A Bigger Life – Page 5 – michelle teoh

Moving In-niversary

1186135_10200545342048560_1315344565_n — Sem 1 days – you can even see Bellyn in the back

Yesterday, the 3rd of July, marks our one-year anniversary of moving into SMR and studying at Sunway College. It’s really quite unbelievable that it’s already been a year, when it feels as if I’d only been here for a shorter time period than that. I can still remember pretty vividly my first day of moving into SMR with six other housemates and crying my eyes out when my parents left and I was faced with the horrible reality of living alone, orientation days in college, first day of classes with my classmates whom I still didn’t know back then etc. On one hand, sem 1 does feel really, really far away, but also near enough that you can still recall details of these events as if it’d happened just last week. Does that make sense? It really doesn’t, but that’s honestly how I feel about this one-year anniversary thing.

The end of a year means that I only have six months left in this place and the thought of it is honestly really depressing, but as an exercise that I’ve been coercing myself into doing lately, which is to focus more on the positives rather than the negatives, right now I’m just trying to make the absolute best out of the remaining six months I have left with all the amazing people I’ve met here whom I am so honoured to call my friends.

There’s only so much of my emotions I can put into writing, and right now these words don’t do my feelings justice. These feelings are a combination of sorrow, melancholy, nostalgia, eagerness (to do everything I want to do before leaving) and above all, gratitude. I can’t seem to stress that enough.

mimpi ngeri

I had a nightmare this morning. It was probably a result of my stomachache and the anxiety that ensued.

I was in a biology lab (note that I say “a” and not “the” because it was nothing like the bio lab in Sunway, in fact, it looked scarily similar to the bio lab in Asma) taking bio practical exam for AS, which is ridiculous because I don’t even take biology for A Levels. The only other student I remember being in my dream was Zi Tian, who was on my left doing the exam as well. Before you ask, yes, I was aware that I wasn’t a bio student in my dream, but I still went on as usual anyway as if nothing was wrong, not even questioning why I was taking that exam when I wasn’t supposed to. Besides, Zi Tian was there and we’re classmates, so it didn’t exactly feel unnatural.

The exam started and we were all given a test tube filled with blue liquid which was apparently glucose and the test tube was placed in a huge conical flask filled with water and when I reached out to take the test tube out to begin the experiment, my hand slipped and I spilled the contents of the test tube into the conical flask filled with water. That was the moment I started to panic because that would mean that I had to re-do my experiment all over again with a brand new sample and I kept on glancing over at Zi Tian because she was already done with the experiment and was filling in her exam paper. So I told the invigilator, who happened to be Miss MC, about my predicament, and she said, “Are you sure? If you use a new sample it would be recorded in your exam paper and they might deduct marks for that” and I contemplated just bullshitting the entire paper with made-up data and observations but realised hopelessly that I couldn’t even begin to bullshit if I didn’t know exactly what was it I was measuring without the glucose sample. So I appealed anyway and the new glucose sample took forever to prepare as another teacher took out the raw ingredients to make the glucose sample and I was just ?!?!?!?!?!?!?! the entire time waiting for her to prepare my sample.

By the time my sample was ready, everyone in the lab had already left save for me and like, two other students and that was when I realise that my dad was also in the lab watching and waiting for me and I got even more anxious as I tried to concentrate on conducting the experiment again. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a different batch of students from a different intake entered the lab, and apparently their practical lesson had to go on despite the fact that there was still three of us left taking an exam. The entire time I was conducting the experiment I was just so nervous and sweating profusely, looking at my watch every few seconds and praying to God that I just finish the paper, please, as long as I finish the damn thing.

I woke up covered in sweat, heart palpitating, breath caught in my throat. Ngeri betul.

Blue is the warmest

Flickr

This is mostly a post about:

1) Cutting my hair: So…I cut my hair! I’m still wavering between liking it and regretting it but ultimately I am glad I did it, otherwise I would’ve still been stuck with boring long hair, wishfully thinking about having short hair. I almost chickened out of it but didn’t precisely because of that. But, as you know how life is so funny all the time, I’m starting to take extra notice of images of people with long hair and wishfully thinking of what I could do with my own had I not cut it off. Ridiculous. Anyway, these regrets only haunt me in the middle of the night, so no worries. I love my hair. I love myself. I don’t need anyone else to tell me otherwise.

