michelle teoh

Twenty Fourteen

Generally, 2014 was a bad year for everyone globally, especially Malaysia. My parents and I were watching a year in review on NTV7 news the other day (kinda like Facebook’s feature that gets all up in your face, no thanks) and it was basically just riots after massacres after pandemics after missing planes after tragedies and more tragedies.

But personally, and this is going to sound very self-absorbed, 2014 was a pretty good year for me. My entire year was spent in Sunway with my friends, and I don’t regret a single thing. I got caught in my own miseries the first half of the year, but that half also allowed me to grow quite a lot as a person, and gradually throughout the whole year, I got to know the people around me, and simultaneously, myself, better. This year was a growing experience, and a lot of great memories were made.

2014 flew by really, really fast. I can’t pinpoint exactly what happened in which month this year like I could last year, because a lot of things happened really quickly, but I’m glad that it was loaded and filled with so many things and people and events. There is nothing sadder than an empty year with forgettable memories.

2014 was great, and I want to thank everyone who made it so. Thank you for being a part of my year. I love y’all a lot

I can’t channel much emotion right now I’m not sure why so apologies for the soulless words, but I’m truly very thankful, and I pray 2015 will be a better year for the world for everyone everywhere.

Have a great 2015, folks

n for nightmare

The first part of last night’s series of dreams had the same recurring theme for a month now. Always the same people, albeit in different places and situations.

The second part of the dream, I found myself in Oxford University. In the state of dreaming, I was aware that I was there as a student, that I’d gotten accepted and was starting my first day there. Before I continue, I’d like to emphasise on how vivid and realistic the entire sequence of this dream was, because upon my arrival at Oxford, I remembered details about my flight (and even wondered how I’d survived the flight alone without any anxiety attacks) and tweeting about my entire journey (where did I get the wifi/data? I don’t know. These things don’t always make sense).

I was at a deserted open-aired corridor filled with empty round tables, and I was waiting for my law tutor to appear. A peculiar thing I noticed was how modern and new the building I was in was, which wasn’t very Oxford-esque at all. In the dream, I even suspected I had ended up at LSE instead. When my tutor arrived, I excused myself to go to the toilet, and went down a really dark corridor that turned left into what was presumably the toilets. There was a counter there manned by an Indian woman dressed in a sari and she was pointing to a sign that indicated I needed to pay to enter the toilet, but all I saw was a string of letters that made no sense to me crudely painted across the sign. It wasn’t legitimate currency, but I understood it was currency all the same. I paid her and entered what I thought to be the ladies’ room, but it turned out to be a huge lift that people used for loading boxes and stuff. There were two Asian girls in it, one that seemed to be my age and the other one in her early teens. I asked them where the toilet was but they didn’t say a thing. The lift descended and when it opened, the younger girl passed me an umbrella and pointed at the place I was supposed to put the umbrella at. But. The thing was. The lift opened into a giant freezer. I took the umbrella from the girl and walked straight ahead and turned right and placed the umbrella on a freezer (a freezer within a freezer, how poetic) as indicated by the girl, all the time gripping my phone in my other hand in case I had to make an emergency call and desperately hoping that the two girls wouldn’t abandon me here. Thankfully, they didn’t. When I turned back, the younger girl was waiting for me outside of the lift and I felt so grateful.

When I entered the lift, the lift changed into a smaller one, the usual kind you find in apartments and other tall buildings, and the two girls were gone. I remembered that I had to get back to my law tutor but I didn’t know which floor that was but I had a feeling it was one of the lower floors. I didn’t press anything as the lift was going up and there were other people in the lift. Gradually, the lift emptied as the lift ascended and even in the dream, I could feel my fear of heights tingling at the back of my mind. The lift started to fill up with people again as the lift started going down and I pressed Level 2. Right before I reached my level, there were two people left in the lift: a boy and a girl, both Caucasian. Before I got out of the lift, the girl turned to me and said she recognised me from Carousell. I was pleasantly surprised and could only afford a smile and a nod before the lift doors closed. I then realised that I’d gotten off the wrong floor. This wasn’t where my tutor was, and it was already night time (this floor was open-aired too). There were, however, long tables in the middle of an open space area and seated behind them were four really pretty girls dressed in long gowns and then I realised one of them was Emma Watson. I went up to her and she said I had to buy some kind of booklet to get her autograph and so I went up to a different table where someone was selling the booklets and I realised that the seller was also Emma Watson (This is all so wild I cannot possibly be making any of this up. Although technically dreaming is making things up…but not consciously so).

After getting Emma Watson’s autograph, I decided it was time to return to my residence. I took an escalator down one floor and as I did so, it just dawned on me how alone I was in this foreign country with no one I could rely on. I brought my phone screen up and I didn’t have service nor wifi and I couldn’t call my parents or even go online to tweet or something that at least gave me a feeble semblance of company. At that moment, I felt a surge of loneliness and sadness so strong and intense that I woke up with my heart hammering against my chest and my palms sweaty. My clock in my room wasn’t even working so I couldn’t even tell what time it was (although I guessed it to be around 5am because it started getting brighter quickly from then on). All I knew was how relieved I felt when I realised I was in my own room at home, and I got up to write down what I could vaguely remember from my dream in my journal so I can write this ridiculously absurd post

here comes the feeling you thought you’ve forgotten

in the car on the way home it was around 12:30 in the morning, i felt that creeping dread return, the kind that made my stomach churn (not from the food, the food from the christmas dinner at my uncle’s was great), making it hard to breathe. i was looking out of the window singing along to natalie imbruglia’s torn but since i was more familiar to one direction’s cover of that song from four years ago, i got all the pronouns opposite. i was looking at all the places we passed by to get home and they were all buildings and roads that i’ve been passing by almost everyday for nearly two decades, but all i could think of were late night adventures in the busy streets of the city and driving down wonderfully empty highways. they all felt so surreal, as surreal as i’d felt it at that very moment, like a scene from a really good book or movie that i’d read or watched years ago and thought to myself, “this is my ultimate dream. but this kind of things don’t actually happen in real life.”

there is a quote: “i was already obsessed with the idea that the experience of any sensation is accompanied by the knowledge of its impermanence. the very fact of my noticing any particular pleasure or pain meant that the moment had passed.” i always put quotes because i can’t quite seem to articulate what i feel accurately enough. it’s embarrassing to admit that i struggle to find the right words, so quoting other people seems easier and hits the nail right on the head anyway.

i should be writing other things, putting my words to better use than writing about my nonsensical emotions on this blog over and over again. but that’s the thing about writing: you can never use up your quota of words as long as you live. you can exhaust even your own feelings, but words will always be there, should you ever need them. and i always need them.

