Kerajinan yang tiba-tiba dan lecturer yang menginspirasikan

Yes, I've decided to try to be a little more diligent with this blogging thing because I know that I've just been too lazy to type out whatever I have on my mind. What more, it seems that I have gone back to my old ways of being private.

Privacy aside I realise I tend to forget what about that I would have really wanted to blog about in the day. This happens so very often. Even now. It is happening.

I might need a moment to try to recall what was it that I so semangat berkobar-kobar wanted to rant about.

There's this quote I remember from Mr Gerald Green public speaking workshop that I attended two months back that goes something like that: Ideas are like slippery fish. If you don't spear them by the end of a pencil, they swim away.

Mr Green suggested we have an ever-ready notebook with us at any hour of the day to jot down whatever ideas that dawn upon us in times unpredictable. He told us of how some people even wake up int he middle of the night to jot down ideas in the notebook. So how? My ideas are usually very abundant when I'm showering. Cham la, notebook get wet.

I'd better take his advice nevertheless. Will save a few ringgit to afford something neat from Creative Products.

Right. So what was I at before talking about my renewed efforts to fight forgetfulness?

Oh, it must be about this superb class I'm having now in this semester that has an ultra fantastic lecturer giving us out of the ordinary lectures! No, I'm not being too dramatic here. I really do think that highly of Dr Carmen Nge's classes. We're taking Critical Reading and Thinking with her and yes, if anyone could, she could make me want to go into the education line.

It takes only one first lecture with her and I dare say the whole of EL Y1S2 is definitely in love with this subject. My first thoughts were how the class seemed like a lesson in comedy and that's good. There's no falling asleep to what lullaby lecture with Dr Carmen (With the exceptional exception of Kung. His head was rolling here and there last Monday. Though I'd have to say the classroom was like a sauna).

As if being a delightful lecturer is not enough, I recently found out (via the tip-off from Pei Ling) that she writes for Off The Edge and had taught in foreign lands before UTAR.

The way she carries our lessons, guiding us on how to prod our young minds and bringing up issues that matter in our society. I have an impression of her as a person who has a thirst for life and change for the better that radiates and imbues motivation. And all this with the unmistakable humbleness: I noticed she didn't introduced herself as Dr Carmen but only Carmen.

Personally, I find it surprising that she remembers my actual name, Ying Xiang. For the first time, I'm voluntarily called that in uni, by an educator. If you know me well enough, I tend to introduce myself as Elizabeth rather than Ying Xiang because it sometimes takes a great deal for people to get my Chinese name right. What with the "Ying Xing, Xing Xiang, Xiang Ying etc" variations that have plagued my childhood, I know better. (Though I still love the name my dad gave me.)

So till I'm full of words and thoughts to be spilled here again. That is, if I remember to get the notebook to remind myself of the words and thoughts.

But I'll remember Dr Carmen for sure la.

Urgh.

So sad it is to read such news.

Yes I'm referring to the recent gruesome murder of a young girl that happened in Petaling Jaya.

So the father has come to accept that it is adik Nurin found in that sports bag, his daughter, and I feel sad and angry for him...for our society. Why do these sickos do it? Not just this case but so many others too.

I have mental debates about how their minds work but I have no conclusion. I shouldn't anyways. The human psyche is a complex thing. Psychological problem? The way they were brought up and exposed to the world outside? The XYY gene that makes them biologically violent? Revenge? I can go on wondering.

But why? Even animals don't kill their own species for dominance or some twisted sexual pleasure. At least I do not know of it. They fight but they don't kill themselves. It is sad that we, gifted with more intelligence and potential to reach for the previously unreachable, still have among us those who misuse our human capabilities. Maybe that's why there're religions and philosophy to keep the human race on track.

While we may never live in a perfect society, I pray that all the people of our nation and the world will eventually learn to love the right way. I pray that those who are lost find the right path again through religion and I pray for those who have thoughts of or have committed the unspeakable to repent and find peace within themselves to live to better the society. No bad deeds will ever reap benefits.

There will always be hope for a better society.

Lost

No, not the over-rated TV series.

It's my on-off state of mind.

I feel lost...
...and I hope to find myself soon. Who likes the mental image of oneself being a abandoned buoy, vulnerable to the perils of the great oceans, unsettling weathers and occasional life? It's liberty with no solace.

...but to find myself I first have to be lost, no? Or at the very least, displaced. That's step one to the hopefully colourful and finally rewarding self-discovery. If not, how do we try to find something that has never been lost? So I think.

I pray for a guiding lamp to appear tomorrow but the todays have never quite ceased to happen, and my lamp never quite arrives. Sometimes I rely on a twinkling star, that tries in all its might to light my path with it faint sparkles...but have darkness resume when my star burns out. What short-lived moments of grateful treading along this beaten path. Stalled again.

...and perhaps all this because of my self-doubt.

Father Time, you see my wallowing in uncertainty. I feel my hair lengthen already but what can you do? I understand that you have a worldly rhythm to hum to.

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.