2) Being a proud owner of blue lipstick: I once tweeted something along the lines of “all i need is blue lipstick and i’ll be ready to conquer the world” and LO AND BEHOLD that’s what my classmates (specifically Harris’ idea) gave to me as a birthday present at Tanamera part II last week. Tears were shed. It was a very emotional night, and not just because of the lipstick gift. And now, now that I can add Wearer of Blue Lipstick as one of my titles, I am ready to conquer the world.

3) Kamikaze Girls: Strongly recommended by Bellyn, I finished reading and watching both the novel and the movie yesterday. It is so, so lovely and left me with this warm and fuzzy feeling inside after I finished reading/watching it. It is a story about the unlikeliest of friendships, and how, despite their vast differences and clashes, the two main characters Momoko and Ichigo managed to warm up to each other, learning a little something from each other along the way, and eventually even ended up with such adoration for each other. Very unconventional, very enjoyable, and very eye-opening as well; I was severely affected by Ichigo’s speech at the last part of the novel, one of the quotes being “She knows you cant really share someone else’s pain or suffering no matter how hard you try. She knows they gotta deal with it on their own.” Man, that entire theme consumed me the whole of today, not in a bad way. I’m still thinking about it.

gratitude

Click photo to link to Bellyn's Flickr for more photos — Click photo to link to Bellyn’s Flickr for more photos

I said this on Twitter so I’ll say it here: I’m not going to blog about the last day of AS, nor Triple A, nor Tanamera here because I’m selfish enough to want all these memories to myself and not publicize it – besides, I don’t think the words that I produce would ever be enough to justify how I felt for the three consecutive days (and nights).

In a nutshell: I am very, very, very thankful to all my friends and I know those ten words are very one-dimensional and flat and emotionless and I wish I could inject all the gratitude and appreciation I feel into these words and have everyone reading this feel them in their full intensity because all of you are amazing and deserve the best things in life. This phrase has been pretty overrated the past few days but there really is no other way to put it: I love you guys. Thank you.

Daddy

Introducing one of the brightest beacons in my life, my steadfast fort, my unyieldingly strong oak tree.

Sorry, Daddy, I broke the streak of winning you a watch in a Father’s Day competition this year. Instead, my gift to you came in the form of my mock exam results in the mail. (I’m sorry if it was a disappointment.)

Happy Father’s Day. I love you.

psychedelia

It’s my birthday today! Hence the pink bow on my head. I’m also trying to accustom myself to the look of having short hair?

It’s my first birthday away from home but it didn’t feel like I was away from home much. Not when you are showered with love and gratitude from the people you love and are grateful for. And this is precisely what this post is about. Thanking everyone in my life because where would I be without all of you? I appreciate every single thing everyone has done for me, in return, I will strive to be the best version of me for all of you, and also myself.

There are a lot of emotions I can’t put into words, so TL;DR, I love all of you. And I know love is subjective and fickle and frequently thrown around like a used toilet paper (to use Effie’s metaphor) but I truly am thankful for every single person that has crossed paths in my life. That also means you, reading this. Know that I thank the higher powers above for putting you into my life (although the feeling might not be mutual), for shaping me to be who I am today, and for helping me get this far in life.

Thank you.

(Also, please wish my mum happy birthday too because it is rightfully her BIRTHday and also she rocks)

We went back to school

But first, we (Aifa, Illiana, Beneh and I) had nasi kandar for lunch.

And then we went to school.

melan·cholia

it’s 1:11am and let me tell you, it’s so easy to be sad. it’s so easy to slip into the comfortable inverted ‘T’-shape vacancy where you curl up to cry and weep and mope to your heart’s desire and then you don’t want to get out anymore. it’s cramped, and frankly, you smell a bit from not showering for 5 hours but it’s too comfortable. it’s not enjoyable but it requires less effort to stand up and crawl out of the handmade weirdly-shaped shed you’d made for yourself to lick your own wounds several months ago. it’s easier than walking all the way to the showers, stripping off all your clothes and standing under the goddamn shower head that only sprinkles cold water. it is infinitely more convenient than drying yourself off and then slipping into a new pair of clothing. so much effort. plus, there is no guarantee you won’t clamber back in after cleaning up. might as well stay put.

