Random~*

of all the poses here, mine is the most perplexing. but then again, I only had one free hand yeah?
eh nono, joyce's is equally puzzling. haha.

but don't you think this is a beautiful photo? I really think it is! Very autumn-y. :)
and of course, credit goes to the photographer and editor. :))))))))))

1. Material Girl
Listening to this song (3rd song in my playlist) makes me all bouncy and happy. :)
Actually, Madonna has pretty good songs, you know.
Frozen (awesome song), Material Girl, Like a Virgin, Ray of Light, Hung up, Vogue, 4 minutes etc etc.

2. All over the place
Anyway, my preference in songs&music is just so peculiar.
it ranges from timeless classics to the less well-known indie bands, from classical music to New Orleans music to bossa nova to smooth jazz to pop to rock to those eerie, ethereal ambient music.
from Chopin&Debussy&Stravinsky to The Beatles&Astrud Gilberto&Ray Charles to TheKillers&Imogen Heap to Ayu&Boa&Gackt&Gakky to Norah Jones&Jazzamor&Sophie Zelmani&Tori Amos...

It's just crazy, the whole range of things I listen to.
I remember myself writing this
'I like songs that can teleport me away'.
Still so, so true.

But I'd have to admit that I've got a thing for oldies and classics and those uber mushy and romantic love songs that we always hear during weddings.

so, to add on to that sentence,
'I like songs that can teleport me away/strike a chord on my heartstrings'


3. The Beatles
there are people out there who claim that they like The Beatles but have never heard a single song by them.
For some reasons I cannot quite comprehend, it seems that liking The Beatles has become something rather trendy and cool.
Like a statement that 'I'm different from the overwhelming pool of fans of Lady Gaga and Beyonce etc etc'.
Hmm, but then again, there ARE people out there who truly enjoy their music and not because it makes them... well, different? Well, correct me if I'm wrong about that but I just feel that there's this ongoing thing about The Beatles.

'Who do you listen to?'
'The Beatles.'
'OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!'

something like that.


4. the love of petit provence

I think I'm so in love with the kaya wassant that I believe I can just eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and be thoroughly satisfied :)

I can't pinpoint what's exactly so addictive about it. It's just different from any other bread you can get from confectionaries. There's no filling inside. Rather, it's just thin circles of kaya around it.
The POWER of it, despite its very very small size.
I've been going to town for the past few days and I just couldn't help but notice them when I walk past Petit Provence. They called out to me.

"Pssssst.........!!!!!! :D :D :D"

















credits
(this is the cream wassant. couldn't get the pic of the kaya one)

and to think I was telling SG how sick I am of having bread for breakfast practically every freaking day.

btw, I tried the cinammon and coffee roll as well as the pafu pafu bun.
ohhhh. the pafu pafu bun is fantastic!! it has no filling and no flavour actually, just something very very plain and not even sweet. but the texture is so goooood! so chewy. :))))

you guys should really try them out.
Even my sis who is not a fan of sweet stuff likes the chocolate wassant. :)

next place to have breakfast - Provence Bakery & Cafe at Holland V/Orchard Ion!
hahahahaha (lots of hint)


5. racking brains over what psychology modules to take next sem.
Time doesn't just fly, it zooms. nono, give me a verb that's faster than 'zoom'.


6.
Awesome Animation

this never fails to make me smile, no matter how many times i've watched it. :)


I think I'm off to read my Wind-up Bird Chronicles. :)

hold them close~*

credits: tumblr.com

there are just so many things that we only notice when we retrospect.
because there are just as many 'yesterdays' as 'todays' and 'tomorrows'.

"Now I long for yesterday."
- 'Yesterday' by The Beatles

as if everything SHOULD be like this because it's the way things are SUPPOSED to be.
but my dear, that's not the way things are in reality.


things are constantly moving further and further from us. it's up to us to hold them close.



on a sidenote:
it has been raining so much. yes I love it, but no, not when I'm outside and getting my feet soaked.






















do you know what's the most striking part of the whole picture?
no, not the fact that my lips look pale
but the very, very contrasting words behind me.

On bits and pieces~*

there are so many things I want to write about and I'm having difficulty starting.
it's gonna be relatively lengthy, so bear with me.


1. on exams
they're FINALLY over.
OVER. doesn't that word evoke a certain relief? Not to mention the accompanying DREAD and FEAR and EMPTINESS that seem to outweigh any teeny weeny bit of temporal relief.

