Desmond and that Familiar Comfort.

I understand how familiarity is comfort. I understand why we may choose to put ourselves in familiar situations, among familiar people, because we expect that any new change will be disruptive to our routine.

But sometimes, if by some flash of revelation, you happen to realise just how uncomfortable your familiarity has become... I hope you find the strength to step away from what you've long considered to be 'familiar'. Chances are, without you knowing, that familiarity has already morphed, slowly, into something different. And if it has changed to become something unfamiliar, and needlessly uncomfortable, then you shouldn't stay.

After all, the reason you sought out familiarity was because you wanted to be comfortable, and you were afraid of something disruptive.

I don't know how much about making choices. I know less about making hard decisions. But today, and recently, I've been wondering if I should turn away from my familiar people and places. Because I don't want to become my surroundings. I don't want to blend in, if what I'm blending into is something I don't endorse.

Familiarity is comfort. But a clear conscience, a strong conviction, and a good heart, can also make you very comfortable.

Desmond the First Real One in Years.

It's Christmas time again, catching me by incomprehensible surprise. How did this year past by so quickly? I don't know why, but as I age, each year seems to pass by with increasing speed.

A lot has happened this year. I've finally graduated--first from college, and then next, from my short-lived bumming stint (although I'm sure my parents disagree with me on the latter). Following that, I started work in a bookstore. And following that, Christmas time comes and catches me by surprise.

This year I also moved into my official room. We all know this, but sometimes we take our privacy for granted; Privacy a very special privilege. In a world where all our lives are sometimes carelessly laid bare on the internet, privacy should be better treasured--physical or otherwise.

Which might be also why this year I've also left huge gaps in-between entries. Since 2003, I've blogged pretty consistently, aiming for at least once a month. But this year has also been the first year in many, where my entries are a bit more personal, and less about the frivolous trivialities of my life.

With the advent of tumblr, and these other-like-minded hipster-ish platforms that everyone is migrating to, blogspot seems once again safe. Safe from the prying eyes of the half-acquainted people in my life, who somehow have access to my blog, through the links of a friend, of a friend, of a friend. Who knew being forgotten is strange comfort?

I love my God. Because even when I try to hide into nothingness, He never fails to notice me. :) Happy Holidays, my quiet and un-visiting world.

Desmond and the Time-and-Task-Sensitive Music.

Today I played Mat Kearney's Young Love album in the background as I did some work. And I liked it. It was light, and easy to listen to, and bright and chirpy--a turn away from the direction that I normally poise my melancholy-loving ears towards. And you know what's happiness? I believe happiness is in the little things.

Happiness is when you have some work to do so that you're not too bored, and not too overwhelmed. Happiness is when your tea is just nice; not too cold or too sweet and not too hot or too bland. Happiness is in the little things, and not the exaggerated.

Happiness is about trivial things. 

Sure, extreme happiness is still happiness, but there's probably a more apt word for it flying so far out of my reach that I cannot possibly know or use it.

But perhaps the more persistant happiness, that leaves you feeling good a longer time than great for a moment, is the happiness of the little things.

Just as I saved my work and handed it in, the last song on Kearney's album ended. And then I smiled, because these things make me smile. I like it when my music ends accidentally in sync with the end my task. I love it that as I open my front door after a long journey back home, the seconds on my itouch wind down coincidentally to zero.

And if you can learn to be content with trivial things at the zeros, then one day, you'll truly learn the words to describe contentment and happiness at extreme levels.

Incidentally, I've written once about Happy and Happenstance, which both originally pointed to some form of accident or luck. Which is to say, Happiness happens to us, from external sources acting on or toward us. 

Desmond and the Lane.

I graduated last week, World (of zero readership). I graduated, and I'm a graduate, and I have graduate qualifications, and basically that's how much I feel my graduation has changed me--merely given me the right to add the word 'graduate' in its various forms to any descriptions I make of myself.

But I shan't go into detail about that day, because I have little photos from my convocation, and I would really like to take some of my gown before I blog officially about it. Instead, I'll photo-journal the day I went to HJ Lane. This was actually taken a day before my graduation, come to think of it.

It's a whole mess of pictures, and I couldn't control the textures as much as I liked to, which really just shows that in Photography, I'm far from graduated. But practice makes perfect right?

Desmond & the Lemon-substitutes.

In baking and cooking, there's what is known as a cooking substitute, which stands in place for something else you're missing. For example, some people say sour cream can be almost successfully substituted for full cream, as is the same with lemon and lime. Of course, they always swear that the finish product is good enough (or better).

I think it's the same in life. You know how life gives you lemons? I believe sometimes it gives you oranges, and you're supposed to do the same thing--make lemonade juice. Of course it'll taste nothing like the sour-ey pick-me-wake-me-up that we're used to, but it'll make a sweet greet-you-in-the-morning drink. Same principals. The finished product is good enough for fruit juice (or better, for the non-sour-toothed).

But at the end of the pulpy road... lemon isn't orange, and neither is sour cream, full cream. They were different for obvious reasons, and the finished product is never the same, even if sometimes better.

