Please Hear What I Am Not Saying

Don't be fooled by me.

Don't be fooled by the mask I wear.

For I wear a mask, a thousand masks,

masks that I'm afraid to take off,

and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature to me,

but don't be fooled.

For God's sake don't be be fooled.

I give you the impression that I'm secure,

that confidence is my name and coolness is my game,

that the water's calm and I'm in command,

and that I need no one.

But don't believe me.

My surface may seem smooth but my surface

is my mask, ever-varying and ever-concealing.

Beneath lies no complacence.

Beneath lies confusion and fear and aloneness.

But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness and my fear being exposed.

That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,

a nonchalant sophisticated facade, to help me pretend,

to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation.

My only hope, and I know it.

That is, if it's followed by acceptance,

if it's followed by love.

It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,

from my own self-built prison walls,

from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.

It's the only thing that will assure me

of what I can't assure myself,

that I'm really worth something.

I don't like to hide.

I don't like to play superficial phony games.

I want to stop playing them.

I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me,

but you've got to help me.

You've got to hold out your hand

even when that's the last thing I seem to want.

Only you can wipe away from my eyes

the bland stare of the breathing dead.

Only you can call me into aliveness.

Each time you're kind and gentle and encouraging,

each time you try to understand because you really care,

my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings,

very feeble wings,

but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling

you can breathe life to me.

I want you to know that.

Who am I, you may wonder.

I am someone you know very well.

For I am every man you meet,

and I am every woman you meet.

-Jill Zevallos-Solak

Lost Before Christmas

24th December! Christmas eve... We should be setting up a jolly happy mood for Christmas...
Instead I was woken up by a call from my father, I hoped it wasn't a bad news, but it was. He called to inform me my grandmother passed away last night. Deep in my heart I know this day was around the corner.

My grandma, or Ah Po as we all call her, was no longer with us to celebrate Christmas.
I haven't seen her for so long now. I only have faint memories of her since we don't meet very much as she lives 3 hour away. I'd only see her during the holidays when I have a chance to go back to my hometown, in seasons such as Chinese New Year, Christmas, and so on.

I wasn't very close to my Ah Po, but I do love her dearly. When we were kids we used to go back every year to stay for 3 weeks during the school end holidays of my primary and secondary school years.
She would wake up at 6am in the morning for her morning walk, make breakfast (usually bread and biscuits) and her signature black coffee while all the adults went to work. At night she would go to her qigong class at the basketball court.

Over the years her qigong classes were cancelled and her health was getting worse. I used to hang mosquito nets for her bed every night. She would sit by her old chair and ask me and my sis to convince my mum to get back together with my dad again. It happens every time...

I really disconnected with them these few years since form 6 was busy til university life I had less and less chance to go back. Ah Po on the other hand is beginning to lose her memory. There came a time she can't recognize me any longer.

The family back in my hometown decided to sell the old house and move to the house above the grocery store they run to tend to Ah Po's needs more conveniently. I remember my cousin told me my grandfather built the house when they were young. I used to stare at their wedding picture in her room and looked at their young faces. My grandfather died of leukimia when I was 3. Don't remember him much. But I remember kind and gentle Ah Po who never once raised her voice. There are just so much memories but they were all in my younger days... I guess I never had a real conversation with her since I grew up.

Ah Po, I will miss you. You are my longest living grandparent and I love you always.
Hope you are going to celebrate Christmas in His arms this year. Please look over us from above as how you always had when you were here.

People we love are going to leave us one by one eventually. Nothing will stay the same forever. Cherish them always.

Christmas is meant to be spent with the people you love, regardless of where you are and what you are doing. The heart that connects us is what matters most.

Merry Christmas people!

What Does It Mean?

Dive to the Heart. What is it?

I took this concept from a game I love, Kingdom Hearts. A little childish I know, but it is a very good concept of the realm of our hearts that we can all relate to.

As a sane human being we have what we call a Heart. No, not the one that helps pump blood, nor is it our liver ("Hati" in Malay means Heart but also means Liver), but more to the world within our conscious self - our emotions and its domains.

We all have a place that belongs to ourselves and ourselves only, and that is within our "Hearts". It is the place we process our thought, the place we imagine things, the place where we miss and love people, the place where we put people that are important to us. The world that only you alone know's its existence, our own secret place, our happy place, our paradise, made out of things that we love.

In the game Kingdom Hearts, the Dive to the Heart is where the main character falls into the ocean of his dream world, when he reaches the bottom of the heart ocean, doves fly away from the ground and the ground is revealed to have a platform of the character with the people he love in it.

This is Sora's platform in his Dive to the Heart, with the people he love in it.

This is a nice concept although we don't really "dive" into the world in our hearts.
I often "dive" into my own heart when I have time alone. It is the time I reflect on my life. To spend time with myself, usually with music. It feels nice to escape from the real world from time to time and "dive" into our heart world to indulge in our own pleasure.

I believe unconsciously we always "dive" into our hearts when emotions struck us. Like when we are sad, heart broken, or when we are happy. Or when we are pouring our soul to write our emotions down, like when writing a blog.
Unconsciously we know who are the people we love the most and their place within our "Hearts".

I chose the title "Dive to the Heart" because this blog is a place to express the world in my heart. My Dive to my Heart.

Do you "dive" to your heart often?

It's so easy to get stalked now...

What I meant is our security over the internet.

Being in the 21st century, we all have Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendster (if it still exists), Check-ins and dozens of blogs and websites that we participate in.