Had probably the worst paper in all my 3 sems in nus.
it has been some time since I last felt my heart sink to the bottom when I flipped open the question booklet. It's that feeling which slowly devours you from inside... like venom.
(yes, thank you, mandelbrot & eigen & bifurcation diagrams.)
I wanted to die on the spot.

As usual, the old rule applies - no more mentioning of exams in my presence. sshhhh.


2. on my old flame.
amidst my frustrations & incredible emptiness during study period, I picked up 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicles' by Murakami Haruki.
(have been keeping it in my drawer for ages. since it's supposed to be an 'emergency read', by which I mean when I encounter 'extreme thirst for good books'. shit I sound mad)

3 paragraphs into the story and WHAM!
that ENORMOUS wave of nostalgia mixed with familiarity plus that dry humour plus dark dark dark tasteful words and twisted plots and characters.
damn. I hadn't realized how much I missed his writings until I started reading.

and now, I'm addicted.




















credits


it's like morphine.


3. on a strange conversation with my sis

"do you know, if you travel faster than light, you can witness your own birth?"

what the...?

In the end, we ended up in an intense debate with her telling me that she heard this from some sci-fi show and me telling her that it just doesn't make much sense, does it?

then we started talking about time and 'grandfather paradox' (something that fascinated me for a long, long time!) and the past, present, future blah blah blah, which spun off into a mind-boggling and braincells-killing conversation. (not the usual thing you discuss with your sis, isn't it? -_-)
and we finally converged to a point in agreement, that

'everything happens as a consequence of your own choice.'

we might think many things are beyond our control. but in retrospection, everything becomes crystal clear.
causes and effect.
cause must precede effect.
because you did _____, that's why _____ happened.
that's the way it is.
and the way physical laws underlie almost everything in life.



4. on a new layout

I hadn't intended to change the whole layout.
It started off as a simple change to remove the super irritating tagboard and to try and install a comment system on my blog. and somehow, one thing led to another and now I've got a new layout.


5. on colour palette

if I could use one colour to describe myself...
I would choose 'black' but somehow, I feel that I give a 'beige-y' feel to people around me. or even a dull shade of grey. well, just one of those DULL shades.

I wish I could be a little more pinkish and reddish and turqoise-y and lime-green-y, too.


6. on detachment from the world

I felt pretty much detached and isolated in my world of psychology and stats for the past few weeks.
my world has been reduced to the size of my room.

















credits: tumblr.com

thanks for all the encouragement during this seemingly endless period of low-ness. :)
without you guys, I think I'll just curl up and die before exams and then die somemore after that.


7. on mandelbrot set

upon hearing my messed up explanations on it, my sis developed a morbid fascination with it. she's so twisted.

Jas: my lecturer even told us we can download the applet into your phone =_=
Ks: let me find. OOOHHH!!!!!!

so, he downloaded it and the 3 of us started 'playing' with it.

no wonder I dreamt of it the night before that paper.


8. on the error of perception of time

it's such a costly error that when I look back and think about it now, I can still feel my heartbeat accelerating.

what happened was that I've got a paper at 1pm and had to get out of my house by 1130am. and when I received tako's text, I realized it was 1145am. but wait! the last time I checked, the clocked showed 10 plus. so how can that be?? and so, I looked at the clock again and realized it showed 1045am.

in other words, my clock was slow by 1 bloody hour, and I was, in actual fact, running late.

which means, if I hadn't received that text from tako, I would still be chilling (ok maybe not 'chilling' but you get the idea) at home at 1245 and reach at like what... 1.45pm?!?!

it was such a close shave!!!! or I wouldn't be here writing this post anymore.



9. on the black beauty

I'm slowly learning to love black coffee with sugar.
actually, it's more like an influence by SG, after seeing him drink his coffeebean's coffee entirely black.
anyhow, I still need some time to learn to fully appreciate it. but nonetheless, no complaints so far!


10. on confessions.

yes I'm so gonna catch 'Confessions' starring Matsu Takako.
because it's going to be chilling and thrilling.

"Jasmine! THIS IS SOOOO YOU!"























credits


do I really come across as a sick, twisted, whacked, screwed-brain-ner with psychopathic tendency?
hmmm. maybe I do.


random:

my sis said she likes this picture.

(my sis looks so falsely bubbly and benign and cheerful and friendly. It's a facade.)



















YOOHOO GIRLS!

















