Beautiful Things

It's a shame how I fail to update my blog when I keep saying I would. Maybe a lot of things have been going on in real life, I find dissonance between it and my cyber identity. I admittedly became distant to Yahoo Messenger and Facebook ever since I posted a status message saying "I think I should Facebook less and live life more" which I've been faithful to. It's true what they say in social psych, the more you publicly profess things the more you become it.

Anyway! So I tried to take photos of beautiful things I see everyday from my random walks to my workaholic-sleepaholic life. Beautiful things, because really, hey that's what all of us should focus on.

Sometimes I wish that color in the world is less saturated. Lighter blues and fainter pinks, I think, look better, than the full blown, in-your-face kind of color. Makes a lot of difference.

This month would be a turning point in my life for many reasons, one of which is (hopefully) graduation. I hope everything goes well so I can make a smooth transition from student-hood to life after school. When I think about it though, I don't see myself as an adult, but instead, as a little girl who just wants to walk the world and create and make meaning out of beautiful things.

And with that I'll update my blog more often. With beautiful things!

xx

O_O

My previous post just jinxed my sleeping pattern. I have never slept normally for the past week. Either I went to bed super early or never went to bed at all, it's insane.

I've been awake since yesterday, and I'm amazed by my wakefulness at this hour. My eye bags are excellent measures of number of hours awake!

From O_O at 3am yesterday to a -_- while taking an exam today and a ._. at around 7pm, and back to O_O now. See, my eyes, they are bionic.

Also, I realized that sleeping less means compensating through eating and drinking.

I keep on feeling the nauseating kind of headache especially while walking or when I'm inside a moving car. I think I should really rest.

Therefore, REST IT IS! The weekend will be a soft, fluffy bed I will sleep on!

Pre-sleep Ritual

One of the most sacred hours in a day for me is that prior to sleeping. It's sacred because I work hard in anticipation for slumber time. I try to do homework days before and I keep my deadlines far away so that I could be assured that I need not do an all-nighter. And then of course, I live not so I could eat good food or watch good movies-- I live for quality sleep. (Who am I trying to fool right there? When I sleep I am unconscious, now how am I able to enjoy that? BUT STILL, I BELIEVE I DO!)

Anyway despite the irony of enjoying sleep, I recently found out some insightful things by doing experiments on myself. To get quality sleep, I now try to incorporate a 10-30 minute winding down period prior to heading to bed. The winding down period comprises of soothing instrumental music or silence, reading of poems by Pablo Neruda or quotes from ThinkExist, and praying. Sometimes I write too, just like tonight. Those 'rituals' somehow cleanse my mind and soul from all the clutter that day. Besides that, I also make a learning list in my head: a list of new, may it be trivial, things I have learned earlier that day.

Then I get the quality sleep that I need (and worked so hard for.)

I don't know if this set-up works for everyone, but it leaves my mind free for what's to come the next day.

It has been my dream to buy a huge Tempur mattress. Meanwhile, I'll bank on this ritual to get me some hearty Z's!

I Want A Boy

Earlier today, I was browsing through files in my hard drive for artworks I've done in the past and photos I've taken which I eventually organized in a portfolio. *TimetopanicI'mgraduating*

I came across this which I wrote in 5/29/2008.

It says something like this:

"I want a boy, a nice and bad boy. He will miss me at 3 in the morning. He will tell me how much he loves me in front of his friends. We'd always take pictures in photo booths and go out at night to see the stars. I want a boy who would dare argue things with me. He would sing to me our song even though he may be out of tune. I want a boy who could break my heart, but would not dare to. I want a boy who can surprise, who can shove ice cream on my face just for fun. I would not cry because of him, but if I do, he'd be there to work out things just fine. He will come with me to see my favorite band play even if he will hear their songs only for the first time in his life. And when we're eighty, he will still give me the same butterflies he does when he kisses me."

I would have not posted this then! My sentiments though, stay the same even if I'm already twenty-something. I think even then what I wanted had always been clear to me.

I realized that finding love is not the same with getting good grades. Getting good grades is mostly based on effort, finding love is not. It doesn't mean that if you actively and effortfully search for it, you will be sure to find it. It's all about the right timing, chance and circumstance.

Yeah, it's so!

Flowers

These days, flowers tend to bring a different kind of sunshine in my life. They remind me of sweet summers and happy days.

