Lemon and ambition

Friday marks the last weekday of the study week, the time for procrastinators like me to freak out. Yes, but in my futile attempt to do so [Somehow I'm drifting in a world of disbelief, my refusal to believe that the exams is next week is indeed alarming.], I've found a me in someone else. In fact, that is a me that's better than me.

Lai Mun, the Lemon of our class...the more I know her the more I grow to admire her. She is the epitome of what I want to and make myself be. She envisions the kind of future I envision myself in, together with the attitude to get ourselves there. However, I believe she's one step ahead of me.

I am not speaking in resentment, nor am I interested in rivalry. We have our different scopes of mental and material lands to conquer, but when stripped down to the core, our ambitions differ little. If not at all.

What Lemon has is knowledge. She's more an encyclopaedia than most here. That, I dream of. What Lemon has is a sense of self. She is what she wants herself to be. That, I truly respect. What Lemon has are tenacity and fortitude. Both needs a little getting used to, but at the end that's what I love most about her.

Youth is short but we both feel there is sooo much that one can achieve in this short period in life. So much that we can achieve beyond the road always taken. So why waste the possibility of a handsome but fickle success on planning for retirement? Label me impetuous, but if not impetuous now, then impetuous when?

I don't want to let the most important people in my life down, but I have dreams I want to chase. And as much as I doubt the future, I have faith that I will not regret my taking the chance. I don't want to be hitting 30 and wondering about all the what if's of my youth. Life is given to me, I shall live it to the fullest.

At times like this, I am given a firm pat on the back, ushering me back to reality. I am not good enough. I have so much more to work on. I am only a speck of someone if I do not go beyond my current status. Life is a constant learning process and I have yet to learn more from it.

So my faith in the unpredictable is renewed and my ambition glows more alluringly in my mind. I have people to prove my worth to, especially myself. And I'm gonna prove to them I'm worth it.

From left: moi, Lemon at SP Corner this morning

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PS: Today's sunset was magnificent! Just pure breath-taking atmospheric beauty! Check out the pics.

How many more hours to Monday?

GREAT.

It's Thursday night already and I haven't even covered a quarter of my finals syllabus. Oh, perfecto...for an agonising unbodily death in the exam hall...if I don't buck up immediately.

My academic life is a constant struggle between taming my seasonal [during exams, especially] wild imagination and keeping the mind on the revision.

Just a reminder to myself, this is an Indian poem [translated] I read in The Star some few years back during the festive celebration of Deepavali that I thought to be really meaningful:

You are your deepest, driving desire;
As your desire is, so is your will,
As your will is, so is your deed,
As your deed is, so is your destiny.

I really gotta get my act together. Too bad I don't have my senior BRAT, Alvin to give me some encouragement this time. In fact, I do wonder where and what is he up to at the mo. Probs conquering his final year finals...yeah that's a bigger issue. In thine prayerst, Lizbeth, thou shalt not forget the one who little did encourage thee in former times when thee were in need of it. (Dunno if such English exists...I'll find out not long after.)

I wish everyone and anyone taking exams all the very best!

Liberty- captured

Yes, I'm in my study week and much to what a study week suggests, I am well supposed to be studying for my finals...but the mind is fickle, I have the attention span of a 60-second minute. Tsk tsk tsk.

So there I was looking up stuff on photography three days ago and I came upon Gerhardt Thompson. I may not be especially interested in nude art but his work is, um, liberal. Really. I had thought some of his photos had me thinking that no law exists in those lands or waters. Art, yes, art is the key word.

There's this one photo of a lady (free of clothing of course) half-jumping in a wide empty field and I thought I would have fallen in love with its expression! It was just so...unrestrained! She was so liberated. And I could feel the breeze from the field in my mind O.o Now that's good photography.

