.:chellespaced.

breathe.

2012-02-05T13:30:00.001+08:00

Nothing nice to say.
So don't say anything.

nada.

2012-01-13T23:09:00.003+08:00

nesting.

2011-12-09T11:38:00.002+08:00

I guess that living in a sharehouse is not really "home". It doesn't really ring, for me. It's a space where the only bit that's your own is your room, and the rest is full of everyone elses' presence. You don't buy the stuff you want for fear that housemates won't appreciate/will completely destroy it (I fear for my Anolon pan). It is synonamous with "temporal". It isn't a place that you want to reinvent so that you can be proud of it.

So the prospect of home makes me happy and all I want to do is fill it with clocks and tea-towels and cat.

wide-eyed.

2011-12-07T23:49:00.002+08:00

I am ecstatic, I am joyful, I am full of warm glowy feelings. I am afraid, I am terrified.

There is something more concrete about the everyday when action carries certainty, when daydreaming becomes planning, and hopes come to fruitation. When the time comes to put money where your mouth is. And while it remains, I feel, the right decision, one is still allowed a moment of doubt and anxiety. It kinda feels like I've lost solid ground, a tiny bit of a freefall. A little bit of "what if".

But what if not?

subside.

2011-11-17T04:54:00.003+08:00

Maybe love is seeing an imperfect person perfectly.

repost.

2011-11-16T23:42:00.000+08:00

illusion.

2011-11-02T21:15:00.002+08:00

melancholy.

2011-10-22T14:00:00.001+08:00

Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad that it was over

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
And I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know

- Somebody That I Used To Know, Gotye

remind me.

2011-09-18T17:41:00.002+08:00

Last night sleeps in my memory
Sun light soaks in
And I'm trying to find the way to break
I'm going soon

If you see me tangled in shackles and chains made of pearls
Could you remind me that you're dreaming of me
If you see me tumbling over the edge of the world
Could you remind me just how, just how you love me

I'm tracing the lines of these broken pieces of mine
One step forward and two more steps to the end

If you see me tangled in shackles and chains made of pearls
Could you remind me that you're dreaming of me
If you see me tumbling over the edge of the world
Could you remind me just how, just how you love me

- Remind Me, Lisa Mitchell

lost my heart to melbourne.

2011-09-17T22:17:00.003+08:00

I love Melboure, like everyone said I would.

Reasons are as follows:

1. Every second shop is a coffeeshop or an italian resturant with a funky vibe and tasty offerings.
2. Getting lost in laneways means beautiful art and discoveries of foodie hunts, interesting shops and wanky bars.
3. Everyone's wine list is better.
4. Looking up from street-level reveals a old-timey world
5. It is so much cheaper than Perth.
6 ....

My point is that I fit in and I soak up the atmosphere and it's got a sense of anticipation and wonder and a tinge of transferred nostalgia. It smells like hope and opportunity. Everything there as a shaper edge to it, is somehow more tangible, more faceted. Somewhere I can easily wander, or sit and watch the world go by, and it isn't a waste.

in other news.

2011-08-31T21:01:00.003+08:00

Heart!

this is home to me.

2011-08-31T20:50:00.002+08:00

Creamy walls and quirky tea towels. Crisp white cotton sheets and cool wooden floors. A cat looking on quizzically with a fluffy tail curved in a question mark. A sunny kitchen and teacups.

Coffee in the morning. A warm indentation in the bed where you'd been. Scrambled eggs for breakfast. Pondering over what to make for dinner. Nestling together and falling asleep.

Home is where the heart is, so they say.

hope.

2011-08-25T22:42:00.001+08:00

If you want to know where your heart is, look where your mind goes when it wanders.

pause.

2011-08-08T12:07:00.002+08:00

It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.

crystalline.

2011-07-25T19:41:00.004+08:00

Murmuring that you think I'm beautiful into my neck as you run fingers over skin. A hand on my knee when I'm driving. A piercing flash of blue eyes. Embracing while we cook and arguing over who gets to stir. Eating more chocolate than what we put into the cake. You giving up on making coffee and folding filter paper. Arms around me, curled up under covers in bed. Gently holding my face in your hands while you give your heart on your lips. Telling me that you miss me an hour after you've left. Watching you tell others that we want to nest together. Hinting at a future.

Every time I sit and sigh, these are the things I remember and I know that I will never go.

mental note to self.

2011-06-27T21:07:00.002+08:00

Easy Cornbread

3 cups polenta
1/2 cup quick oats
1/2 wholemeal flour
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup olive oil
5ish cups hot water (added last)

Line a tin, pour in and bake.
30-45 mins 180C.

so be happy.

2011-06-19T20:49:00.002+08:00

sad face.

2011-06-14T20:09:00.001+08:00

What's with this sleeping alone business?