Rocketrictic 2015 Calendar

Yesterday, the Rocketrictic 2015 Calendar which I ordered from Mei arrived in the post!

It’s so pretty I can’t stop looking at it!!! And touching it and smelling it sorry that’s a bit weird

All artworks are by Malaysian artist Mei Lee herself, to order a copy for yourself, go here.

Keep It Safe

Your brain is a fortress, heavily guarded at all times by malicious crocodiles or buried landmines or powerful spells (take your pick) and these guards are up all the time during the day, when you’re out doing routine tasks and/or interacting with other people, both to prevent threat from harming your castle and hidden secrets in your secured vault from being exposed to the public.

And then as you go to sleep, so do your guards; your crocodiles doze off from a full day’s work, your landmines are deactivated and unmonitored, your spell caster/warlock/wizard heads to the local pub for some drink with their fellow spell caster/warlock/wizard friends, leaving your precious castle vulnerable and prone to immediate sieges by the ominous shadows that lurk in the woods. Your fortress is a weakling exposed to mortal perils throughout the night up until the moment you wake up, and truly that moment is the moment you are most vulnerable, because as soon as you wake up and your consciousness takes over, your treasured vault does the same, heavy metal doors swinging wide open, welcoming the night’s enemies for a full-throttle invasion with open arms. And that’s when you stare at your bedroom walls with crusty, half-awake half-asleep eyes, realising it’s too early in the morning for visible light to even fill the dark and dusty corners of your room, feeling the cool air-conditioned air against your bare legs because you managed to kick half your blanket (and your pillows, goodness) to the floor, wondering where the hell did this sudden heavy weight of sadness pressing against your chest come from and what did it want and why did you dream the same themed dreams with the same people again and again and what’s the point of life anyway when this kind of sadness exists within you

It’s so baffling, because with time, a new routine is formed once again at home, albeit one that doesn’t involve classes and homework and meeting friends, but a routine all the same. And yet, the new stimuli of each brand new day are not enough to satiate what your heart truly desires (oh lord, the corniness of this sentence), so when your castle is left unguarded at ungodly hours of the night/morning, your old fears resurface, reminding you of greater (/greatest) times you’ve had which you are melancholy about because 1) you might never experience the same greatness again and 2) quite frankly, you’re not sure whether you want to move on or not.* You’re exactly like the emo trash main character in Spike Jonze’s/Sofia Coppola’s movies (see: Lost in Translation [2003], Her [2013]). If your life were a dramatic movie, it’d show excessively long panning scenes of you lying in your bed (it must be a white bed with white sheets) with dimmed lighting and an awfully depressing background music score, which proceeds to zoom into your goddamn woeful face, your eyes trained on the ceiling the entire time as if the instructions to getting your old life back are written on it and you’re desperately trying to commit them to memory before they fade off as they first hint of dawn light shines through your window. To put it shortly: you’re quite a bit pathetic.

I guess that’s where I am, and where I’ve been: this grey area of not wanting to remain stagnant yet not really wanting to move on. The former because, well, nothing good ever comes out of being stuck in the past and the latter because I’d bought into the myth (or is it really just a myth) that moving on is equivalent to forgetting and I don’t want to ever forget. Overall, all this makes me is a miserable, irritable and unproductive human being whose only goals each day involve building new houses on The Sims, increasing my ‘read’ count on Goodreads, watching horror gameplays on Youtube and reading at least three articles on Rookie per day in the hopes of gaining creative inspirations (“Did it work?” you ask. Well, I’m here, aren’t I?).

The absence of real aims reminds me all too painfully of post-SPM days, when I’d go into an abrupt existential crisis in the middle of breakfast or in the shower or any other activity that allows me to drift through my own thoughts without distraction. What was I doing with these torturously long nine months? The next upcoming goal to look forward to was going to university (provided I even get in) in September and that’s too far away for me to do anything much about it (except wait for emails) (haha) (waiting is the exclusive complementary to the saying “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop). I’d told myself I’d get creative during the nine months, to create stuff I like for the world to see. But to be honest? I’m terrified. I’m terrified I’d do a terrible job of it and tarnish the truth with biases and prejudices of my own perspectives and end up hurting and offending people in the process. An article on Rookie articulates this fear of mine all too well.

I don’t know. I’m not entirely sure where I am currently in my life. Two years ago when everything was a huge mess of anxiety for me, I told myself that in a year or two’s time, I’d figure everything out. I’d be a mature and independent woman who can think for herself and others and life will be great, like they’d promised in books and movies. Two years later, there has been some progress, but I have yet to solve the elusive mysteries of the world. It’s all too easy to convince yourself that things will work out in the future but immensely difficult to put the proverbial pen to paper or to pull the proverbial sword out of its sheath (THIS IS NOT AN INNUENDO). But I guess everything we do, everything we fight and strive for, we do it as an extra step towards what we believe in. And currently, I believe in immortalizing the memories I’ve had had with my friends just a little longer, memories which are secured in a prized vault in my mind palace where I am keeping them safe forever.

*3) you’re afraid of losing your friends to distance and time and brand new memories (both yours and theirs), and while you feel it’s not entirely too abnormal to feel that way, you (or I, whatever really, both pronouns indicate the same person throughout this long ass post) read another article on Rookie that says “It presumes that relationships exist in stasis, like you established a fixed level of closeness one day and now the rest of your interactions must be a carefully guarded dance designed to maintain your agreed level of closeness” and that’s not true at all, is it? Friendships that are mutually important and valuable to both parties are not friendships that are fragile enough to be disrupted by elements so petty such as distance or the passing of time. Friendships like these are meant to last till the end of time.

Time to take out the christmas jumpers

It got dark really quickly.

Ipoh Again

But this time, with different company.

Early in the morning of 27th November, which was a Thursday, Bellyn, Zitian and I took a taxi to KL Sentral, where we met up with Taliza, Karu and Harris before we took the 9AM ETS train to Ipoh.

