Less than two weeks to 2013!

The world reels in the wake of the Newtown tragedy. My heart continues to ache whenever I read news coverage about the incident and I find myself holding back tears. It is hard to believe in a benign creator of the universe when there is so much violence in the world.

I have been reading a lot these days now that I am left with a empty vacuum of time. It is amazing how much time lovers spend together; it is amazing how much of a presence my ex-other-half had in my life. And now, I am slowing rebuilding my life and learning to be happy and comfortable on my own.

Anyway, here are a few links to the articles that I have enjoyed reading lately (courtesy of Longform):

Why Go Out :A brilliant article on loneliness, being alone, and needing people.

Remains of the Day: Not quite "Happily Ever After". The nosy person in me had always wondered about couple life after the marriage vows.

"I am Adam Lanza's Mother": A Mom's Perspective on the Mental Illness Conversation in America: This reminds me of the harrowing read, "We Need to Talk About Kevin".

And we have less than two weeks left to the end of 2012! Time seemed to have zoomed by. Not that I am complaining. I have great plans for the new year and can hardly wait for all that is in store for me!

Two young lovers, in their kingdom by the sea

Finally managed to catch the much touted and the latest Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom. And I must say, it is such a refreshing change from the standard Hollywood fare that has been flooding the cinemas lately.

Moonrise Kingdom is a charming tale of a blossoming romance between two young outcasts, who were lucky enough to find each other. The film follows them as they run away from the adult world and into their temporal kingdom by the sea (somehow the scenes of them in Moonrise Kingdom reminded me of Edgar Allen Poe's poem, Annabel Lee). I cheered silently as the two young lovers emerged triumphant and managed to retain their autonomy despite pressure from society.

Wes Anderson managed to weave in the nostalgic charm of an older period, untouched by modern technology. I really enjoyed the film.

To love thyself

I have not been here much lately because I was dealing with disbelief and a broken heart.

How does one recover from a shattered dream? These days, I am amazed at my own ability to mask the inner turmoil and go on with life. I am amazed at the inner strength that pushed me to make a decision to leave.

But I know that one day, I will look upon this episode and smile because it was the right thing to do.

Three lines

They sit in quiet companionship,
each lost in their chosen book.
Yet their hearts beat as one.

Dim sum and a piece of sad news

As I was drafting another entry about my weekend in Hong Kong, I received a piece of sad news that a friend and her husband passed away in the recent Hong Kong Ferry accident.

I knew Mani from my exchange days in the University of Leeds. She was on exchange at Leeds Metropolitan University and we got to know each other from the pub opposite the university. Leeds is a university town so the more famous pubs and clubs (with the cheapest booze) were a common place for legions of students from different schools to gather.

I met up with the bunch from Leeds when I was in Hong Kong but Mani was not there because she was busy with her wedding preparations. During lunch, we pulled out our phones and checked her FaceBook page to look for her wedding pictures and chatted fondly of our time in Leeds.

Shortly after returning to Singapore, the girls told me about her demise. I am still in shock and my heart goes out to her family and friends. Rest in peace my dear Mani, you will always be in our hearts and minds.

You know how some people have their favourite places in the world, other than the place they call home? Well (quite obviously), Hong Kong is one of mine. The food is good, shopping is cheaper than back in Singapore, the shops open till late, and some of my friends are there.

Before my trip, I made plans to meet up with the girls from Leeds for dim sum at Tsim Sha Tsui (for the uninitiated, dim sum originated from the Cantonese and refers to Chinese food served in bite-sized portions). I was pleasantly surprised to see Dima there as well and learned that he just started working in Hong Kong and will be there for the next four years. Hong Kong seems to be the meeting place for my group from Leeds.

With the bunch from Leeds

On the topic of dim sum, I can never find a good place for that in Singapore that is comparable to any restaurant in Hong Kong! The prawns used are always large, bursty and fresh. So my travel companion and I had another round of dim sum at the Michelin star restaurant, Tim Ho Wan, just before boarding the Airport Express for our flight home. The cha siew bao (barbeque pork bun) was the best dish in my opinion, and this is saying a great deal because 1. I do not like pork and 2. I never eat cha siew baos back home. I was really glad that Tim Ho Wan opened at the Airport Express station! Two years ago, when I was in Hong Kong, the restaurant had only one outlet in Mong Kok and the queue was insane!

My travel companion and I at Tim Ho Wan

Oodles of noodles

My friend and I were whisked off to Hong Kong last weekend for four days of food and shopping. I love holidays with the girlfriends!

Of course, my first meal was wanton mee (prawn dumpling noodles) from Chee Kei. I love that shop! The noodles are chewy and (as the italians say) al dente, and the dumplings are bursting with the freshest prawns. Mmm just thinking about it makes me salivate!

Hong Kong will always have a special place in my heart as it is where my godmother and good friends from my exchange days stay.

How great is it to meet up with friends whom you have not met in years and still have that same sense of familiarity!

We also took time to head to Macau for a day trip and stumbled onto more great food. Unfortunately we decided to try our hands at the gambling table and lost! It was an eye opener though.

