Soowie & Flooe

Either being a survivor or a looser, because it is hard to balance myself as I walk along this weakened rope

A rare, really really rare sight of Mike saying 'Smile truthfully from your heart man."

I owe you guys too much, to the handful of people that I personally have in mind right now. Words alone are inadequate to unambiguously express what I have to explain; I hope that someday I will have the time to explain and clear things meticulously to where they belong. Patience is a virtue and I am dealing with it right now, too many lies and emotions too bogus have I dealt with in the pass. I am ashamed of what I have done, and to seek a confirmation from God alone is hard to deal with despite the fact that I know He truly forgives all who sinned against him. Too used to covering everything up, too used to putting a mask on all the time, when it finally breeds boldness it is certainly difficult to undo and acclimatize myself to new surroundings. 

Please bear with me as I slowly pick myself up, it may be a dawdling and apathetic process but please stay where I am because I’m in a verge of slipping off any moment from now onwards.

From Thought Catalogue

I'm an avid fan, obsessed about good writing and words, especially those really good ones. It has always been so rare to stumble upon an article that is so true and so real, especially those that can really make one teared up. This particular one speaks about a past, something really personal and I could not help but to read it over and over again because it is just too heart touching.

Losing A Best Friend 

FEB. 21, 2012 

By MILA JARONIEC

 

When it happens, you won’t want to believe it. You’ll take their word for it when they say they’re busy, swamped at work, “just doing me.” You’ll make excuses for them, put your ringer on extra loud in case they call. But you’ll still feel the change, and because you can’t rationalize it, you’ll try to ignore it. 

It’s a specific kind of loneliness that hits you like a wave of nausea. When the two of you are having a beer and you realize that you have both been staring out the same window for twenty minutes, nothing to say, the opposite of a comfortable silence. When they cancel plans consistently and stall when giving you reasons. When you scroll through your contacts and stop at their name and almost call but don’t, feeling suddenly, inexplicably, abandoned and confused. 

Sometimes there’s no huge fight that marks the end of a friendship. No falling out, no major disagreement. Sometimes it just falls apart for no good reason. Distance. New relationships. Priorities. Somehow these things can become more important than your connection; they shouldn’t but they do. And as we get older we tend to downsize, prioritize. Trim the corners of our lives, keeping what’s important and discarding what isn’t. Sometimes we stop needing people in our lives and it isn’t even conscious. No one wakes up in the morning actively thinking “Hmm, I think I’ll stop being friends with so-and-so today.” It just goes out with an empty fizz, like a cigarette hitting the bottom of a Coke can. 

In so many ways, losing a close friend is worse than losing a lover. Lovers are transient for the most part but friends are supposed to be there for you always, or so we like to believe. Friendship is a special kind of love that’s not supposed to fade. You never expect the one person you thought you could always depend on to disappear without saying goodbye. And when they do you feel sickeningly stupid and cheated, wondering what you meant to them all along, whether you were just convenient or in the right place at the right time. You never really know for sure. 

You look through pictures from back when you were happy — holding each other up drunk and ecstatic, working on art projects on a rainy Sunday afternoon — and can’t understand what happened. Reach for the phone. Attach a photo to an email, start the subject line with some fusion of “Remember this?” and “I miss you…” Get suddenly overwhelmed by a horrible emptiness and discard the draft, leaving the phone untouched. History. So much history flushed down a dirty sink. 

And the worst part is, you don’t even know how to explain yourself. You know if you bring this up with them they’ll give you a blank expression and a blank excuse. You don’t want to explain how you feel. You can’t. You just want them to get it, to read you like they used to be able to. You want to take them by the shoulders and shake them, screaming Where are you? What happened?! Until you’re blue in the face. But you can’t do that either, because you’re no longer on the same level and it’s going to make you feel crazy.  

In life, it’s a given that you will lose people. People will flow in and out like curtains through an open window, sometimes for no reason at all. But losing someone important to you will feel like a suckerpunch every single time, and you’ll never see it coming. Which makes the friendships that do hold out, the ones that make it through countless breakdowns and breakthroughs and changes and years, so damn important.