As usual, what I did throughout the 2.5-hour train ride rotated between 1) sleeping 2) stoning 3) scrolling through Twitter pathetically (because there was very limited data coverage) and 4) working up the courage to play Five Nights at Freddy’s on Karu’s phone.

We reached Ipoh finally at around noon, and Zitian’s mum fetched us to Shamrock Guest Hotel where we (excluding Zitian) would be staying for the night.

Contrary to my younger self, I hated hotels, mostly because the ones I’ve stayed at were uncomfortable, cramped, and the sheets smelled really funny. But this one. This is one hotel room none of us really wanted to leave at all. We had two king-sized (or it could actually be queen-sized but anyway they were double beds) beds and a relatively alright-sized bathroom and ceiling-to-floor windows and a flatscreen TV (which we could connect my harddisk to so we quite literally had an endless playlist of music, movies and TV shows hallelujah), a small fridge, cabinet and countertop with kettle, free WiFi (of course) and even with all this we still had a pretty large floor space and (I might be wrong, but it certainly seemed that way) we had the whole hotel to ourselves. Honestly if there was somewhere I had to be stuck in, it would be right here with the exact same company. But more on that later.

They really play up the whole Irish image well

And then it was lunch time when Zitian’s mum came to take us to Oldtown Ipoh. After lunch, we explored a colonial building with murals of white people on it and we made it our own rave club instead.

We went exploring around town after that.

http://instagram.com/p/v5UERaMsnt/

(If there is one video you ever watch on this blog of mine let this be it)

We walked back to the hotel where we lazed around and showered and waited for my parents to reach Ipoh (they were on their way to KL for my mum’s Cosway meeting) before heading out for dinner – Vietnamese food at a restaurant just a minute’s walk away (but because it was raining, all five of us squeezed into the backseat of my parents’ Toyota Wish. It was pretty funny).

My parents had to leave immediately after that because they didn’t want to reach KL too late so we walked to Ipoh Parade, huddled together like penguins whenever we have to pass through dark suspicious alleys. It was also drizzling.

At Ipoh Parade, we got ourselves facial masks (impulsive purchases), presents for Zitian and her parents and came up with the idea to lie to the masses that we had actually and legitimately gone to Ireland for a vacation.

From left: Karu, Harris, Taliza, Bellyn (although after that she switched to Royal Jelly), me (and then we also got another Royal Jelly for Zitian) (I can’t believe I still remember this) (actually is that really surprising)

And then we went back to the hotel after visiting a nearby 24-hour store where we stocked up on supper and cave supplies.

The next few hours into the night were spent watching The Frog Princess on TV, playing Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 on Karu’s phone and just chilling. It was so nice. At that moment I’d tweeted that I never wanted that moment to end, knowing that I’d look back at that tweet and feel intensely. But it was true, and it still is true, and it’s kinda like in the first Hunger Games the day before Peeta and Katniss were going to go into the arena and they were at the rooftop of the Tribute Center and Peeta (or Katniss I don’t quite remember either one of them) said that if possible, he wanted to stay in that moment forever and when I read that I couldn’t relate to it at all because all along I’ve always just wanted to be somewhere else other than where I was at that time but that night, I truly dreaded that night ending.

But it did end, and I woke up really early the next morning after I received an email from UCAS. Then I changed into cave gear and became designated DJ while everyone prepared for the caves.

We took the second least challenging tour at Gua Tempurung: Top of the World. I say second least challenging, but I still burst into tears when my fear of heights got the better of me and I had to pretend really hard that I wasn’t exactly trapped in an enclosed area the entire time. Still, it wasn’t totally terrible. Harris and Bellyn reenacted scenes from Lord of the Rings (including shouting “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” resulting in echoes bouncing off the cave walls) and pretended flat stalactite surfaces were battlefields full of fallen men. That was pretty fun to watch.

After caves we had really good dim sum lunch at a shop opposite Foh San (which, according to Zitian, is far more superior than Foh San) and at Foh San. Then it was back to the hotel because we, I mean, I was a sweaty mess and couldn’t wait to wash my hair and, well, everything else.

We sort of understood, then, that that was our last moment together in Ipoh because our next stop was KL Sentral (our train was scheduled to leave at 4PM). And then out of nowhere jumping while laughing hysterically on the bed led to a pillow fight which led to multiple pillow ambushes while Call It What You Want by Foster the People (informally dubbed our “yolo song”) played in the background. No one cared much about anything else. We were having fun and we were doing so in the presence of favourite company. Nothing else could be better than that. The feeling from last night returned with full intensity. Which was why when it was time to leave, there was a tinge of reluctance in the air as we gathered our bags and tossed one last melancholic glance in the direction of the incredibly nice hotel room we were leaving behind, where we’d manufactured memories and marked our presence in the form of bad karaoke, damp towels and rib-aching laughter.

This looked a lot worse during and after the pillow fights

We said goodbye to Zitian at KL Sentral and then during the last 15 minutes on the train sentimentalities started washing in and we finally addressed The End, capital T and capital E.

I still miss this so much. I still miss everyone so much.

Quit Skype

Seenly Photo HMQltzuC — this photo was taken right before a sneeze, bless

Never have I ever hit the “Quit Skype” button so fast. Not even after I quitted two roleplaying sites and went offline before I was tempted to continue discussing subplots with my RP friends on Skype.

I had an interview with a panel of Magdalen College law tutors from Oxford University through Skype this evening, and after the thing, after a whole week of not feeling at ease after coming home from Sunway and progressively sweatier palms and vivid nightmares and recurring nausea, I signed out of Skype and paced around all corners of the house emitting different pitches of screams and groans, some of them muffled with my head buried in my pillows and some of them the only appropriate response I could give my mum when she asked me how the thing went. I felt secondhand embarrassment for my firsthand embarrassment. The blank pieces of paper I used as a mousepad during the thing were filled with scribbles of “OH GOD” in capital letters with many exclamation marks ensuing, its frequency proportionate to the depth of my interviewer’s frown as the thing progressed. The “thing” was all I could say to refer to it during the days leading up to the thing, my making taboo of the word probably intensifying an unnecessary fear.