Jas: give me something wistful to write about shadows. 5 seconds.
Jess:. ...
Jas: what about 'temporal evidence of existence'?
Jess: ... what about 'why are you guys blocking the light?

terrific.

Theorize... too much?~*

Look at the way we trudge through life, theorizing things whenever we can, making sense out of things that don't make much sense, using logic, following the strict norms and doing all the 'right' things...

without stopping to think about what happens when we view the world from different angles.

the 'right' could be 'wrong'.

Questions that exist not to be answered, are, nonetheless, attempted to be answered.
And once answers are provided, reasons are given, they lose their enigmatic quality.

'What is love?'
there are theories to explain interpersonal attraction, theories to understand altruism, to understand why we help, why we do what we do. (yes, social psychology is just so fascinating)

I am a balanced-brained (not right, not left).
so a part of me will analyze, while the other half will feel.
Which means, my very self, my pattern of processing is a paradox.

While a part of me subscribes to the way everything should be guarded by a theory and a logic and a reasoning (that's the way to ensure orderliness and make sense of the world),

another part of me secretly wish all theories could be debunked and feelings should just remain as they are - unpredictable, mystifying.



if an ultimate equation can be derived to explain all facets of life, including the very origin of life,


I think I'll just yawn and go to sleep.




on a sidenote: the weather screams awesomeness and this is probably my last post. Anyway, my sis dug out a novel from her pile of junk (decades old) and guess what.

It's 'Norwegian Wood'.


















and the last time I stepped out of the house.

On my own,
When I wander through this wonderland alone,
Never knowing my right foot from my left.

- 'Misty' by Ella Fitzgerald

updates~*

This was written a few days back. Was left unfinished and chucked away in my drafts. So I came back to finish it up.

























credits: tumblr.com

1. the above picture caught my attention.
What an accurate depiction of life.
What goes on right in the middle of birth and death?
Who knows?

Anyway, it just dawned on me how,

life is perhaps just a culmination of causes and effects.
how one thing leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another...

like how an unfortunate event unfolds when all the circumstances add up.

you wake up one minute later than usual, step out of the house one minute later, cross the street one minute later than usual, and a car just happens to skid out of control at that very moment.

if only you hadn't woken up that one minute later.

I think that accounts for quite a bit of unexplanable events that unfold in our lives.


2. Was so reluctant to return 'Woman on the other Shore' by Mitsuyo Kakuta.
It's another book I highly recommend.
So heartachingly beautiful.
And the ingenious way the 2 seemingly separate stories gradually merged at the very end.

It reminded me a lot about friendships - about the way everybody used to love everybody else so fiercely initially, and how time seems to blunt edges, extinguish certain passion and intensity, certain unneeded conflicts and friction...
something inevitable, part of the passage of growing up?

what's left afterwards will be something resembling less like friendships that we know of when we were young and ignorant and more daring, less inhibited, but more like a comfortable sense of presence, existence, of 'I know you're still around'.


3. I'm tired, but I'm still trying to write, because final exams are in a weeks' time and I probably wont write much already.


4. I was about 1/2 drenched in rain this evening when I went out to get dinner for myself. (yes, I'm camping home now. Or to be more specific, my midori room.)
The thing is, I wasn't a least bit concerned about being drenched.

I wasn't disturbed by the many people running towards the nearest shelter (ironically, the opposite direction to where I was heading), neither was I concerned about the fact that I looked stupid, walking in the rain like some seriously depressed person.

The rain was just too inviting.

(continued)

5. My brain is dying pretty soon. Felt so suffocated in that midori room that I had to come out and write something.

6. my mum got the flu (am I the culprit?) and suddenly, the house became eerily quiet except for coughs and sneezes.

7. finally went to get my grade 8 cert from my teacher.
Was so reluctant to look at the examiner's report. But to my surprise, I didn't fail any component. I thought I'd screwed up my aural and sightreading really badly but I guess the examiner was really really lenient towards me. :)

Examiner: Suggest a possible composer for this piece?
Jas: ... Mozart?
Examiner: yes, it's a Mozart's minuet.
Jas: OHHHHHH.

leniency plus luck, definitely.


8. to me, breakfast is indispensable.
I can do without lunch, without dinner, but definitely not breakfast.

I just cannot function without breakfast. I can't think, my mood is garbage, I'm just a cranky old woman.
(oh no, it's different from caffeine withdrawal symptoms yeah?)


