I saw a light shine~*

credits: tumblr.com

a question that is truly powerful.


lighter things, for a change:

1. Attended baby Zayden's full month baby shower. :)
the first thing that came to my mind was the fragility of human life. how vulnerable, helpless and fragile he seemed, in JS's arms. but then, at the same time, it reminded me of the miracle of a new life.
and he's truly adorable!!

if I were to whisper something in his ears, I'd definitely tell him
"hello there handsome, welcome to the world. live life to the fullest, starting from this very moment."


2. I overslept this morning.
my phone alarm didn't ring, my alarm clock didn't ring. (thank goodness for tako's msg)
and the cab fare to school makes me want to knock my head against the wall.
damn. serves as a punishment for the ever-accumulating sleep debt.

3. Finally submitted our stats project proposal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
raymond's obsession with minute details just cracked all of us up.
yes yes, professional ya?? XD

Raymond: wait wait, before we staple the final proposal, let's consult everyone! let's msg WQ!

hahahah.

anyway, worked on it till pretty late into the night, after my 6-8pm lecture (and I had social psych test)
and what happened after that? refer to point 2.

this is just the beginning of a very loooooooong journey.
but am I being strange for feeling excited about data collection?? XD


4. having a weird obsession for tea.
english breakfast, chamomile, earl grey, coffee club's red berry tea, starbucks' lemon tea+passion, teadot's passion+orange tea, coffeebean's japanese cherry blossom tea, mof's genmai (I see SG scowling!!!), muji's rose&jasmine tea, forest infusion, coffeeclubexpress' japanese sencha, mof's matcha, green tea, yuzu tea, barley tea, chinese tea...

my ultimate favourite is still the good ol' japanese green tea. :)

and TEADOT at tampines 1 is my new discovery! (call me slow)

and to top off my caffeine overdose,
yakun's coffee, toastbox's kopi-c, spinelli's cafe latte, coffeeclubexpress' cappuccino, old town white coffee's nanyang kopi-c, my cafe nova...

I'm developing an immunity to caffeine soooon.

and I've yet to visit Royal Copenhagen!!



5. Have been watching America's Next Top Model, Britain's Next Top Model, Canada's Next Top Model.

was completely intrigued by the amazing poses&facial expressions the models could muster.
and how makeup and clothings can completely transform a person.

but more fascinating is definitely the way judges evaluate the photos. what is considered as 'high fashion' and what's not. till now, I still can't tell a 'good' photo from a 'bad' one.

I think that's what got me rather addicted to watching it. (minus all the bitchy catfights and backstabbing and melodrama.)


6. Finished 'Nocturnes' by Kazuo Ishiguro agessssssssssss ago.
I was rather reluctant to finish it because it was such a lovely compilation of anecdotes of musicians. :) gave me such a comfortable and tranquil feeling.
images of piazzas, coffee, jazz musicians, string quartets, paris... awww. :)

Reading 'Lost in the Forest' by Sue Miller and 'Daniel Isn't Talking' by Marti Leimbach now.

While 'Daniel Isn't Talking' is a heartrending tale about a mother and her struggle to come to terms with the reality that her young son was diagnosed with autism, 'Lost in the Forest' is about a family who had to come to terms with the loss of their father/husband.

both are very gripping, in their own ways.
having studied about autism just makes me feel for mothers with autistic children... you'll truly be awed and touched by a mother's fierce love for her children (no matter how 'imperfect' they are).
the most, most noble love of all.

indeed.


7. my sis came back from taiwan with many many goodies for many people.

of everything she bought, I'm most interested in this packet of candied peach. hahaha.


7.5 a correction about my current hair colour.
upon a more thorough observation of my current hair colour, I conclude that it's actually a shade of brown that is very, very close to black.

nowhere near platinum beige, and I've made a mistake about it resembling ash brown.
in fact, it's more like... dark brown. like a more natural brown.
much darker than my previous hair colour, in fact.

but then again, maybe after some time, it'll slowly turn lighter. haha.



im trying to keep my spirits up and prevent haphazard thoughts from invading me again.
no, I'm not going to give in to the urge to start on the uncalled-for nonsense.

the best way to keep those thoughts away is so go and sleep.
yes yes, I shall do just that.

