Down with the sickness.

The past few days have been me playing tag with an annoying cold, with it somewhat reaching its peak on Monday when I was teary-eyed and sneezing all day, thanks to the spoilt aircon which kept on oscillating so the glacial 18 degree celsius airflow would whoosh down upon my desk every 4 seconds or so.

Now I'm kinda better though nursing a somewhat tired throat and a nose that occasionally needs some plumbing. Meanwhile I eat lovely aglio olio pasta with extra mushrooms, joy! for lunch or the herbal chicken soup which I will probably eat more often when the pasta place has closed down. :(

Tabby gained weight due to my Dad feeding her an overabundance of pellets every morning and night and a lack of exercise... thanks to Sadie the stupid useless dog that I hate more than I've hated any animal before. So I made Daddy cut down on pellets and then Tabby got a few days exercise because my sister's boyfriend was taking Sadie for awhile. After this my Dad felt Tabby one evening and proclaimed her 'too thin'. Men. -rolls eyes-

I'm somewhat growing out of my yogurt-granola phase, though I took a teaspoonful of that marvellous clover honey and am still blown away by how nice it tastes. Maybe I'm sick of the yogurt because my Mom's been making flavoured yogurt with the yogurt maker and I still very much prefer the plain, tart kind, with a spoonful of honey carelessly mixed in, and my pick of frozen (read: brainfreeze) berries or vanilla granola and oats.

I could do with nomming some frozen berries right about now. They taste lovely.

And I am exceedingly proud of myself for having sewn the hem of my pants this morning when it came undone, which sadly, seems to be a given with G2000 pants, along with the previous problem of a very loose buckle which seems to have been rectified with my latest 2 pairs.

I write very long sentences.

I'd like to take guitar lessons from Jon. Why Jon? I don't know. He was rather fun when at the shop. I'm not as afraid to say the wrong thing around him, I suppose. Haha.

Just a random thought based on recent events. I don't think, that as the perpetrator of pain, you are allowed to pressure the person you've pained into forgiving you. True, forgiveness is a good thing. But it is a privilege we have from God, not so much an entitlement, and I don't think you should be entitled to be instantly forgiven, just as you shouldn't have felt entitled to hurt in the first place. You did something bad. Suck it up.

Eyes.

Sometimes the brightest smile hides the most broken heart.

Exert.

After playing for an evening, my right hand's fingers are dead from fretting. It hurts to type now. Lol. But in a way I feel a sense of accomplishment that I managed to play till my fingers are screwed. Yes I'm masochistic. -grins-

I have really sweaty hands man. And pressing them constantly on strings makes them sweat MORE even when I'm not playing, argh! Ouch ouch typing is painful. t.t Need to file my nails down cause my nails go right to my fingertips and that's pretty but not so good for guitar, I suppose.

Went to visit Keith yesterday before he left for Macau. Also excuse to show him new toy, haha.

Sonnet.

Say hello to my new baby :)

With the flash she looks quite reddish but the colour is more to the non-flashed pictures. Looks a bit muted though, she's slightly brighter in real life.

Jon went down with me to get it. She's left handed, if you haven't noticed. HAHA it's the first time I've seen Jon look a little lost and confused with a guitar in his lap, cause we were playing 2 guitars, same model but one right and one left handed. And then he was holding the left handed one and I was holding the right, and he was like... "Am I holding it wrong? How to hold ah?" So I took it from him and held it the left handed way and he was like... "Oh ya. Wah looks funny man." But he's so pro lah he can play left handed... and he also turned the lefty guitar upside down and figured out ways to play the chords that way. Too pro man. /salute

I was a bit torn, to be honest. The world, frankly, is made for right handers. When I wanted to play violin, I was very adamant on getting a left handed one, and I was initially pretty adamant on getting a lefty guitar as well. When I play air guitar, instinct is to finger with the right hand, and strum with the left. The rhythm just flows with the left, whereas on my right it seems that I have to consciously think about it. The same when I imagine playing the violin. I could not, for the life of me, imagine bowing with my right hand. It's awkward, it's weak, it's shaky and just feels wrong somehow. Any benefit I would have fingering with my dominant hand somehow feels insignificant.

Even then, the thought of always having to order left handed guitars is scary. Hardly any place stocks them. It would mean special orders, which means none of the financial perks that one gets from buying a righty guitar that's been purchased in bulk. And because I'm new, well... I don't know.

In the end, music - and nature - won. Jon was like saying that when we tap to the rhythm, we do it with our dominant side. It just comes naturally that way. And it does. I'd never played a lefty before, but five minutes on the lefty felt more comfortable than the several times I've picked up a standard guitar.