9. The semester ended, just like this.
And my last lecture was one which left question marks flooding my brain, with approximately 10 people in the LT.

I just hope for a pass, so I can S/U it.

Jasmine, you just have to accept the fact that there are just things that you can never comprehend. Like the link between fractal rainforests and Eigen and stretch&fold and turing machine and chaos and evolution and big bang and amoeba and and cellular automata...


10. I did 2 quizzes on 'How old do you act?'
and NOOOOO I didn't get '80' but I got '17-19' for one and '15' for another.

SURPRISED? So am I.

11. I'm wondering what I should do during my one month hols.
Anyone interested in learning piano and have enough trust in my ability to teach piano? HAHAHA.

12. Must we have reasons to feel sad and lost? and to feel happy and blessed?
Think with el corazon.

13. I've got this huge bump on my left knee and I've got no idea how it got there.

14. yes yes yes. listening to Astrud Gilberto on a cool, chilly, rainy night... but without a novel. I've got stacks of notes and heavy textbooks instead.

15. Christmas is coming!

16. I'm currently watching The Big Bang Theory Season 3. :) It's a de-stressor.

17. I've got a bad habit of frowning at grammatically wrong sentences.
It's really pompous, in my opinion, since it's not as if I'm error-free all the time.
A bad, bad habit.

So now, I will just learn to keep my face blank.

18. You see, I'm just trying to procrastinate. 'Personality Disorders' is calling out to me. ahhh... Cognitive dissonance experienceddddddddddd!!!

19. Dug out some old piano sheets and guess what I found - 'Maple Leaf Rag' by Scott Joplin. It shall give me some reason to touch my neglected, cob-webby baby.

20. I'm so random, I can't stand it.

ok, I'd better get back.


















what are we waiting for? for a train to take us somewhere, elsewhere.

I'll go on my way
And after the day
The darkness will hide me
Any maybe tomorrow
I'll find what I'm after
I'll throw off my sorrow
Beg, steal or borrow
My share of laughter

- 'Who Can I Turn to? (When Nobody Needs Me)' by Astrud Gilberto

Secrets~*

they say if we want to reveal some secrets really badly, but we don't want anyone to know, we can speak into a hole in a tree/wall, and cover the hole up.
then the secrets will reside there.
safely, securely, locked up beautifully.
as it was, as it is, as it will be.

nobody will know.

and life will go on.

The sea, the night, me~*

credits: tumblr.com

If I could, I would.

I would wake up in the middle of the night to the invitation from the sea.
I would light a candle and climb down that spiral staircase while willing it to stop creaking.
I would walk barefooted, tentatively at first, but slowly taking bolder, longer strides.
Across the soft, grainy sand, into the cold wind's embrace, rhythm matching to that of the crashing of the waves.

Under the moonlight, beneath the stars.

I would dance to 'Midnight, Stars and You'. I would sing 'Quizas, Quizas, Quizas' and I would fall asleep.
I would dream of all the things I ever dreamt I could do.
I would dream of all the places I ever dreamt I could go.
I would dream of all the things I ever dreamt I could see and experience.

And most importantly, I would dream that everything weren't dreams.

But I would wake up.
To kisses from the sun, to playful tickles from the wind, to you calling my name.

If I could, I would.


on a sidenote:
I watched 'In the Mood for Love' with mum and sis (hence the music in my playlist).
(Sunday night has become movie night with family)
I just love great, old classic films.

I see me~*

with the surrounding air thick with unverbalized thoughts and scrambled words, of peacefulness and serenity, of dust of age and swirling glitter powder of hope, of hidden secrets and beautiful lies, of sincere wishes and unmatchable determination...

I looked into myself.

and I saw what I know I would see, and hence not what I wish I would see, but end up seeing.
in other words, my true, imperfect self.

I leaned in close to her and whispered, "keep on going, girl."



on a sidenote: my nose is failing me in that it's preventing me from breathing. and so is my voice. down 15 octaves. so manly.

bizzzzare~*

I should be sleeping but I can't, because

my throat is killing me (even though I've been dutifully gulping down water),
my body is like a radiator (but no fever registered)

and there's a void within me.
something's missing and I need that something.


[the rain stopped as abruptly as it started.
one moment, time crawls, and another moment, time flies.
perception of time is really subjective, isn't it?

anyway, it's already november.]

what am I talking about? it's so bizzare.

oh boy, it's gonna be a looooooooooong night and an equally loooooooooooooooong day tomorrow.