(I really like this layout because it's so simple and clean, precisely what I feel life ought to be)

From the corner of my eye I thought I saw a light shine
From the corner of my eye I thought I saw a light shine

May you know the truth inside you from the start
May you find the strength to know that you are a
Part of something beautiful...

- 'Something Beautiful' by Alexi Murdoch

Permanance (if any)?~*

credits: tumblr.com

two moments of the day, when my mind runs helter-skelter, without fail.
early in the morning and late at night.

early in the morning, when I wake up with the sunlight.
that's when all the sensible&practical things come to mind.
very matter-of-factly.

late at night, when the air that is thick with moondust&stardust envelops me.
that's when all the sentiments&emotions&reflections set in.
as if the morning person got consumed.

and now, late at night, I just want to express this intense, fierce need for a certain consistency, order and predictability in life.

some things have got to remain constant!

even though it's probably a wishful thinking on my part because many things are so... ephemeral.


tell me.
where do I start my search for a permanance?
when to begin a fervent yet going-to-be fruitless journey in search for a certain consistency?


let me know the answer if you have it, alright?

voided~*

credits: tumblr.com

white. blank. vacant. void. empty. bare. nothing. zilch.

that's the way we all started off.
before all the scribblings, streaks of colours, dirt came into contact with us.

before we understood, experienced, knew.

the very fundamental of becoming, the very initial starting point, when we're just empty-headed, full of excitement, of overwhelming yearning, wants, exploding with inquisition.

before we knew.

then suddenly, here we are, yellow with age, speckled with experiences, realizations, revelations, scratched from betrayals, confusion, sadness, coloured with happiness, love, delight.

we've led a life learning about things we want to learn about and finding out things we wished we hadn't.

took the path we want to take, and then strayed to the little alley which we would later come to regret.


such a vast array of experiences, of coming dangerously close to the edge again and again,
feeling peeled and raw.
when nerves become almost threadbare.

and of course, when our thoughts start to incline towards the logical, practical, tangible...

life as we perceive.
life as we have led from then till now, and as we will lead from now till ...

things that constitute
the uniqueness of every single one of us,
having come from all sorts of pathways, dirt tracks, smooth expressways...

isn't it amazing, that eventually, all these paths will converge?

they will, won't they?


alright back to my headache-inducing project. :(

I love this song so much.
and the lyrics is just amazing.

There there baby
it's just text book stuff
it's in the ABC of growing up

Now now darling
oh don't kill yourself
cause none of us were angels


- 'Speeding Cars' by Imogen Heap.

escapade~*

credit: tumblr.com


I was walking past my baby (by which I mean my piano) when I stopped to look at the photos placed on top of him.
Then I looked harder.
And when I walked back to my room, I scrutinized the photos placed on the shelves next to my bed.

and I came to the conclusion that I was, in fact, blatantly, downright un-self-conscious in the past.

that I had all those awkward, awful poses, lousy smiles, nightmarish hair and angles etc etc etc.


and you know what?
I miss them all.


I miss the times when I can just be comfortable with myself, honest with myself.
without giving a damn to what people think, how people would raise eyebrows at those pictures of me.


since when have they all started to matter to me?
impression management.
it makes me sick to the stomach to think that from who knows when, I've lost that 'heck care' attitude towards the way I carry and present myself.
I've lost that carefree attitude.

yes, that's something that's undeniable. I've lost it.


although vanity still hasn't completely overwhelmed and dominate me, it's apparent that I do care about how other people perceive me now.

It's actually pretty tiring.


and it makes me feel more inclined to be with people who don't constantly judge/evaluate me from head to toe, from outside to inside.

which makes me feel blessed to have people who just love and accept me for the way I am, despite all my nasty flaws.


or maybe, I'm just no longer in sync with myself.
and I need to get that rhythm right again.

that i'm perhaps, experiencing dissonance. (social psych again)


ultimately, it's all about finding a balance within yourself, and finding a way to come to terms with yourself, flaws and all.

of course, that doesn't mean staying stagnant forever.
rather, it's about seeking confidence and building self-esteem.


you know you can never be good looking enough, 'perfect' enough, smart enough, good enough.
to me, measuring such things should be done using your own yardstick.
and in this case, it's really about the level of comfort you experience when you introspect.

