a roadtrip to Malaysia to escape the realities of everyday Singapore life, if only briefly. Celebrated my birthday with my family at TGIFridays, where an unexpected ice-cream-with-a-candle made its appearance after our dinner and I was serenaded the birthday song by the waiters. Embarrassing and hilarious.

And as I embark into the next decade of life, the 30th year milestone, I am quite randomly remembering an old friend, N; who has drifted from me but who I remember now, cause when we were 17, she often told me of how it was foretold by a soothsayer of sorts, that she wouldn't live past 30. I realise this is a morbid story -- but I'm quite sure she is fine and alive and happy somewhere in this world. I miss you, N! We turn 30 this year; our lives together in school seem a lifetime ago.

I'm also thinking that the longer one lives, the more courage one needs; that it seems true that life either makes you into a saint or a cynic, and it takes a whole lot of courage to be more of the former than the latter; to stay optimistic and idealistic and dream big; to believe in the goodness of people, the goodness in the world, and the goodness in one's self.

snapshots of wonderful things the past few days:

This was from E

and I shall never forget this endorsement, haha;

I shall wear the title of llamacorn with pride,

especially on sad days when I'm wont to think that

all my weird amounts to freak instead of special.

Indulgence while in KL, and I couldn't resist getting a hardcopy book

while at the best Kino bookstore in the world haha.

Three hundred years ago, one of the most famous and brilliant scientists of all time, British physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton, the man who gave us gravity from Cambridge University, England, actually thought in such terms about time: for him, there was the time of humans, felt by us all and measured by our clocks, and there was the time of God, which is instantaneous, which doesn't flow. From the point of view of Newton's God, the infinite line of human time, stretching backward and forward into infinity, is but an instant. He sees it all in one blink.

-- The Universe in Your Hand, A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond, 

by Christophe Galfard