Well, either way, there’s not much I can do to alter anything now except hope for the best. My email inbox has returned to becoming a ticking timebomb, probably even more urgent now than before. (In retrospect: I was being super melodramatic and exaggerated, well, pretty much everything, but it’s an effective coping mechanism to keep my expectations low.)

During my first week back at home, besides being a trainwreck as described above, I also managed to unpack everything I brought back from Subang, rearranged stuff in my room to make it more den-like (to prepare myself for spending an unhealthy amount of time cooped up in it), took down all my posters and put up my Wall of Stuff (which is more superior than all of the posters in the world combined), timehopped back to 2013 as a feeble attempt of an antidote to cure my reverse homesickness, and watched Markiplier‘s entire Five Nights at Freddy’s 1 & 2 and Outlast gameplay compilation (which, ironically, was my go-to to calm down whenever I started feeling really anxious).

I still want to write an Ipoh post even though it’s long overdue by slightly more than a week (it already feels like I’ve been home for ages) and I kept telling myself “I’ll write it after the thing” so I guess that time has arrived. What I don’t openly admit to myself is that the reason why I probably procrastinated on writing that post for so long was the fear of reopening old wounds of nostalgia and missing my friends

[dated 6th november 2014, 1:59am]

Every night at around midnight, I tell myself that I am tired. It’s time to go to bed now, Michelle. Try to be a healthy teenager for once and go to sleep at a godly hour and wake up before lunchtime. And every time I fail. It’s been three weeks now. The only anomalies during which I actually attempt to sleep before midnight and wake up at 7AM are days when I have to sit for papers.

Honestly, can you believe it? I’ve only had three papers? It feels like I’ve spent 500 years rotting in my room and some days it’s so hard to get out of bed. Some days more difficult than the others. And some days when you wake up feeling like you want to throw up and just the thought of doing laundry makes you cry and you’re stuck between not wanting to leave your room forever and not wanting to be in your room any longer. It’s fine though, nothing I can’t deal with. I’m really in no position to complain, because it’s a choice I made and I’m in the process of learning how to deal with the decisions I make even if it might turn out to be a wrong decision.

One evening, while crying into my phone to my mum and demanding her to “please make a decision for me” I thought: what constitutes a right or wrong decision? Between two decisions, can both of them be right decisions? Likewise, can they simultaneously be wrong decisions too? It felt like being caught in a crossfire; maybe the only right decision is for me to hide under my bed and never come out for meals or toilet breaks long enough so people will believe I’m not actually there anymore.

Joyride (Subtitled: Gratitude, Part II)

On the second day after I’ve reached Alor Setar, I’ve been desperately trying to search and compile evidence of my time in Sunway, and of my friends. It’s almost so easy to believe that none of the things we did for the past 1.5 years was real, that none of my friends are real. The metaphor we used was that of waking up from a really long and nice dream, and after waking up, you’re back at square one. Dream’s over. Everything’s back to how it was. Continue with the life you’ve always known prior to the dream.

I’m desperately clinging onto memories of my friends. I’m so scared. Absence leads to apathy and I’m scared.

It’s crazy to think how this is all a product of chance. If I’d chosen to go to Taylor’s instead of Sunway (which I was very, very close to doing). If Bellyn had chosen to do IB instead of A Levels. If Taliza had decided to join a different A Levels intake. If we hadn’t met Zitian and Qiujing on the first day of SMR orientation. If Harris had chosen a different college that was nearer to his house. In a parallel universe, one in which we had chosen our alternatives, all of this wouldn’t have happened. And I like to think this version, this current IRL version, is the best version there is.

I’ve been digging up old Whatsapp conversations, tweets, blogposts, Facebook photos, Instagram posts, letters, cards, polaroid pictures, receipts, name cards; anything at all to remind and prove the existence of these memories and my friends. That they’re not just part of the most wonderful and longest dream I had. That they’re real. Even though I can’t see them and talk to them and go to classes with them and go on spontaneous road trips with them anymore. Because 1.5 years is long enough that you can fit in so many things that happened rather compactly, but short enough that it’s not unbelievable to think that it hadn’t actually happened. When you think about it, 1.5 years is nothing much to take out of the equation of our lives, unlike primary school or high school, which was approximately five years each, and spread over a wider span of physical and mental growth. I need constant reassurance that they’re still there, they’re still real; I can’t bear the thought of permanent severance from them. They’ve been my home for the past 18 months, there is nowhere else in the world (except perhaps my own home with my parents and even that feels really foreign right now even after 36 hours) I feel safer and more comfortable than with them. There were countless times when I managed to overcome my anxiety merely in their presence; it made me feel like I could do anything, that I was strong and brave enough to be a better version of myself.

The digging process made me realise how different of a person I was in sem 1 compared to sem 2 and 3, and while sem 1 was the idealistic version of myself that I wish to be now, it wasn’t me (I realise that now), and I managed to feel comfortable enough during the consecutive semesters to reveal bits and parts of who I was of which I was previously ashamed of to these people I consider my close friends. I never would’ve been able to learn to accept my own failures and flaws if it weren’t for my friends who were willing to accept me for who I was, flaws and all, even before I could even do it to myself.

Farewells at Sunway before going home whenever there was a break got progressively more difficult as time passed. Even at home, a lot of the things I did was accompanied with the thought of “If only [friends] were here doing [the things] with me; [friend] would be [doing thing] and [friend] would be [doing thing]”. I didn’t really understand it at first. It was reverse homesickness. I was always sick for something that I didn’t have, until I have it and then I take it for granted.

I found myself getting more and more comfortable with where I was as sem 3 progressed. I hadn’t gone home for two months (even though I was supposed to twice and twice I chickened out and still I felt quite okay with it) but it didn’t feel strange or uncomfortable, as I previously would’ve felt in sem 1 or 2. In fact, I felt like I was starting to get a stronger foothold of myself and this place. I was easing myself into this environment that sometimes still felt rather foreign. And then A2 happened and there was little room for, I don’t know, appreciation and sentimentality but as soon as A2 ended, everything was just snatched away abruptly. But I’d just started getting used to this life and actually liking it!, I whined. I whined and moaned and moped because that’s what I do best when things don’t go my way but I had to face and accept the rude awakening of A Levels ending and leaving this place.

