11:58.

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride

Forbid it Lord that I should boast
Save in the death of Christ my God
All the vain things that charm me most
I sacrifice them to His blood

See, from His head, His hands, His feet
Sorrow and love flow mingled down
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet
Or thorns compose so rich a crown

Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were an offering far too small
Love so amazing, so divine
Demand my soul, my life, my all

Oh the wonderful cross

Oh the wonderful cross

Bids me come and die and find that I may truly live

Oh the wonderful cross, Oh the wonderful cross

All who gather here by grace draw near and bless Your name

- The Wondrous Cross

20:38.

There is something amazingly liberating, refreshing and joy-inducing at being able to don a short skirt and slippers, find a nice patch of grass at some park and plod yourself down, enjoying the sunshine and breeze while working on my laptop.

Something amazingly so satisfying. And somewhat enriching in some way, what with the sense of free-ness one gets.

Good company, sunshine, gelati, parks off lygon and bouverie, green grass... immense joy is found in things like today's leisurely events.

I've no idea if Spring is already here, but it feels like it. Maybe the season's called Spring because that's what you feel like doing at the change of climate. Or rather, when the change involves a moving on from a cold that was at times getting to be monotonous, your heart just does little jigs.

:)

whiz.
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15:44.

I planned to graduate in the Singapore convocation for RMIT students instead of at the grand telstra dome with all other graduates this semester. But after making some queries, I discovered that the offshore convocation might be held late next year so that both the folks who graduate this semt and next can combine for convocation.

Nope, doesn't look fancible, does it? It costs more to graduate in Sg too.

The idea of having my convocation here both appeals and does not. The arena, the sentimentality and symbolic nature of the experience (darn iconic gown and mortar board) are fanciable but the boredom and long wait, plus the fact that I am not graduating with people I know deter me. They had three years together. I came in for a year, and honestly have not mingled much.

The third possibility is this - Graduate in absentia.

Don't attend any ceremonies.

Whatever it is, I have got to make up my mind by Sept 3. That's the deadline for the application to graduate. Yes, we got to fill out a form if we are confident that we will finish our programme this semt. Guess in a school this big, you never know if the students on your list are actually alive, or studying 'nuff to graduate. Oh well.

23:41.

Crop off my head
make me attached
separate, living
dead to breath

Drown me in song
while standing tall
to the ancient hieroglyphs
a distant memory

Let me bleed

The sirens songs
lack melody
it stank of blood
distant feuds

The earth gods rot
fed by dust
The seasons come
eternally round

When shame turns red the yellow earth
and the children of the soil are damned
Wings of change, strip bare this land
Till the old bones come to life

Let me bleed
That I might live
It all makes sense
I just do not see it yet

17:27.

Wheee.

23:20.

Frickin' toolbar. So the perks of Google having bought Blogspot manifested in my Gmail account, but frickin' darn search toolbar (see above) which I did not and do not want. Its presence has automatically transformed this journal to part of some corporate entity, and stamped its biz identity onto my blog. I am linked to "next blog". Joy, we are all cows on the conveyor belt. Visit the zoo. Yeah, yeah, I know it's not as if Midair doesn't already have to have that little Blogger button down below and I am after all using this as a free account but this, its in-your-face-ness, takes the whole cake. And did I say it throws off all composition? Like hush.

17:56.

It's not dark yet outside! Almost six o clock and it's not dark yet! *laughs* Seasons are so wondrous. Don't laugh at me, laugh with me. This rocks. Winter's on its last leg. I didn't detest it but some change will be nice. Hah.

17: 48.

Leaving a part of your heart in others' lives - Read the Fri 13th post here. Maybe we hear stories like these oft enough but they still mean something.

And from the same site, an excerpt from another post there:

"That old man that you brushed aside? The one you called a liberal and a wishy-washy Christian? He spent the last fifty years with his hands and his heart in the pages of that sacred book. He has wept over it and searched for truth in its stories. His unanswered questions have increased every year until finally he knows nothing at all but the love of God and neighbor."

It's the July 16th entry. Some parts may be arguable but there's truth in there.

10:40.

John The Baptist archaeology links?

Fly me to the moon.
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16:37.

A thought struck me last night.

Instead of asking "am I called to full time?" and "how do I know", why don't you ask, "what are the signs that I am not called to full time and do I see these in my life?".

Could it be simpler?

23:03.

Fumbling [her] confidence
And wond’ring why the world has passed [her] by
Hoping that [s]he’s meant for more than arguments
And failed attempts to fly, fly

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside
Somewhere we live inside
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside

Dreaming about Providence
And whether mice or men have second tries
Maybe we’ve been livin' with our eyes half open
Maybe we’re bent and broken, broken

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside
Somewhere we live inside
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside

WE WANT MORE THAN THIS WORLD'S GOT TO OFFER
WE WANT MORE THAN THIS WORLD'S GOT TO OFFER
WE WANT MORE THAN THE WARS OF OUR FATHERS
AND EVERYTHING INSIDE SCREAMS FOR SECOND LIFE

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live
We were meant to live

- Meant to Live, Switchfoot

16:20.

Will these questions be with me all my life, sometimes haunting me; when I am weak, kicking me; at times simply driving me.

I have taken to videotaping my life here. Not continuously, of course - as in life doesn't already feel too 1984 some times - but just during the regular stuff... church, school, walks, OCF.

Got an email regarding graduation this week. I have to submit some application and let the uni folks know where I want to graduate and stuff like that. For the life of me, I have no freakin' idea. Of course I don't. I have no idea where I will be. I have no idea when I am leaving Melbourne. I have no idea how it's all going to work out.

I know it will all work out and I just have to trust now and keep walking, and that it is all right to feel up in the air but - that is my problem, that I feel a "But". Not that I even know what it is logically.

My head spins, I realise more than ever the need to study the tenets of my faith, more than ever I want to articulate every aspect of this faith in a clear coherent intelligent manner. I want to be able to paint it with words, even as I desperately want to paint it with my life.

I am scared. There, I said it. I am scared of being cynical again. I am scared I will be facing that "is this all there is?" again even though I do know there is pleasure and beauty and service in the common things. This is one of those questions that has marked me. One of those that seemed to already be part of me.

I am scared. Scared that after going back to Singapore, the difference in lifestyle might mean a certain detachness again. It won't be leaving God, it won't be letting go of faith but I am afraid of being average. I don't want to be lukewarm. I don't want to be immersed in salt, feeling like a dead piece of meat floating on the dead sea.

And I am losing my words and running on emotions here. And I am completely aware I cannot force it and try to stay here either. You got to run with arms wide open, and hands open and not clenched. You can't hold on to time.

What do you want to say, girl. I don't know.

This semester, I met a coursemate who was from Mass Comm too. Never knew her then, she's a year my junior. I was and am glad for company and that familiarity that unravels once we identify each other's alma mater. It's not unfamiliar having friends who find their life in drugs, alcohol and getting laid and I enjoy their company still and do not condemn them. Yet sometimes, in utter unreasonable manner, I feel some sort of frustration, as if she reminds me of a world I don't particularly want again.

Media speak, slang, attitude. You can always identify your own kind. And it's not that I hate the industry, very darn far from it. And I know even while in it, I am not completely part of it (Perpetual question II - Am I always to be the different one?). But I don't know. I keep thinking, I don't want to live that life.

I don't know. Maybe she is representative of a world where I feel decidedly helpless at times, a world when I have to network and mingle, do the PR and project the right image. A world where I have to find a place to scream. Scream.

Scream.

I don't know. Do you? I really don't.

And for a moment, I felt like smashing the TV.

Let go, girl. Let go.

0145.

Cause and effect. If all is ruled by cause and effect, then does that mean all is determined? If every person or event's end and conclusion and unravelling is brought about due to some actions in this logical causal way, then what of free will?

23: 28.

Too. many. grey. areas.

Too many.

Objects are seen as shapes, colours as varied greys. Muted the emotions but no less their strength. My head might spilt from my mind and its kamikaze thoughts.

So much are just a chasing after the wind, there is nothing new under the sun, meaningless meaningless, so much, so much are meaningless. And the dog freakingly returns to its own vomit.

I am a stateless desperado, nope under no one's window, just writing my own dispora of a distopia. I feel honestly stateless at this moment, nationality and identity based on geographical boundaries fluid or simply non-existent.

Is there something I can do after spitting out lyrics to Creep and Sexed Up, trying to remember new chords on my Epi?

Every thing seems to be either a containing or a detaching, the former more than the latter. The normalcy of life birthed from structure.

Language, the words I speak, write and think in. Could they be guilty of containing infinity?

After all, when the inventors of this device I type on called it a laptop, they forever limited it. If someone else in some jungle saw it for the first time and called it something else, they will be "corrected". All that infinity of what it could be called, and with every name, a different feel, connatations, implied character and traits, every. thing. limited.

Sigh with me. Every thing's a contradiction.

20:51.

When are character traits learned and when are they part of you? At which point does learned behaviour become rooted and morph into innate characteristics? If that happens, can you separate it from "you" any longer? And in doing so, are you ridding part of yourself or just something alien?

This has been one of those days, when boredom and melancholy combine to just immobilise me. I suppose I have a part in it, allowing inertia and exercising choice to not do and do the things I did not or did.

I got some work done, enjoyed certain moments and activities of the day, but the boredom and desire to just not do any thing is still here.

*stares at screen*

Argh.

Household outing to Brand Smart at Nunawading today. Brand Smart is this plaza where many factory outlets gather to sell stuff at obscene prices (well, at least some were. I still won't pay $150 for a $400 Calvin Klein jacket) while Nunawading is about 40 minutes away from the city.

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Nunawading train station.
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Nunawading train station.
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Nunawading train station.
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Swirl. Sky. Scrapers. Windsill.
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Through the train window.
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22:39.

Think.

If you would, of a long neverending corridor, reminscent to that cold white one with many doors in The Matrix's.

Then again, think. Of a sound panel - sound proof of course - a thin straight division cast from floor to ceiling right smack in the exact center of this corridor. And in the middle, with the plastic-looking panel enclosing like a perfect cut-out looking like it's cutting through me, me. Not physically cut in half, but stuck in between two worlds.

One ear hears Garbage, Shirley Manson singing, "My head explodes and my body aches"; the other - if it is the other - hears Blur, Damon Albarn's almost defiantly bored drawl, "I'm a professional cynic, but my heart's not in it".

And though that clinical, plastic looking division/ panel/ wall is not cutting into me but merely in its perfect fit, gripping me perfectly , my head still feels as if it's being pressed, constricted, pressured.

Too many questions. My random theory formulated during Philo of humans being mere passive receptors of emotions and colours and every thing projected by our surroundings comes to mind. Too much to think about. And they are not even really immediate or to put it poorly, directly related to me but stuff on a bigger whole.

But I am rambling.

I read a nicely crafted lead and felt a part of me go, I want to write features like that. I want to shape and craft and mould art, my art of wordsmithery. And yet, again sometimes, I think of what I left and don't feel a desire to return.

Do I love my craft any lesser? Enjoy and desire the adrenaline chase any less? Stop believing in the power to change the world through the media?

No.

No.

No.

I still stand in many ways the same idealistic, wet-behind-the-ears, 14-year-old girl who decided to be a journalist and is willing to shed tears and blood for it. Just not dreams. And why I added that last three words in I have no idea.

Where is the mind located in the body? Is it a physical object? How does it dictate to the material body movement?

Too many questions. Too many questions. Too many questions. And I am not even expressing the linkage to theology yet. Nor will I for sanity's sake, mine and yours.

I keep thinking of Plato's cave in relation to my own situation.

But back to my Matrix-esque white corridor for which I am the conductor between the two sides. I am stuck like Anthony Kiedis, Red Hot Chili Peppers, in their Can't Stop video. Stuck in the wall like a paper cut-out, a chalk drawing on the ground. But I am alive.

"The world I love
The tears I drop
To be part of
The wave can’t stop
Ever wonder if it’s all for you
The world I love
The trains I hop
To be part of
The wave can’t stop
Come and tell me when it’s time to"
(Can't Stop, RHCP)

17:55.

Malaysia's take on screening The Passion.

Bombings targeted at Iraqi churches.