Posts tagged reflections

What are you grateful for?

December 29, 2011 · Filed under beauty, my life, thoughts, writing · Tagged , , ,

I was sipping my glass of moscato with a group of old and new friends tonight when I caught myself off-guard for a moment. There I was, laughing and fooling around with a bunch of people I didn’t even know this time last year (other than one old friend. But as Sue always say, “an oldie but a goldie.”) and I found myself smiling to myself as Keane was playing at the background.

I’ve been saying this for months but sometimes I still want to pinch myself. I’m happy. I’m so truly happy right here and now that everything seems so perfect at the moment. (well, other than the impending deadlines that are scaring the hell outta me…) I’ve came a long way this year. I really have.

I may not have gotten married or pop yet another baby like some of my peers. And despite not having these generic milestones the past year, there are still so many things I’m grateful for. So many. Even the seemingly bad moments.

Right now, I’m grateful for:

  1. My job. A younger me took my previous jobs for granted but now, after a year of freelance writing (not that I didn’t love that year of freedom, haha), I know I must always be grateful that I have a job. And one that I absolutely love? I must be crazy not to be thankful. I marvel how everything had happened in the past year to allow me to land this great gig. Truly – every thing does happen for a reason.
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  2. My boss and colleagues. Is it too fast for me to declare this? Things may change in the future but right now, thank you Life for putting me in a work environment where I just adore my boss and colleagues. Each of them and their idiosyncrasies amuse me to no end everyday and despite our multinational and multicultural backgrounds, we are all the same. I love exchanging knowing looks with a few kindred spirits among my colleagues and I love how they make me laugh my ass off just by being themselves. And the ex-colleagues that were never quite mine to start with – AS and MJ. Fast friendships do happen in real life!
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  3. Fashion, art, photography and architecture. In my own little mind, I categorise this group as “beauty”. Beauty is everywhere around us – all day, every day. In good fashion, good art, good photography and of course, good architecture. I’m grateful that they’re such awesome sources of creativity and how they inspire me endlessly with their beauty. I love how my exposure to them makes me learn so much about history, sociology and psychology.
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  4. New friends. The girl and boy friends I’d met through the course of yoga both locally and while I was travelling, thank you for being the epitomes that one is never too old to make new good friends. Regardless of our nationalities and backgrounds and whether you’re skyping or emailing from Toronto, Tokyo, Sydney, San Francisco, Beijing or Amsterdam, you are amazing examples that we’re, again, all the same.
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  5. BADSPY. Our friendship is like an elastic band and I’m grateful that despite the fact that sometimes it stretches thin, it’ll always rebound to original form. Maybe cos I was the runaway child who left for two years and came back again, I feel the evolution of our friendship more. Nevertheless, I absolutely love us for who we are. I was rereading the Christmas cards we exchanged this year and as cheesy as it sounds, they warm my heart. :)
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  6. My travels. Thank you for opening my eyes and mind and allowing them to rethink our so-called set of ethnics and morals. Who said we would always stay the same and never evolve? And of course, letting me realised I’m more independent than I let on and that I’m amazingly open to every possible experience Life may have to offer.
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  7. My mistakes. Whether grave or trivial – you’ve opened a floodgate of lessons that I would have never learned if I’d never committed you. Thank you for the wealth of knowledge and teaching me that learning gracefully from mistakes are just like passing our school examinations with flying colours. Yes, even the ones that I’d made at the sake of losing some people from my life for good. It’s OK because they were meant to happen.
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  8. My family. A father who relentlessly fetches me anywhere I wanna go and makes sure I have my dinners that there’s no such thing as “out of the way” when it comes to his daughter. A mother whom is generous and loving to a fault, and also ridiculously innocent yet endearing. A sister who’s ethereally unfazed by anything. She’s my role model at living a simple but loving life.  She embodies the saying “keep calm and carry on”. And the small little people she’s given birth to who love and adore me unconditionally and the best teachers for teaching one how to appreciate the little things in life. Candy is no longer just candy. They’re EVERYTHING.
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  9. Music and movies – the perfect escapes and yet one that often allows me to connect to another. Sometimes they transport me to other worlds and sometimes they bring forth a whole slew of epiphanies. My creative little soul needs that outlet that ignites all my senses.
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  10. My best friend who, somehow, seems to have mastered the perfect mix of goofiness and grace. Thank you for creating this friendship with me that’s so strong and effortless that it befuddles me to think of a situation that can possibly rock it.
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    and most of all,
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  11. My Self for being relentlessly optimistic and hopelessly romantic. For continually surprising me at how strong I can be without going all girl power and feminist and I can walk my talk. For being able to always seek the lessons in every dire situation instead of blaming the world. And most importantly, for never taking myself and Life too seriously.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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I’ll like to do this…