it’s so easy to focus your entire energy into mass manufacturing negative thoughts – and not even a variety of negative thoughts, no, not creative enough for that. the mother cell of a (-) thought undergoes binary fission to produce two identical (-) thought daughter cells. just plain mitosis. it multiplies ever so exponentially like cancerous cells. so much energy, so that there is little mitochondrial generated ATP left for the production of (+) thoughts. your mitochondria powerhouse is exhausted. at the end of the day, you are still stuck in your inverted ‘T’-shape crater with a bunch of dancing (-) thought cells in your head. very easy. very deadly.

it’s especially so easy when you’ve maintained it as a routine. it’s not something anyone does deliberately. it happens. and then it stays. and it becomes a bland regimen. at least, you trick yourself into thinking it’s a regimen. it’s not. you are getting comfortable with sadness. no. get out. get your ass out of that wretched tetris block hole. get in that shower cubicle and scrape all that mud off your kneecaps. jostle forward even when all your cells (especially if they are (-) thought cells) protest against it. do do do. don’t think. just do.

break out of the routine. it’s not impossible. a wise friend once said, “it’s okay to hurt as long as you know how to pick yourself up after that”. it’s ok. it’s ok to be sad. it’s ok to order pizza and stay put. feel it in its entirety. and then you force yourself up. stay, but don’t stay stagnant. it’s the least you can do for yourself. remember, this is always about yourself. you command how you feel, and your actions and thoughts only complement it. franz ferdinand (british rock band, not to be confused with deceased archduke) sang about a verse, “right thoughts, right words, right actions”. you choose where to go, or not to go at all. you choose between the selection choices of (-) or (+) thoughts. you choose what kind of new clothes to wear. it is so hard to believe, trust me, but it is true. because no one knows what you need and want more than you do.

Don’t you see me now?

Flickr

Yesterday’s clothing choice was not intentional. You’d think being called “wild and boorish” after entering college would make me revise my clothing choices a little bit more. But alas, you thought wrong. I cared for the first few hours I was told that, but after that I realised I didn’t have the capacity to care anymore. It wasn’t until I went to a local textile shop with my mum that I realised, rather narcissistically, that I reminded myself of Matty Healy, lead singer of The 1975, in his floral shirt. Rushing my mum to head back home before the sun went down, I spent two hours at the empty lane next to my neighbour’s house while residents from the nearby kampung appear sporadically to stare at me incredulously on their motorbikes. I half expected street harassers to make their appearances as well (I had my defense mechanism ready: look as murderous as possible and grip onto my guitar like a deadly weapon) but thankfully none appeared. It’s so sad that street harassment is something to be expected every single time you step out of the house. And societal norm once again expects you to just accept it as something to be accustomed to. Head bowed, lips sealed, don’t say anything. Don’t retort, don’t retaliate, just keep quiet and suck it up. There is nothing you can do. Boys will be boys. Men will be men. Darwinism my ass.

I don’t even know what this photoshoot is themed. It’s saved in a folder on my pendrive labelled “matty”. That’s it. I suppose in a way I was going for the music-festival-hippie-touring-rock-band-member kind of vibe but who cares, really. I wrote this in a Tumblr post last night, that doing this makes me feel like I’m actually doing something and that in itself makes me pretty happy (even though I might not actually know what I’m really doing). I also read this post by May Zhee in which she says, “Do not ever think you’re too stupid for art. Too disadvantaged, too untrained, too uninterested. Stop paying attention to what the art is saying, but how they are saying it.”