It's a terrible idea.

it's a relative thing.

2011-06-05T12:15:00.003+08:00

I've been up since four in the morning eating a packet of Doritos with chopsticks and watching every single Glee video available on Youtube.

Yeah, I'm cool.

blobby.

2011-05-29T21:57:00.001+08:00

Best. Characters. EVAR.

disguised.

2011-05-20T04:52:00.004+08:00

I spent the majority of today sitting wrapped up in a blanket, drinking copious amounts of tea, knitting, being on the phone, and watching documentaries on ABC.

All grandma-like.

Only, the phone wasn't some spiral-wired retro rotary affair but a Blackberry, I was watching ABC on my laptop, and also it was four in the morning.

Headbangin' techy wired-up grandma, yo.

I have no other defences for the rest of what I was doing.

petulance.

2011-05-05T22:49:00.002+08:00

I miss having long hair.

I miss the ease of being able to gather up in a swirl and knotting it. I miss swinging it out of the way to read a book. I miss twirling it in my fingers unconsciously. I miss the sensation of running my hands through it, or, for that matter, someone else's hands running through it.

Chopping it off was ... cathartic. It was leaving an old persona behind and proving to yourself that you were a different person. It was relief and change and metamorphosis.

Fuck that.

I want it back. All of it.

transience.

2011-04-25T16:40:00.001+08:00

Why, if our time on earth could be
spent as laurel, its green darker than
all others, its leaves edged with
little waves (like the smile of a wind)--: then why do we
have to be human--and, avoiding destiny,
long for destiny? . . .

Oh not because happiness is,
that rash profit taken just prior to oncoming loss,
not out of curiosity, or to give practice to the heart,
reasons which would hold for the laurel too. . . . .

But because being here is so much, and everything
seems to need us in this fleeting world, and
strangely speaks to us. Us, the most fleeting. Once
for everything, only once. Once and no more. And we, too,
only once. Never again. But to have been here,
this once, if only this once:
to have been of the earth seems irrevocable.

- Rilke, Ninth Elegy.

momentary.

2011-04-20T23:16:00.001+08:00

Someday, there will be someone who will make you realise why it never worked out with anyone else.

fidelity.

2011-04-02T14:31:00.000+08:00

And suppose I never ever met you
Suppose we never fell in love
Suppose I never ever let you kiss me so sweet and so soft
Suppose I never ever saw you
Suppose we never ever called
Suppose I kept on singing love songs just to break my own fall
Just to break my fall
Just to break my fall
Break my fall

- Fidelity, Regina Spektor

hiding from the world.

2011-02-21T19:16:00.003+08:00

So exhausted.

So drained.

So alone.

All I want is to make a fortress out of my bedsheets and stay there, buried, forever.

be still, oh my beating heart.

2011-02-14T20:33:00.002+08:00

No, we didn't do anything for Valentine's Day.

What's with the mixed expression of pity, horror and surprise?

He tells me he loves me, every day. He makes me dinner because he feels like it, not because of some arbitrary and utterly contrived role reversal that happens once a year. I like flowers, but there is no need for roses and candlelight, especially when they cost five times the usual price. Diamonds fail to impress me, and probably never will.

If you need a commercially-enforced occasion to show someone that you love them, you have missed the point.

Because love is about simplicity, and the everyday. It's conveyed in little things - holding a hand, a hug when you're down, concern when you're quiet, a caress when you're cooking. It's touch and words and pauses. It is world enough, and time.

There is no need for crystal, sliver, silk sheets and overpriced, moderately bad wine.

stay, my love.

2011-02-12T17:49:00.005+08:00

Who knows how to make love stay?
1. Tell love you are going to Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.
2. Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.
3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.

- Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker.

our's not to question why.

2011-02-02T21:28:00.003+08:00

"It's impossible", said Pride.

"It's risky", said Experience.

"It's pointless", said Reason.

"Give it a try", whispered the Heart.

pair.

2011-01-21T22:07:00.003+08:00

Thanks to Samm Blake's wonderful photography.

day one.

2011-01-10T19:02:00.002+08:00

Within the first couple of minutes of us sitting down in Bruce Hunt, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we learn this:

1. Believe nothing.
2. Trust no one.
3. Check everything.
4. Give oxygen.

My life has begun.

abode.

2011-01-06T18:12:00.002+08:00

I love my house.

I love the red-bricked shoebox entirety of it. I love its slate tile and cream walls, and my tiny tiny kitchen. I love our glass plates and wooden cake stands, but maybe a fan-forced oven would be nice. I love the Tasmanian hardwood table and the mismatch of op-shop armchairs. I love our backyard with its edible greenery and vines heavy with grapes hanging from the arbour and occasionally tendriling onto our clothesline.