I cried all the way back from Sunway to Alor Setar in the car yesterday, which, is it really surprising at all? It’s true, I’d probably cooked Broccoli with all my tears because there was absolutely nothing else I could do in the car except cry and sleep. There was hardly even space for moving my limbs. Sleep didn’t come easily either because I’d be five minutes into dozing off when a memory of the life I’ve left behind would pop up and I’d be jolted awake with the sudden pang in my heart. I wish I could say I was being hyperbolic. It was not fun at all. And when I finally gave in and resorted to listening to music, the first song that came on shuffle was Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second by STRFKR. Like. Thanks a lot, universe. I’d never felt so violated in such a cramped space in a moving vehicle before.

The next consecutive hours spent at home were not unlike the Pavilion trip I had on Saturday. I felt like a detached, mindless human being taking up space, not willing to do anything else other than sleep or look at old photos/conversations or cry in the middle of meals. I am aware of how pointless and self-inflicting all of this is, but I feel like if I don’t mourn this breakup properly, I will not get the chance to do so in the future when everything and everyone feels…further away, and I wouldn’t have been able to give it the justified attention it deserves. Don’t worry, mum and dad, after the time allocation for this mourning period is up, I’ll return to normal again, whatever “normal” means anymore. I will be okay, but for now let me use up my not-okay quota until it runs out and feels right again.

I kept on saying “it feels weird” back in Sunway when my term was almost up. It feels weird, because things are changing and change is always weird, like an itch on your back that you can’t scratch and never seems to go away. Even the unpleasant memories become nostalgic, purely because you know you won’t ever experience them again. The pain and sadness felt during the past year were definitely gruelling, but they were familiar and recognisable, and mostly they were comfortable. I didn’t know that then, because I was too caught up in my emotions to realise it, but now that I’m miles away from them, it feels like my ability to feel shit about something that was important to me has also been taken away from me too. How can I feel shit about something if it’s no longer there anymore? And this makes me dangerously wonder if I’d rather go through the shitty feelings over and over again if it meant staying in one place in Sunway. It doesn’t seem logical or even safe, but the absence of familiarity feels like I’m losing my balance and at this point I’m desperately struggling to grasp onto anything at all to prevent myself from falling, even if it’s having to grasp onto a thick branch filled with thorns.

I know exactly what I’m doing – I’m making myself stay stuck in the past and feeling sad over it, and it’s not a wise thing to do because there’s nothing I can do about it. There is no solution to this melancholy that I’m coercing myself into feeling. I’m doing it for the pure masochism, and the inane belief that it is what is required of me. Along with this comes the fear of forgetting. Right now, everything seems intense. Right now, it’s all we can think of, and all our sentiments echo the same way. But the worst thing is the inevitability of forgetting. We will gradually become occupied with different matters, as we take on different commitments in our respectively separate lives. Previously, we were brought together in a classroom setting; seeing each other and hanging out with each other was almost an obligation and we were more than happy to comply.

That’s why attending classes in college never truly seemed like a chore. I still remember during sem 1 when I would dread the weekends because it would mean that I didn’t get to see my friends and there was nothing to do at all. I looked forward to weekdays more than anything else. Classes started to get progressively stressful as sem 2 and 3 rolled around, but even then, I’d never really felt the same kind of stress and dread I used to have everyday when attending high school classes. A Levels was tougher than SPM, definitely, but it still wasn’t as stressful as SPM period. It also didn’t help that the friends I’ve made in Sunway were the first group of people that I could truly connect with, people that I trusted more than myself. Essentially, all this added up to a really great life in Sunway. I say this almost like as if there weren’t moments when I felt like escaping from Sunway in its entirety, but right now, with the knowledge that the end is permanent, it’s difficult to see the shortcomings of it. Much like when I came home for short breaks knowing how brief a time I have to spend at home that I don’t dwell much on the downsides of it.

I’m afraid of the person I will become. I’m afraid of becoming apathetic. But at the same time, there is nothing I can do, except immerse myself completely in the torrential downpour of emotions that I’m smothering myself with. Which is why I spent a good half a day free writing everything that I could possibly interpret from my emotions. All into this giant masterpost of post-leaving thoughts and feelings.

I miss my friends and I miss my routines. And while staying in a bubble forever would have been ideal, it would not have been possible. Moving on is necessary, and I know this. This transition process I’m facing is difficult but I’ll get through it. We all will. And while I love to dramatically throw around the phrase “the end”, I also know that’s not true. It may be the end of our little 18-month bubble of hedonism, but much brighter things await each of us individually outside the bubble. It’s just the beginning of life as we know it, and the pricking of the bubble does not equate to the severing of ties that we’ve formed between ourselves. More adventures lie ahead for all of us, collectively or not. At this point, this is my logic!self writing this to reassure my gut!self that everything is not as bad as it seems. Just because it’s the truth doesn’t mean it’s easy to believe in it. But I’m getting there.

The movie is ending, and as Bellyn would like it, the violins in Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve are echoing in the background as the screen fades to black before the credits start rolling. I had the best time of my measly 19 years of life for the past 18 months, and I can never thank everyone enough for giving me that. I don’t know what I’ve ever done to deserve this, but I’m so glad I did. Thank you for being great characters in my story; I’ll write us the best story anyone could imagine.

(a new chapter)

never goes out

i started crying on the train back from ipoh yesterday, and couldn’t control the tears all throughout dinner (which probably messed up dinner in itself, sorry about that) and i went to bed with a queasy stomach and numb palms and woke up the next morning way before my alarm rang. i cried even more after saying goodbye to bellyn and then returned to my room and continued crying curled up in foetal position, and then rumin invited me to go to kl for lunch and i saw it as an opportunity to avoid a guaranteed breakdown within the confines of my smr room so i agreed. even then, the first half of the trip i was either crying or sleeping and i felt so detached from the world because i was just swimming (read: drowning) in my own sad thoughts and i couldn’t shake off the wet soggy clothes weighing me down. it kept me down for a good long period of time until i figured i’d exhausted my emotional capacity which led to my current state of feeling nothing at all. i think i still feel sad, but also not really? i don’t think i’m feeling anything. the only slight emotion i’m feeling is perhaps suspicion and wariness that i’m feeling this way, or rather, not feeling any way at all. pinpointing skills had expired for the day. i guess that’s what crying for 12 hours can do to you. it feels terrible not to feel anything but it also feels terrible to feel sad. there really is no way around this.

