funny conversation

A: hey, are you wearing make-up today?

B: umm... no... only eyeliner...

A: ........isn't that make-up?

B: well, yeah, if you consider eyeliner as make-up......

A: ?!?!?!?!?!

this exact conversation did actually happen today. it was hilarious.

empathy 101

ever since i came to Adelaide up until yesterday, i'd been feeling extremely sorry for myself.

would you feel sorry for me, too? oh poor little linn. she's all by herself in a foreign country, studying and working her butt off because her biology lab group is just a little incompetent in english, missing her family and her friends, feeling depressed when her friends don't make time for her, emotional whirlwinds, frequent moodswings, getting tired of walking around the city all the time just to get from one class to the other and then to the bus stop or train station.

oh the pain. oh the misery.

boo hoo hoo.

yes i will admit that was and always has been my attitude towards myself. i don't know if there is a scientific or medical term for my condition, but i have this mentality that my life is a movie. do you realize that movie characters always gain the sympathy of the audience? even if in the movie the characters seem to have to fend all by themselves, they actually have the support of the millions of people watching them go through all their hardships. and i now realize that this is my very problem. i always visualize my life as a movie and thus, inevitably, i expect sympathy out of others. that is why i always want to tell people about my depression and my hardship. and i don't think this is just me; i have thought about it and have collected this much: human nature makes it so that we want pity for being in the worst possible situation. just imagine two people talking about their lives to each other:

A: oh sheesh man life sucks. life is so difficult.

B: YOU'RE telling ME? i know life is difficult. for goodness' sake i have to wake up at 4am every morning to go to work.

A: so? i don't even have enough money for public transport. i have to WALK to work.

B: i have to walk to work too. and my workplace is further than yours.

A: so? i have to work longer hours than you. i am so tired after every day that i can't even stand properly anymore.

B: you think i'm not tired? right after work i have to do this and that and blah blah blah...

okay i don't know why i picked this particular scenario (i actually made it up) but doesn't this sound familiar to most of us? i don't know why people often try to boast about their hardships to each other... why do we want to boast about things like this? aren't they better kept in confidence between us and God? i still find myself a culprit of such a crime. i still want people to know the hardships i'm going through because, well, they ARE hardships! i never expected that i could feel so depressed and homesick all the time. people at school and church meetings often see me at my best. at my peak. they see me when i'm happiest and most bubbly and most adorable. what they've never seen is me bawling my eyes out on skype with my mum or me curled up amongst the blankets and school books and whatever else is lying on my bed, shivering and sniffling and not knowing how to feel better. only my closest friends and my closest family would know how i really am nowadays... yes, my emotions are that tumultous. but i do think i'm getting better at handling this. i still need to turn to the Lord more.

and yesterday my mum told me that she, too, is very lonely at home now that i'm not there. me and my mum, no matter how much we fight and argue, are the truest bluest best friends there could ever be. we have all our little secret languages and inside jokes that nobody else can understand. we laugh about things until we're mistaken for crazy. oh how i miss being with my mum. and it was only then that i realized that i had barely thought about how SHE feels. i can't imagine what it must be like for her. she must feel quite sad, too. and this is where i've learnt that self pity really doesn't do anything for us. it only makes us even more depressed because we wallow in our sorrows and we bathe in it, surrounding ourselves with recurring images of depressing things that happened to us; it makes us even more miserable. and self pity also closes up our mind to others and especially to the Lord. we really need to have a repentant and soft heart if we want the Lord to vitalize us...

somehow, my posts nowadays keep ending with some reference to the Lord Jesus =)

awesome!

and so from now on, i will always do my best not to judge others and not to feel sorry for myself all the time, but rather to let things be and submit to whatever the Lord brings to me.

hit, sunk.... and risen?

how would you feel if somebody knew something about you that you yourself felt so shameful and dejected about?

what if it was shoved in your face and you suddenly had to face the harsh, angry reality?

not being as cryptic as i'd hoped here, but i really do have the urge to type this post now. i've been thinking about why people blog. i guess there are some that have a huge followers list because of the unique content. i am aware that there are some great blogs out there, the impact of each one varying according to the reader's personal taste. i know of food blogs, sport blogs, political blogs, news blogs, shopping blogs; the list goes on and on.

