I think the sweetest thing about love is that someone really cares when you are hungry. And i'm not just restricting it to romantic love, but every kind of love which makes your stomach as much theirs as yours.

On another note, I think I would love a t-shirt that says "Will Love You for Food".

I can't remember if I ever mentioned that my family bought a Holland Lop while I was in Holland. The irony continues since my pet name in the family is Rabbit, we tend to call each other by our zodiac birth names - and whether our resemblance to our zodiac animals were natural or a self fufilling prophecy is something like feng shui, one cannot put a finger on. When my sister is not around, and when I switch on the air con in my room, the rabbit will go scratch scratch scratch, knocking at my door. When I open the door, she will look at me, sniff around my legs, scamper in then scamper out, she doesn't let me close the door, and when I gently push the door close, she will slither out in a hurry, not sure which world to remain in: inside or outside the door? There is a kind of love you probably won't gain knowledge of till you get a pet of your own, and even then, it's not clear how much you will learn at once. My first pet broke my heart, but even more deeply, is that feeling that I also broke a little of his. It reminds me of the Little Prince and the advice the fox or the rose gave him, don't go taming things if you can't love them for always. This Rabbit, called Sunshine but may more appropriately be called Bull dozer, had a rough start of a relationship with me. I naively thought the Rabbit was a dog, so used to open and readily gained affection. But this rabbit, this rabbit was as immovable and impenetrable as Medusa's eye.

But then Sis moved into hall, and I started spending time in the day with the Rabbit, who so used to my sister's love, was now a little forlorn. She may not answer you all the time, but she answers you when you need her the most. She will just sit there, let you stroke her and as if she was now the medium in which time flowed through, and you were stroking time softly across her back... it's in those times you understand why we need love. Love is the only thing that can take us outside of time. Outside of these human ways of measuring one full moon to the next, outside of all the goodbyes and hellos we have yet to say, love is the one thing that keeps us falling off the earth and going mad. Science tells us it is gravity, but if it weren't for love, it is likely we would have all died out long ago. Scratch scratch scratch. Someone, somewhere, outside a door, wants to be let in.

Carole King and James Taylor set for World Tour 2010.

I am super excited and really sad at the same time. I have two artists on my list of must watch their concerts before I die (or they die). And I fulfilled my Eric Clapton fantasy, but I've never been able to watch Carole King :( since she is about 3/4 retired. And now!!!!! Carole King and James Taylor! I've always loved their duet... On Top of the Roof... I can't even type coherently. It's like a dream come true but nightmare in reality. How am I going to get the tickets??? Or worse, how am I going to physically get to watch the concert! Sighs.

The dates so far:

Tour Routing:
SAT 27-Mar MELBOURNE ROD LAVER ARENA
WED 31-Mar BRISBANE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE
SAT 3-Apr HUNTER HOPE ESTATE
TUE 6-Apr SYDNEY ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE
SAT 10-Apr AUCKLAND VECTOR ARENA
WED 14-Apr TOKYO NIPPON BUDOKAN
FRI 16-Apr TOKYO NIPPON BUDOKAN
FRI 16-MAY LOS ANGELES HOLLYWOOD BOWL

UGH!! If it was only a month later maybe my dream can come through since I plan to travel Tokyo in May. Sighs. I heard there will be more North America and Europe dates announced. But how feasible will it be for me to fly? Sighs. I feel like I am wrestling with myself, since it's one of those things I know I will regret to the day I die. I would definitely fly to melbourne and watch it but it's in the worst date possible, I don't even know when my exams will be in march/april. And the tickets are released in Nov! If only the tickets were released later, perhaps if I only know how school goes next semester, I can fly there for a few days to watch the concert. Crazy right? But it's my dream :(. Sighs. Ok I have sighed too much in one entry. It's pretty crazy to fly so far to watch just one concert. Since I plan to backpack Japan and Taiwan already, I really doubt I will be able to fly to america or europe just to catch the concert. Sighs. Sighs. I cannot stop sighing. The chances of me catching them is about 0.000001%. Still, cross fingers.

It reminds me of how Leonard Cohen was giving concerts when I was in europe, but despite my love for leonard cohen, I didn't feel the impetus to go watch him at all... I think the desire to watch someone live, stems from your own feelings about his or her music. I don't want to watch Leonard Cohen live because his poetry is live enough for me. I want to watch Carole King live because she's like the voice you've listened through happiness, sadness, joy and heartbreak and I want to hear that live!

another book to add to my endless reading list: barbara kingsolver, the lacuna.

Today, a little seed sprouted in me. It was planted long ago, but laid dormant, forgotten as the mind goes on plowing other fertile corners, distracted by the more dazzling flowers blooming around. As i went to bath, I felt this sour stickiness around me, but it wasn't a sour stickiness you could actually smell. And then I remembered the homeless people I met during Europe, that strong overwhelming stench in which you had to try and hold it all in you so you won't hurt someone else's feelings. It usually happened in the metro, a few stops, here and there, and then they were gone.