I watched my mom make a whole canteen of food today. First frying noodles, and then making mango-flavored jelly, before finally slicing up two oranges. And...? I had no big revelation. I'm just waiting for the jelly to set, before I nonchalantly ask my mom if I'm allowed to taste one. But if life does give me oranges one day, I'll just make the same puns as everyone else does, with the lemons: sell it, throw it back in Life's face, make juice, make pie, clean up the tough stains... Oranges and lemons are both citrus fruits, they should be good enough, right?I cannot help much what is given to me, or what someone else does. I can only cope, and hope that things will be better. And make the adjustments, hoping the finished product is good enough, or if I'm fortunate, better.

Desmond and the Long Break.

Blogger has dropped out of the popularity race, and now all the cool kids are endorsing the indie-ish tumblr and the incessant twitter. I have to say--and be slightly embarrassed while I do--that I have a tumblr. Several, in fact, and I actually have followers. Hee! Of course, most of the times, the people who think they are cool, really aren't, and so I really am not either. Also? I'm a sell-out for not updating my blogspot for three months now. Yes, that day finally came, and multiplied itself a hundred times over. I stopped blogging.

This blog has held a lot of history for me. I've seen myself grow, and I've seen my childishness, and dare I say it, my brief flashes of maturity. I've been overtly and unwisely honest at times, and mind-scrambling-ly guarded on other occasions, and in all of it, I've used writing this blog as a means to mark my time and remember my moments.

2012 so far has been a year of moments. Of course, every year has moments, but as we all know, certain moments in our lives are milestones. Towards the end of April, I finally got my own room. Yes, it's been a loooong and whine-ful wait, but I now have a room to clean and take care of, to slather with photos and other half-baked crafts that I know are terrible, but choose to think are stamps of my creative individuality. I finally have a room to call my own.

Of course, 2012 also marks the end of my undergraduate studies. I'm still waiting to have my convocation which happens in approximately 2 weeks, but that's a milestone too. I am a graduate! I get to wear a gown and a clunky hat, and worry about falling on the stage, and getting no cheers. I get to leave my schooling, laid-out, timetable days, behind, and enter the pre-working limbo of hours and hours of drama shows and spontaneous and continuous eating. Basically where nothing is dictated by any sort of time-based system. I've been living that for about 2 months now, and believe me, it's a heck of a slow-acting freak house. When the freak reaches it's maximum (which for me is kinda now), it hits you hard and shows no mercy. The only way to counter it is to rally up an inexperienced army of past working experience (none), and other past vaguely-relevant achievements that really aren't much to boast about anyways.

That's the next milestone--looking for a job. Which is really where I'm at now. I'm in-between states, and I'm in-between a rock and an incredibly soft and comfortable place which I now have to leave because of eviction on the grounds of graduation. It's unsettling and scary, and I just want to huddle up in my blanket and cry on my bed. The bad news is, I can't do that forever. The good news is... I now have a room where I can do that in private confidence.

Thank God for 2012's milestones. Some, and counting.

(I applied for some places, and we'll see who gets back. Also, I went to the gardensbythebay the other day. )

Desmond and the Rice-bowl.

I don't know when it was exactly that I started eating rice out of bowls. I didn't before. It's a deeply Chinese thing, eating rice out of a bowl, so much so that in Chinese, the terms are used together. Fan Wan. The thing is, my family isn't deeply Chinese. Mandarin isn't even my primary language. And I don't have the fair-coloured skin that my country-men have come to associate with the Chinese (even though we all know how inaccurate that can be). And rice-bowl-Chinese-ness is often left, in my sub-conscious mind, to my grandfather's generation.

When I was younger, I ate my rice out of a plate. I remember still that there were cartoons on that plate: right on the centre, and along the brims. Eating was much like a prize; you ate to finish, because finishing meant you could see the picture hidden underneath the rice. And if you couldn't finish, you were reminded of the staving children in Africa. I'm sure at some point in time, I wondered why we had to finish the food we couldn't, if there were people elsewhere going hungry. Wouldn't the decent thing be to eat only what you needed, leaving the excess for the hungry people? But I guessed I got the sentiment: we eat because we are thankful that we are fortunate enough.

I don't fancy rice. When I was in Ireland, someone heard that and exclaimed that they had found the one Asian in the world who didn't like rice. I found it slightly amusing, that he made the assumption, because... do all Asians like rice? Should all Asians like rice? Isn't that a little presumptuous and small-minded? But its an idea that I take for granted myself too. I hadn't quite realised it until he said it, but the instant he did, I questioned it myself too. I took for granted that all Asians (or at least all Chinese) loved rice, much like at one point in my boyhood, I took for granted that I had rice that the Africans did not have.

Sometimes we take for granted how we are wired, on account of our culture, our families, and our environments. We take for granted the effect Change has on us. I took for granted all that, and even the fact that as un-Chinese as I consider myself to be, I've recently swapped my rice-plate for a rice-bowl. Yes, maybe it's because I hate rice, or that I just want a smaller portion and a bowl is more practical, but I've started eating rice out of a bowl. Maybe I'm growing up--heading towards the grandfather generation. Unlikely, but I'm not going to be presumptuous. After all, I'm the unlikely Asian who hates rice.


(It's 3am and I'm wide awake, and of course, musing and wondering. I've been working on my FYP, which might explain--I'm trying to figure out why I'm thinking like that too--why I'm suddenly thinking about my Chinese-ness. It's something I hardly think about, but it's something that I feel is unique to citizens of my Sunny Island. We are a mix, and a testament to that is my mini-insomnia: it's the Indian teh tarik I drank for supper just now. I just want to sleep. :( )