Friday, January 31, 2014

The Day You Told Me You Were Tired of Things that Break: A Rejoinder


I have heard you whisper: broken things
are sharp edges. Brokenness begets
brokenness. Why not turn your gaze
towards the glazed ceramic vases,
with their perfect posture and silent
mouths? They have never cursed
their maker, and will forever be
of use. I reply: Consider this.
Perhaps the hand touching
the shattered pieces sees
more life in them than in
things that have never
stood at the edge
of the world.


From the latest issue of QLRS by Mary Jean Chan, a rejoinder of a poem she submitted some time back titled The Day You Told Me You Were Tired of Things that Break. 

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. 

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

And it begins

So it's only the second week of school and we already have deadlines looming up and about a million things to read everyday. Have been taking a rather chilled out approach, reading things slowly and all. I tend to lose myself in an abyss, somewhere between not giving a fuck and panicking like a crazy asian chick - but it works out usually. Apart from some light studying, we actually haven't been doing anything very concrete, the time just seems to pass extremely quickly here. We did attend a few international students happenings though, so at least we're not completely out of sync with the people here :P

Skyping with Hazel in school last week and watching a Swedish dude behind me start on a book and eventually.. fall asleep on it, lol.

Glen and I had a slow Saturday morning, lunch for two :3

 Then we decided to get our lazy bones moving and head out like normal young people.

 Sean brought us to a secondhand bookstore that he found (there were a couple others in the vicinity).



 Oh, my new dumpling coat which I bought before we went to the bookstore! It's insanely puffy and makes me look like a bao but so warm, it's amazinggggggg <3 

 My favourite kind of place.




Greek food for dinner!





 Making our way to VG nation for a pub quiz


 Entrance to an adorable cellar pub!






 Glenn and I missed our busstop again and were stranded waiting for the next bus (25mins) in the cold. It was actually pitch dark, couldn't see anything in front of us except for tiny twinkling faraway lights. Took out my camera to try and see if it could focus on anything, turns out the lights from the occasional passing cars make for good photographs.



Attempted to take a shot of ourselves as well, couldn't stop laughing at the ridiculous situation despite the biting cold on our cheeks.

Finally almost home.

On Sunday morning I received some love in the mail (:

It was a beautifully sunny day, we went out to the city for a student event.

 We were a little early so we headed to the cathedral for some warmth and comfort.




 Puppy tracks!



 Watching little kids sled down the tiny hill with their parents!

 Tried our hands at it too! It was wonderfully exhilarating and fun though our asses hurt a little at the rough bits. Got bolder and tried steeper slopes, totally worth it!






Sean has some footage of us screaming on the steeper slopes, will try to get them soon!

 Adorable kid in his little sled, his dad would bring him up to the top and sled down with him (there's enough space at the back for the dad). He was so adorable, when they went down, his eyes would be shut tightly, his face clenched from the cold.

 Fika to warm ourselves up!


Finally went for mass, the only English service is 6.15pm every Sunday so I had to wait a fair bit after our Fika. The church building is usually open though, so I hung out there till it started. English congregation was barely 30 people but the mass was simple and good.

Lunch by myself on Monday when Glenn was away at school. 

We had to brave the night wind to run out to the convenience store because we ran out of bread and eggs.


 Reward for myself tonight for finally dealing with my assignment (due in a couple of hours). 

It's only about 9pm here in Sweden and I'm feeling all chilled out at home. Had an early morning class and then came home to have brunch, intended to rest a little but ended up taking a 3 hour nap. Forced myself to get going on my assignment and finally got it done by evening. Didn't feel like doing anything else so I've just been listening to music, painting my nails and being a sloth in general. It feels nice actually. 

A much more important assignment due on Friday night so I'll probably have to start thinking about it tomorrow (lol, who am I kidding, I should've started thinking about it last week!),  but for now I'm just enjoying my quiet pretty room with the soft melody playing. Was reading through the stories on Humans of New York, too many of them are so beautiful - it breaks my heart.