Generally left handers are just convinced to take it up right handed. It's convenient. People tell you, it doesn't really matter. Hard work can overcome the awkwardness. But you'd work hard anyway playing it how it comes naturally to you, and then you wouldn't have much awkwardness to get over at all. The same amount of work would get you further.

Honestly for someone who is such an advocate of lefty things, I'm surprised I faltered a bit. But I think it's important to do this, not just for myself, but for the sake of the future. People who make guitars, violins, heck, even pianos - need to know that 10% of the world are left handers. It's not an imaginary condition. We are the opposite of you. And we're not all ambidextrous - it's just that we've grown up in a culture of right handers, and thus have to use the things they use, which we have become somewhat accustomed to. But if nature had its way, we'd all be doing it the other way round, and being much better at it. We're in 2009. This IS the future we talked about. There should be that alternative.

And for those who think it doesn't matter...

Jimi Hendrix. Kurt Cobain. Paul McCartney.

Supplies!

I'm really bad with surprises. Like, horrible. It's not that I can't keep a secret but I feel as excited about the person I should be surprising that I want to tell them immediately.

I got Keith... the Cobus DVD. And he was like WHAT DID YOU GET ME WHAT DID YOU GET ME and I also couldn't stand it so I told him. Lol. But it only comes on the 26th December I think. Haha. Gotta wait super long.

KY mentioned that my blog's a far cry from what it used to be. Where once it sounded like a real person and how they'd talk, now I just sound like, well, any other blogger. Which is true. While I used to say what I wanted to say on my blog... Now this blog is just the leftovers, pretty much. Yes, this blog is self-censored. When you don't control who reads your blog you have to control what you say.

Do I miss speaking my mind? Heck yes. I love to write. I love making observations, I love constructing lines that tug at heartstrings and sometimes I look back at certain things I've written and think, wow. Not wow as in WHOA NELLY THAT'S AWESOME WRITING but like... that is me. I look at it and think that was wholly me. Every word every punctuation is exactly how I'd say it, and it was exactly how I've felt.

I live life in words. My life is a book, and for every happening my brain shoots off a word interpretation of the event. Every falter in my step, every smile, when I look at something, beautiful or hideous, I think of how to describe it in words. I have loved writing in my blog. It meant something to me, and now it means close to nothing except for the few posts where I shed some light on myself, like this one.

I miss writing honestly, without the political correctness and careful wording. I miss that love affair with words I had on this blog. But, as we all know with painful experience... love isn't always enough to keep something alive.

Under a spell.

Well that was a nice response to the last post. Always afraid cause not everything we read or hear, even in Christian literature, should be taken as fact, and I'm often very critical of what I read because of many false prophets and such. One thing we should always pray for is discernment I think. Otherwise we will blindly follow anyone proclaiming themselves authorities of Christian faith which might not be totally true.

Anyway, just a testimony that my dizzy spells have gone away! Praise God... been having headaches and occasional dizzy spells that just hit me out of nowhere. Was getting quite worried, and I went to the doctor awhile back, who prescribed me medication saying it might be a restriction in blood flow in my neck area which caused the headaches. Well, headaches are gone, and the dizziness hasn't come back at all. ^^ Happy.

Had Frisbee again yesterday. Wah my legs are tired. It was like 3v3 and 4v4? Keith was laughing cause he said he never saw me sprinting before. -whacks Keith on head with a calculator- Anyway was the biggest workout I've had in a long time but it was fun and I felt like I actually played decently for once. Like I mentioned to Keith, playing with so many people means the guys always throwing to each other, then when they DO throw to me like once in a blue moon, if I fumble, after that they don't wanna throw to me again. Then like don't get the chance to really get into the game, you know? But yesterday shiok lah. Hahaha. Although I did abuse Jo a couple of times. T_T Sorry! <3

Passion.

So I finally got the chance to watch The Passion of the Christ. I was mentioning to Keith that King of Kings is still my favourite movie about Jesus, but in retrospect I think The Passion had probably the best depiction, not just of His suffering, but His life as well.

We always think Jesus was, well, Jesus. All we know of Him is those three years that He was teaching, never the earlier years, His life as a carpenter in His younger days and such. We always think of Him as this holy moly God-in-a-man's-body... Seeing this portrayal of Him in the show made me cry just as hard as the horrible torture inflicted on Him. He laughed, He smiled, He kissed His mother affectionately on the cheek, He took little children into His arms and blessed them with His marvellous love. Surely that is a God to be proud of. Not a distant, judging God, but a God full of mercy and love for us.