This entire week of art therapy at home is going well so far and I’m glad.

is it late enough

Today was my first time visiting Angie’s twin babies, Esther and Emily, and while everyone was fawning over the both of them I was just…keeping my distance…I am terrified of infants. I think I am more terrified of the knowledge that they do not exactly own a stream of consciousness yet and also of how fragile they are and I cannot be trusted with fragile things. Especially living, breathing fragile things. And then I imagined them as toddlers five years from now, and it was fun to make deductions about comparisons between the twins, to predict which one between Esther and Emily would be the more outspoken one, which one would have a bigger appetite (for food and sleeping hours) but I stopped halfway because I knew if I was in either one of their shoes (or infant socks) I would’ve hated it. Don’t do that. Placing your expectations on people before they can even walk is very sucky -80/10 would not recommend

I came home and took a two hour nap during which I had dreams about the same people/person again and please can you stop and then I went downstairs to find out my dog had run outside and my dad and I had to chase after him but he kept on running and in the end we had to do it the reverse psychology way which is to just let him run wherever his little heart desires until he finds himself trapped and in this case trapped in an empty house two streets away.

Idk I saw this on the way home and thought it was cute

I dyed my hair purple

As the title suggests, I dyed my hair purple the second day I came back to Alor Setar. If you feel disappointed about the colour (or lack thereof), don’t worry, I felt the same way, but here’s to hoping the colour will become more obvious after a few more washes.

At approximately 2.45 this afternoon, I hit the ultimate pinnacle of boredom as I scrolled through social media sites. The weather looked good, not too hot, there were a few grey clouds rolling through, that’s okay. I leaped up and dug out mum’s DSLR and tripod in the cupboard under the stairs and scouted the backyard despite my mum having a guest over. The first tripod had a faulty leg, but thankfully my dad found another newer tripod in the very same cupboard (although it was also quite faulty in some screwed places). The first few shots were devastating. Wrong lens. Changed them. Better. Not amazing, but better. It started raining really heavily halfway through, so heavily that I couldn’t even hear the music I was playing on my phone, so I made do with some decent shots that met my low enough expectations.

I am no Bellyn in terms of photography skills but hello Belle, if you’re reading this, you inspired this.

The second week back here is scheduled for studying, so in the meantime, I’ve decided to start seriously writing again. And by seriously writing I mean contributing to KL Noir. It’s not a guaranteed publish but what the hell. I guess something Taliza once asked really struck me, which was “Do you ever feel the need to constantly prove yourself to your friends and everyone else?” and my answer is yes. I don’t want to be just a sad and emotional baggage hanging onto everyone else. And also I just really, really want to create without the presence of pressure or expectations, not to mention the consistently looming obligation to study, study, study

I don’t know I also made a Flickr

It Feels Nice Doing Nothing

track listing:

01 weekend – last dinosaurs

Stats paper was over on Thursday, which signalled the beginning of our two-week holiday before we resume two more papers in June and then AS would end, finally. Exam period also meant that I was (uncharacteristically) cranky and (characteristically) tired so despite Austin, Ian and the rest’s open invitations to go ice skating, Taliza, Karu and I chose to hang out at Starbucks instead, having mini art therapy sessions, brief naps (in which one unintentionally strikes a melodramatic nap pose) and lazy conversations, just the right amount of replenishment before we rejoined the ice skating gang to watch X-Men: Days of Future Past at the cinema. Movie rating 9.5/10 would recommend; ’twas one of my favourite movie experiences ever.

02 supremacy – muse

The next day was a Friday, and the Sanuki Udon gang decided to revisit Sanuki Udon for lunch. Harris was yet again our esteemed chauffeur that afternoon, and we met up with Karu at Sanuki Udon at Kota Kemuning where we resumed the same seating as the one we had the last time we were there, which was 12 weeks ago. It was yet again pretty surreal, doubled by the absence of the pressing need to study for exams 24/7.

After lunch, we hung out at Karu’s room where we did practically nothing. And it felt amazing. Taliza, Irfan and Karu were playing guitars, there was a huge spread of Archie comics on the bed much to Bellyn’s delight, and even Harris managed to sneak in a few minutes of napping despite the commotion we were causing. Karu played Muse songs on his electric guitar and Taliza and I even had a mini Muse concert to it. I imagined if there ever was a three-hour music video to a lazy techno song, our three hours spent at Karu’s room would be it.

03 quality time -strfkr

On the same day at 5.30PM, Bellyn and I took the Aeroline bus back to Penang and I spent the five hours watching Star Trek and The Hunger Games, the last hour appropriately spent listening to STRFKR’s Reptilians album. Nothing eventful happened, but the general relaxed atmosphere which I hadn’t been able to feel in months was enough to earn a track on this playlist.