I can't imagine being homeless. Those nights in which you sleep in train stations, airports or hostel bars, you knew you were going to a better place the next day. Transiting for hours, is different from transiting throughout life. It is difficult being a migrant, and probably something you can't really grasp till you realise you only have the rights others decide to bestow on you. You have no birthright. I remember having residence visa problems, none of my own fault, but due to poor administration - someone completely abandoned my file! So, you go to the immigration office, and you ask where to go to, all kinds of alphabets and tables, and this section where all kinds of people, colours, origins, sit and wait with an uneasy face. And you are really grateful that the Dutch know english so well and their officers are well-educated, if not, who can you speak to? Who will care?

You know how almost everyday the newspaper reports about property? About how the apartment sizes are decreasing and becoming "mickey mouse" apartments and whether they are livable? About how prices are increasing? About singaporeans' unease of all the immigrants? People are frightened because they want a roof over their heads. They want a little space in which no matter how harsh the world is, they can sleep and belong. I forgot along the way, but I do remember now, saying to myself, that when I return home, I will care. I will care that people have homes and migrants have rights. I don't know how that will work, or what I will actually do, but I'm glad i remember.

I kind of wandered into Maira Kalman from Corrie's link. I don't think I've ever met someone who I wished I had their talents, but man is Maira Kalman such a woman. Not only is her blog called "the pursuit of happiness", she photographs, paints amazingly and writes sensitively. She can do everything! But it's great. Everytime you come close to some form of beauty and greatness, it incites in you a desire to expand yourself.

*AND* she writes children books which she illustrates herself. I need to get those books and... sighs. *dreamy sigh*

See: http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/may-it-please-the-court/.

It's funny. Today, the Sunday Newspaper has a column on a guy looking back on his life from a recent class reunion and unlike the Happy Blog article that tells us we shouldn't look back least we turn into a column of salt ala the Bible (haha), the columnist wistfully wonders the what ifs of still being with his first love.

At my grandmother's wake last week, my cousin (A) asked me if she should study literature or law. Is this the me of years past? But it isn't. My cousin is really different from me and she is not 18, she is 21, with her own views and experiences of working and studying. Actually, very few people I know who were really passionate and still are passionate about literature, actually go on to study literature. You study for life or a living, and hopefully both at the same time. The funny twist is that another cousin (B) tells me to tell the cousin to study literature because her bubbly personality will enjoy the flexibility of literature more than the rigid structure of law.

I don't think there will be an eternal answer to literature or law. They aren't commensurate in the first place, unless you see it very formally as years of study and measure it in terms of starting pay. That isn't, to me, a way to choose a course. But who am i to decide how fellow travelers pick the route they would like to travel? We may both live on this world, but never go to the same places, have the same experiences or dreams. I don't think, anyhow, that whatever you study actually determines what kind of life you will have or the things you will actually do. Can 4 or 5 years of your life dictate the next ten or twenty years?

I don't think we should see our lives as moving up a ladder but as something more complicated, a pattern that we can't grasp. I know the feeling best while backpacking. Usually the receptionist, will be a foreigner living in a foreign city, he was a backpacker too. You will share your experiences and he/she will be envious of your ability to travel now. But you see, he is saving up for his next experience while you are on yours, and the next time you meet, you are probably fixed right here, while he moves off to his next adventure. So life is not up or down, but of fixed moments and fluid moments. And even if you don't know where you would like to be in life, what I would advise my cousin in the end, is the importance of being able to go to where you like to be when you do finally know .

The scariest thing in life is not being in something you dislike, but not being able to do anything about it.

I fell sick a few days ago and finally visited a doctor yesterday. A traditional chinese practitioner. I always love visiting "chinese doctors", their clinics have all kind of smells which I love - herbs, flowers, all kind of scents, it feels real and as if one is tapping into the healing powers of the earth. Western practitioners instead always have a clean antiseptic feel, completely sterile - as if one goes there to clear everything that is bad inside. A western clinic feels like a human washing machine. People hardly talk in the western clinic, but at a chinese house it is a veritable market. So, finally it's my turn. She places her fingers on my pulse, she is hearing things I can't. She can read palmistry too, surprisingly, she comments that my brain can only think of big things and not housework. My mum laughs. She says I have a boy's personality. I think too much. They move on to talk about my sister and her rebelliousness. I notice the lines on my palm have changed. They are much more complicated than they were years ago.

Western medicine is lovely to drink because they are artificially sweetened. Chinese medicine is black and intimidating. But it is not bitter at all. The aftertaste is always surprising, and thoughtful.

Shirin posted this great article, from http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/the-referendum/. Happy Days. Blogs. That is a name that cannot go wrong. It's amazing that at twenty one, you get actually get the article, because it's filled with a deeper poignancy of having been at forty instead of the having will be at twenty. But you can feel it enough now, as we all take our paths that seems to have been ear-marked years ago, things that never occurred to us were different, but turns out, they were.

I think the clearest theme in the article is not to vindicate your own life choices by demeaning others. Why is it so scary that we want different things right now in our lives? Sometimes you feel a competitive edge in how our life flows, when really it is not a competition at all. How serious someone's ambitions may be, does not mean your own is trivial in comparison. A lot of things have happened recently, life-altering in more ways than one. And the greatest lesson I've learnt, moving forward, is that happy or sad, the most important thing in life is peace of mind.

Venice is a place you can easily mould to your emotions. You look and say, "I feel just like this ."