Passion

Winding down the year and reconsidering some of the passions that have developed over the years which have waned, slowly but surely. Some to a pleasant lull that will likely pick up again once plateau's are over (tango, still the main core interest), others relegated to a I-have-no-time-for-this phase (yoga, pole) and past passions with no more regular counterpart to keep up the interest (tennis). Then there are the latent ones, the ones which had required so many years of investment, but now barely feature in adult life (music).

Somehow have signed myself up for Choir on Sunday. I am terrible at singing, have never attempted to, and am now subjecting myself to choir in German. This should be interesting.

But the more you listen to people describe their passions, be it in the past, do you realise that the statement "everyone you meet knows something you don't" really rings true.

To rediscover that? Aye, that's the rub. Some people we meet later on in life seem to be passionless, and that's the most worrying thing isn't it? I've always admired the fact that when dance becomes the passion, it never quite wanes, and it is, the most expressive form and display of ones personality and physicality.

Especially Tango. Tango, oh tango.

Anonymous

Being in Singapore is kind of like being...in a Malaysian version of a Western city. But what's more important is, that I'm anonymous. I tend to end up with a completely different persona of myself whenever I'm taken out of my comfort zone, and sometimes I wonder why I do not do that when I'm in KL. Too much history?

Someone got down to the root of it when I say that I stay on weekends because I might as well make use of the time. Not really, it's more the fact that being away from home makes me so much more independent than if I were to be staying at home. Grown up? I think so.

Ann Arbor was kind of like that. Anytime I'm away from the home setting do I realise that, yes, I can survive and I'll be fine. I'm a grown up. Even if all I'm doing is pretending to be. Doesn't help that the equilibrium and rock of home has been turned upside down to the point that sometimes I wish I could just escape it all. Too many worries about the future. Too much guilt-tripping.

Sigh.

Job well done
Standing ovation
Yeah you got what you wanted
I guess you won
And I don't want to hear, they don't know you like I do
Even I could've told you
But now we're done

'Cause you play me like a symphony
Play me till your fingers bleed
I'm your greatest masterpiece
You ruin me
Later when the curtains drawn
And no one's there for you back home
Don't cry to me, you played me wrong
You ruin me

I know you thought
That I wouldn't notice
You were acting so strange
I'm not that dumb
And in the end I hope she was worth it
I don't care if you loved me, you make me numb

'Cause you play me like a symphony
Play me till your fingers bleed
I'm your greatest masterpiece
You ruin me
Later when the curtains drawn
And no one's there for you back home
Don't cry to me, you played me wrong
You ruin me

We're that song you wouldn't sing
Just a broken melody
You're killing me

You play me like a symphony
Play me till your fingers bleed
I'm your greatest masterpiece
You ruin me
Later when the curtains drawn
And no one's there for you back home
Don't cry to me you played me wrong
You ruin me

Karma

We flew through a storm getting into KLIA on Friday, a real proper show of flashing lightning, swirling clouds and 15 backed up planes causing a 2 hour delay to a 1 hour flight.

Descent through the clouds reminded me of the cloudy murkiness that engulfed us diving in the waters of Sipadan in January, where the only distance you could see was up to the hand extended in front of you, a wall of coral on the left and on the right and below, nothingness stretching into blackness.

Dancing raindrops skittered across the plane of the double-paned window for what felt like eternity, all I could see was the dense white fog and the flashing illumination of our plane wing light reflecting off the mass of clouds. Sparkling sparkling raindrops reminding me of the million stars at the top of Rinjani at 530am. Before a break and there, Home lay below. The snaking lights of highways or the patches of neighbourhood lights, circles breaking the darkness, illuminating just only what was below them. A gate, a petrol station, nothing high rise, just monopoly-like houses.

Karma. This whole week feels like Karma. One week of dancing til 4am's and another of working til 2am's.

I am really. really. tired.

Of Beer and Crabs

I was always an awkward teenager. I don't think there's any way to deny it, but teenage years sucked between the acne, glasses and untameable hair.

Somewhere in between stuff grew out. The hair became far more versatile, acne finally cleared post uni with a dosage of Roac and the glasses was the last to go at the ripe old age of 25. Despite that, there's another set of worries coming about such as the impending wrinkles and tired eyes that don't seem to be going away. There really is such a thing as wearing your age on your face, and apparently I'm a bit too readable.

But obviously this is probably the top of the curve and it's all downhill from here, man I really need to be more optimistic.

Had a great time last weekend catching up with someone that I'd only really met in the earlier part of the year, but sometimes you do realise that you click with people in sudden and unexpected ways. Barring age differences. Conversations about family, about life, about food, about dancing. When conversation isn't forced it is so comfortable and I've realised that people I click with all have family issues. Don't know what it is, maybe it translates into a certain personality that has learnt how to deal with adversity from a very young age.

Besides that tried my first AcroYoga class with C and dinner at Newton after before rushing back to get ready for Sunday's milonga which was fun, other than a very violent crash of heels of which I was not the recipient of. Oops.

Good weekend are of course followed up with Mondays from hell. The usual.

Back home this weekend, CAN'T WAIT!

Checking In

6 month project in Sg has seen me move across the boundaries for a M-F job. So far hours have been hectic and I have yet to picture an outcome, which is..worrying at best. Catastrophic at worst, but you know, life will sort its shit out eventually. And nothing is as bad as it seems, unless it's a death. Then yes, it's really as bad as it seems.

