Today, awakened abruptly by my body my mind was seized painfully by nostalgia and the reality of time.

I miss the dreams I was inspired to have. I miss my nationalism, my youth, my idealism. I miss my pure spirituality, my poetic nature, the inspiration to my photographs. I miss being able to marvel at the most random things. I miss my love for the world.

For the strangest of reasons, I traded those in for me. I traded them in for dreams of an entirely different nature. Now money, ambition, god and success drive my world. Those are hard things to have drive your world. Too hard.

Issues

I have issues with
-gender
-family
-religion
-pride
-confrontation
-seeing that I'm in the wrong...

It must be hard being in a relationship with me.

Shanghai

Whenever I start every semester in Fudan, a cloak of numbness settles over me. Tight, almost suffocating. I cease the ability to feel for anything that lies outside my closed shanghai world.

Friendships, love, kinship. I stop caring, I stop talking. In their place a thin base of anxiety, desperation and self pity sets in. Here, I'm constantly trying to keep up, to keep everything at bay.

People ask if I like Shanghai. What am I supposed to say? Its my everything when I'm here. I cannot but love it yet for all that it is, I loathe it.

I start school today. This semester seems to be preceded by several deeply saddening occurrences. I will pray for peace to enter hearts and love to do its miracles.

Sin

The word “sin” as in “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is a translation of a Hebrew word, het, that means “to miss the mark.”

EMERY!

My favourite picture of Gerald and I

In transit

I can't believe I'm saying this but I am heartily and truly sick of traveling. When the corridors of more than one transit stop become all too familiar, you start to realise a few things.

1) You are a cheapskate and only take flights that have at least 2 lay-overs.

2) You are traveling too much for a 19 year old.

I must confess. Every time I look at those glowing electronic boards that show the boarding gate of your connecting flight, my heart thuds painfully upon setting sight of the word Singapore. Singapore, I belong to it yet it never seems to be the destination I am searching for. With every month spent away from it, the reality of me being able to live elsewhere grows stronger.

I always thought that I would spend my adulthood in Singapore. Always thought that I would eventually marry someone from Singapore, raise my kids and well... grow old. I guess life doesn't always work the way we planned it to. Mostly because we lack knowledge during the planning stages. A character from a movie I watched recently once said " Young people never know how young they really are" That I must grudgingly admit is one of the truest things I have ever heard.

I still remember standing at the viewing platform at Changi Airport's terminal 2 longing to be on a plane. That longing later transformed into the fierce determination hardened within my heart as I stood watching the planes at Terminal 3, determined to talk, study and impress my way onto them. I wanted to see the world, to prove that I was different, to experience all that was new. I miss her, that fired up girl. I ate a fortune cookie recently and out spewed a piece of paper that said "you bring enthusiasm to those around you" Gerald who was standing by my side immediately declared it a lie. That is once again unfortunately completely true. I have lost my spark. I no longer believe that I can change the world, I no longer believe that my meagre actions can satisfy anyone... even myself. In my frenetic search for new experiences, I forgot to ground myself and as a result got lost in the vastness of what I found.

I need to find my bearings again. If I were to depend on others to be my roots, forever I will be like a tremulous autumn leaf, completely dependent on the branches for support, at mercy to the gusting winds.

The ride

Endless stagnant rows of crops, she stared unseeing through the brown tinted windows of the train. Her companion sits facing the lit up face of his computer screen, steadily chewing on a small piece of graying gum. Another train ride, more foreign lands. Dull thin droplets rolled down her cheeks, vacant and passionless.

She started off searching for adventure, success and the promise of love. She found all but lacked the ability to attain it. Weakling, the word thuds dully in her head. She is tired, she wants to rest but she does not know where. Having abandoned everything and found nothing she has nowhere to go. The train ride will end and a plane will take her to interim. A dull blue car, battered sits by the side of the tracks.

She gets up and makes her way to the toilet. Looking at the ground she avoids the lazy gazes alighting upon her. The sound of her urine hitting the metallic seat startles her. She stands up and feels a warm droplet trickle into her jeans. Sitting back in her seat she stares at the darker blue spot by the seam. Her companion lifts up his hand to scratch his head.

After a long slowly drawn circle, she is going back to China. She dimly remembers the stories her Grandmother told of the horrific place she escaped from. She cannot remember the exact details. Silent images of dull red people with open mouths and raised fists flashed in her head. She didn’t fit in where her grandmother escaped. She went back to find what she assumed she had lost, only to realize that she did not understand what was lost. Her companion came along and offered an escape. A bus, train and plane ride took her further and further away. Love became a diversion; it confounded her, she forgot what she left and what she came for.

The sun rises in the East her grandmother told her. Her teachers at school reminded her that the sun sets in the west. She thought that was where her journey would end. But she is 19 her life stretches ahead. She can’t stay in the west anymore the train takes her back, back to the home that exists no longer.

These are slightly troubling times.