Anyways, I wanted to capture that expression, that liberty, in my own interpretation. Of course I couldn't just run out of my hostel room, grab a female as my model and start taking photos of liberty with my 1.3 mega pixel handphone camera. I didn't have that liberty...yet (maybe). So I ended up spending half an afternoon working some Macromedia Fireworks on the photo.

As much as I am a feminist and my views in congruent with this poster:

I do know it is also very true that Michealangelo's David:

is very much a David (read: it's a masculine name).

The combination of trying to alleviate my self-contradiction (this kind of photography can appear to be a form of female exploitation) and a first-time dabble with Macromedia Fireworks resulted in this:

I will not post the original photo, Brumby Queen, here as I respect readers with potentially ultra-sensitive eyesight. The original and Gerhardt's other works can be viewed here and here.

NO PLAGIARISM INTENDED, GERHARDT THOMPSON IS CREDITED FOR HIS PHOTOGRAPHY.

fortissimo

If I could sum up the past couple of weeks in a couple of words, it'd be 'utter insanity'. Ok, maybe I'm being a lil over excited about the roller-coaster chain of events but hey, life is good when it ain't dormant.

So what about it? It's the end of SAMEW working together. Yeah, SAMEW has retired. FYI, SAMEW is the name of the group I 'piah' my assignments with all this while. And though our last presentation wasn't as superb as I'd wanted it to be, it was still a most happy event. I am proud, as always, of SAMEW. Hard work, man, peppered with hard laughing. I love us!

That was 4th April. Then came 7th April, a day not to be forgotten...a day I met all the him's I wanted to meet. At 3.40pm, my friends and I were among the earliest to reach Dataran Carpark...to witness the Hitz.fm 10th Birthday Bash! And my, my, was it awesome! especially when I get to meet and greet Jason Lo!!! Lucky for us we were early and the DJs had time for us to snap pics with them. I was actually dumbstruck half the time I spent there.

You know, after all this time of wishing I can watch a concert in person, I've finally got it! Might have missed some of the hottest concerts in the past few years, but hey, I got photos with J Lo, JJ and Rudy, Ean, Serena C, Pop Shuvit, Dragon Red etc... and autographs and a Dragon Red single and a JJ and Rudy T-shirt I caught when they flung it out to the crowd. I'm well beyond pleased. Just unfortunately, I had to miss J Lo's performance...I waited ALL night! :(((... because we were afraid we'd be unable to get a taxi home. Such is the life of vehicle-less students. [will post concert pics]

While I was enjoying the sinking-in effect of having gone through a beautiful experience, reality couldn't be any harsher than to come crashing down on me with the moving-out issue. So two a hours after I rose on the following Sunday morning, I was out and about with my aunt and subsequently Jojo, hunting for the perfect room. So here is where I made a mistake of buying a good piece of wadrobe which I consequently [due to hesitant decisions and changes of mind] had to place in Sam's house.

Terror. Is when IKEA calls to say the wardrobe will arrive in an hour's time when I WAS EXPECTING IT IN THE EVENING. FYI, it was 9 a.m. and I was in Web Page Design practical lesson. So, in all my distress for not getting the agent to open our new apartment door for me and not getting through to IKEA's home delivery operator...Sam saved me by allowing me to crash the wardrobe at his place. Gee, I feel guilty for troubling him. [but it is gentlemen like him that melt me]

I bet there were a crazy lot of hormones streaming through my veins this past week cos I earned myself some zits again. Aih, a futile battle it seems.

In contrast to the first week of April, the second was bombarded with misfortune. Lady Luck wasn't smiling down on me but I ain't griping. Life's like that.

So till I'm imbued by my life again, this is where I sign out.

PS: Sam, if you're reading this, THANKS so much!!!

Elusive Dreams

Like a favourite scarf,
Drifting in the wind,
Just beyond my extremity,
Out of reach.

Like rising to the morning chorus,
Grasping at the sweet memories
that are slipping away,
Upon my broken slumber.

Like a piece of perfect melody
that escapes the ears in haste,
Teasing my desires,
are these elusive dreams.