Spring-cleaning and redecorating and playing house has made me appreciate my home so much more.

labryinth.

2011-01-02T19:24:00.000+08:00

Dear Audrey Kawasaki,

You create beautiful art.

Yours sincerely,

Me.

owl.

2010-12-28T00:59:00.002+08:00

transient.

2010-12-24T22:56:00.006+08:00

I've been away twenty days from the city that I call home. I've been on five flights between four countries. I've meandered through markets, trawled through antique shops, shopped through sales, traveled obscene amounts in diverse places for food, and got sunburnt floating in the warm emerald waters of the Andaman Sea.

And all I want to do is to go home. Back to the man who I love. Or want. Or need. Or perhaps all three, with such singular desperate acuity of feeling that it scares me.

I leave on a jetplane in five days.

shantaram.

2010-12-15T21:22:00.002+08:00

"I think that we all, each one of us, we all have to earn our future," she said slowly. "I think the future is like anything else that's important. It has to be earned. If we don't earn it, we don't have a future at all. And if we didn't earn it, if we don't deserve it, we have to live in the present, more or less forever. Or worse, we have to live in the past. I think that's probably what love is - a way of earning the future."

- Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts

jetplane at midnight.

2010-12-05T11:20:00.004+08:00

I've lasted a horrific four-and-a-half hour red-eye from Perth to Singapore. So tired, yet unable to get any shut-eye. I hereby promise myself that this will be the last set of flights that I fly budget. In a month and four days, I will forever leave this purgatory between studenthood and a full-time paycheck. Granted, this comes with reduced flexibility - I will no longer be able to turn up an hour later that I was due, or go home at lunchtime. I can deal with that.

So here I am, really quite tired and more than a little bleary-eyed. The first thing I did when I got out of immigration was to wander determinedly between terminals, luggage and all, desperately seeking somewhere that eould provide me with the complement of strong iced tea, kaya toast and half-boiled eggs. I stayed there an hour and a half.

Eventually I forewent finding a Starbucks - coffee wasn't exactly going to help me. I sat for hours on some random courtest seats in the departure hall. People-watching (otherwise known as staring blindly into space while tuning in occasionally) confirmed what I intellectually knew. I'm in Singapore. It's full of doting mothers, outlandish clothes and garbled accents. Oh, Queen's English. How we have slaughtered thee.

stretch.

2010-11-25T22:15:00.002+08:00

I went and lived in the middle of nowhere in the Wheatbelt, Western Australia for a couple of weeks.

It was sharp biting sun, brisk winds, red dirt, blowflies, and hayfever. Cream-filled pastries and only one street of shops. Children playing sport and parents drinking beer.

Welcome to the country.

It took a long time to get there. I guess the cliche that it changes you is a little bit true.

no regrets.

2010-11-19T23:52:00.002+08:00

simplify, simplify.

2010-11-15T11:39:00.002+08:00

The thing with movie-style romances is that they come with movie-style intrigue and drama, and you can't buy them separately. You pay for moments where the world fades out around you with arguments and friendships. It's one thing to come to the conclusion that it's worth it, and another thing entirely to actually go through with the fallout.

I want to get off the rollercoaster and arrive at something simple and beautiful.

facing the music.

2010-11-09T12:38:00.001+08:00

It was apt that the sky was as pregnant with things unsaid as I was.

almost to shore.

2010-11-08T22:02:00.007+08:00

I've made it to the other side.

6 years, all gone in a flash. I remember the first time I walked to the clock tower, squinted into the sharp sunlight and ran my fingers over the sandstone, and thought how this day was so far away. But that's how time is, isn't it? It plods when you're waiting for it, and then suddenly you're living it, and it's over. And when you look back, nostalgia colours everything rose and speeds it up like fast-forwarding through film. It seems like last week. But no, what was it? Time was ... is a sunk cost. I paid it to get here.

God I was young. I mean, I'm aware that this is just the beginning of the rest of my life. But when you're sixteen and seventeen you don't know, you never realise, what it all means. All these options stretch out in front of you like lines in some sort of intricate abstract painting. Joan Didion wrote something about that - being young. I could make promises to myself and to other people and there would be all the time in the world to keep them. I could stay up all night and make mistakes, and none of them would count.

Twenty two is not the time to become jaded and cynical. Twenty two is when you have your entire life in front of you, when the world is full of possibilities and wonder, and sight and smell and sensation crystallise to form moments that you will remember for the rest of your life. It's falling in love and the smell of the city after it's just rained. It's first kisses, still, and meeting on street corners and peering in shop windows and a jumble of skin and sighs. It's the feeling of brick under your hands, and warm wood and windowsills. It's tapping your foot on cobblestones and watching the world sweep past and the smell of coffee in the morning.

And now I'm done. And it is so close that I can taste it.

Now, to face the rest of my life. Pending not receiving the phone call of doom come next Tuesday, anyway. There are ... prospective costs to be paid.

resolve.

2010-11-07T18:15:00.003+08:00

Tell me are you gettin’ hurt, is it worth it?
Tell me are the people strange, do they change?
Tell me are you letting go, do you know?
I’ll tell you the truth, if you tell me the truth

If you gamble everything for love
You gonna be alright, alright

Alright.

- Gamble Everything for Love, Ben Lee

The tide pushes me ever closer to shore, closer, inexorably.

I will give it up - all of it. For something that could be amazing.

capture.

2010-11-05T20:01:00.002+08:00

oh, really, now.

2010-11-05T18:46:00.000+08:00

"How do you know when you're in love?"

"All the songs make sense."

bucket list.

2010-11-03T17:50:00.002+08:00

So, instead of studying, I will now make a list of things I want to buy with money I do not yet have.

1. New bedroom furniture
2. Sigma f1.4 50mm lens for my E520
3. A holiday to Melbourne to drink coffee and red wine in a Real City
4. Karlsted sofa from Ikea
5. A bicycle
6. A red Smeg refrigerator
7. Kitteh!

Thus ends my pointless list, since I'm doing this completely out of order. As I was told today, first become doctorer. Then, earn money. Then, have money to buy stuff.

the sea, the sea.

2010-11-02T11:52:00.002+08:00

My love for you exists in a sort of eternal present, it almost is the meaning of time. I don't protest too much. Such love can live with despair, with quietness, with resignation, with ordinariness and tiredness and silence.

- The Sea, The Sea. Iris Murdoch (1978)

seething.

2010-11-01T15:34:00.003+08:00

Having to remediate because you suck is one thing.

Having to remediate because you didn't care enough to actually read the cases when you had them is just plain silly.

God, I'm so annoyed at myself.

my sweetest downfall.

2010-10-29T00:58:00.003+08:00

Trying to beat my misery,
Don't wanna go across the sea,
And if I could take you everywhere,
There'd be no cause for my despair,

And I know we won't touch for months,
And your smell will evade me,
But our love could survive a war,
Without the slightest sore.

I know you suffer for my art,
Always pulling us apart,
You're forever in my brain,
Even when I cause you pain.

And I know I can't taste your skin,
With an ocean between us,
But our love is a dinosaur,
Hear it roar.

And I know we won't touch for months,
And your smell will evade me,
But our love could survive a war,
Without the slightest sore,

And I know I can't taste your skin,
With an ocean between us,
But our love is a dinosaur,
Hear it roar,
Hear it roar.
- Dinosaur, Kisschasy

a stranger in a strange land.

2010-10-20T13:46:00.000+08:00

There is a reason behind the silence.

fix you.

2010-09-26T17:10:00.002+08:00

It's such amazing feeling to be in a room with seven hundred or so other people, and know that everyone is cheering you on as you enter the end sequence of six years of tertiary education. That Med Ball, every year, is a celebration of those who have almost made it. Just to stand there, with everyone clapping as faces flash past on the silver screen, filling up with deafening elation and spilling over.

I will miss this, but I won't forget the blood, sweat and tears that we've gone through to get thus far. And, this is a phase that we pass on our way to better things.

55 more days, and I will be a doctor. I am scared shitless.

I am elated.

I am almost at the end.

of toast, and tea.

2010-09-22T17:35:00.002+08:00

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it toward some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.

That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

- T. S. Elliot

simply beautiful.

2010-09-10T17:06:00.001+08:00

oh god.

2010-09-06T22:12:00.000+08:00

I can't remember the last time I wanted something so much.

This scares me.

sigh.

2010-09-02T13:34:00.000+08:00

taken with grace.

2010-09-02T00:07:00.001+08:00

“Come by mine tomorrow, lover.”
She gave him that last word carefully. He was learning to take such presents with grace.
- China Mieville, The Scar

permanence.

2010-08-31T18:57:00.004+08:00

So, here we were at the magazine stands in Borders, and he was flicking through tattoo mags while I was cross-legged on the floor persuing articles on black and white photography.

And he tells me that legend has it that if koi, on returning to spawning grounds, make it up the waterfall to the top of the mountain, become dragons. Which explains the recurring motif of koi in the tattooists' repertoire, symbolising determination and the journey to success. Chinese citizens of yon-olden-days used to, when sitting for the examinations that would grant them entry to official-dom, wear tunics with koi embroidered on them. And, if successful, they would then wear symbol of the dragon - power, authority, wisdom and strength. They'd made it.

I've decided that when I get into the Emergency training program, I'm going to get a koi tattooed on my back, in traditional oriental style. I shall bear this throughout registrar-hood, and the moment I pass my exit exams, I'm going to get a dragon tattooed on my back, too. The problem with this is one of unity - i.e. the two need to look like they are part of the same work of art. I've worried over this for some time now, after seeing many examples of tattoos done badly. I think my current plan is one that will work though - commission one artist to design something that can be done in two stages, and come back to the same. In healthcare we call this "continuity".

This beats my earlier idea that I've been nursing for a couple of years of this flower thing down my ribs. This is so much more ... significant. Not to mention cooler. I think the reason people regret tattoos is if they only get them for the sake of vanity. I'd want better reasons than that (yeah yeah I hear you - see, that's why I didn't put ink to skin).

Now I have to think of another appropriate spot for Robert Frost.

Anyway, Phil thinks that tattoos on women are hot (he's a strange one, that man). Besides, this is his idea that I've stolen. Coming from the guy who wants to tattoo dermatomes on his arm.

fragments.

2010-08-30T17:06:00.007+08:00

Well the end has come for this friendship group, I see, and I never felt it so acutely as today. They all went away for the weekend, and it wasn't so much as I wasn't invited as I'd declined my invitation in advance. I suppose I lost it all in the divorce - or at least the rest of it, since it was fragmenting to begin with. But you know, there are the beginnings and the ends of things, and even when you're blinking into headlights, the collision still hurts.

We'd had good times, all of us. But first I'd left, and then I was gone, and then other people made various decisions that made ... well anyway. The matter of fact is that our heyday is over. And, you know, I never thought how much I depended on these friends, but loss makes need more evident. And now I need to start over again. To build another friendship group from the ground up, instead of simply being absorbed into another. Everyone else is doing this, too. And in a way, this is necessary. Because we're all going different ways, in a couple of months, and there will be a reshuffle. For me, this is sooner, rather than later.

It's strange to be so acutely lonely - I correct myself - not lonely, per se, but I don't know, alone? It's the end of 'my people'. This is, clearly, not incurable. And one moves on.

I can hang out with people I like, still. And, quite frankly, I never was the cool kid!

Yes, I do refer to it as "the divorce", for was it not? The tree may have died but it was still intertwined, and for a very long time, too. Unfortunately, the sad lack of any sort of gravitational pull, which I fully expected, was conspicuously absent - evidence for having done The Right Thing. And I'm sure there are some sideways glances going on as to the speed of which things have moved on, but I assure that all was proper, and after all, you can disguise death for a while (assisted ventilation, anyone?).

As Phil explained it to someone who asked, "I met her at Tom's birthday party three years ago, and she was not single. I met her again a couple of months ago, and she was."

There you go.

lust.

2010-08-25T18:17:00.001+08:00

do not want.

2010-08-19T16:53:00.000+08:00

There are the things that I wish the dean had mentioned on that fateful day that we all sat, goggle-eyed, in anticipation of the rest of our lives. Really, there should have been some sort of warning so that we could all cry in realisation and quit before we figured out what we'd gotten into. But, as things stand, they tell me that there is apprently some sort of doctor shortage, and so this would be a counterintuitive move.

Here are the reasons why I wouldn't want to be a doctor:

1. The paperwork. No one told me I'd have to function as a glorified secretary for the first couple of years out of med school, on call all hours of the day and night. And then you move on to even more paperwork. My consultant's IN tray is stacked to the hilt.

2. Pontificating public. If you think that you can make an ED run better, lets see you try. I am sorry that you had to wait 2 hours to be seen, clearly there are people sicker than you in there. So crying to the media about it is just going to make us dislike you.

3. Patients who believe that everything they read on the internet is true. Do you SERIOUSLY not want to vaccinate your children against polio because some silly people went to court about it AND LOST? And, no, IV vitamin C is unlikely to cure your cancer.

4. The lack of family/social life. You thought that you didn't have a social life in med school? Check out your social life as a junior doctor. Apparently the solution to this is to dump your other friends and only hang out with people from work. This is also the reason I use to repeatedly explain to my very-asian mother why I am in long-term relationships now. No, I am not too young, and in a couple of years I won't have the time to meet people and I don't want to end up like some of my registrars - married to my job and alone.

5. The health system - it needs more funding, and sensible people to regulate it. It is depressing to go to work every day and see all the ways in which it is dismally deficient.

6. Dealing with the invisible people in society - clearly they need help. They are the drunk, homeless, the nameless. Everyone else ignores them. We can't. Even if they're throwing up on themselves and smell bad, we still have to stitch them up. And sometimes, there is nothing that you can do, and that is sometimes the saddest, most frustrating thing of all.

Of course there are heaps more reasons. These are my main ones.

But I'm still going to do it. The reward far outweighs the cost. And seriously? It's still a pretty awesome job.

place.

2010-08-17T14:34:00.006+08:00

Some things you can feel coming. You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step; like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus.

-- Umberto Eco, 'Foucault's Pendulum'

Now that I'm in a better place, I sat down and tracked the spiral as it wound down and down and down. From last August where I was sure that it was just a matter of time, that it was just a matter of waiting till forever. To October where the milk was just a tinge sour. To December and January, where I was just coming to the realisation that it had gone bad. And then the months of anguish, of effort, of too little, too late.

And then the end.

It was a relief.

And then, alone, I could breach the surface.

does not compute.

2010-08-15T10:50:00.002+08:00

Morning --> Afternoon --> Evening --> Night

ED shift --> Sleeping --> "Day" --> ED shift

Sleeping --> "Day" --> ED shift --> ED shift

:(

courage.

2010-08-08T11:00:00.001+08:00

Come to the
edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too
high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and we pushed,
And
they flew.

- Christopher Logue

crim?

2010-07-28T13:49:00.003+08:00

on the bright side.

2010-07-25T11:32:00.003+08:00

Still on a high from On the Bright Side, although that may also be secondary to being around so many people smoking pot. Quite a lot of bands of the electro-pop slash house kinda genre, which is a bit strange for a music festival. However, I turned up late and missed all that regardless. Except for Art vs Science, which I still do not entirely get.

Band of Horses, which sounded like something I'd like. Will download and find out.

Angus and Julia Stone, who were FANTASTIC, and so dreamy and beautiful. And they played all my favourite songs! They're really not all that good at the talking bit of live shows, though. I'm pretty sure Angus was high as a kite.

Mumford and Sons, which were ever-so-good live. People singing along were deafening. Hearted lead singer's waistcoat getup.

And The Strokes, which I almost missed out on seeing because I wanted to bail and go home, but was prevented from doing so by Tim. I'm surprised at how many Strokes songs I know just from playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Although they did the annoying thing of playing a really short set and then coming back for multiple encores. I'd left by then - they'd played most of their good songs already. Everyone was cheering and clapping - not really "OMGWELOVEYOU" though, and more of the vibe of "come back and do your job, dumbasses. I paid to see you play for more than forty minutes".

I brought my Golden Half (partly because my SLR had been deemed to be too awesome for such an event), so pictures flood Facebook when film gets developed. I can't wait!

In other news - I have never seen so many tweens dressed up in so little clothes. Apparently, to fit in, Ray Bans, cutoffs, and ripped stockings are necessary. Also, as I said before, smoking pot.

juxtaposition.

2010-07-23T18:54:00.003+08:00

The dark side, baby.

Making the intangible real.

opportunity.

2010-07-21T21:13:00.004+08:00

I was in the city tonight, during the Golden Hour.

Sun and sky and skyscrapers, together with the last of office workers in trenchcoats hurrying to catch the trains out of town combined to form what could have been a stunning photo. Plus, Phil was wearing a fedora and fit perfectly into the atmosphere of that one moment.

But, damn, I didn't have my camera.

This has occurred one too many times. Henceforth, I am going to be carrying my camera everywhere.

That's what photography is all about, I think. Like bottling happiness in a mason jar, one tries to capture feeling and time in colour and light.

somewhere, nowhere.

2010-07-17T18:27:00.001+08:00

We may have engineered our own defeat, but you did more of the pushing than I did.

saccharine.

2010-07-16T19:01:00.001+08:00

one hundred years.

2010-07-15T18:27:00.004+08:00

I'm back on campus for lectures this week, and have realised how much better practical learning is. I am now unused to sitting for hours at a time listening to people talk at me, and this is made worse by the fact that some of these people really aren't very good. Generally I sit in my seat with the dodgey table wanting to die but am unable to do so due to being in direct line of sight of the lecturer. I spent a couple of hours today watching Tiffany play Plants vs Zombies, so desperate was my plight.

Eventually, I got tired of reading old Boingboing articles, and downloaded an eBook reader on my Blackberry. And what a good decision it was. I leave it running and the book slowly scrolls down my screen, and I simply seem disinterested, as opposed to actively doing something else.

This stems from not being able to read my book, but a phone is relatively unassuming.

So, in the last couple of days, I've almost finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude (which I started after strong recommendation).

And it is fucking good (expletives are required to adequately express the awesomeness of this book). It's about what's real and what's imaginary, what's magical, and does it really matter? It's about dimetrics and objects with meaning, and without. It's something that I read and occasionally go, "wow, I love that sentence". It's filled with gems hidden at every corner, every turn.

And this particular one had much resonance with me, lately:

(She) felt the weight of his hand on her knee and she knew that they were both arriving at the other side of abandonment at that instant.

history.