A Little Quiet

In the crazy, busy, toxic environment, there is no way to survive if you're on the Internet 24/7, or if you constantly hangout with people, or if you're stuck with too much work, or if you're all three. Our minds will eventually get clouded which isn't gonna be healthy in the long run.

If you've heard of the phrase 'me time' and had tried to incorporate that into your schedule, well then that's good. However sometimes, that time alloted for you to hangout with yourself turns sour when you try to sneak in one homework or one round of that computer game. So it turns to be not 'me time' at all but 'me time plus a little distraction on the side'.

It's hard to stay away from musts and shalls because they're there to lure you and pull you. Okay, I'm not saying that we should totally ditch our obligations. What's there to say is that there's a fraction of the time (for example, a good 10 to 20 minutes) when you can stop and drop everything and do something you don't feel obligated doing, which involves less thinking. It will afford you more... space. If you're familiar with disk defragmenting, then let's take a metaphor in that. 'Me time' is something that will help you organize your thoughts so that you can function more efficiently as a person, by letting you feel less suffocated.

Eat alone! Spend a night drinking tea while relaxing music playing on the background, whatever floats your boat.

I was just giving myself a sermon right there.

Game On!

I'm graduating a college few months from today, which alarmingly is not my biggest concern. Maybe it's the time has come when I would not really bother to think what I want to do because slowly I've quite figured that out, and it all seems a little clear to me now. Arriving to what I wanna be or who I want to turn out to become cost me a lot of time, effort, trying out things and a college degree.

Yes, a college degree! I won't say I ever regret taking psychology, because studying it made me learn so much about humanity. It made me learn about how people grow, sleep, feel, talk, think, learn, behave, respond, and so on. All my life from here on, I will be surrounded by humans. This degree would definitely come in handy, all day, everyday. It helps whoever that studies it to become more self-aware. We have also been trained to become good research paper writers and statistical result interpreters (or even excellent at that). But most of all, what I like best about it is that it will help me become a nurturing mother to my future children. No matter how I try to convince myself that I landed in the wrong course, I would not land at a proper justification. I'm glad to have met Erikson and to have bumped into Cattell, spent sleepless nights with Freud and learned conditioning the hard way through Pavlov.

I'm thinking of going back to school after a short while. Meanwhile, I shall go and try to pursue something I wanted all along. Sometimes it feels like there's something out there I'm meant to do, which feels a lot natural, to which I'm hardwired. I think the creative process intrigues me too much for me to let it pass.

So, game on!

That Sweet Purple Potato Latte

Subspace is a little yet home Korean-themed cafe in Ortigas. They serve really good Sweet Purple Potato Latte, which I have been craving for the whole week now. The cafe itself is also photogenic and unique. There were chairs hanging from the ceiling, pretty vintage pieces, and stuff like that.

Yummy!

A. Christie

I've started reading detective novels, specifically A. Christie's infamous Hercule Poirot stories and man, does she write well? I found myself unable to let go of the book the moment I reached chapter four of my first read, which was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It turns out to be the author's masterpiece. I'm quite impressed by her poetic English, but I'm more intrigued by the deductions Monsieur Poirot made. It gets my 'little grey cells' going. I don't know why I was not able to guess the murderer. It was too cleverly written, the identity of the killer was never a giveaway.

It's one of those must-read classics. I'm glad Christie wrote several novels on Poirot in the 1920's. I'll read on! I hope to be able to read all the books on the list.

The Universe

They found water in Mars!

It should be the least of our concerns in the age of prospering life on Earth, I know. However, where there's water, there's life, just like where there's smoke, there's fire.

I read that the size of the universe is incomprehensible. All that's out there will never be fully known.

My roommate (also an international student) once asked me about the Christian faith. She did not come from a Christian country like ours so the concept of God and faith was very new to her. She asked me, how come I believe that a God exists out there when there's no concrete evidence.

All I could think of was how special Earth is, that that the universe was perfectly designed. Same goes for the breadth of the universe. And the Earth, why is it placed in a location in space where its neither too hot nor too cold, titled in an angle of 23 degrees? Among all the galaxies, why in Milky Way? Why were humans given such a special home?

And we need not look too far. If you have studied biology, you'd understand that the design of the human body is too complex that any machine ever invented wouldn't even measure up to it.

Some say that science and faith are two conflicting ideas. I believe otherwise. The most compelling proof of a God is the work he created-- the universe.