i’m sitting alone in my almost bare smr room, looking at the half-packed stuff on the floor and the table, the little blu-tack spots dotting the white walls that i’d probably get fined for, and thinking how it’s just rumin and i in the entire unit. and tonight is the last night i’ll be spending in smr, in sunway, in the state of selangor away from home, and how i will never return to this place again. i felt so much pain when all i saw were ghosts of ourselves walking on the streets next to pavilion to head to tous les jours that night after jogoya, or the canopy walk from college to pyramid, or on the lrt clinging onto the poles playing the balance game. we were everywhere. there was no escaping it. we have literally left trails of ourselves all over pj and kl yet now we are nowhere to be found. it left a horribly sour feeling in my stomach, like it was trying to fold itself in with the help of acid secretion juices.

everyone who knows me wel knows how incredibly bad i am at farewells. and this is one farewell all the farewells i’ve ever previously had had never prepared me for.

there is a song in my head that won’t stop

Pinpointing emotions has always been my (shamelessly self-proclaimed) forte. It’s what keeps me sane as I am able to make reasonable and mostly accurate deductions about what I am feeling about a particular situation at a specific moment. It allows me to recognise what I am actually experiencing and subsequently provides reasoning pathways for me to figure out how I should respond to the current situation and how it has affected me.

Unfortunately, my pinpointing skills have failed me in recent weeks. My emotions were reduced to murky waters that couldn’t be filtered into its basic constituents. As a result, I resorted to the good old-fashioned way of trial and error; am I feeling Emotion A? Or Emotion B? What about Emotion C? Anger rarely reared its ugly head in any of my possible choices, so when I started feeling angry at a certain situation lately, I got angrier at myself for being angry. I was terrified of being angry; feeling sad felt better than being angry. But at the same time, anger didn’t feel like the right emotion, either. I was/am not dealing with [situation] the way it should be dealt with. And sometimes, none of [situations] were situations that could be dealt with, which made things even more frustrating. I was feeling, but for all the wrong reasons. I don’t know how to explain this. But a lot of things just felt wrong most of the time.

The only thing distracting me from this myriad of conflicting emotions was planning. It gives me something to look forward to, and it feels great staying up to execute [plans]. It also gives me a sense of control over what I can or cannot do, unlike the feeble control I have over my own emotions, so weak that I can’t even understand what I’m feeling and/or how I’m responding to it.

I guess most of the anger and frustration is directed towards myself for not being able to feel entirely happy and worry/fear-less whenever I spend time with people. It doesn’t make sense that I would feel this way with people that I am comfortable with, which makes the frustration even more intense. How can something that is so easy and effortless for other people (and even past-me) be such a huge fear boulder weighing me down? What have I been doing wrong all this time?

My last A2 paper ended today and like the last day of all exams I’ve ever sat for, it was kinda anti-climactic in contrast to all the hoo-haa of anticipating the end of exams.

I’m just trying not to think about like, people leaving and leaving people and leaving this place and leaving this goddamn town that I’ve grown so accustomed to and just leaving. All the farewells in my life have never prepared me enough for this one.

Red, Orange, Yellow Flicker

Carbon Milk

Feci3

Abandoned Popcorn

Yearbook Three

Not A Band

Horse

Carbon Milk: After Chem P5 and Econs P4, considerable amount of weight was lifted off my shoulders and my housemates and I went to Publika. We had milk and fancy toasts and bought a quarter watermelon from Ben’s Independent Grocer which leaked juice all over CPY on the ride back in the taxi. The night ended at 4:20AM for me (I remember this clearly) but the others continued to stay up till 6AM because why not right

Feci3: Miss MC posted on Facebook asking for volunteers to help out at the SIS Science Fair at the Chemistry lab on Thursday. The usual suspects were there. There were four waves of middle schoolers, each wave lasting 40 minutes (think Plants Vs Zombies) and during each wave our job was to help out these 13/14-year-old boys and girls carry out a flame test and a pH test, and also to make sure they don’t, well, hurt themselves or accidentally drink CuSO4. It was fun. But also tiring. Very, very tiring. I’m terrified of kids.

Abandoned Popcorn: After that, Usual Suspects and I went to watch Mockingjay Part I, continuing the tradition of watching Catching Fire last year. All my Hunger Games movie experiences so far have been with favourite people; please don’t let next year be a combo breaker.

My five-word review of this movie: Natalie Dormer Natalie Dormer Natalie

But honestly, Mockingjay Part I was so draggy and dry and as as the book itself but it stayed true to the tradition of Part I movies being boring and uneventful so I guess we can look forward to Mockingjay Part II with good reason.

Yearbook Three: Harris, Bellyn and I went to Kinokuniya and I spent a great amount of time hiding behind bookshelves at the art books section flipping through (read: absorbing) the brilliance that is Rookie Yearbook Three before I gave in and bought it. It’s my most prized possession currently.

Not A Band: On Saturday, Bellyn, Taliza and I did a photoshoot for A Band (@bukanaband) at Empire Damansara and it was quite fun I guess. It was certainly a brand new experience.

Horse: On Sunday, I met up with InTeRnEt FrIeNdZ Elya, Effie and Sya (for the first time!) at Sunway Pyramid and we talked about TV shows, horses and ate ice cream. Elya gave me a bag of Lush stuff and my room now smells like Everything Right In This World

Last week of college!!!

One Week

I was reminded that I leave Subang in a little over a week. Wow. I was having dinner at Lunchbox the other night before Physics P5 and they were already playing Christmas songs and it just hit me that Christmas means the end of a year and it means the end of this year and that means A Levels is coming to an end. A2 is almost ending; I only have a last paper left next week before I leave Sunway for good. It’s weird. It didn’t seem so long ago that I posted that blogpost about A2 starting, and now it’s already ending. So weird.

I was clearing up all my papers to give them away/sell them/recycle them when I stumbled upon Sunway brochures and black and white documents that were used when I applied for A Levels here. It’s funny because looking back at all of them, I can still remember all the hopes and dreams I had when I first entered college. That was melodramatic. But I was very ambitious, even circling all the clubs I wanted to join (there were four) and indulging in the Complete College Experience™. I suppose, in a way, I got what I wanted, but it was nothing like the stereotypical and clichéd expectations I’d had before coming here. It was neither better or worse, but it was real and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

With a deadline looming over my head, right now, I just want to make the best of the time I have left here and spend as much time as I can with my friends. I’ve built a home here, both in the literal and metaphorical senses, because home is where you feel safe and comfortable so that also means part of my home was built in the presence of the great friends I’ve made here. The last chapter of this 1.5 years story is ending soon, and I want to write the best epilogue there is to it.