Singapore so far has been a hectic world-wind of dancing, brunching, lunching, dinner-ing and a bit of drinking thrown in for good measure. There's quite a bit about being away from home (much like Uni felt) that often unleashes a very *ahem* manic Id side of me that the other sides often feel the backlash of for, far, far too long.

Crossing boats. Always. Why is that? Is it more of the fact I need to introduce more recklessness into my KL lifestyle, or is it that KL just isn't a conducive environment for it? Probably the latter.

But what can I change right? Forging my own career and destiny often felt like something I would look to pa for approval for, now that he's gone I often feel more adrift than ever. Elated at the possibilities, but so, so fearful because there are no check-ins anymore. Welcome to adulthood, here's the keys now go.

Life happens like that.

The hardest thing you will ever do...

What is it? I've never been one to give up, in fact, I've never reached the point where I've said I would give up. But last Saturday at 7am in the morning, I sat on the rocks on the final stretch of Mt Rinjani and uttered the words, "guys, I don't think I can do this".

There is something very scary about looking inside and finding...nothing. Nothing but a gaping abyss where once your goals and hopes and dreams used to once upon a time sit. Nothing in the strength of motivation or that little niggling competitiveness that pushes you to want to even TRY. Nothing.

That stretch of Mt Rinjani could act as a metaphor for my work life currently, where sometimes I just sit back, look at what I'm doing and wonder whether there's anything more to this. I do not want to be 40 and be facing the same set of work. I really don't. That is what I'm so sure at this point, if of nothing else.

Anyway, Rinjani was a refreshing, albeit an out of character moment for me, normally I would be the person hauling everyone else up the mountain but this time I just felt. Tired. Mentally and physically. That being said, some of the best moments on this trip proved to me as it always happens to be, that when you put your mind to it, you can do anything. Absolutely anything. Even when you have nothing left to pull out.

Other moments like sitting by a firelight, finally feeling warm. There's something so elemental about a fire, after all we are reliant on aircons most of the time, but a fire? A fire for warmth and not for cooking...now that is a treat, and makes me marvel at how life can be so different by circumstance. I could be in a tent in the middle of a Sahara living a nomadic lifestyle, or at the top of the highest skyscraper on this earth. All because of where I am born, and maybe that's what is so interesting about life, that everyone lives it so, so differently, and yet we only catch but an inkling of what life is like for some people outside of the radius of our normal lives. And maybe this was always the case through history? That everyone lived so differently, settled across continents, lives taking shape and taking root until we all ended up with different languages, culture, skin colour, food.

Stories, stories of death. Of life. Of magical caves that deem you worthy of entering. Of seven mysterious deaths off a cliff. Of things within the crater lake. Things that you respect. Especially when being told in the dead of the night in a forest. Good god.

Sometimes you're faced with unexplained things, which you have to just accept as is. There are things in this world that cannot be explained. Reality is at best tenuous.

It hurts

"I'm eighty kid. If I die now, it doesn't really matter at all. I was laughing when I made it pass seventy but here? Here it's just the wait. Four out of my seven closest friends are already dead. The last one who lived just around my house and used to hang out with me just passed away, I still remember calling his son about it like it was yesterday. Nowadays I just think whether I lived a good life. And I believe, the answer is yes, and I'm ready for death.
"So in this long life, what was your happiest moment?"
"Finding out that the girl I loved, loved me too."

~Faces of KL

All this pain. All this anguish. All the why's and what's and how's that are appearing with MH 17 being shot down over Ukraine. Will this be this century's Franz Ferdinand? Will it? Or will we retract once again into mumblings of sanctions and toothless bites as economies struggle with maintaining their current form.

What is justice? What is justice? Is justice an eye for an eye or the willingness to allow things to go unpunished and to believe in a higher being. I used to think religion exists because humans needed hope on this earth. Now I'm beginning to believe that we need to believe in a higher order because nothing justifies anything that I am seeing with my own eyes now. What happened to doing good and good will come to you? What did those families on that plane do which justifies anything that happens to them?

As I lit my joss stick at the alter of my daily ritual, all the logical side of me could think is, what's the point? Why this anguish? Why hate someone just because they believe that they will die differently from you? I don't understand and I never will. All the theologists in the world can spend their reams of paper explaining the reasoning behind why humans believe in this higher order but logic tells me over and over again that it makes no sense. We fight and fight and fight and argue but when we are dead, we're really dead. Gone. Nada.

I looked at the list of dates denoting the years and months of rituals and absurdly enough, I hope nothing on this Earth gets replicated wherever I'm going next. Please, when I'm up there with my heavenly juice overlooking paradise the last thing I want to worry about are dates and rituals. Nope.  No calender for me please.

Those people lying in the fields or in the trains being guarded by scary scarred men? They are the lucky ones. They are the ones that have escaped this mortal realm, bless their souls.

Death. Death has hovered around me and with me for the past year and I don't particularly want it around any more.

And this fear. This fear that something bad is always lurking around the corner. That roofs are easy to break into. That kidnappings will happen. That car crash. That slip. That illness.

Nothing in life is preventable, and the older I get, the more I realise how we can never escape the footsteps which have tread before us.

Thank the stars? Thank whoever your God is? For really, apocalypse has never felt more real than now.

And we learn, over and over again that we never learn from our past. We are our best killers, our own population control. This brought the war directly to our doorstep, and it will not and cannot be ignored or forgotten as petty squabblings take over the front pages of the local papers again. No. The repercussions of this are beyond us and spiral into abyss that remains unforeseen for now. But echoes of an impending tsunami. Just brace ourselves, hold tight to our loved ones...and pray.