Hands

It began when you first touched my hands. Gently making tiny circles at the curve where the flesh leads from the thumb to the forefinger, as you urged me to tell you a story; one I sometimes feel that I no longer have the strength to retell.

And my hands have held so many broken things before, as have yours. You know that makes them hardy, independent, but you still hold them as if they were light. You hold them as if they could break, because you know that I wasn't always this way.

And I cling onto yours because your grasp is warm, reassuring, safe. I no longer feel the battle scars on my knuckles. Your hands have a kind of magic that makes me think of the smell of rain and the faint pink hues that streak across the sky just as twilight goes to meet dusk. They make me think of the soft glow of morning sunshine that bleeds through my bedroom blinds, of the gentle breeze that presses its lips on my cheek.

They are where mine goes to rest, and I can only hope that yours finds peace in mine.

Humans of New York

"I wish I'd partied a little less. People always say 'be true to yourself.' But that's misleading, because there are two selves. There's your short term self, and there's your long term self. And if you're only true to your short term self, your long term self slowly decays."

This struck me deeply. 

International Gasque

Last Friday, we attended UU's International Gasque. It was pretty costly and I'm not sure it was even worth the money that we paid, but we had a good-ish time so I guess it was alright!

We were almost an hour late because we spent the entire afternoon shopping, hahaha. 

Glen bought a beautiful dress from H&M, I decided to just slum it with one of the dresses I brought over, hehehe. 

Centrum in the night.

Starter: Cheese Pie. It wasn't particularly appetizing though quite lovely to look at. It tasted oddly like some kind of quiche, but not particularly flavourful. It was kind of.. strange to me. 

So throughout the entire course of dinner, there would be "breaks" for speeches and singing. After every speech, a song would be sung and then we'd have to proceed to toast the people sitting around us. Pretty interesting tradition. This was one of the beer songs, made me think very fondly of our Pitchstop gang back in NTU.

Lucky enough to be assigned seats next to each other, the seating was supposed to be random and mostly B/G/B/G/G/B/G/B/G/G. No idea how come we managed to get seats side by side but it was actually quite a relief because though the people at our table were nice, conversation didn't flow so easily. 

Assortment of drinks that was served. 

Main: Lamb with Red Wine Sauce served with Potato Gratin. 

Glen opted for the vegetarian option because she doesn't eat lamb: Portobello Mushroom served with a side of beets (+ potato gratin as well, not featured in the photograph, hahaha). 

Dessert: Blueberry Cheesecake. Was relieved to see this, it was quite yummy and a welcomed dish after the strange cheese pie, haha. 

At the last song, we all had to stand on our chairs, hahhaha. 

German dude who sat beside me, he was kinda shy and laughed at me for being an Asian-sterotype (with regards to my "terrible" habit of taking photographs of everything in sight). 

After the dinner ended. 

Our boys all dressed up (lol I know, only 2). 

And the girls! Missing Fathin and Anh! 

Full black crew. 

The dinning hall was cleared into a dance floor, these two were the most enthusiastic. 

It was a good-ish time, except we couldn't recognise most of the songs, lol. 

There was also a karaoke room which was terrible; drunk chicks screaming their lungs out on the microphone is just.. not very cool. We ended up missing the bus back to our place and had to pay an expensive fare to get home by cab, but it was still a good night :3 

Homebodies

A: Have you realised, if we don't have class, we never ever leave the house.
G: That's so not true, we do!
A: When have we ever specifically left the house for reasons apart from school?
G: We went for a walk a few weeks ago...
A: Yes, that one time.
G: We go out to throw rubbish...

Hahahaha, jokes aside. We do leave the house from time to time, sometimes to go for dinner with friends and occasionally to do some grocery shopping. But.. we rarely just go out for the fun of it. I kinda love being at home in Uppsala though.

Putting in a little bit of effort

Have problems dragging myself out of bed this morning because I had a late night. Finally made some breakfast and got ready to head to the library at English Park to look for some textbooks that I needed for Religion class but they were nowhere to be found. The libraries here are rather beautiful, this particular one was full of pinewood and every shelf had a backlight installed so that the titles are illuminated. The only issue is probably that they function on their own kind of Dewy Decimal System so it's slightly difficult to find the texts you want, also, it closes around 7pm on weekdays and 5pm on Saturdays (not opened on Sundays). The opening hours are way too short in my opinion.

Glad that I made it a point to come down because it has been quite lovely to get down to work here. Been extremely blessed to have the sweetest Swedish class/project-group mate who cycled all the way to the library from home and back, just to pass us a copy of the texts that she made. In addition, she already picked up the relevant chapters so that saved me the trouble from having to scan through the entire text by myself, such a lovely person.

After being an absolute sloth for the past week (and the past 2 months really, I've only been putting in the bare minimal for most of the work here), I think I finally got back some of my gusto. Suddenly remember how much I love studying, what a geek. Never thought that I'd ever take a class in the theology department but this course is pretty damn interesting, a joy to explore, albeit a little high brow at times. It's always rewarding to study something that excites you, it's the same for work I guess. I don't know if I can ever do anything wholeheartedly if it doesn't ignite at least some kind of passion within me, this could be a problem in time to come.

For now, I'm just enjoying my good fortune. Family, friends, love, a good education; I honestly wouldn't know what else to ask for.

3rd March

Life has been good, can't wait for the 22nd! (:

Grave

The lovers are taking it slow. They are drawing out
the days of nothingness, making them last.

Who will be the first to go? Who dares to answer
such questions? The lovers in church are praying

only for each other. They are tracing the edge
of the shore with their footprints. What have they

done that they have not yet been forgiven for?
There is still time to replace the curtains,

to oil the gate so it may close again without
crying. Now is the moment. The lovers know this

as they head home now, evening drawing
their bodies closer, slowing their steps

at a momentous pace, as words fold away
into the spaces even memory cannot reach.

- Cyril Wong, Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light