Pretty Little Liars Season 4 Finale

I don’t normally do write-ups like this but I watched the season 4 finale the other day and couldn’t stop thinking about how incredulous the entire franchise plot had become. I even have a voice memo on my phone in which I sort of rage burst about the millions of loopholes in the show that no one bothered to even cover up in the end. I feel like at this point the producers are just trying to pull whatever meagre plot strings they can find and hastily throw it into the plot cauldron, hoping that it would turn out fine and make sense, at the very least.

But no. It was such sloppy work. Among the trashiest shows in the history of tv shows, PLL ranks pretty high on that list (along with the likes of Teen Wolf and Faking It) – but just like the aforementioned two MTV shows, I just cannot stop watching them. I wish I could say they were so terrible that I couldn’t even continue watching them, but in reality it’s the exact opposite. The more I curse and rage scream at the stupidity of the characters, the more I want to find out what they do and how they end up. I think this speaks volumes about my own level of trashiness too I guess

The last time I finished season 3 was last year even before I came to college, so enough time had lapsed that I was at first quite bored in the first few episodes of season 4. The thing about drama shows like this is that there is quite literally zero sense of continuity. You can pretty much discern very clearly when one plot finishes and another one begins, because you will notice that no one else ever brings up the finished plot later on in the series, even if it’s something as huge and significant as Hanna’s mum being arrested. It’s a really huge pet peeve especially after watching shows like Parks and Recreation in which you can see very clearly character progress and development from past events and how they shape and mould them as the shows progresses. In season 3, it’s still hard to believe how quickly Spencer just snaps back into normalcy after leaving Radley – still not worse than the ???s that surfaced when Malia just randomly checked in and then out of asylum in Teen Wolf, it was like she was just THERE for the sake of wanting her to be included in Stiles’ plot but let’s not go there – and it was no longer brought up again, not as a significant plot nugget anyway.

My biggest problem with season 4, however, is the entire “Shit! Ezra is A! Oh, wait! He’s not! All of this makes sense! Thanks!” execution. So first, we find Spencer, Emily, Hanna and Aria in Ravenswood apparently trying to…do what exactly? They found a flyer advertising about a magic show and somehow connected it to a magic trick bladesaw that A sent them as a parcel in the mail. “A sent us this box which if you turn a knob a certain way, a saw will fall out but if you don’t do it correctly it won’t fall out it’s ~magic~ so that means A wants us to go to a magic show” and in Ravenswood. Of all places. Okay, fine. They go to Ravenswood, and Emily almost gets killed, presumably a stunt pulled by A. At the same place, they find Cece, whom – what exactly does she even do again? They discover that there are actually two Red Coats – Cece and actual Alison DiLaurentis who, surprise surprise, isn’t dead! I mean, they don’t know that for sure yet but at least that’s what Spencer pieces together. And apparently Alison led them to A’s lair in Ravenswood, where they find multiple computers linked to CCTVs EVERYWHERE in Rosewood as well as a lot of flow charts with photos and names of a lot of people and basically just what you would probably expect to find in a serial killer’s basement. And then you think – shit. This is really A’s lair. Who else would do this sort of sickening thing besides this A person who’s been obsessively stalking these four girls for four seasons already oh my god get a life already.

And Cece’s character is so WEAK, I swear she only exists as a name for people to throw around when nothing makes sense to them. Cece’s name was certainly mentioned A LOT for someone who only made a cameo for 5 minutes for the entire season. “Cece Drake is behind this this and this!” they all exclaim for everything that happens, but then it turns out she wasn’t even in Rosewood the entire time. She didn’t even do ANYTHING God who even is she

But that’s not even the most important thing of that episode. The most important thing is at the very end before the end credits, they show you a person dressed in black from head to toe – typical A clothing gear – walking into the lair, realising that it had been invaded by the very people he had been stalking all along. But this time, this time they pan the camera around and YOU FINALLY SEE THE FACE OF A. IT’S EZRA FITZ. HOLY SWEET JESUS. The “I read Shakespeare so I’m an intellectual, y’all” English teacher that Aria had a more-than-brief secret love affair with. How could he ever be A?!

That’s right. How could employee-with-a-steady-income, vest-wearing, impossibly-neutrally-nice Ezra Fitz who recently only finds out he has a son be A?! You can’t brain this. Neither can I. A once blackmailed Aria with information about this affair at the very start of the show, how could he have sent a text to Aria’s phone while being in the same room at the same time. Guys. What is this. Of course, and then you remember that there was once a theory in season 2 or 3 honestly you can’t remember anymore which was that A might be a group of people but it might also have been dismissed in season 2 or 3 again after Melissa Hastings did something I think. Speaking of which, there was like two or three episodes in S4 that roped Melissa back in for the mask thing and then kicked her out immediately after Melissa told Spencer a bunch of useless stuff that apparently justified her making a mask of her own face? Actually, the entire mask ordeal is so pointless and messy and frankly, very disturbing. Yet again, no continuity?! To this day, we don’t even really know what the masks are for?!

Okay, so once it was made known that YOU, as the audience, know that Ezra is A, they start to make Ezra’s actions seem suddenly very suspicious. His glare longer with more suspenseful music in the background, and he’s suddenly lurking and stalking the girls in school?! Like, does no one really notices that? All past three seasons prior to the “giant reveal of Ezra as A” left absolutely NO INDICATIONS at all that Ezra had even a remote chance of being A, but as soon as YOU know Ezra is A, his actions immediately escalate to become alarmingly suspicious? It is literally a gradient zero graph. A steep step from bottom to the top. And then you spend the next few episodes groaning in frustration, wanting ANYONE AT ALL to just figure out that this man! This sickening, disturbing man is A! He is the cause of all your problems! About 2 episodes later, Spencer is the one to find out, and frankly, she really had very little to work with to pin it on Ezra, but you don’t care! You’re just really glad that finally! Someone can expose this paedophilic bastard!

