the path diverged
but i was not torn
convinced
to go down the path not taken

the path was treacherous
no challenge i feared
convinced
i had faith within me

specks of flowers brightened the path
encouraging
convinced
to forge ahead
for the cross is my burden

but today i despair
angry and doubtful
convinced
something has gone awry

hindsight is ugly
why did i push past boulders?
admired for my courage? or foolishness?
perhaps
i should have turned around sooner

i'm wrecked with hurt
now i see
perhaps
i was wrong all along

i've never held back
given all i had
nothing else i own
is there still wanting?
perhaps
but i truly have naught

nothingness is my possession
i am empty
drained
forsaken
know not what to do

all that's left is a mustard seed
dry and hard
void of love, waiting to grow
struggling to burst forth
in vain for now

So its back to love again, not sure why everything seems to culminate around this word recently...must be all that Valentine's and Chap Goh Mei aura floating around.

Even the liturgical reading for this coming week seems to concur. Love your enemy is the message, and it is something that comes across stronger than ever for me this week. In times of impatience and anger, attempting to (I don't think it can actually be done!) say a good thing about the person causing the harm can be as if not more painful as the hurt that was caused. In those moments, I have been guilty of trashing and lashing out in the worst way, it just needs to get out! On hindsight (which is annoyingly always 20/20), when my rationality returns, then only would I (useless by this point) start thinking about what could have been done better.

I have to admit, my hindsight is rather cowardly. I bet anything that if a similar bad situation comes up again, hindsight would have no impact whatsoever on making my behaviour better! The brain does the stupidest things sometimes, especially when it comes to emotions.

Speaking of emotions, for some odd reason, I seem to be giving (not very wise perhaps) thoughts and semi-solicited advice about relationships recently. Such stuff coming from a single female is just wrong lah haha...

Love is a beautiful phenomenon, regardless of which kind it is. Everyone knows what it is, but everyone attaches such different meanings to it. We categorize it, quantify it in terms of time and cost, break it down into bits and pieces and play give and take with it.

Below are some of the odd things people do with it (I'm not judging =) just observing. I'm guilty of a few of them as well!)

1. Putting a cutoff age on love.
1 or 2 years of age gap is the standard, 5 or 6 is pushing it and anything beyond that is going to get you labelled.

2. Putting a cutoff distance on love.
when two people live near to each other its fine, but when one shifts halfway round the world, it won't work.

3. Putting a trading value on love
i spent 5 hours with your parents, you have to spend 5 with mine

4. Putting a memorandum on love
i will continue to love you if you start/stop *insert word here* (smoking, gambling, washing the dishes, clean the shower etc.)

5. Putting a claim on love
because i love you, you are mine, therefore you shall shut out everyone else in your life and focus on me, myself and i

6. Putting a cutoff amount on love
i've said/done enough for this hour/day/week. Its someone else's turn.

7. Putting a still (like a photo) on love
i fell in love with this person, don't change or i'll leave

8. Putting love on a commonality
i like dancing, you like dancing, i love us dancing together. so, one day if i can't dance anymore......i might lose the reason of loving you

i think it is easy to allow the things above to happen. It is rational even, because we don't want to open ourselves to the possibility of being vulnerable and getting hurt (vulnerable! that's the word...i think viable was wrongly used some time this week haha). But there is one situation that would wipe off all of them immediately and it is to imagine oneself in the position of a parent. i won't stop loving my child because of our age gaps / when they move far away from home / not do the dishes / change their character / stopped doing something I liked. I think I would never limit my love for my kids in that way, so it becomes incomprehensible to do that to a partner as well. Of course, one never fully knows what the other person thinks, not knowing if what they decide to do about love is similar or 10000 miles away, but that's the chance one should take. Always.

But well, like I said, I just have a feeling all these might just come back and smack me from the back of my head and going 'Oh, I informed (told) you thusly (so)!'

We'll see =)

So, in life, when you get lemons, you make lemonade with the juice, pie with the zest, a tree with the seeds, aromatherapy with the oils......and throw whatever is left into the face of the lemon giver.

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On a totally unrelated note, I have been sitting down a lot lately. Either that, or running into buildings away from the cold.

4 months en route to Permanent head Damage, there are a few things that i've learnt which i wish i knew before. Of course, there have been people who told me about them, but they have put it in such nice ways that it took away the degree of impact it should have had. Not that it would have changed my decision one bit, but when one truly experiences and becomes aware of it for the first time, it can be like a perpetual thunderstorm of grey clouds and falling rain...like the weather outside my window right now haha...

Today, I'm struggling with feeling stupid.

No. Don't pacify me.

i knew studies would be tough. Just didn't know how tough exactly.

It is abnormal for me to have been reading about something for 4 months but still am unable to grasp something properly. It is absolutely frustrating.

How frustrating?

Imagine reading something in English but not understanding it. Sounds impossible? Not at all.

I'm starting to understand the magnitude of power of meanings we give to words. It is overwhelming. Just like how i'd have associated a red fruit with the word 'apple' and a round bouncy object to 'ball' when i was younger, i feel that i have regressed back to that stage of learning, only this time, i'm trying to associate graphs to 'cross correlation' and formulas to 'ARMA modeling'.

I can't wait for the day when i'm competent in the language once again.

Its half past 10 in the morning (seems that its more common here to refer to the clock by quarter sections instead of mentioning the minutes like back home - 'Its half ten' vs 'its ten-thirty'), and church mass has probably just begun. I'm sitting in my room and not the pews because the rain is rather heavy today. Would probably be drenched with the half hour walk, so I'd decided to go for the evening mass instead.

Hm.

Come to think of it, that's an odd decision to make. I'm putting off getting wet for a possibility of being dry, but it is equally possible that the rain would continue (or even get heavier) in the evening. The optimistic me had decided that rain would stop. Or perhaps the naive me is putting off the discomfort of getting wet now without considering being wet later. [Just an update: it didn't stop raining! So much for my brilliant probabilistic decision-making]

Anyhoo....

I have this habit of always playing something on my laptop while I'm working on something else. It doesn't matter that I'm not watching the video or listening to the music, but I just feel comfortable with something playing in the background. This weekend, my hard disk is not with me (most of the stuff I play is in there), so I resorted to Youtube instead.

Searching for something to play is not that easy. It should preferably be something entertaining enough, but not too attention catching that it disrupts the other thing I'm doing. At the same time, it cannot be too monotonous and fall waaaaaay into the background or there would be no difference with not playing anything. And it should be long and continuous enough so that I don't have to spend too much time to keep searching for clips when they end.

Documentaries work well (yes, I'm THAT kind of nerd), and sermons too. Amongst my favourites are TEDtalks, BBC Horizon, Discovery, Stanford lectures (this one sometimes makes me agitated, especially when math comes up!) and the newest addition as of yesterday is Catholic Clips, from where I was introduced to Archbishop Fulton J Sheen.

It so happens that the profound revelation that changed my thoughts was the clip about the 3 kinds of love. Apt for the upcoming Valentines Day, but I'd beg to differ because to me, love means so much more than the commercial version we see so much that it has become a norm. Kinda like what Christmas seems to be like.

I had the long-standing view that love at first sight is a myth. Like (or lust...c'mon, we all had this before some time!) at first sight? Yes, but love, no. Me thinks that all love relationships start from friendship, and that like at first sight + getting to know each other better would eventually tend to love (as time approaches infinity - darn those math terms!). Love comes when I see the beauty of the person within, which doesn't necessarily tally with the like which is usually physical attractiveness. By the way, I find it easiest to find love by looking at another person's eyes, do you?

Of course, the fuzzy thing about my logic is the way I define love. The love that fits my thoughts above is erotic or romantic love, what the Greeks called Eros. The love for one specific person, deep and consecrated, a mystery made whole by the sacrament of marriage.

Therefore, based on that, it is possible to like someone but not fall in love with that same person.

Archbishop Sheen had a different idea about love.

He said, we can love someone but not like them. Like is in the emotions but love is in the will...we feel therefore we think vs we think therefore we feel (hm...its James-Lange vs Cannon-Bard Round 2). We can be commanded to love, God commanded us to love, to love Him, and love our neighbours as we love ourselves. If I had to like everyone before I loved them...gosh, I'd be very busy!

Then, it clicked. It is entirely possible to love people, to love and empathize with the cashier at the checkout counter at the end of a long day, to love and care for people at the homeless shelter whom i've never seen before, to love and be concerned about people affected by floods half a world away (from where i am at least!). I don't have to like them, in fact, it would be impossible to since I can't use my nice little equation up there.

Philia, was what the Greeks called this kind of love.

This alternate meaning of love turns my equation around. I can love someone but not like that person. Love and like have swapped meanings. And when one has grown up with meaning so strongly attached to certain words, swapping them around like that makes one question all the other meanings we give to so-called 'words'!

But anyway, what does this mean for me? In the future, when I say 'I love you' to someone, which meaning would it take on? I mean, it would be ridiculous to go around saying 'I eros you' or 'I philia you', so I'll stick to 'I love you', and let its true eros or philia meaning be revealed through time =)

Oh.

Pain struck me for a while. God loves me, I know that. But does He like me? Have I made myself likable to Him?

I've been listening to some sermons by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. He is such a brilliant story teller.

He says the most complicated things in the simplest ways...and peppers it with stories like this:

"She said, "I want you to promise me faithfully that you would not ask me to go to confession"

"I said, "I promise you faithfully that I would not ask you to go to confession". She came back that afternoon...[]...and I said, "We have two very notable paintings in the church. Would you like to see them?"

"As I took her down the side aisle of the church...I pushed her into the confessional."

...with a straight face...

"I always keep my promises."

This is the Youtube channel where his sermons are: FultonJSheen

Wish he were still alive, would have been such a privilege to hear him speak.

I can't actually remember why I stopped writing, but well, what's important is starting again =)

So, perhaps 10 little updates would be appropriate.

1. I'm at Birmingham, UK (please don't find me at Birmingham, US!)

2. It has been 4 months since the start of a 3 year PhD.

3. Have been constantly confronted with things I swore off as hates (like physics and math and engineering. karma.)

4. It's surprising how much I thought I'd be more sure of things as I get older, but I honestly think I'm still none the wiser.

5. People in another country also think I look older than I am (?!)

6. Coffee and chocolate addictions grew deeper

7. Hails Skype as one of the best things ever invented (Google is also in the same realm - remember it holds the answers to life's questions!)

8. Have probably walked more in the past 4 months than the last 10 years combined.

9. Felt snowflakes on my face for the first time =)

10. Fell so much deeper in love with God. Amen.

How do people make decision making so easy? Maybe i should just go be a nun and forget about everything else. It increases my chance of life AND afterlife insurance no?

hello =) i have been away...and i'm back! Looking at my last post, i have to say...i think i'm a psychic that can read her own future...freaky no? Speaking about change and crossroads, this year has been nothing but change. Many changes and 'firsts'. Gone are my comfy routines. i've gotten an offer to do my PhD in UK. Its just crazy! i've been dreaming about something like this for so long =D i have a new laptop =) It is the prettiest most elegant thing ever. And i now owe my sister the equivalent value of its cost, in English pounds. i took IELTS. Regardless of what everyone says, i'm still sore about my score. i've just left my job to prepare for the PhD...it is week #1 of my 'pengangguran' and i'm so so restless already...ack~ Will write more soon. Time to go predict something about striking lottery. Or who wins the World Cup =)

In 1 hour and 52 minutes, I’ll be 23.

This shouldn’t be happening to me now, it should only hit when I’m 30, but I’m going “Dang! Time is passing too fast! I’m already 23!”

Looking back, I think I have a lot to be proud of my twenty-secondth year of life.

I competed in my first dance competition and bagged 2 golds + 1 bronze.

I performed for my studio’s annual dinner, for a radio station’s roadshows, for a charity event, on an international dance cruise, and at a shopping mall for Christmas.

I did a recording for a local drama.

I learnt to put on stage makeup.

I wore a bikini (hah! Finally learnt to love my body).

Conducted research, wrote and published my first international paper.

Had 2 abstracts accepted for international conferences.

I gathered the courage to speak my mind at work.

Got my first increment.

Got my first bonus.

Watch my sis get married.

Learnt a little more about love from my parents.

And got to know God a little better.

This year is going to be a year of change. My dreams never seemed more vivid than they are now. I know I have to make a lot of decisions and act on them soon. Part of me is afraid, probably why I’ve been dragging my feet about.

Am I making the right choices?

Am I doing the right thing?

For the past few weeks, the poem by Robert Frost keeps replaying in my head. I’m having a ‘crossroad’ year. Pray for me, I want to walk the right trail =) Blessed Birthday to me!