2010-07-01T13:54:00.003+08:00

I was reading old posts from this blog today in a fit of nostalgia, from Way Back in 2005. It's been a while that this has been going, so I realised. In fact, this blog has been going for as long as I'd dated Deepak, which was a Very Long Time.

And now everything's changed, and for the better - or so I think.

I've been ... happier. More myself. And realising that there are people out there that speak my language in life, which, as it turns out, is easier than teaching someone else to speak it. Or, indeed, more rewarding than failing at such.

I read through the chronicle of the last couple of years, and all I could think was that I was so young.

So worried and paranoid and obsessive, about the most inconsequential things in the world. So trusting and so willing to fall in love. So cliched. So desperate for love. So blind. So unaware of what was important and what was not.

But in between it all, beautiful crystal moments.

I made my own mistakes, I thought I was all grown-up and adult but really I was just playing at life.

So stupid.

"That was the year ... when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every word, all of it."
- Joan Didion

breakfast.

2010-06-20T15:42:00.002+08:00

if this is it.

2010-06-19T22:48:00.003+08:00

3/14 Arnold Street, South Yarra, Vic 3141

2010-06-10T11:21:00.003+08:00

I would happily have rent stress for this place. I have the biggest weakness ever for refurbished pre-war apartments :D

Isn't the kitchen particularly sweet?

interior design porn.

2010-06-04T18:03:00.002+08:00

Oh, how I want one ...

gigs and money matters.

2010-06-03T12:22:00.002+08:00

On the Bright Side - The Strokes, Mumford and Sons, Angus and Julia Stone,
The Cat Empire,
John Butler Trio,
Jack Johnson.

Are all coming to Perth this year.

On the other hand, I guess I'm not going to spend $5k traveling Japan, so maybe I can afford it?

you let me down.

2010-05-31T15:27:00.001+08:00

Lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling
Ooh, baby, you let me down
Crying to myself and trying to shake the feeling
Ooh, baby, you let me down

You let me down easy, you let me down light

It really gets me down, but you let me down right
You set me down gently, you let me down slow
It's gonna take some time before I can let you go

Floating on the ceiling, staring at the floor
Looking from above at what we had before
I could hear your motor humming, I wanted you to stay
But I could see it coming from a hundred miles away

Lying in the grass, staring at the sun
Burning out the memory that you were the one
Trying to pretend that I didn't feel a thing
But it's feeling as familiar as the simple song I sing

You set me down proper, you said the right things
The sun was coming up, they were waiting in the wings
The sun was going down, you were packing up your clothes
You said, "I hate to let you down but, babe, I gotta go!"

Lying in the back seat, eyes shut tight
Tired of staring at the road so I'm stopping for the night
I can hear your motor humming so I'm covering some ground
Ooh, baby, you let me down

- You let me down, Joel Plaskett.

melbourne.

2010-05-30T11:34:00.002+08:00

Well that seals the deal, then.

The Alfred offers a PGY2 training position in Critical Care, and there isn't an equivalent in Perth. I'm sold. I'm moving to Melbourne in 2012.

As Michael says, we're going to have to find new residency hospitals anyway because RPH is likely to close its doors soon. Might as well go somewhere with late-night coffee and tasty food. And I'm quite the transportable person at the moment.

remember the treadmill guys?

2010-05-26T17:56:00.001+08:00

the four loves.

2010-05-19T15:48:00.000+08:00

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

- C.S. Lewis

you might not think it, but.

2010-05-12T12:36:00.001+08:00

I understand.

'Cause when a heart breaks, no it don't break even.

grad trip.

2010-05-02T12:20:00.002+08:00

So, we've decided to go to Japan for our graduation trip. And oh God is it going to make a giant hole in my pocket. But the flurry of planning has started, which I guess is necessary because there will be like 10 of us going together. Sounds like a recepie for tensions to run high, one believes.

Also I now recognise about half the hiragana alphabet! There is purpose now to studying this language - at least I will never end up ordering natto by accident.

yellow lunchbox.

2010-04-30T13:23:00.002+08:00

My Smart Bento lunchbox has arrived from I Love Obento! and I am ridiculously and unaccountably happy.

nonsense.

2010-04-30T11:51:00.001+08:00

Translation Party = hours of fun.

http://translationparty.com/#7281946

Also Michael has perfectly summed up my reasons for doing so:

Michael: So you decided, as a true internet-living, lolita-dressing, anime-watching japanophile to up the ante?

Me: Pretty Much.

4 chords to success.

2010-04-26T11:08:00.000+08:00

procrastination-enabler.

2010-04-19T14:05:00.003+08:00

You know how sometimes, when there's something that you desperately need to do, and then you do everything possible in your power to avoid till the last moment (or forever)?