From Russia to Seattle

Random tumblr quote photography

Dear Seattle, 

It’s been too long since I heard from you; your absence in most of the social networks has certainly driven me into bewilderment. The sudden perplexity and confound wondering where have you disappeared to. I missed being able to have our regular intellectual debates or regular scholarly discussion over matters, the habitual [mentioning] in Facebook regarding news that may seemed to attract your interest or just simply nonchalant chitchat and minor sarcastic mockery. You made me realized how much that I missed despite having half of a thousand friends in Facebook, your absence has literally obliged me to adapt into an unsullied environment; your name does not pop out in the [search] box. ‘Odd,’ I utter to myself monotonously. 

You’ve been undergoing through so much, an email labeled ‘This is Long’ sent to me, I’m glad of your long years of trustworthy and loyalty despite the amount of time we knew each other. No email is ‘too long’ to be sent when a friend is desperate for a pair of ears to hear. 

Time cures, but most important companionship with an addition of the human heart. You might be bored, rigidly fed up of what I told you over uncountable times but I’m shamelessly going to repeat again till it reverberates in your mind. The person I know, I know it sincerely that you will eventually go through whatever hardships you are facing now. Though you might be collapsed underneath, but trust me… time will tell and you will eventually see through things. Perhaps your future-Washington- Psych major certificate will tell you better. 

If testimonies help, then I might as well share one. I’m no one with natural self healing abilities, the countless circumstances and obstacles I’ve gone through are beyond what this brat can ever imagined. I’m surprised myself, how the hell can this happen to me among all people? It took me quite a while to pick myself up again but here I am, trying to be a self-proclaimed consultant (derisorily), striving hard to lend over a helping hand. 

People around us are the ones that will bring us up when we fall, their care and attention for you and not forgetting to mention, the jillion sacrifices and trust. A handful of these friends are worth living for, and to tell you that your buddy here will always be there for you.

Yours sincerely, Russia

Paw

"People come and go— they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in your favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past." 

— Nicholas Sparks

Slanted Eye Army

Familiar paper streaks during Chinese New Year

Grandma making traditional cake, never succeeded in this personally

Grandpa, always trying to teach me how to make one of these

'Cai Kueh'

Family roots, counter alienation and confusion which helps define who we are, they provide something steady, reliable and safe in this world of disorientation. But seriously, why does the world often judge Asians or specifically Malaysian Chinese not by our own origin? I've been traveling to various places, meeting a diversity of people but dejectedly people often come in front saying: 

"Where are you from?" 

"Japanese?"
"Korean?"

"China?"

If you're lucky enough they might call you a 'Singaporean'. 

Once in Turkey, I was doing my last minute shopping with a friend of mine and these really amusing shop workers confronted us. 

"Where are you from, China?"

His friend replied: 

"Impossible that they're from China, they have beautiful eyes, double eyelids [Not to point fingers that individuals with single eyelids are less attractive or whatsoever]"

So I decided to play along and said that if they can guess where we're from [highest confident level ever since Malaysia appears to be seen by no one in this entire globe] I'll get a thing or two from their shop. What do you know, out of the blue he blurted out...

"Malaysia!"

The thing is that, why does it take people from all walks of life to recognize citizens of Malaysia? Why can't people assumed us directly that we're from Malaysia instead of making guesses that I'm from Japan or Korea or China? It's as if Asians are meant to have slanted eyes, having coitus to produce slanted eyed babies invading the world with their Asian level mentally, maybe like an empire or army of slanted eyed terminators invading mother Earth? That's my imagination, no really... I'm not even close to being a racist among people of my own roots. 

Mind Setting

I had an unexpectedly long conversation with a friend over a certain matter; I did not really plan to be engaged in such confabulation at that particular moment with that exact person. It’s like babbling to a new profound species from a different paradigm. Don’t know why, but I somehow [disreputably] admit that I categorize my friends according to circles. However, it does not mean that I am egoistic or self-centered that I have the tendency to judge people and hence group them according to personal imaginary ratings, point-black. It’s an approach on how I mingle around with people from all walks of life. 

