When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested on the edge of a table.

I spent my life learning to feel less.

Everyday I feel less.

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

- excerpt from Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

i will stop wondering what would have happened if i got there earlier.

i love coming home in the evening to see children playing.

today as my car pulled into the usual spot by the roadside, a young girl is walking her dog around the periphery of the playground opposite my house, where the neighbourhood boys are playing football. my next-door neighbour is watering his plants outside, a jogger nearly runs into me as i clumsily step out of my car.

it is a familiar feeling that reminds me of growing up in our old neighbourhood, taman hussein. such were often the scenes around that time of day, right before sundown. just before moms come calling for their running, cycling, hopscotching kids to come inside and have dinner.

i am grateful that it is not so very different almost 20 years later, here in bandar utama.

i suppose this place will yet become home to me.

i would read the signs
but they’re hidden in your eyes

sometimes this beauty is one
that eludes, as it
slips into the horizon
all that i know is shrouded

morning, rescue me.

not so long ago happiness was having you as the last thing on my mind, and going to sleep knowing i was the last thing on your mind, too.

it has been a long and tearful struggle, both internally and with God. i am rethinking my priorities, my allegiances, and my idea of ‘happiness’. a wise person once said it is not a thing to be pursued and grasped. much like a lovely, elusive butterfly. the danger is that it can become a frustrating wild-goose chase. the danger, for me, was that for so long i was not able to give up my claim to my right to myself- my right to my own self-centred idea of happiness.

and as for you. you were the happiness that came to me, but never was mine to keep.

being here at times it feels suffocating.

in london i could go outside. i would be alone, and i would feel a sense of emancipation. the largeness of nature, of the outside would swallow up everything else. there would be perspective to be gained, and escape.

it could be a vastness of green grass lined sparsely with trees. a solitary bus ride where the destination didn’t matter- only the journey did. it could be standing on a bridge over the thames. learning lessons from a plastic bottle being tossed about and displaced by the current, only to find that, really, nothing of significance has changed in the larger scheme of things.

but here one feels almost trapped. there is no larger space to which this intensity can dissipate.

here are some pretty random london pictures, most were taken using my handphone camera, during my last few weeks there.

this is lancer square, just off kensington church street. we pass by it on the number 70 every single sunday on the way to church and back, i’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve said to melissa that we should go there someday soon. it has a very very pretty entrance and facade, with a very red cafe rouge right by its main entrance. the arcade itself, in terms of shopping, leaves much to be desired. off the top of my head i can only remember starbucks as one of the tenants there. oh but i do love these uber-cute open-air shopping arcades so much! like this one on carnaby street, kingly court i think it’s called. it houses mainly independent labels, lots of vintage stuff too. very very charming.

strictly speaking the borough i live in is the royal borough of kensington and chelsea, but south ken happens to be on the border between the city of westminster borough and kensington borough. in the background, beyond the signboard, is the edge of hyde park. so we’re very central and yet it’s very green and leafy which i really like. i was feeling shutter-happy the day i took this picture.. was walking across the park to bayswater (something i very rarely do thanks to the aforementioned number 70) and it was such a gorgeously sunny day. london climate isn’t terribly generous with those, but when they do come, they come bedecked in their fullest glory. (=

the royal albert memorial. any more upclose and it won’t be so nice to look at anymore. the first thought that came to my mind when i saw it for the first time four years ago was, what is such a gaudy and awful looking thing doing amidst all these pretty red-bricked buildings (royal albert hall and its immediate surroundings). but i didn’t dare say so because i didn’t want to seem like i didn’t know how to appreciate a fine piece of art or something. haha.

and this is the very famous warwick avenue tube station!! haha. if you don’t know what i’m talking about, you probably haven’t heard the song by duffy (in which case you really should stop listening to whatever you’re listening to and start listening to the proper stuff! haha). a bunch of us made our way to east London on one of the weekday afternoons to see the canal and little venice. wes made us detour to warwick avenue tube station for this shot! sadly though, the spot wasn’t quite as poignant as the song had promised it would be, i think you can tell from the picture!

this is the millennium bridge across the river thames, i love the views from on the bridge. i also like that the bridge connects old london and new london, represented by st paul’s cathedral (which you can see in the background) and the tate modern on bankside, respectively. took this photo on the day i walked along the stretch of the river thames from the southbank centre to bankside. i am very very fond of this part of london. with its galleries, exhibition centres and theatres aplenty, there seems to always be a buzz of activity permeating the air, without being too busy or congested. there is no better way to wake up in the morning than to look out the window, see the lively crowds and feel like you can’t wait to go out there and begin the day yourself! there, it almost feels like it’s the weekend everyday.

we saw the remnants of 2007’s autumn in december, just outside beit hall. i love the changing of seasons, but unfortunately have never had the chance to experience summer mellowing into autumn. hopefully someday in the not-too-distant future…

jun and i went to see a free performance at the royal festival hall during the london jazz festival. the name of the band is five funky fellas, they play a very upbeat and funky brand of jazz, with african influences. there was a tuba player too, now how often do you see a tuba player in a jazz ensemble! the london jazz festival was definitely one of the highlights of my fourth year in london, this gig was only one of the many free jazz performances i got to see throughout the two weeks.

well, by now i would perhaps be stating the obvious if i were to say i’m missing london. i’ll be moving to kl next weekend to start work on the 1st of august, and i do wonder if i could fall so much in love with kl like i have with london. just reminiscing about london makes me want to wax lyrical all over again. but i think i’ll save that for another day.

in these my final weeks in london it seems i have at last come a little closer to living with the kind of abandon that has been absent from my life all along. i’m not too sure what it is a manifestation of – the need to prove myself to myself, the realisation of the irreversibility of age and time, or a quiet denial masquerading as something else.

and then i have shoved into a corner the things that truly matter. unlike with packing away my belongings into boxes to be shipped back home, i fail to compartmentalise and organise. and strangely enough i am deriving some sort of comfort from this haphazard scheme of things. i suppose it clouds out like a smoke screen the things i’d rather not face.

tate modern to see the street art exhibition
gelato place in south ken which even gordon ramsay recommends
jamie oliver’s fifteen since i can’t afford gordon ramsay
karaoke at 113
htb big summer sunday!
window-shopping at carnaby street
spitalfields and a snapshot of east london
606 club for the tribute to tom jobim night!
a stroll around little venice in maida vale
watch the sound of music
and agatha christie’s mousetrap
sip good coffee at ray’s jazz at foyles, with a good book in hand
southbank

will be striking things off the list as i complete them!

london i miss you already..

so this is it. the culmination of all our fears, expectations, hopes, frustrations. 17 years of academia and look what we’ve become today – experts at the art of examinations, cynical that this has been anything else but that. least of all the pure, untainted pursuit of knowledge and learning. perhaps. or i could be alone in my cynicism.

that being said, it is not at all an unemotional end. there’s infinitely more to it than simply not having to study for exams any longer. for so long one has been protected from it all by the belief that all you gotta do is work toward that one thing. so what do you do when you’ve done what you gotta do? who knows what’s out there in this big bad world. at that one last peal of the bells, it’s run and you’re on your own.