falling into grace

since i've last posted:

There was studying in oxford, bunking in with john, shitting myself laughing at jerald and his antics (botatoes?); serene, sheryl and I getting progressively drunker while managing to maintain a very. serious. conversation, seeing all my friends again, collections (4 essays in the morning, 4 in the afternoon, maths the next day. so. tired.), 12 hour pub crawl for dush's birthday, salman's visit! lounging in the sun (yes, sun! yes, warmth!) in christchurch meadow enjoying chocolate sauce cones with chocolate ice-cream, rushing around organising the ball, then of course, i wouldn't feel at home if it weren't all topped off with an all-night essay crisis. (which i've just finished. 2166 words ladies and gentlemen!)

and then it's amazing how much has happened in just a couple of days. whether it was witnessing the pain of loving someone but not being able to make it work; or whether it's learning very first hand the fall-out of confusing sex and friendship (and maybe learning more about myself in the process). it's been wild. and it's only 4 days into term.

things to come: georgie's birthday; thames boat party; the teddy hall ball; my sister's visit!; aimee's visit?; exams exams exams. and then, after 10 months, i'll be back at that airport i left in tears so long ago. Then, my head was filled with fear and uncertainty, my heart was filled with sorrow at all i couldn't leave behind. Almost a year on, I wonder if it'll be the same - walking out from a cold building into the warmth, instead of the other way around; seeing everyone again, sleeping in my old bed again. I wonder how different things will be - how much I will have changed then, to add to the already entirely different me now. And you, dear reader (all 3 of you!) will no doubt be privy to my innermost happiness and horror.

Ah it's good to be back!

Posted by chang! at 4:45 AM | Permalink | Comments

went to shu-wen's blog, not really expecting those pictures to jump out at me like that. such an unfamilar face - yet i feel like i've been socked in the stomach, overwhelmed with..what is this? nostalgia? shock that these people are still alive and existing, and going about their business, when they've been no part of mine for so long.

so long that it's been easy to imagine that you've fallen off the face of the earth, and then the thought: to you, I am the one who has ceased to exist.

how transient our precious illusions; how tiny our trekmarks across time -


Over the sea and far away
She's waiting like an Iceberg
Waiting to change,
But she's cold inside
She wants to be like
the water,

All the muscles tighten in her face
Buries her soul in one embrace
They're one and the same
Just like water

Then the fire fades away
But most of everyday
Is full of tired excuses
But it's too hard to say
I wish it were simple
But we give up easily
You're close enough to see that
You're the other side of the world
to me

On comes the panic light
Holding on with fingers
and feelings alike
But the time has come
To move along

Can you help me?
Can you let me go
And can you still love me
When you can't see me anymore

Then the fire fades away
most of everyday
Is full of tired excuses
But it's too hard to say
I wish it were simple
But we give up easily
You're close enough to see that
You're the other side of the world
to me

kt tunstall

Posted by chang! at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments

at the risk of over-shadowing my last post (which was, erhem, quoted (ok, on yaxin's blog, which is hardly the zenith of intellectual achievement. but still!)): (zhuang's) pics from edinburgh -


arthur's seat, which we climbed! (my (regretful) suggestion.) that's tiny me and tiny dush.

view of some stuff from the entrance of the edinburgh castle.

dush's neighbourhood

tired and crabby. perhaps the most revealing picture of the lot. hah.

princes street.

in the scottish parliament.

stealthily taken on the train. zhuang loves this pic. him: "2/3 rule of beauty blah blah blah". me: "i look puffy-eyed and bloated..and surly." (this is rather startling evidence of the fact that my "neutral" face is to most impartial observers: "scary and pissy". sigh..no wonder everyone so scared ar.)

faith and i. it was awesome seeing her again..who would have thought, 8 years ago when she migrated to glasgow, that we would be reunited in edinburgh. old friends tho, always the best kind.

Posted by chang! at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments

it's been too long since i've blogged properly - i've been chalking it up to the fact that i'm a nomad during the holidays, and am never settled enough to do things like blog or reply my email (hah, such transparent excuses), but the truth i've just not felt inspired enough, or bothered enough, to write lately.

The holidays were properly a whirlwind as usual. back in oxford now, and time to start mugging properly. but before that: I owe it to myself (and the 3 faithful readers, 2 of whom are my sister and my father) a proper post on my holidays.