That's my cat, after being unnamed due to my absence I decided to name her 'Patches'

Some people are able to deliberately accept my appalling attitude of being extremely straight forward: in such cases, it’s either that you’re one of my close friends or we've come to a stage whereby I at least… accepted you as a friend. Some people with minor interactions on and off, well let’s just say that I’m at my best state of being pretentiously nice but mentally hoping that we could both shed off the masks that have been bothering. 

Anyway, our in dept talk actually lasted for approximately an hour; which can only mean one thing. I’m just amazing, amazing that I can humble enough to lay down my pride to actually speak up about issues that though it may seemed diminutive even to me. Well of course, this friend of mine was also unpredictably sharing things which I presumed, she originally had no intention or purpose to share with me. 

Cat fur, I have this all over the place; even in your rice bowl

It’s really funny how the human mind works don’t you think, we can go on for centuries unwarily setting up [Mind] preferences and then at certain moments being formatted by our emotions, the entire system goes down. Improved or not.

No Avatar Fight

Hi! Doesn’t sound very friendly or breeding any sort of familiarity of any kind appointing to that imaginary gesture I presumed. I keep telling myself to at least blog within these few days, but eventually the level of procrastination leaps up to an extend that I can imagine myself leaving this lousy blog of mine dead and eventually swept into extinction. I shamelessly blame the local Malaysian weather for this, contradicting with the current Russian winter of -30 degrees... I adore my beloved Malaysian sun so much I can practically imagine myself suntanning in the middle of the road.

Wasted 10.50 Euros on a book which lasted me for 2 weeks and not having the urge to continue reading

Not too familiar on placing my fingers on this familiar keyboard facing a plain canvas and typing out conjoining alphabets to pour out my haphazard, erratic thoughts all the while because there is just too much happenings that I cannot simply squeeze everything into one post.

Simply could not be bothered about minute incidents that have no significance or whatsoever. But then again, the recent catastrophes bombarding Volgograd stopped me from not paying attention; a good friend of mine was placed in a situation of gangsterism which costs him bruises and minor wounds. Yes, Fucking racist Russians [excuse me for the vulgar language, I normally curse mentally] decided to ambush foreign students again to show their support as the upcoming election takes place, flea brains are meant to be fed with dog dung I say.

Soy milk, reminds me of a dear friend Kaliz cause' she used to hand made soy milk for a few of us

I took the initiative to return back to my former secondary school, which means I incredibly, phenomenally got myself up from bed at 6AM just to tag dad along in order to meet up with a former teacher of mine. As astonishing as it seemed for me to discover that the sizes of new form one students are depressingly going down the chart, not that I am proud of my heights or whatsoever; as a matter of fact I am brazenly admitting that I am pathetically short for those who know me personally. Really interesting topic we had there, discussing over issues regarding students nowadays which indirectly made me feel like I’m as ancient as a retired working man deliberating mundane issues.

Fruits, that grandma is pestering me to consume because she assumed that Russia is facing winter all year long

Speaking of retired man and being an early bird waking up at 6AM, I tagged along some friends who are also having their semester break to head for breakfast and when I say breakfast, it means a 7AM drowsy drive to a local shop for scrumptious Sarawak Laksa. 7AM and the place is packed with elderly people convened together accompanied by colloquy which I assumed to be about their wives, children and humdrum, boring things. Immediately I voiced out: “Well, look at the bright side; at least when they’re old they still have friends to chit chat around. I swear when I’m old and unwanted by my children, I’ll just have to die alone by the roadside.” No I seriously mean it. I’m beginning to see what most of my seniors who told me earlier on, are slowly coming into reality. Medicine is a field which literally kills your social life other than your own circle. It’s tolerably for me to mingle around with friends studying the same field, but to entirely make new friends beyond the border… It’s merely possible, let alone I’m pessimistic, anti-social and I live a sad life. True story.