We put down all our information during the registration without knowing what effect it brings to us.

Anybody with a keen eye for observation can learn about a person's life and lifestyle just by scrolling down their page in Facebook, Twitter, or any information providing pages about yourself.

For example, we can easily determine things like what's your favourite colour, favourite hangout place, favourite food, where we live, who we mingle with, all just by look at your profile and pictures.
Check-in's just makes you easier to catch. Reminds me of a friend who was stalked by a guy through her check-in's.
Statuses can reveal more than what we write, it shows your current mental state, your vulnerability, you lifestyle. Trailing through someone's statuses we can easily get a picture of the life they have been living.

We might not think of it as this serious, but it only takes one smart (and crazy) guy who had a bit of a grasp of psychology to take one look at your profile and easily know everything about you.

But of course, I am talking about the negative effects of mentally unstable people who has any reason to stalk you and do bad things to you. There are also some positive ones, but that is another story.

Girls especially, should take more care in the things they put up on the net. The problem is people don't see the seriousness of things until it really happens to them, and then they wonder why it happens to me.

What are Blogs For?

Seriously, what is it for? I can't find a clear definition for it. Blogging have existed for such a long time now. Most people treat it as a diary to include anything and everything about their daily lives in it. Some use it to start a business (a good business plan if you ask me), some use it to tell stories, some use it so communicate, etc etc.

Perhaps blogging was a predecessor of Facebook-ing? Before Facebook was invented, there were no places that allowed people to vent their anger, share their joy, share their pictures and video besides sharing it on a blog. Where can you find a better place to look at people's stories before Facebook? The blog!

Now that Facebook has become a world wide phenomenon, blogging has become more like a diary than ever. Or is there just something about writing down your feelings down in a blog beats writing notes and statuses on Facebook everyday.

We would write down everything on a blog and keep it hidden in some part of the World Wide Web hoping some people might come across your blog and read it, rather than post something on Facebook and everybody would know it. I guess this depends on the people. Attention seekers, partially closed and the fully private people would have different uses on it. Hmm... Fascinating...

Time for class!!!

Memories Locked or Forgotten?

Memories are such weird things... Sometimes I wonder do we really forget something? Or is it just stashed in the storeroom of our memory warehouse like how we throw our useless household items into the storeroom and forget it ever existed until we open the storeroom again?

"I'd seen in before. Twelve years ago in college. Sitting on the couch of the TA I was trying to make, waiting for her to come back out of the bathroom, hoping she'd have a condom. Somehow, my unconscious had served that up. A memory I'd never even recorded. Or was it there the whole time and all I needed was the access."

-Eddie Morra, Limitless

I guess most of us had been through so many chapters in our lives. Some really good ones that we would never want to forget, and inevitably some bad ones we never want to remember.

Many times in my counseling path I saw so many heartbroken and tangled - tangled to the one they loved so dearly that it was so hard to let go. And some still haven't let go.

As life gets busier we zip through time so fast we never looked back at the path we walked. College semesters passing faster than the last, working days past like minutes. We kept ourselves so busy that we had forgotten about the past. Or have we really?

“我假装过去不重要，却发现自己办不到。”

-周杰伦，说了再见

As life slowed down now that all my assignments and presentations are finally over, I had more time to myself to do more of what I liked, and to reflect upon myself. Looking back at my old things I found some things that linked to some memories that I thought I had forgotten. Then the memories started pouring in like the seal has been lifted.

Looking back in my life I have been through quite a few notable chapters, namely Meow, Fish, Jojo, Pink, ReEiGkEoN, LCLY (current).

I remember how I used to painstakingly forced myself to forget someone for three years with no avail.

I found out I had forgotten when I stopped asking myself to forget. I used to remember every detail of every event, now I just remember how it felt.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

-Maya Angelou

With every hurt we learn, and I learnt so much. I vowed to make choices that I would never regret. Some things I thought I would never look back. Some things I thought I had forgotten, but it seems like it was just locked and sealed for now. ReEiGkEoN, I haven't seen this term for so long, surprised I still remember it. Kinda makes you wonder what would have happened if things went differently. But I have no regret to the choices I made. Its my life.

Well, memories are nice but that's just what they are. Time to pack it up and keep it in the junk again, hope that next time I come see it it will become a smaller box. Its time for another tomorrow in my self assigned schedule! What I had hoped is that I have become a better man than I was then. Go LCLY~

Thank you for the memories, I will keep what is mine.

She Says

Lately have been listening to JJ Lin's "她说". Nicely sung, great vocals and piano play, you go JJ! Weirdly I had a hard time deciphering the metaphors of the lyrics. Some part can exist as its own but does not necessarily adhere to the main story of the song. Hmm... Can anyone help me decipher some:


林俊杰 - 她说
作词： 孙燕姿 作曲：林俊杰


她静悄悄地来过  她慢慢带走沉默
只是最后的承诺  还是没有带走了寂寞
我们爱的没有错  只是美丽的独秀太折磨
她说无所谓  只要能在夜里翻来覆去的时候有寄托


等不到天黑  烟火不会太完美
回忆烧成灰  还是等不到结尾
她曾说的无所谓我怕一天一天被摧毁
等不到天黑  不敢凋谢的花蕾
绿叶在跟随  放开刺痛的滋味
今后不再怕天明  我想只是害怕清醒


不怕天明  我想只是害怕清醒


Music Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt2PuFlibZY
MV Story here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZbYh8Oyjfk&feature=relmfu