Words cannot express how awesome Spain was. To think that it had started out almost farcically: a plan hatched nonchalently by vicki and i one afternoon while walking back from grocery shopping. it went something like this:
her: (catching sight of row of travelbooks in some shop) ooh, look at all these cool places
me: oh, i totally want to go to egypt!
her: me too! we should go!
me: yeah, but it's too far and expensive and dangerous though
her: let's go to...spain! look, there's an STA over there!

you get the gist. it carried on that way alll through the booking of hostels and tickets late one night which went something like this:
me: googling 'hostels in madrid'
her: this one looks pretty! book it!

in fact, the most effort put into preparing for the spain trip was our shopping trip to primark, where we (very optimistically) got bikinis, sunglasses, sunhats, beachbags etc.

needless to say, the night before we were due to get on the plane, I was feeling rather trepidatious. we had a brand new guidebook which NO ONE had read, I was about to embark on a two week long traipse through the unknown with two ulu Brits whose combined overseas experience were schools trips to OTHER parts of England. One's idea of "roughing it" was to bring her flat boots instead of her boots with heels, and the other would probably start a conversation with a pickpocket. I was convinced we would be RRK-ed (that's raped, robbed and killed in phoebe-speak), never see Angleterre, not to mention the garden city, again.

who would have thought it would be the most awesome two weeks i've had in recent memory? we had totally bitten off more than we could chew, but that was the brilliance of the trip: we were just winging it at every step, planning ambitious Gaudi treks around Barcelona over breakfast, spontaneously buying nosebleed seat tickets to a random concert just because we couldn't get over how gorgeous the opera house was, stumbling into a random intimate flamenco performance (so absolutely riveting), managing to soak in las fallas, enjoying museums like i never thought i would, partly thanks to being with someone who knew what was going on.

and the glorious banter! vicki falling down the stairs and taking an old woman with her; her trying to convince the hotel lobby to "pack" breakfast for us for our early train trip the next morning; the incredible snoring man and rachel's misery; me at the buffet table stuffing down that ill-advised last creme caramel - even writing this down now in an empty room surrounded by suitcases, I'm cracking myself up, thinking of the good times. from "bikini me fresh!" to "do you want to get married, DO YOU?!" and to the long, amazing chats we were still having at the tail-end of the holiday, at a time when we should have been so irritated and sick of each other that we would be communicating in grunts.

And the love that overwhelms me when I think of the two of them in Spain: despite the ulu-ness and the very unglam childlike glee at the four-star hotel, and the resentment that I sometimes felt that I had to be the one doing the logistics and the worrying, they came through when I needed them too: vicki stuffing in the bags in the overhead on the train, completely oblivious to the deathstares she was getting; rachel's endless wisdom and her determination to not let us slide into a moshpit of sloth - we were tourists, glorious tourists, young, and guileless, and just having so much fun.

writing down on postcards our "memories" on that last day in the hostel - one card for "quotes" and another for "anecdotes" - i think we were all a little stunned at how well the trip had gone. We had our tense, tired moments, but for someone who has had friendships ruined over bad holidays, this trip was such a relief. (even the last-minute crisis was resolved spectacularly: I left a shopping bag (which had my shopping from spain in it) at gatwick, and the wonderful staff just used their walkie-talkies to summon the bag onto the next train into victoria. love these people.)

I think alot of it had to do with the fact that i've changed quite abit, I think. Before (before what? i have no idea.), I would just, in a fit of self-involved superior pique, see a flaw in a friend which I would magnify in my head. Then I would systematically destroy my own opinion of that person in my mind, and just ruin the friendship for myself, thinking: god, i can see through them completely! I can't be friends with such a person of course! This time, for some reason, whenever that opening occurred - and it did, of course, in 12 days of 24 hour interaction - something told me to step away from the abyss. Maybe it was because I knew that if I did this to my two best friends, what would I be left with? But I like to think that maybe that's someone I'm learning to be: someone less critical, someone more tolerant, and maybe someone more self-aware: because I know I'm hard to live with sometimes - and the least I can do for the people who put up with me and love me in spite of it all, is to forgive their far fewer faults.

it's so easy to hold a grudge: so easy to feel bitter about someone not coming through for you, so easy to play the victim, to be righteously angry because that's so much more fun than..you know, letting it go. And so, so hard to forgive, especially when you can't see a reason to. But sometimes the only reason is just because there's no other way to live with yourself. Do these things get easier with age? (is it easier at 34?) Or maybe it just gets easier when you realise that there are so many things in the world to feel resentful about..and the one thing I don't want is to be a bitter old lady. you know one of those. Even if I die alone with my cats, I refuse to be bitter about my lot. Because that's no way to live, is it? and it's not a good way to die either.

hmm something tells me i'm not talking about spain anymore. oh well. post on edinburgh to come -

Posted by chang! at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments