1:46 PM
Everybody's Free - Baz Luhrmann
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.
You are NOT as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's. Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings; they are your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography in lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
*EDIT
& I'm really thankful for taking Cultural Industries this sem, even though I felt like I had to swallow down a whole encyclopedia for the exams. But it really opened my eyes and made me realised that we're all surrounded by low cultural products which are getting more distasteful each day. All these cultural industries are using the same standard formulae just because it is lucrative and it's a sure way for them to make money, it's all out to serve their own personal interests! That's why all our cultural products are just variations around the same theme, all so similar to one another. Creativity is not encouraged unless it proves to be profit making. Stop being a passive consumer and start being more discerning.
Anyway what I wanna say can pretty much be summed up with this quote from tumblr...
“But now realize that tv and popular film and most kinds of ‘low’ art—which just means art whose primary aim is to make money—is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas ‘serious’ art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. So it’s hard for an art audience, especially a young one that’s been raised to expect art to be 100 percent pleasurable and to make that pleasure effortless, to read and appreciate serious fiction. That’s not good. The problem isn’t that today’s readership is ‘dumb,’ I don’t think. Just that TV and the commercial-art culture has trained it to be sort of lazy and childish in its expectations.”
- David Foster Wallace
When you work hard for profound pleasure, it’s much better and deeply satisfying than immediate gratification.
Oh & I'm starting to get more interested in horoscopes now after watching this Hong Kong drama revolving around it :)
1:38 PM
& so I've been comparing my hands with Nicole's, and I see how I've aged, from a wrinkle-less hand back then to a hand starting to show signs of wrinkles now. When I was very young, I thought everything was my size. All my friends were my size, and the toys I played with were for my size. I categorized anyone who was bigger than me as adults. I thought God only created two kinds of people, one would be people of my size, and the other would be people who are big and whom I called adults. I always thought that adults came into this world in the size they were, I never thought that they too were small once. In my eyes then, I was small but I felt big. Seems like as we grow bigger, we start to feel smaller. Anyway now, whenever I see small kids, I wonder if they are thinking the same thoughts as I did back then.
& back to the point about my starting-to-wrinkle hands...yknow the idea of death scares me. When I was young, the thought about it could send me into tears. & even though I now know that death is inevitable, I'm still freaking scared. The thing I'm scared about is, I have no idea where I will be when I'm dead, I don't know if I'm going to be surrounded in darkness forever, I don't know how it's going to feel like, I don't know if I'm ever going get another chance to see this beautiful world again. The whole idea about not being able to picture how the end is going to look and feel like is very scary. I did this logical thinking test last time, and I met with a question which asked whether I was someone who would be concerned about the process of a project or the end product. I think I chose process back then, but now come to think of it, I think would choose the end. Because I'm someone who pictures how the end product would look like first before starting on the process, at least this way I have an idea of where I'm heading and I would be sure that I would get the result I want and feel satisfied, and also make sure that throughout the process I really give my all in order to achieve the end result. & I guess this applies to life as well. & I guess it's time I start believing in a religion, so at least I can have some picture of how the end might look. I think hz once asked me if I would choose to die peacefully or die with a terminal disease. She said she would choose dying with a terminal disease, because at least she has a rough estimate of the time she has left, so she would be able to cherish the time left so much better and do the things she liked and do everything for the people she loved. Her reasoning makes sense to me since not everyone actually lives each day to the fullest until they start to realise their time is going to be up.
Now I really start to see how life is really a journey.
9:06 AM
Anyway I think mainstream songs are getting more trashy each day, my entire sleep was ruined when I got woken up by annoying Kesha grr. The lyrics for all these songs are meaningless, and repetitive which is damn annoying plus the fact that it's so noisy, please just shut up already. Where did all the good music go?
& a few weeks back I rejected the offer of an iphone, and Nicole being Nicole of course she couldn't resist such an offer. I feel as if technology is taking over the world. Until now I don't see what's so great with an iphone. I don't see a need for all those abundant applications, I don't see a need to be connected through my phone all the time (I'm already trying to remain disconnected as much as possible, which is quite hard, but I'm trying, so I don't need yet another technology to ruin my plans of staying disconnected). All I need is just the simple function of a phone, that is to text and call, and me being me my frequency of calling is definitely not very high. Besides my phone is functioning well regardless of the number of times I've dropped it. Why not try dropping your iphone and see if it can still last for long after that. Maybe I will only change when my phone has become obsolete.
After watching Bride Wars again today, I realised that things have never been the same again, and maybe that's why I always feel this constant need to fill this empty space inside by engaging in so many things. But at the end of the day, I find it all so pointless.
"Sometimes in life there are bonds formed that can never be broken. Sometimes you really can find that one person who will stand by you no matter what. Maybe you'll find it in a spouse and celebrate it with your dream wedding, but there's also the chance that the one person you can count on for a lifetime, the one person who knows you sometimes better than you know yourself is the same person who has been standing beside you all along"
- Bride Wars
3:00 PM
I found this term in one of my readings and I found it very apt, now that I'm searching for myself again even amidst the amount of books I have to swallow. I really think finding one's true self is very important, not because Marilyn Monroe said so, it's because I don't want to die at the end of the day not knowing who I really am, that's damn sad really. When I do find myself, I must stay true to it and not falter regardless of whatever challenges I may face. & I was reading Bonnie's older entry, I still think I'm going through a quarter life crisis! Bonnie, how? :( From that time I commented on your entry, until now I still think I'm going through a quarter life crisis omg.
I really think the time where you lay in bed, just right before you fall asleep is when your mind is crystal clear. I want to pen down all these thoughts running through my head before I sleep, but if I do, I think I don't have to sleep already.
& last night I was just thinking back to the China trip, and I realised it's the very first time I actually allow myself to let my raw emotions show in front of so many people, and so many of them are people I barely even trust. But lucky I won't get to see them much I hope. Omg I must be crazy, I really don't know how I managed to do it. Must have been the China beer, and it could also be that I could relate to xj's story which gave me the courage to just let go of this baggage for awhile. Omg I must have looked like a freaking wreck/mess, blabbering on and on incoherently. Eee I scare myself just thinking back on it. Okay, never gonna talk about it again, what happens in China, stays in China.
5:01 PM
In view of what has happened so far, I know everyone's facing their own difficulties in life, and now I really see how life can be very fragile. Must be handled with care. One moment I can be standing here and the next I might be gone. I'm not having weird suicidal thoughts, I know life is too precious to be suicidal. It's just that I find life so fragile that it scares me. I wonder what people will remember me for when I'm dead. And it seems like there has been an influx of deaths these days.
8:10 PM