VJ's Garden of Thoughts

The Morning After a Night I Could Not Sleep

On the morning of January 21st 2013, I ranted a series of tweets about the consecutive two nights that I had trouble sleeping. The following are those tweets in the series some of which I have edited for spelling, grammar and full versions of shortforms used:

~ I normally sleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow… I literally just need to switch off

~ but last night I had difficulty switching off, because my mind like an app on overdrive just refused to end the task it had started

~ I traced the source and realized that the app got activated the night before when I awoke in the middle of the night

~ for some reason a chain of thoughts had decided to wander further back into the dark recesses of memories

~ archives that have collected dust, dark because the bulbs that lit the rooms have long bust, and mold and such have eaten the documents much

~ the program having set on a mission, struggled, cast a long rope and tried to reach, deep into what seemed like an abyss

~ at first it seemed much was gone, and only fragments remained, but still, how much of the cavern had closed was not yet known

~ and like an archaeologist that returns to light only to continue the search on another day, my mind returned to sleep. That was the previous night

~ last night the archaeological program that was looking for long forgotten memories went back to work in the dusty shelves of my mind

~ it found some legible information, other bits and pieces, yet I do not know still how much has been lost over the years

~ but the greatest realization was that like an outdated encyclopedia that you have not referred to, I have not looked at them for too long

~ memories are like fragile old documents that it’s condition you have to check on every now and then, to ensure its health

~ and when you’ve let it be for too long, retrieving them is a painstakingly long, slow excavation process, not something done overnight

~ it can be sweet, bitter or a mix of both depending on what you had packed into the boxes

~ some keep to continue living in the past, others as a testament to the journey they’ve taken, some choose what to keep, others just discard

~ but whatever it is, once the app has started on its work, it’s difficult to quit and shutdown your mind as was the case for me last night

~ {END RANT}

Guest Post #2 on Life is Great

This week I have written a guest post on Life is Great. Earlier this year I got a couple of recipes from mum. These are 2 of my many favorite chicken dishes that she cooks for me (among all the other wonders my mum cooks and does for me). So after getting the recipe from her, I have tried cooking it twice. Here is my story behind it and the recipe she dearly imparted on me. I shall not reveal too much here, but I talk about home cooked food, my mum and stuff. 

As usual I have taken the pictures of the wonderful effort and Pick Yin has processed them for the blog. Its a recipe that is simple enough to try. Enjoy!

Thanks mum for everything!

Tagged: food

sakura

disaster strikes

if you read my first blog post, you’ll find that i have a habit of connecting a string of things that are significant to me. naturally, when disaster struck the Tohuku region in Japan on March 11, my thoughts immediately went to a dear friend who was living in Japan. i knew i would have much to say on the matter and wondered deeply on how to put those thoughts which had yet to materialise in full force into perpective. how would i connect them?

as i started writing, i started getting lost in the flurry of thoughts and began questioning the purpose of the post. 

where’s my friend?

as dear as my friend was, i couldn’t remember exactly which part of Japan she was at, although i thought for sure it was close to Tokyo, from my last conversation with her during her birthday.

i followed the developments very closely as i had with the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the ensuing tsunami. i finally came to realize the power of twitter in disseminating information fast and became a junkie overnight. i knew the names of some big cities in Japan but never really understood the geography of where they were in the island or how far apart they were from each other. this promoted me to do something i enjoy very much which is map reading.

by Sunday, i had established some form of contact with her in addition to facebook status update. relief that she was fine despite the fear, inconvenience and uncertainty. 

refreshing old memories

back in 2002 and 2003, I used to play badminton regularly. i was doing my post grad then and we had a regular weekly (sometimes twice a week) meet for 2 hours of play. during the height of our sessions, there were 8 of us playing doubles in 2 courts, so it was continuous play most of the time, unless of course some of us had to rest, then we would resort to singles match for those who could still go on. it was during this period that I made some new friends some of which I could really connect with. it was in one such session that i got introduced to a Japanese girl from Osaka named Sakura. only she wasn’t from Osaka, Japan but was actually born and raised all her life in Layang Layang, a small town near Kluang in Johor. in a short time, we grew close and became good friends.

eventually we would make a memorable road trip to the east cost, she would introduce me to the best kaya toast and Kluang coffee at the quaint old railway station in Kluang town and we would talk philosophy and life.

later that year she left to Japan to be with her guy.

Sakura has been in Japan for about 7 years now and we’ve kept in touch and in those times finished her master’s degree, got a job, changed jobs, moved from Niigata, got married, relocated to Yokohama and most recently had a baby. the items in that list may not be in that order, but the point is a significant part of her life was lived in Japan.

i wanted to vist her in 2006 but never did. 

reflection

while writing this i suddenly remembered an old Japanese TV series in the 80s. Oshin. i used to watch this with my mum on TV3 every evening without fail. it was dubbed of course but i think it had an impact on the impression i would later have on the Japanese people.

perhaps to many of us the catastrophe in Japan is just another big news with no real connection. A friend once said its just statistics to most people until its someone dear to you that is affected.

at one point i had wanted to ramble about the situation over there, a sort of an insight of an observer approximately 5000 kilometers away. but then i thought whats the point. you already know the extent of the disaster. you already saw how dignified the people of Japan remained. you already heard the miracle stories. you have already read the analysis both technical and cultural. and for those who still bother you already follow the latest developments and humanitarian efforts.