One of the writings in my Bible says that being a man, Jesus gave up the omniscience that God had during His time on earth. In His manly form, He retained the attributes of a man, and thus His knowledge was limited by what He had learnt as a man. He had to rely on the Father to reveal everything to Him. He didn't know everything going on in the world, it was all through prayer and His relationship with God where God spoke to Him and showed things to Him. From the time He was born, God was ministering to Him. All that He did was through faith that He was the Son of God, trusting in God that He was truly His child. And when satan tempted Him in the desert, He would've honestly struggled with that belief that He was to be seated at the right hand of God because He wouldn't have had memories of His own divine form.

Well, this interpretation of Jesus's life is somewhat disputed, but I personally find it a huge encouragement to us. If this is so, then Jesus truly walked in our shoes. He did not have the omniscient knowledge God had... like us, and yet He had enough faith in God to truly follow Him and walk with Him. He struggled with doubt, like us... fear, like us... sadness and loneliness... like us. And despite the show being somewhat peppered with fictional interpretations of what temptation Jesus (and several other characters) went through, I'm sure He did experience very human emotions during those dark times. During His life on earth He cooperated with His human limitations and did not exercise His divine properties, allowing God to empower Him... just as the Spirit currently empowers us to do God's work.

So what a comfort it is to know... God has experienced our every walk of life and emerged triumphant. And so can we.

A Quiet Taste.

Here's the deal. I can't stand acquired tastes. Really.

When it comes to things like... key lime pie, oysters, truffles, cheese, sashimi, it's alright. At first bite, they seem... well, a little strange, but oddly nice. Then when you try them again they get better and better.

This occurred to me yesterday during post-Frisbee dinner when I stated that I didn't like the taste of beer. More accurately, I said it tasted like piss. Upon which I got many incredulous looks as well as humorously unnecessary defensiveness about the taste of beer. Note, half the table were avid beer drinkers. Upon my comment, they proceeded to ask me whether I've tasted piss before, to which I replied it's how I would imagine piss to taste like. To which, they asked, "Why are you imagining that?"

For that matter, I stated that I 'would' imagine piss to taste like it. See how semantics make a difference? Imagination is a funny thing, you don't always choose to imagine something, it just somehow pops into your head. Which I guess, people with little to no imagination would not be able to understand. Mine is strong enough that I can almost smell/taste/hear/feel/see things I imagine. Sometimes it's not a very good thing. :p

Furthermore, I'm sure people have come across the gross stench of pee before. And as they say, taste is, what was it, 90% from smell?

Lastly, to conclude, I'm sure many of those people at the table have stated 'this tastes like crap/shit' before, and I highly doubt anyone jumped in quite so defensively, to ask if they've tasted crap before. I mean, seriously.

So coming back to my point, people were trying to convince me why beer is nice and alcohol is good and cocktails taste better with liquor in them. I mean, okay, if it tastes better to you, fine. Why try and convince me? I don't care. I don't WANT to drink alcohol. When I was a kid my grandpa gave me a sip of his beer and I hated it. As I grew up I got the chance to try beer again and everytime, I hated it. It's bitter, sour and weirdly sweet all at once and is frankly horrible and I can't stomach more than a few sips to quench my thirst. Jolynn told me I cannot think about the aftertaste. Honestly, if I have to think about something for it to taste nice to me, then that kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it? I can't be bothered. If something is nice, it's nice and I'll eat or drink it. If it's not, then I won't. I shouldn't have to force myself to like something. That's how people start smoking and drinking, by the way. Because someone tells them that there's something wrong with them if they don't like beer/cigarettes/cigars etc.

Frankly I find it silly that I have to try and like something that isn't even good for me. Like I said, I don't care. If it makes you feel grown up to drink, fine by me. I'd take the sunrise without the tequila any day.

Return.

No I am not dead yet. As you can see there are no posts now. They have been deleted and exported to another blog that is private and whose readers are good friends who like reading faithfully but do not overstep their boundaries into my life.

Not that those of you who can't read it aren't - just a lot of things there that I can't say out in public, you know? We love everyone to an extent but some people tend to try and take an active role after reading about my feelings and manipulate me to do what they think is right, which isn't always right despite good intentions.

So this blog will have... well, light-hearted stuff. Musings on the world around me that won't piss off too many people, pictures and accounts of happenings in my life, etc. I will not talk about my feelings, unless they are OH I'M SO HAPPY etc.

For those who are able to read the other blog, you will probably never have to take a look at this one because I'll duplicate the posts here over there. Then again, you might get some kick out of seeing how differently the same events are represented on both sides.

My life is not an open book, for people to decide to tear pages out of, or highlight some parts. For those who have read the final posts of my blog before it was made private, you are possibly somewhat worried about my well being. Don't be. I am fine and things are looking up.

So I shall end it here.

Shalom.