Several things fall into this category - exams, personal problems, extreme dislike for a rotation. Mostly exams. I've found something new to be fixated on every swotvac since the dawn of time. It hasn't been all that bad, though - some have developed into permanent obsessions. But I do realise that there's a number of bad flash games out there where I have clocked up days of actual game time.

So, I guess the entire point of this post is to announce that I have found a new procrastination-enabler!

http://www.textfugu.com/

I've been trying to learn the language since I became a japanophile in high school, I guess I can just pick it up again when trying to avoid something else :)

Plus it may even be somewhat useful since I think I'm heading to Japan for grad trip this year.

Also it is embarrassing that all the japanese I currently know is from watching subbed anime.

obento, my bento.

2010-04-17T21:12:00.005+08:00

I have discovered the obsessive interests of various people run to the weird and wacky. The Japanese have a word for this - 'otaku'. And quite frankly I am one. I'm a geeky, knitting, photographer wannabe.

I have found a new obsession!

Obento.

I guess I've always brought in lunch, mostly as a money-saving exercise. But lately, because I live with 2 other boys, leftovers from dinner have been scarce. So I've been considering putting in a bit of effort and do some prep over the weekend so that I have foodz to eat. And so I went on a trawl through the internet to find recipes amenable to this cause.

I discovered the bento otakus. I may well join in.

After all, who can resist this?

impulse.

2010-04-06T20:59:00.002+08:00

Well, so. In general my life and my relationship has been in a bit of a mess lately, and feels like the imagined flight of a bird that's had a stroke. Or a child's doodle. Or someone writing with a glo-stick on long exposure film.

Mostly my relationship has gone all pear-shaped, and while we're working very hard to try and fix it, one wonders if it is too little, too late. If too much has been lost. If one can live with what has surfaced, despite our history and the cliched conviction that love will overcome all.

I wonder if it will be enough. I want to believe that it will be enough, but reality intrudes, sometimes. And sometimes I sit and anguish, filled with wracking doubt.

I miss the certainty.

I am not myself.

In continuation of that, I went and pierced my ears today (they used two green cannulas, and it did briefly cross my mind that I could have easily done this myself).

turning point.

2010-04-04T11:09:00.000+08:00

It's either goodbye, or forever.

And I can't decide.

tomorrow and the day after.

2010-04-01T21:54:00.002+08:00

reasons.

2010-03-30T15:33:00.003+08:00

It was never what I did, it was what you did. I thought everything was fine, remember? And then I woke up and we were crashing and I didn't even know when we had left the verge. But oh yeah, that's right. I wasn't driving.

Suddenly everything that had been the same was all wrong.

It'd turned and bit me.

It wasn't me who'd changed. It was you.

spirituality.

2010-03-30T07:42:00.004+08:00

the end is in sight.

2010-03-29T16:38:00.002+08:00

'Cos baby, we're slow dancing in a burning room.

tenacity.

2009-12-11T21:26:00.001+08:00

And we are so near I can almost taste it.

We will ignore my panicked running around the house.

threads.

2009-12-11T00:50:00.000+08:00

Wispy, fragile things that are so hard to hold on to.

And they snap when you try too hard.

false hope.

2009-12-06T18:05:00.002+08:00

The credit points from this year have already been added to my total - bringing it to 240. Whether this is any reflection that I have actually passed the year is debatable, and no one is very sure what it actually means. Most of us are holding up to the mantra that the Faculty lives to screw us over, and are skeptical.

I remain skeptical, but also want to believe that I passed. Oh well, the board of examiners meets tomorrow.

Facebook is full of all these people who have already jumped country, we're still left behind. Not that I'm complaining much, after all I do still need to find somewhere to stay. And all the extra packing time that I don't need (but that Deepak probaby does, seeing as he only bought his pack yesterday).

I'm raring to go!

Countdown = 5 more days.

countdown.

2009-12-03T21:58:00.000+08:00

8 days to lift-off, baby.

one week.

2009-11-28T09:52:00.003+08:00

Because it seems like we moved into this house a week ago. And now the year's already over. And I don't think that I need to cancel my plane ticket to Nepal.

Last night, as we toasted each other over dinner and reminisced about the year, I was a little sad. I've had such great times here in Bunbury, RCS was the best decision I've made regarding my education. And well, life in general as well. I've learnt so much and made such fantastic friends. Even studying for exams was enjoyable for the company (we will neglect to mention the month-long study break). I loved my teachers. I can find a vein just as well as the next heroin addict.

As I pack up my stuff and when I hand it my keys and the beepy card that gets me into ED, it won't be without a twinge of regret.

Just one more year to go to graduation!

anxiety.

2009-11-19T10:13:00.000+08:00

Exams start tomorrow and I feel a distinct lack of anxiety. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing.

spreading the loveeee.

2009-11-07T23:21:00.002+08:00

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” - T. S. Elliot