*670 - taiwan

In no particular order:

*669 - inevitable

Is it better to be deliriously, impossibly, gleefully, sunbeamy happy for now but set yourself up for disaster later on, or to remain in a relatively comfortable state of kind-of-okay-ness with life, just living each day with nothing much to look forward to, but with nothing particularly nasty bothering you either?

Something (irrationally) human in me pushes me to take the plunge into happiness, for now, and to hell with the heartbreak later. The mind knows what's best (or it thinks it does) but the heart always wins.

*668 - V is for ...

Valentine's Day: I've always half-boycotted it. I have vague memories of having dinner at the J8 food court with Justin and the ruggers after their training one Valentine's Day. Just because I feel compelled to be a cynic.

Now that I think about it, it seems like I'm always breaking up near Valentine's Day. Hm.

This Valentine's Day was different - possibly the first one I've spent without my man/love interest. Went snowboarding with the boys, met Woody on the slopes ("I'll be at the trick park" "No, I am NOT going to join you there"), fell unnecessarily often, died of cold because I was stupidly wearing only a tank top under my coat and no hat, drove Des' car home. Went to the mall with the girlies, wore tacky Valentine's Day-themed clothing (Jenny's shirt was screaming "LOVE" and butterflies and sparklies, Inshi's was hot pink, mine was heart-printed), watched the worst movie in history (Something Shopaholic - be warned), grooved to 60's music while waiting half an hour for a cab, and almost didn't make it back to Cornell. Very sweet. Stayed up guzzling beer and exchanging secrets with a drunken roomie, talked to the mum for an hour, collapsed in bed at 5 am and got up at noon.

It's ok to be single.

Plus, look what arrived most unexpectedly at the door. A huge-ass bouquet of twelve long-stemmed red roses in a glass vase. By far the most beautiful bouquet I've ever received. I stood wide-eyed with mouth agape and stuttering for a full five minutes.



Thank you, you're an amazing friend. I'm very touched.

They're next to me on my desk now and are even taller than me when I'm sitting down.

*667 - paths

I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse that on most occasions (except maybe 1 or 2) I'm able to just switch off and just move. I guess it's more about the circumstances than an intrinsic quality of mine.

I did love you, we had happy times, and you would have made a perfect boyfriend to a girl more perfect than I. I know that the kind of love you showed me was more than what many girls could ever hope for. (Thank you.) I'm sorry that I couldn't understand, and I'm sorry that I let you down.

We'll part ways now and see what God does to our paths in future.

*666 - devil's number

Shudder. I wanted to skip over this post number, but decided that I'm not superstitious and that my God is bigger than the number 666! So.

Today is my second day of being "properly" single since, what, 2004?

Thank you to the friends who mostly won't ever read this who are helping me get through life. (This means you, Inshi, if you ever see this.)

I don't know what to feel, don't know what to say. Pain? Regret? Guilt? Relief?

Why do I always hurt the ones I love the most? Why do I always take them for granted? Why do I always do the stupidest things? Why aren't I more committed? Why can't I be a better girlfriend?

I'm such a disaster.

*665 - s

Evelyn,

We missed you--but seemed to have a good time anyway.

Get well soon!

Joyce

Is that not awesome?? :) Sweetest professor ever.

-

Blundered around class today with a thick fog in my head. I think two days of dancing with a cold did not do me any good. Skipped three classes today and went home to sleep sleep sleep. Woke up with a shock when C called and we zipped off to the hospital with J to pay a visit to S.

It was sad. Just because everything was strangely familiar. Walking down the same corridors, pressing the same buzzer, signing the same forms, walking into the same ward; even the other patients looked like how the patients looked like a year ago. Everything's so transient that everything stays the same.

He read us a poem he wrote in Spanish. I was expecting it to be loopy and medication-affected, but it was actually quite beautiful. I don't think he really understands what's going on, but he thinks we don't really understand what's going on in him either. He's right, we don't. But I think he doesn't either.

*664 - s

It's like deja vu. Only this time, it's genuine concern rather than a more selfish type of love-tainted despair. Something tells me the next couple of days are going to be rocky. When things like that happen, there's nothing to do but pray.

It puts life in perspective. What's bad grades, having a sucky cold, gaining weight, and all those ridiculous little things, when you step back and take a look at the bigger picture? We're blessed with life, the will and ability to do things with our lives, to take control of life and make beautiful things happen. What happens when you don't even know if someone you care about will ever accept that, will ever even understand that, something cruelly powerful is controlling his life, and he might never be able to recover?

I don't know what's going to happen. It's funny why things like this happen. Why? Why do wonderful people get crippled with illnesses or disorders? Why don't they have a fair chance to live life like all the other people?

*663 - hotel de glace

So, my first reaction to stepping out onto Ithaca grounds was to twirl across the VP carpark singing "WHEEE what lovely, warm weather!" And seeing that we are in the pits of a snowy, cruel Ithacan winter, this means that Quebec was No Joke At All.

Another thing that is No Joke At All is the fact that I left on Friday after class and just reached home, and I have a full day of classes tomorrow that begins at 8.40, with projects and assignments due on Tuesday.

That said, Quebec was delightful and Hotel de Glace was jaw-droppingly amazing. Imagine: a hotel carved out of ice which lasts 3 months in a year and is different every time. Ice chairs and ice cups and ice chandeliers and ice bars.

Also imagine: open-air hot tubs, where the weather is below -30, so your body's warm and happy and pruney from being in the water for so long but your hair above the water crystallizes into a shiny, white ice sculpture. And imagine: all of us scuttling barefoot in the open in our underwear (some clever ones brought trunks/bathing suits but the rest of us were woefully unprepared), with the soles of our feet sticking to the ice, wet bodies turning into ice blocks, and then plunging madly into the hot tubs or running screaming into the sauna.

Sleeping in ice rooms on ice beds (with a mattress and sleeping bag) was not fun, though. The boys seemed to generate heat a lot better than the girls so they survived through the night. I slept 3 hours, woke up shivering wildly with the sleeping bag around my head encrusted with ice, struggled for half an hour to ignore the cold, gave up and dove into iced clothing, and sprinted to the bathroom to blast a hairdryer at my face and another at my feet.

It was a strange, and painful, and wonderful experience.