but what i think is the case for the average Ah Beng (or in this case Ah Linn) on the street is that blogs simply serve as a scratching post and often a canvas, ready for whatever is splashing across our mind to be translated into words and posted on our blogs. what is the purpose of doing this? i hope i speak for many others out there when i say that blogs yell for sympathy, empathy and the occasional dose of pitying comments. i don't know whether it's just me or it really is human nature for a person to want others to know the hardships and victories they go through, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant they are. isn't that what personal messages on MSN and facebook statuses are for? facebook really helps us out here. they literally ask us to tell them what's on our minds. and what, may i ask, is the purpose of this? well of course, it's so that all of humanity can know the little things that pop into our head throughout the day.

so it is true! we do have the natural tendency to seek out attention! however this is probably only for a percentage of us. some people don't give the slightest care towards splaying out their personal thoughts and feelings for the public to see. i highly admire such people. unless of course they're all chronically addicted to something or the other and therefore have no time for life's social aspect, in which case i'd feel highly sorry for them.

this issue of publicly displaying one's social life on networking sites such as Facebook or personal blogs suddenly came to me after a few instances where people (especially from church) have shot some cute comments at me regarding my facebook statuses. "Did you enjoy your avocado?" "How was your maths test? Did you slap that guy in the end?" sometimes i totally forget that i posted all this on facebook that i gape at them and wonder how on earth they knew. and that is what scares me THE most, the fact that i've been posting so much junk about myself on the Internet that i could even FORGET what i've posted! oh dear dear me...

so, back to the two rhetorical questions given at the start of this post. earlier today, i was feeling incredibly depressed. this is where words fail me. usually, i am pretty good at articulating my emotions and feelings to a high degree of accuracy; but now, i think i might have trouble expressing exactly how depressed i felt today. words have their limits, no matter how descriptive or provocative a word may be, the exact feeling can never be conveyed. this, i feel, is the inadequacy of language. anyway, i shall do my best. oh depression. i will not go so far as to say it was suicidal, or even cut-wrist-worthy, because it certainly wasn't. it most definitely wasn't that kind of depression. it was more like a quiet, aching depression; a depression resulting from yearning after various elusive things all at one time. it was like being dragged down into a deep dark chasm; the sinking feeling in my chest could have been analogous to that of the Titanic. any form of comfort from any person would've bounced right of me at that time. either that, or it would have wilted in the melancholy exuding from my pores. i don't feel that i'm going overboard with the adjectives here. i really did feel this way. OHHH i felt like i regretted so many things i had done in the past. why? why did i do this? why did i do that? OHHHH. i suddenly felt alone, isolated and unloved all at once. i also felt foolish, demented, mentally exhausted.

then i had to go for young people's meeting. i must say, i wasn't all that up for it. i had to drag myself to the car where Lee Ying was waiting patiently for me. i put my head on the windowsill and rolled my head around as the car bumped and hopped its way to the meeting. i'm sure i must've also uttered strange noises and mumbled to myself along the way. yes. i was that demented.

upon reaching the meeting, i immediately sat down and folded my arms across a pillow and looked down at my knees. i didn't want to say anything and i didn't want to look at anyone. i was in no mood, i told myself. people better watch out for me!!! such was my mindset, but oh you have to understand, i was in an unstable state at that time. luckily for me, the Lord intervened,

you know sometimes, when you are fully aware that you are completely NOT in your spirit and yet you still reject all feelings from your conscience, and then as if by God's hand (well of course by God's hand... what else??) everything that happens consequently only seems to speak to you? it's like, every hymn you sing, every verse you read, ever short prophecy that is shared by any saint, it ALL just seems to be talking to YOU! it's like God is literally pointing his finger at you, saying "OI ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? YES I'M TALKING TO YOU" and you can't help but feel touched, scared and shy all at the same time. well tonight was like that for me. everybody started sharing about how whenever we feel out of our spirit, we really need to just turn to the Lord, because we have the resurrection and transcending power given to us by the Lord. it reminded me of the Day 2 portion i read in morning revival, talking about how the way for us to use such a power is to have the desire to get away from all deadness. and it suddenly dawned on me why i felt so depressed: it's because i felt dead!