And then you cheer Aria on when she finds all of Ezra’s stalker A stuff about her and her friends and Alison and literally everyone else in Rosewood and then Ezra suddenly appears and hunts after Aria and Aria heads for the ski lift (honest to God Aria what the everliving heck were you thinking) and SUDDENLY EZRA IS BESIDE HER AND SHE CAN’T ESCAPE OH GOD

AND THEN EZRA REVEALS THAT HE IS NOT A

Get this, THIS is Ezra’s story to all the creepy stalker stuff he keeps about all of them: Ezra is writing a book! He’s writing a book about Alison and Aria and Hanna and Spencer and Emily! He knew Alison first before he even came to Rosewood! He knew Aria before he even saw her! He showed interest in Aria because he wanted to “get to know” his characters even more in depth to write a story about them! This isn’t disturbing on a psychological level at all!

You know, they say all artists and writers are, to some extent, insane, but I wouldn’t count on that extent to be on the level of fixing-hidden-cameras-everywhere-to-follow-your-subjects’-every-move. Tell me that’s not downright sickening. Actually, tell me that’s not a federal offense, because I’m pretty sure you could go to jail for that. And why isn’t he put away?! Like, okay, fine, even if he isn’t A, it still doesn’t excuse what he did?! Which is keep tabs on four high schoolers (and more) 24/7, take photos of them without their knowledge, hide surveillance cameras to record their daily actions and interactions. He’s an English teacher! Doesn’t he have test papers to mark? Notes to make? References to write? Actually these questions are rather on the same level of “Don’t these girls have homework to do? Tests to take? College essays to write?” so never mind. But, really, I’m pretty sure you can write a book about people without becoming a downright criminal. And if you can’t, then maybe you really shouldn’t even write a book at all.

And then there’s the thing about Ezra knowing about A. I couldn’t really accept Ezra NOT being A at first, so I honestly didn’t entertain any possibilities at all that he isn’t A, but when the show decided to progress in that direction of Ezra not being A (which is still absolutely absurd but I guess I would have to accept because of what happens in the finale later), you have to start thinking: so Ezra isn’t A, but he KNOWS about A. Which honestly doesn’t make him any of a better person tbh!!! If he knows about A ALL ALONG – in fact, probably longer than any of them because Ezra knew Alison before he knew them – then what has he even done to help them stop A? Or warn them about A? If he’s been keeping such close tabs on all of them, there is NO WAY he can’t have seen A leaving notes in their lockers??? Delivering parcels to their doorsteps??? Ezra??? Please??? You could have actually been a great deal of help with all your creepy CCTVs – you literally had one job! But??? No??? Seriously??? WHAT EVEN IS THIS SHOW

Finally, we are graced with the finale. In the finale, we finally get to meet Alison. That’s right, folks. She’s not dead. She’s been pretending to dead for two years. What has she been doing for the past two years? Studying for her SATs, I hope. And she finally tells us the whole story, which turns out to be not whole at all. Thanks, Alison, but you have been zero help. She tells the girls that on the night she went missing, she’d been trying to figure out who A was by blackmailing pretty much everyone she knows. At the end of the day, she was no closer to finding out who it was, but was instead hit on the head by a rock, and buried alive by her mother. Okay. Well. I mean. Ali’s mum. She knows that, uh, you should probably, uh, check your own daughter’s breathing first before diagnosing her as dead and burying her in your own backyard right? Right? Isn’t this basic human anatomy knowledge? Don’t Americans know this?

And then Ali’s creepy psychic 100-year-old friend “sees” Ali being buried alive and drives all the way from Ravenswood to Ali’s house JUST IN TIME to see Ali reach her hand out of the soil. Okay. Let’s see: 1) in one of the episodes, we see that Caleb had to take an hour-long bus ride to Ravenswood from Rosewood. So either psychic friend also has the supernatural ability to drive really fast without getting a speeding ticket, or she could “see” it happening to Ali hours before it did; in which case, couldn’t she have just called Ali and asked her to stay at home that night? 2) Ali was unconscious when she was buried alive; I’m pretty sure you lose A LOT of oxygen even if you were buried alive for seconds – and she was unconscious. How did she even get the energy to reach through the soil and unearth her hand? It’s not like she was buried underneath foam bubbles y’know!

So anyway, she managed to escape wow amazing and Mona ends up taking care of her. Right. Mona. Another character for the producers to conjure ONLY when two plots don’t seem to fit together. “Oh, it’s fine, Jerry (generic white man name), they don’t make sense now but let’s just throw Mona in! She’ll make everything make sense! Totally!” From being A to being A’s henchman (who knows NOTHING about A okay that’s v convincing thank) to being on the girls’ side to DISAPPEARING FROM THE SHOW COMPLETELY to helping out Ezra write his book??? This girl no hobby one is it??? Actually, does any of the characters have hobbies??? I feel like everyone on this show really needs to take a step back and just chill. They all need to take a day off and DO NOTHING. Please. I worry for y’all.

Halfway through Ali’s storytelling, a hooded figure shows up and tries to shoot, well, all of them I guess? So all five of them run…to the rooftop. Excellent idea. They get cornered, and out of nowhere, a door bursts open melodramatically, only showing you the shadow of someone wearing a cap – so you think: A. And then Aria suddenly steps forward and says, “Ezra?” and you’re like whAt tHe HeLl and it IS Ezra and another door opens and it’s the hooded figure so it’s true! Ezra is not A! Ezra then tries to protect the girls while screaming “I KNOW WHO U R PLZ DONT DO DIS” but he gets shot and A gets away and Aria and Ali are screaming Ezra’s name but no one had the sense to ask him who A is guys!!!! This is super v v v v important!!! He got shot in the stomach I watched enough movies to know that he’ll live!!!! Scott’s dad in Teen Wolf survived a sword to his gut for HOURS without batting an eyelid, he’ll be fine!!!!

Sigh. At this point, they can literally pull out the most convincing A and still be able to deny it with a pathetic excuse like maybe he’s developing a game and he’s testing out the possibility of the player winning by actually executing them in real life and everyone will be all “Phew at least he’s not A” BUT GUYS HE IS AS DANGEROUS AS A DON’T YOU GUYS LOVE YOURSELVES

I can’t believe I just spent two hours writing this