04 how can you swallow so much sleep – bombay bicycle club

I spent the night at Bellyn’s place, where we put together the next day’s driving playlist, dug out Bellyn’s high school yearbooks and to end the night, watched a 14 minute video of epic fail compilations on Youtube. We went to bed at 2AM.

05 glory – radical face

The next day started at 10AM in Bellyn’s Viva heading for a Penang authentic kopitiam to have toast and half-boiled egg breakfast. Being surrounded by old folks speaking in Hokkien and actually enjoying what we were eating was such an antithesis to the dull tedium of visiting The Rock almost everyday for every meal in Sunway; it was already a good start to the day.

We decided to head to the beach after that and the car drive to Batu Ferringhi accompanied by good music from our playlist was amazing. Ethereal. Surreal. I use the word “surreal” a lot but trust me, it definitely is surreal, the kind that leaves you literally breathless, emotions jamming your system that should you laugh??? should you cry??? who knows???

Unfortunately, we didn’t really think this through, and by this I mean going to the beach at 12 noon on the dot in the sweltering heat. We drove to (according to Bellyn) what was apparently the smallest national park in the world, found zilch parking, stopped by at two beaches before deciding it was too hot for this and finally succumbed to the cool air-conditioning of the car. But it was okay. Like I said, good music + car drive around town + good company = the impossibility of anything going wrong.

Lunch was mi jawa somewhere in town before we went cafe searching around Armenian Street and ended up at a cafe called Favourite Cafe (whose favourite cafe? We might never know). At around 4PM we headed back to the Ooi residence where we lazed around for about 10 minutes before my mum called and I had to leave with the heaviest of hearts.

Protected: isabella of castille by strfkr

Mummy

Would Mother’s Day be defunct if everyday is mother’s day? Calling you every night before bed when we’re 406km apart to cry about my woes and worries or laugh about that funny thing that happened in class today or have a heated debate about things we don’t agree on (which literally just happened 10 minutes ago), I don’t know about you, but everyday feels like Mother’s Day to me?

Growing up, never once did you give up on me even when I already gave up on myself, and you were always there during my lowest point when I didn’t even think I was worthy of anyone’s attention and all you did was give and give so selflessly, and that’s saying a lot considering how difficult a daughter I must be to deal with. Trust me, if I were in your shoes, I might not even have had the same patience as you. And I am so, so grateful for every single thing you’ve done for me.

Culturally, we’ve never been ones to express our gratitude and affection verbally and I think it’s my fear of veering from that tradition that prompted me to write this blogpost (and also I think I deliver my thoughts better in the form of the written word rather than the spoken one). Dear Mummy, thank you for taking the best care of me since day one, for teaching me how to love reading and books at the mere age of 5, for being worried for me when I locked myself in the fitting room in Pacific Mall when I was about 6 (?), for switching jobs when I entered Primary 1 so that you could look after me better, for coaching me to speak louder in class when I was appointed monitor and could barely speak above a whisper, for preparing breakfast and lunch for me almost everyday to bring to primary school, for staying up late to search the entire house for my purple English book I needed for class the next day, for demanding your way into MCA headquarters just so you could guarantee a spot for me in one of the best secondary schools in the state, for asking me what’s wrong when I came back from school crying almost every day, for teaching me how to be as selfless as you and treat people better as I grew up and stepped into more daunting environments, for all the appeals you’ve made on behalf of me to the school just so I could live my school days better, for always giving me motivational pep talks when I was feeling anxious before exams, for knowing when not to spoil me to build my character (and not make me an asshole), for being there and smiling so broadly at me when I got my SPM results (aka your birthday present), for planning all those “surprise” birthday parties for me because you know how much I love surprises, for being more nervous for college than I was, for calling up first few days of college to make sure I made friends, for putting up with my relentless whining and moping and complaining over the phone until this day, for saying “goodnight, love you” every night before we hang up, and most importantly, for loving me unconditionally. I love you just as much, Mummy, and I want to make you the proudest and happiest you’ve ever been.

Interlude 9

magnet
/ˈmagnɪt/

noun

a person or a thing that has a powerful attraction