of course, being a fallen human being, i couldn't immediately get out of my wallowing state of self pity. however as the meeting progressed, i began to shake myself into some sense and drag myself out of thinking about ME ME ME and i began to exercise my spirit a little more. it was good. i needed it.

many people were scared of me tonight. people who see me depressed for the first time often feel that way. because i usually convey an upbeat, cheerful and bubbly nature, anyone who hasn't known me for long will get incredibly puzzled and even frightened if they see me depressed. sometimes they look so spectacularly concerned for me that i want to suddenly burst out laughing despite my sadness. yes, that is how it is with demented people.

okay at this point i got interrupted in the midst of my peaceful posting by someone chatting to me on facebook (ironically) and so i have forgotten everything else that i intended to say. luckily, there wasn't much left to go. so i'll just end here by saying that death can really envelope us when we're in our worst situations. it's all down to how quickly we realize it, repent to the Lord and turn back to our spirit. and THEN the Lord will grant us the strengthening =]

Oh Lord Jesus.... be with me always...

callous words

like the spines of a prickly pear

knife-edge sharp

and the power to sting,

a gutting slice

a shameful blow

my face stains hot.

such poison.

chocolate at glenelg

a little sumfin' sumfin'

http://thoughtmagazine.wordpress.com/

my dear friend Adelene Lai has the most distinctive writing style ever. i could smell her pen ink from a mile away. and what's more she is an absolutely brilliant writer. i do wish she would blog more because her posts are so refreshingly witty and, more importantly, so frank and raw.

i always wanted to write with a style of my own. and i think Ade's writing has somewhat influenced my writing to try and win a niche of its own. i think it already has a style, if i'm not mistaken. and anyway, nothing CAN'T have a style, if we really think about it. right? any piece of writing that exists must certainly have a style, whether it be boring or interesting, most readable or most distasteful...

so yes. i hope i can start writing something substantial and word-worthy real soon. i received a recent email from Ade asking me to help spread the word about this new collection of short stories, articles and other random bits and bobs from the youths of KL (i hope i still qualify for this even though i now live in Adelaide) called Thought Magazine. you can go to the URL above and download the PDF; it won't take long.

to be honest, i skimmed past the first few stories and articles because, and i'm sorry for this but really, war-related matters really don't interest me much, especially the first one which i felt went a little overboard with the extravagantly descriptive sentences. is it just me? i don't know. perhaps i was all too eager to find Ade's article and read it. i did have a look at the artwork and some photos, though, being the visual person that i am.

words don't come easy to me. HONESTLY, they don't.

but i'm looking to improve this.

Penang

and here's another poem i wrote slightly more than a year ago... it was probably inspired by Isobel Dixon's "Plenty" which was one of my favourite poems from the "Songs of Ourselves" anthology we studied for IGCSE. "Plenty" is an amazing poem which really draws us a picture of the kind of world the poet was living in, and i feel that my own poem really does convey the appropriate imagery that allows one a peek into the world of my childhood.... i only spent an average of a month a year in my grandmother's house in Penang, and yet, some of my happiest memories stem from there... as i grow up, it gets harder to enjoy the liberty of staying at Ah-Ma's house. nonetheless, i hope to visit there every year... =)

just to let you know, my mum thought it was good and thus shared it with my dad and my brother. BAD IDEA.

my brother came up with a parody poem talking about his addiction to computer games while my dad complained that my poem didn't rhyme and thus couldn't be considered a poem... =_=

Penang

a resonating warmth greets my toes,
as I splash tap water
to bathe my dusty feet.

as I wash,
the pail is beautiful
and familiar in my hands,
and it smiles at me.

in the house,
every room smells of memories,
blankets, and the spin of the fan,
soothing the simmering heat.
an ancient clock ticks
to sound the passing of an age,
that flew
without us knowing.

and as the house swells with
laughter and tears,
the hands of the clock
refuse to turn back,
and buy us a little more nighttime.

but no matter how fast,
or how cruelly, dawn comes,
the pitter-patter of feet,
and the crunch of a biscuit,
and the taste of burning incense
will not cease to resound,
upon the ceramic walls of my
lost childhood.