the lake house

one day you just realise that some things pass and never come back.

"no one told me it was musical chairs. by the time i found out, it was too late."

have you not considered that i still love you?

sunrise, sunset

i've waited 9 months, marked the equinoxes and solstices, found time and luck to get the sunrises and sunset. (except during september, when the indonesian haze was at a peak, it was hard to get the sun while low in the sky.)

it should be so amazing that such massive changes happen over a year, but are imperceptible at the daily granular level. (the sweep is even larger at higher latitudes, until the arctic and antarctic circle, where you get the midnight sun / total nights.)

but there is so little that i know. i only know that the earth will continue to spin; the sun will continue to rise in the east and set in the west. i only know that the earth will continue to revolve around the sun; the earth will continue to tilt at 23.5 degrees (at least within my lifetime), and the sunrises and sunsets will continue to sweep across the sky.

but there is so much more to know.

firing up

this is a defunct blog. and my heart might be defunct as well. but recently, some feelings were re-awoken. along with the same heartache. is there anyone who also feels that you may have missed the one chance? that it was the right person, but the wrong timing?

'forever' and '永远' aren't promises that people should make.

nepal earthquake

nepal is a place where people can be so happy with so little money. it is really unfortunate (and unfair) that the earthquake struck, and i am hoping very hard that the people are safe. i am happy to have gotten in contact with raj and the team and to know that deepak is ok.

i think i am infinitely lucky to not have been caught there in the earthquake, but please don't say to me 'thank God that the earthquake struck before you went there', or say to the survivors 'thank God you survived.' because if you say that, then what about the people who died? are we to think that God had some other plan for them?

birthdays

while i have reached the age which you can round off to 30, we have reached the age where we complacently rely on social media to remind us on the birthdays of our friends (or "friends"). this year i decided to hide my birthday on facebook so as not to get flooded on my wall, but a side effect was that as of now, 11 hours into my birthday, only one contact had posted on my wall (and that was because he lives in korea and got the birthday notification one hour ahead, before i had turned it off).

i did not do it to test if people remember my birthday - that's why i called it a side effect. but it's still a disappointing side effect. nevertheless, there are people who remember it, with or without the help of facebook (because facebook gives reminders a few days ahead as well), who wrote to me outside of the facebook wall.

i do not think it means that the majority of people do not care; i do not think that people who rely on facebook reminders to remember birthdays are less sincere. that is something external to me - it pertains to the well-wisher, so while i do not think he is less sincere, i am not entirely sure. but internally, to me, something is just lost when i realise some people post only once a year on my wall - on my birthday - because facebook reminded them that it is my birthday. it becomes less meaningful, more efficient.

but i like the idea of a quieter birthday anyway. maybe it's to do with age. maybe at some point you don't get that rara about birthdays anymore. to those who have written to me out of the facebook wall, i am happy, and grateful. i do keep a manual birthday calender where i jot down birthdays, and i look at it every first of the month to see the upcoming ones. i shall aim to write to those people outside of a social media platform when the time comes.

spellcheck is even telling me to change 'facebook' into 'Facebook' now.

serendipity

rainy season is back. it is the time of the year for movies like 'love actually'.