no, this post shall be a tribute to my dear friend who is now part of a society that i have always revered greatly. 

my-so-called-Nike shoes.

dear Sakura you would most definitely remember this. but all my other fellow readers, i shall enlighten you. during our road trip to the east coat, we made a detour to Tasik Bera. while walking around and snapping photos with my Nikon F3 film camera (yes the days of film), i noticed the beauty of the striking red of her ‘Nike’ shoes against the dried brown leaves on the ground. it looked like a pair of Nikes but i wasn’t so she called them my-so-called-nikes. it was film, so i had no way to know how the shot would turn up but i took it anyway. this began a series of shots that i took of her wearing the shoes in various locations during our road trip. we purposely decided that the shots would not reveal her face as to add to the focus on the shoes and not the wearer. 

i do not know if the shoes made the journey to Japan but i’d like to believe that it did. here’s to you and the well being of the honorable people of Japan.

Awakening & Rebirth

When I woke up this morning I immediately sensed something amiss. It was too bright and this was a weekday. A confused moment passed and I checked my iPhone for the time. It was 9am. So that was what was wrong. I had overslept for 2 hours and already late by an hour for work. And I still had to get ready before going in. There was obviously 2 ways of looking at this from a glass half full or half empty perspective. I could go on getting anxious and rushing about getting ready while consistently and hopelessly figuring out how or why I had overslept or I could be relieved that I woke up at all at 9 and not at noon when my boss most certainly would have rang me up to find out why I was missing.

So I’m awake now, late but definitely up.

Awakening.

As with most humans, I too am a creature of habit. And like many of us, I like to make that symbolic connection between events or happenings around us with things taking place in our daily lives as well as time cycles of these. And with that we celebrate anniversaries, commemorate events, births, deaths and pretty much anything that we find significant either to ourselves or collectively as a society. Perhaps it’s our natural need to pause and take stock of the situation, a sort of a checkpoint to analyze and reflect. Changes, improvements, degradations, the rate of change or the lack of change. These and many others are pondered upon when we look back at something after a year, or two, or three or the more significant ones like 5, 10, 25, 50 and a hundred years and multiples of that.

Just last night, my other half commented that it has been 8 years since she started her blog. Another friend updated his twitter and facebook status on it being 3 years since the 2008 Malaysian General Election (where a political upheaval took place denying the ruling coalition two-thirds majority in parliament) and what has changed since then. Are we just comfortable rounding up numbers? Why don’t we register at this checkpoint at say 3 years, 7 months and 22 days? Is it because we feel we have a good perception of what the measure of such rounded numbers actually means? Do we feel we can perceive the measure of a complete year just like how we have a relatively good grasp of how long 1 feet or a centimeter is?

But it probably didn’t start with that intention. Ancient humans from the time of the pagans marked their calendars based on the seasons and at a time when hardship and toiling was the rule of the day for the common man, ending of seasonal cycles that allowed them to take a break gave them sufficient reason to celebrate and recharge. With calendars, mankind was able to effectively make date stamps to mark his/her life’s journey milestones accordingly and not just rely on the seasons. As time went by, the toiling never ceased but the rewards (s)he reaped probably increased and (s)he needed more justifications to take the occasional breaks for two big reasons. Firstly, because (s)he wanted to and secondly because now (s)he could afford to. Perhaps it could be possible that this high order milestone laying, entwined with our very nature of wanting to see recognizable patterns that comforts us out of our fear of the unknown eventually filtered down to its current incarnation in our present selves? Why else would we have “Today in History”, celebrate birthdays, have memorial services and so forth? Maybe it is our way of taking a break from routines of the mind and body. The mundaneness of daily life. And maybe just maybe these time or date stamps that we connect to significance gives us the justification to do so, to take that break.    

A couple of weeks ago, Pick Yin, my other half was deciding to refocus and reorganize her blog into mainly a food blog, with all her past postings not related to food and more on life and musings into an archive. During her heydays, she used to blog on a variety of topics but these days her efforts are focused on food. From a marketing standpoint (which I doubt she actually thought about), this would be the better way to do it. A focused food blog would probably attract a stronger following and gain bigger popularity due to its specialization. I was sad that all she had written before would go into the closet. I always looked at her blog as a possible avenue for me to vent my thoughts but with this restructuring that door seems closed unless it is food related like the guest blog i posted not to long ago.

Which brings me here.

Rebirth.

I need to connect significant things to dates in a way that matter to me. This is my OCD (among things). Yesterday March 7, would have been a great day to restart blogging (if the first attempt even qualifies as blogging) as it was the day that conclusive evidence of alien life being found made news. I am a proponent of this idea for a variety of reasons but that is at topic for another day. The point being I had to speak up. That pushed me to get myself registered at tumblr but not enough to begin torturing the world with my ramblings. Then today March 8 was the 8th anniversary of Life is Great (previously the Daily Appreciations of Pick Yin, now the Delicious  Appreciations of Pick Yin) and the 3rd anniversary of last Malaysian GE. Both matters were things that stir strong convictions in me. Enough said. I have made my connections and date stamps to mark this milestone.

With these thoughts I have left for you to digest, I end the restarting of my blog. It is already better than the 3 pathetic lines (the only 3 lines of the single post before the entire blogspot was taken down due to inactivity) I put up the first time I started under “Of Color Portraits and Musical Landscapes” back in July 7, 2007 (Live Earth). Now, I sincerely hope I’ll at least make it to the second post.