December 4, 2011 · Filed under beauty, love, my life, thoughts, writing · Tagged , , ,

  • “I’d like to have time to kneel and smell the flowers, get pollen all over my face and have bees chase me around for being nosy.
  • I’d like to remember the smell of an early morning; get up with the sun and be the first Eve who ever walked on Earth, naked. Does anybody know what dew is?
  • I’d like to reach a higher scale in my shower symphony, compose an opera piece on the spot and splash the bathroom walls with notes. Wash all my sins away with organic soap.
  • I’d like to sit still until all fear starves itself and silence is OK; breathe deeply in some universal chest like a healthy organ. And then be born and curious about the world again, pointing at things with chubby fingers, because they are so fresh and new, they haven’t been named yet.
  • I’d like to answer all my phone calls and mean the how-are-yous and not save my honesty until all the good-byes have been sentenced over my wireless head.
  • I’d like to be a friend of insects and men. Not be afraid of mirrors. Not even scream at spiders.
  • I’d like to yogalise my poses, buddhalise my prayers, jesusise my love and hindulise my smile.
  • I’d like to whisper to only a few people under a blanket instead of shouting at hundreds over the internet rooftops.
  • I’d like to put a heart in every word even if it ends up so beaten that I run out of all my seven lives before my grave is finished.
  • I’d like to love you out loud, not only in the dark cave of my mind, with bats hanging out of my eyes, in the opposite direction.
  • I’d like to speak in complete sentences, instead of SMSing  E-people with LOL-lives always in !!!!! demand for + Facebook #Likes. I’d like to kiss with my lips instead of XO with my keyboard.
  • I’d like to love my neighbour even when his f***ing TV drives me so f***ing crazy I could reach across the f***ing wall and pull out the morning-show f**ks through the TV screen and get them another f***ing job that doesn’t degrade humanity.
  • I’d like to be 100% recyclable, untraceable, not remembered, only perceived, non-violent, transparent, like water; donate all my organs, leave only footsteps on a beach, not carbon footprints on my future children’s faces.
  • I’d like to take naps, lots of naps, preferably in a swing or by a fireplace, preferably in the sun, with a dog drooling over my feet; and never have to hear the sound of another alarm clock again.
  • I’d like to write letters – at least once a month, with real ink on thick, recycled paper, and seal them with my ring on candle wax; send them away with a carrier pigeon and then wait patiently for the answer, looking down from a castle window. Not type up anxious atoms on a screen, click, double-click to open, close and open, close again, why-won’t-you-charge, brainless, annoying piece of s**t?
  • I’d like to have some faith, just any faith that I can walk on water and not drown; and even if I didn’t have that faith, jump off the boat with no lifesaver, anyway; especially during Shark Week.
  • I’d like to hear some real birds chirp over my shoulder, not blue, dead birds tweet hashtags with my fingers.
  • I’d like to finish all the books I start. Review the universal story through every pair of glasses. And after all is said and done, be even more certain that I know nothing yet.
  • I’d like to love and lose and love again, and lose and love and lose again, because what else is there to do.
  • I’d like to get up once a week with no other agenda than laziness in bed, and eating breakfast for dinner, off a blanket. And stay alive like that in bed. 24 hours. Alone. Always alone.
  • I’d like to sit with old people and understand why they’re not in a hurry, rest for a few minutes at the shade of their deep and heavy, bulldog wrinkles; and listen to the stories they tell from when the world didn’t use to end.
  • I’d like to believe that we’re not just numbers plus minutes plus blood, but human issues glued together and dangerously alive; and like all great short stories, we sound familiar, but haven’t really happened any place or time before.
  • I’d like to have kids so they can remind me of all the things I used to know when I arrived into the world. And when my kids forget, I’d like grandchildren.
  • I’d like to be more than a word, a sentence or a paragraph. I’d like to be an entire chapter, or better yet, a novel. Be written in detail. Survive the darkness. Rephrase the light.
  • I’d like to think with no thoughts that the heart is its own country, in which I am allowed without a passport, or any kind of name.
  • And write with no fingers on that flickering life that passes as we write, incessantly, about how life is passing through our fingers.”

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