I haven't get myself a new haircut yet, no wonder no one recognizes me. 

Eelin Tan

Budapest, summer 2011

Thank you for walking all the endless miles with me throughout our friendship, not sure whether it's a blessing or true luck to have such an amazing friend that can see through all your flaws and watch you slowly grow up  to someone better. Happy Birthday, Eelin Tan. 

As Said By Tim

Randomly stumbled upon this photograph; what's the best picture to post that can self-remind myself that I've grown up in many ways?

Raw photograph of me when I was a toddler, first and unseen before.

It took me more than two years to partially grasp a firm hold onto it. I tend to seek a confirmation in any sort of relationship, I cannot help it. It’s selfish, appallingly hoggish to expect something in return from others. Personally, I am cognizant by the fact that I treat people by expecting, in return the way they treat me similar to how I treat them. The lack of trust perhaps, according to a good brother of mine that once said to me? I was haunted by a past on how I easily ruined a friendship over the fact that one has to tolerate me for being too pushy and desperate just because I could not find my position in another person’s heart. The constant perpetual desperation due to the lack of trust, basically my fault of being so immature and naïve back then cost a friendship. 

“Why being so bothered on how you want people to treat you?” 

Maybe I should take this break to figure out this properly especially when things are mended and patched back to where it belongs (I hope), just to make sure that I don't have to drag myself back into what's called the past because I really did not like it there.

Sorry God For Blaming You

I've arrived to a point where I am unable to blog entirely, literally, meticulously about anything personal as I know that the number of readers around my circle slowly increases in diameter. It really creeps me out, contradicting to what I emphasized on eons ago regarding the freedom and necessity to blog one’s heart out. I am cognizant of the limits and details that should be splurged out to fellow readers, the decency to retain personal details that only some may know. 

Some might know what I’ve been going through, I would not claim that I have survived but honestly it had hit me real hard. A kid like me has no strength or perseverance to face the truth that I am nothing but burden and being the factor to others’ problems. Long story short, I have undergone the worst of the worst. Maybe someday I will dig out the guts and bravery to blog about it, but as for me… the phalanges are really incapable of working side by side with emotions and the cerebrum in order to be honest. Forgive me once. It has been the biggest, inconceivable weight that could ever be hurled upon me and only God knows how much I hated and blamed Him for all that has happened. Desperately rummaging through the past thinking of the one particular sin that could possibly lead me to this. Ashamed, but I’m really sorry beyond words. 

It made me realized the people that cared for me after everything that happened, a sign not to take anyone for granted. It can be the closest individual I had aside from my parents like Lily dearest or a random senior whom I hardly spend anytime longer than 5 minutes over counter commenting on Facebook. Or to this particular Spanish lady and her family who offered me all the help just to make sure that I made it through the night by making me a decent dinner. What’s more, a total stranger who became friends who is willing to really helped me out… basically my savior like Ing Tai. I am out of words on how to thank these people. Talking helps, talking with parents and crying to them helps, a conversation with some of the people whom I put my trust the most also helps. Someday, maybe someday I will truthfully repay their help. I can go on and on endlessly. To my best friends who have null idea of what has happened, I apologize.. I simply could not bear it all. 

I must need some moment of clarity, some divine intervention that will put me back on course. It came before I even knew it; out of all the misery I am glad and relieved actually that a miracle happened. Thought that I had loose a significant part of memory, more or less similar to losing an important individual; but it came back. In pieces or in fragments, it does not really matter. Maybe God does know how to fix things when everything just crumbles down on me, when things are in their worst position ever that I certainly am not capable of handling them myself. What are the odds of having such a coincidence? I traded such a huge portion of my life, financially, mentally and emotionally for a person, do not sound right but that is what I thought of at least. It could not have happened in any better time. 

I finally grew up; it took me a long time to actually have in mind and to apprehend but I’m glad that I did.