(I sound like some self-help guru or something)

oftentimes, we get too critical and hard on ourselves, don't we?
never appreciating ourselves enough, always finding faults with ourselves.
and hence the mounting regrets...

it just snowballs.


I think sometimes, we should just allow ourselves on a short escapade.
just to see things a little more objectively, in a more realistic way.
and tell ourselves 'hey, good job so far.'...





oh, if only I practise what I preach.
damn.

NIJI~*

listening to aragaki yui's 'Niji' (新垣結衣's '虹')
I'm at the 4th song and I'm already dying from overdose of sweeeeeetness.

she's just sooooooo sweeeeeeeet!!


a true blue okinawan beauty +
her adorable shyness + contagious smile + radiance + saccharine voice

I think if I were a guy, I'd love her to death.



just to augment my point:









































































she just looks effortlessly pretty in every single photo.


finished listening to her entire album.
and all I can say is that it's really, really lovely. :)

enough to raise your spirits and mood for the rest of the day (night, in my case).


her happy songs are just as infectious as her charming smile. :)



I think I'm going to dream of marshmallows&rainbows&babybunnies tonight.

updates~*

credits: tumblr.com



keep trying.
keep, keep trying.



a)
we always talk about the past as if they're an entirely separate entity from our current lives.

the way we narrate them with almost perfect indifference, how we laugh about things that weren't funny back then, the way we'd groan and slap our foreheads when we think of how stupid we were back then, the way we almost always assume that we've learnt from our previous mistakes.


the cruel nonchalance.


but then again, that's the right thing to do, isn't it?




b)
SILENCE.

I suddenly remember this lecture in sem1, when my lecturer tried his very best to define 'silence'.
but sorry to disappoint, I still didn't get it in the end.
(and it came out for finals)

an entity with its meaning so clearly taken for granted.

what's 'silence'?
duh. no sound.


but it was more than that.
much more.

whatever it is, why do we always attach a negative connotation to 'silence' that somehow managed to emerge during a conversation?

am I the only one who acknowledges the presence of a 'comfortable silence'?


I like it when there's a period of quietness between 2 persons, after a certain conversation has ended.
well, when there's nothing more to be said for the moment, then there's nothing to be said. period.
it's that simple.

people will then infer that there's nothing to say to each other and then experience that awkwardness that's really unneccessary.

we can't be talking forever.

it's actually peaceful, when we're not talking to each other and yet there's no awkwardness but that simple happiness, comfort.



and most importantly, that's the key for a conversation not to turn out forced.
when you don't feel like talking, when you feel like having a moment of quietness, it's alright.
there's no need to change that.

and it's actually much better than forcing out words and frantically finding topics to fill in the gaps.


enjoy the moment of silence.
sometimes, it speaks wonder.






random stuff:

1.
happy mid-autumn festival! :)


I wish it were autumn in singapore.
like, autumn all year long.


2.
my hair is platinum beige in colour.
well, it's supposed to be that colour.

but it actually looks more like ash brown.


3.
from now on, I'll be playing piano purely for leisure.
is that sheer bliss or what.

(oh no, don't talk about the exam because I think my nervousness killed me again)


4.
The Killers. I really like their songs.
I can listen to 'dustland fairytale' again and again and again and again and not get sick of it.

more intriguing is how I don't get their song lyrics most of the time.

but I really like this particular part of the lyrics.

Out where the dreams all hide
Out where the wind don't blow
Out here the good girls die
And the sky won't snow

Out here the bird don't sing
Out here the field don't grow
Out here the bell don't ring
Out here the bell don't ring

Out here the good girls die


- 'Dustland Fairytale' by The Killers

(maybe I like it for its grammatical errors. to me, they are deliberate.)



5.
my sister's in taiwan now, with ks.

I'm genuinely thankful for the quietness at night.
THANK YOU.

piano~*

what lies beneath those keys?
the power to transcend across time, culture, people.
and to suck me in, thoroughly.



I suddenly stopped halfway through practice this morning.

20th September
will mark the end of this seemingly neverending journey, fired off with passion, maintained with love, happiness, tears, disappointments, pride, and eventually, shall end on a beautiful (I hope) note.


oftentimes, I had wanted to give up so badly.
so, so badly, until my tears soaked the keys.

times when there are just so much more weighing down on me.
when I couldn't care less about whether I got my crescendos and cadenza right.
and whether or not my fingers were listening to me.


times when I had let my monochromatic buddy down, and my teacher down.



when pure selfishness set in.
"who cares if I play half-heartedly? Or if I flunk my ABRSM? I've got more important things to worry about."


Even just moments ago, when my fingers slipped the notes, I had that recurrent thought in my mind.
'WHO CARES?'

Then I realized,
'I CARE.'


I took up piano, not because of pressure from my family (far from that)
and not because I wanted to impress anybody.
I pushed on from beginner to grade 8, again, not from pressure and not to impress either.
along the way, I have fallen in love with piano.

my solace. my company. my support. my best friend.


this might sound cliche, but it's the truth.
times when I thought I might go insane, I poured out my feelings through music.
it doesn't matter what I'm playing, it doesn't matter how I play, I just want the comfort from the music that I produce.



just when things seem to run smoothly, I started to develop this intense&irrational fear of performance in public.
It's awful.
It undermines everything, it nullifies every effort I had put into practice.
It tears me up inside and floods me with frustration and disappointments, time and again.

It makes me want to give up even more.
It makes me question my abilities, myself.
It spilled over from the domain of music to many more areas.


then, the ultimate disappointment came.
and things just went downhill from there.
I could have done so much better.
I could have! I could have!


I couldn't pinpoint what was wrong.
there was nothing I could do about it.
my teacher tried her best to help me overcome it.
but I could never return to the past, when I was so confident of playing in front of other people.


"Wan Qin, what are you afraid of???"


exactly. what am I afraid of?

I'm afraid of mistakes.
I'm afraid of negative evaluation.
I'm afraid of letting myself and everybody else down.



but in the first place, I hadn't started learning piano to impress!



it's just something that I love doing.
I enjoy playing.
Isn't that what's the most important?
since when has that changed?

since when have I started playing to be judged and criticized?

since when have I started to be afraid of errors?



something has died, somewhere along the way.
that innocent thinking that
'I love to play and no matter what you say, I think I play rather nicely.'


it has dissipated into thin air.


so has my confidence, my belief in my playing.



what took its place is just trembling of the hands, cold sweat, jumbled mind and ugly notes.



2 days to my final hurdle.


and I'm struggling to find it back.
here I am, trying, trying to revive that thought again.
even just for that mere 30 minutes of my life, I need to revive it.


"I don't care if you fail me or dislike the way I articulate or express my music, I'm just here to play."



yes, it's not going to be easy.
but I cannot let my nervousness and irrational fear get to me anymore.
play the way you play when you're alone. when you think nobody is listening to you.




Jasmine,
it's going to be the last time.
just let that music flow.
don't constrict, don't refrain, don't restrain, don't panic, don't give up.

reflections~*

credits: tumblr.com


Reflections Aplenty.

A brief moment for me to halt and reflect. To take a deep breath and carry on.

Sure, there have been moments when everything just seem to weigh down on your chest and breathing becomes such a chore.
Moments when you question yourself, your actions, your motives. Basically, yourself.
Moments when you feel like you're dying inside, when you look perfectly fine on the outside.
Moments when you wonder if everything is going to work out, if things you dread will really pass.


I needed a brake and a break.
I couldn't possibly accelerate with no limits.


When I looked back, I found moments when I became skeptical towards things I used to be so certain about.
I identified events and incidents which marked the start of a certain change, a transition, a transformation.
and eventually, it got so exhausting and bewildering that I told myself, 'Heck. Let it be.'


It's about the here and now.


I look into the mirror and I wish I could reach into the mirror and give her a pat on the shoulder.
I look at that girl with so many evident scars and flaws and I want to give her a big hug and let her know that it doesn't matter anymore.



Sure, the road ahead is not going to be smooth and it's impossible to be error-free.
not everybody is going to like you and you still cannot please everybody.


there might even be more scars, but they should never be self-inflicted.





enough of could-have-beens and what-ifs.
enough of giving-ups and self-pity.


nobody ever told you it's going to be easy.
nobody ever told you it's going to be all rainbows and no rain.
and most importantly, nobody ever told you to listen to nobodies.


listen to yourself.


can you hear that?




can you hear that heartbeat?




it's telling you something.




You're alive.

So, live.

credits: tumblr.com


will be buried in textbooks and notes for the next couple of days, and the next, and the next and the next.


1. have been cursing the hairdresser everytime I look into the mirror. sorry, but nothing seems to be able to appease me.

2. work is increasing exponentially. it's crazy when I look at my to-do list. it goes on and on. I'm drowing in them.

3. piano exam is nearing. and I don't even have the mental capacity to deal with it, now that there are about a hundred more things weighing on my mind - all the midterm tests, assignments, projects...

4. the thing is, it's amazing how much more useful I feel when there are things for me to do and to keep me occupied and my brain functioning (in productive ways).

5. I think psychologists are amazing people who provide answers to questions that we've been pondering over and over, with no apparent results. in other words, every action we take can be explained and accounted for. studying all these just makes me feel that, perhaps human behaviours are not random afterall. a chaotic system, perhaps? hahaha.

6. psychology is one thing, stats is another. stats makes me feel stupid, that's all.

7. finished 'Alice & Oliver' by Tess Callahan a looong time ago. beautiful story which is so close to reality, it'll really tug your heartstrings.
completing 'Nocturnes' by Kazuo Ishiguro soon. I'm going to rave about it later on.

8. they took away what's left of my pathetically few sources of entertainment - The Simpsons from fox channel. #$!#@*&!@*#.

9. I need to get back to my 'Bipolar Disorder' soon or I'm going to die.

10. after a long discussion about pets with mabel and serene, I'm having that urge again.



extra note:

I. CANNOT. STAND. MY. HAIR.
(and my tagboard too)



something rather inspiring:






























I've concluded that my character = having no character.

Everybody's looking for that something
One thing that makes it all complete
You'll find it in the strangest places
Places you never knew it could be

Some find it in the face of their children
Some find it in their lover's eyes
Who can deny the joy it brings
When you've found that special thing
You're flying without wings

Some find it sharing every morning
Some in their solitary lives
You'll find it in the words of others
A simple line can make you laugh or cry

You'll find it in the deepest friendship
The kind you cherish all your life
And when you know how much that means
You've found that special thing
You're flying without wings

So, impossible as they may seem
You've got to fight for every dream
Cos who's to know which one you let go
Would have made you complete

Well, for me it's waking up beside you
To watch the sunrise on your face
To know that I can say I love you
In any given time or place

It's little things that only I know
Those are the things that make you mine
And it's like flying without wings
Cos you're my special thing
I'm flying without wings

And you're the place my life begins
And you'll be where it ends

I'm flying without wings
And that's the joy you bring
I'm flying without wings...



- 'Flying without Wings' by Westlife.

hanamizuki~*

Lovely song. :)
a sweet song about a long-distance relationship.

















Gakky's 'Hanamizuki' (movie version).

"may the love between you and the person you love last for a hundred years..."

happiness~*

credits: tumblr.com




definitely something I've come to learn for the past few days.
it has been like a roller coaster ride and though it's not ending yet, now, with that furry kitty next to me, I feel that I might be able to survive this ride.


there has been so much unhappiness going on these days.

I've figured out that me being an additional source of unhappiness is just plain selfishness and not at all helpful.


instead, I hope to be the strength for others.


that might have sounded a bit unrealistic, and hard to believe even, but yeah, I shall try, nonetheless.



happiness is contagious, in a way.
if you have it, share it. :)

credits: tumblr.com



things that appear simple always turn out to be complex as hell. because of the countless implications and whatnots.

even so, certain things are undeniably unambiguous.