More about Hong Kong in another post as another busy weekend awaits me.

The Fantasy and Science Fiction course that I am taking on Coursera is coming to an end. I am going to miss it. On a happier note, I did really well for the essay that I wrote on Ray Bradbury and received great comments asking me to keep writing. It is great being good at what you enjoy!

Weekends should be this simple

I love quiet, restful weekends with a good read, some company and great food.

After sleeping most of Saturday away, we decided to make the most of Sunday - the last sacred day before the work week starts, again.

We walked off our hearty brunch through the atmospheric Tiong Bahru estate, trying to find a place to read, and settled in the aptly named 'The Reading Room' for some caffeine and reading time.

An halfway though 'The Martian Chronicles' and am eager to read more of Bradbury.

A quiet Sunday morning

Today, I'm enjoying a quiet Sunday morning to myself. It is really a rare moment because I'm usually sleeping till my stomach wakes me up for lunch.

I am now headed to the supermarket to get some things for a picnic in the late afternoon with my best friends.

Just finished "Herland", by the same writer of one of my favourite short stories "The Yellow Wallpaper", for my Coursera course. It is difficult to find time to read, think and write for the courses in between work but I'm enjoying the balance. I miss school. I miss Literature!

Anyway, "Herland" is great. The utopia that the female characters achieve is without the elements that I hate in the real world - war, destruction and the whole notion of the afterlife.

Oh the places I'll go!

I've reached the end of documenting two weeks of my life in Myanmar and thought I should write about this blog's raison d'etre.

The travel bug hit me hard while I was on a semester exchange programme at the University of Leeds in the UK, 3 years ago.

My part time work at a bar prior to the exchange experience helped pay for my crazy travels around Europe. I took a bus out every weekend to a different UK town and spent the Easter holidays in the main continent.

Guiltily, I spent more time seeing the world than attending classes and reading my texts! (But then again, that is what the exchange is for).

Travelling opened my eyes to a world away from the sometimes protective confines of an Asian society. It fed my soul and expanded my mind. And so, here I stand, still touched by that magical experience, still looking for places to go and mountains to climb.

"Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance."
- Ulysses, James Joyce

Holy shit, the quote explains so much! (A joke, dear readers)

Part of the cubicle

Letters

"You wrote "It would be wonderful to want to believe in God. The aimlessness of living is too insane." That is the creative artist—a penalty of the creative artist—wanting to make order out of chaos. The rest of us plain people just accept disorder (if we even recognize it) and get a bang out of our five beautiful senses, if we're lucky."

I love this passage from a letter written by Ursula Nordstrom to the incredible Maurice Sendak.

Letters are so so precious. 

I'm back from Myanmar and will write about it soon so stay tuned!

Loving Annabelle

When I was an undergraduate, I loved going to the University library to borrow films, just because. And I really miss that. So I have been trying to watch a film a week.

Just caught a really beautiful and tragic film, "Loving Annabelle". It may be a little clumsy but I love the simple, straight-forward story-telling. Love is love, whatever the form. A tale of forbidden love set in a rigid Catholic boarding school where nothing that is not black and white is ever accepted. In comes the outwardly rebellious daughter of a senator, who later proves herself to be a gentle and sensitive soul. Her presence disrupts the orderly ways of the school and breaks down her poetry teacher's pretense to normalcy. 

What I liked is the the film never victimises either character. While both are powerless to the attraction of the other, they are both complicit participants.

"What you call sin, I call the great spirit of love, which takes a thousand forms"
-From Madchen in Uniform, the German film that it was based on. 

Back from Da Nang

As I left Da Nang airport for home last Wednesday, I remembered how one year ago, I left home for Da Nang with plenty of bravado, a sense of adventure and a desire to learn to dive. And how I eventually met an equally adventurous Thai lady who stuck with me throughout my stay in Hoi An and who is still in touch with me now. I enjoyed the freedom of going about on my own, choosing to do what the heart fancies. Yet single travellers face a whole set of challenges, especially single female travellers.

Gorgeous ain't it? 

Do you enjoy travelling solo? How do you curb pangs of loneliness?

Da Nang airport has changed so much in just a year. It has abandoned the dingy open air concept and adopted a modern glass façade. Pity the glass house effect this time of the year though. Sometimes I wish for the plates to move overnight so that I can wake up in a cooler climate!

Living it up while in Vietnam. Accommodation in Singapore is expensive !

As the plane took off,  I sat among the clouds, floating where the wind blows. The invisible force. From the window seat - the privileged view - I saw the yielding land beneath the fluffy white layer. Fatigue kicked in but sleep eluded me. And I sought temporary solace from Neil Gaiman's "Fragile Things".


Will share about my work trip to Jakarta and the weekend getaway to Kuala Lumpur next!

Work trips

Is it already June?!

Time passes so quickly and we are already at the mid year mark. June used to be a happy month when I was a student as it was (and still is) the designated month of school holidays. This June however, is packed with back-to-back work trips. Good thing I had a short weekend getaway to Kuala Lumpur just before departing for one of them. 

Can't quite wait for July when I can start travelling for fun again!