the human body is a wondrous machine.
if this sounds like a preface to an olympic games-related entry, fear not, as it isn't since i barely followed it save for one exhilarating table-tennis battle in which i was sound asleep for a good half of.
no, i'm thinking about the relationship between the physical and emotional; they are co-dependant, in a way. any disturbance in one will manifest symptoms, sometimes very drastically, in the other.
lately, i've been having a great deal of trouble sleeping. even my legendary 5hr naps are nigh impossible to pull off because i wake up way before the finish line.
tiredness begets distress, distress begets insomnia, insomnia begats tiredness.
i know several of my stress points have come together recently in a blatant conspiracy to rob me of rest. alright, alright, you've made your point, i finally get it.
i'm listening.
after a short self-exiling stint, running away from letting you readers see inside my head, i've come back, sort of, to resume my blogging life.
the break wasn't all unfruitful though. i managed to sort quite a fair chunk out and gear myself up for the next couple of months which are probably going to lead me to the trembling cusp of sanity, or death.
anyway, as the past has always, always taught me, i miss writing terribly when i get into one of those 'i'm-never-writing-again' moods; so it stands to reason that i should work that love-hate aspect out. or not, we'll see.
i'm exhausted, thanks to the draining week that has gone by, so i'm gonna catch some z's now.
when something that's been wanted intently and over a long while suddenly appears to be granted, is it cynicism that my gut reaction is cold suspicion rather than, oh, say, grateful elation?
it's taken me a few months, but i think i'm finally starting to thaw against the notion that change within the relational system at work, and I mean true long-lasting change, could actually be materializing.
what's exciting is my spanking new role as the catalyst of sorts for this slow and tedious shift. it would be foolish of me to have not seen this for myself in the crystal ball; afterall, what have i been training in? but (there's always something!) an oddity within me is what feels like a twinge of resentment underneath it all. i'm not sure.
what i do know is that a lot is going on in a very volatile space, so i need to proceed with utmost caution and respect for all involved. i think i need to keep repeating this to myself.
there was never any doubt that the narnia franchise would only get bigger. after a rather tepid debut on the big screen 3 years ago, the long-awaited sequel is superior but only at a technical level. this simply works better as a popcorn flick thanks in part to the careful writing which balances pathos, humor, gravitas and action over 2 and a half hours. a bigger budget also contributes to its slicker sheen and the director cleverly borrows grandeur from the vast expanse of the natural outdoors.
but like most film adaptations of best-selling books, there's simply never enough running time to feature everything, or even half, that is of significance. screen time is spread unevenly among multiple characters, most of whom end up as no more than paper-thin caricatures. the pace also plods needlessly in the first half although there is a measured build up for the family-friendly battle sequences, with the last being the most predictably spectacular.
a stand out moment for me was when lucy, the peace-loving and youngest of the 4 protaganists, finally meets aslan, the Christ-figure at the center of the series. throwing away all previous doubt, she races towards him with such unabashed delight that spoke deep volumes of the complete faith and hope that his presence would right all, heal all.
"you're finally here. now i know that everything will be okay."
the words were unspoken, but it gave me a tearful glimpse of what going home, truly going home, might possibly feel like.
written by john lennon and paul mccartney
performed by timothy t and carol woods in the movie across the universe
so my pent-up frustrations over the work situation were unexpectedly given a brief respite today over lunch. forcefully stirring my iced milk tea, i could feel a fresh anger rising as i unloaded them.
what's this bitterness lingering behind my words? i thought i had already dealt adequately with this.
am i being petty? immature? i asked myself when i was alone. am i just choosing the well-worn pathway of helpless complaint and malcontent? i scorn the kind of person who gripes about others with a heated eloquence in safety behind their backs; yet i fear that's exactly what i've been reduced to.
someone said, but not to me, that we have no right to be upset when in christian ministry because that's how God trains and teaches us through firey trials and whatnot. and i wondered, after surpressing a wave of indignance, if all this is meant to be part of my testing, in which case i'm probably faring abysmally.
for the first time, i wish the capable voice of reason which has always guarded my emotional core could simply vanish so i can just let myself experience this at the most instinctive plane. maybe i have no idea what i'm asking for, but beyond the possible anguish, it might just be the most honest i'll ever feel.
i guess that's what i really need right now.
i finally decided that i had to have a 3g data plan so i meandered into a hello! store and did the deed. it was only half-price, too, thanks to a promotion. the shiny sim card that came with the plan stared forlornly up at me. looks like i need to get a new toy to go with it. 
the viewty by lg comes from the land famed for plastic surgery, extremely good-looking people (thanks to plastic surgery) and kimchi (which has nothing to do with plastic surgery because it is all natural and thereby great for health).
so this will be my glamorous internet-on-the-go device which i will use to surf the www, take 5mp snaps and cool slow-motion videos with, and also blog from when traumatically torn away from the home or office.
now to find a boring queue to stand in so i can use it.
being alone in the office is great. productivity barely registers on the chart at a flat zero. but it's great.
this stillness in here is really quite therapeutic.
i'm thinking the rest of the church should organize monthly camps up north. i can make a nice habit out of waving them goodbye from the parking lot.
wishful thinking aside, i should cherish this little gift of quietude. come tomorrow, i will have to let it go.
i'm not always ready to admit and accept that what's good for me, which is usually artfully disguised as some sickening ordeal like seeing the doctor or abstaining from fried chicken, is what i truly need.
and i very often struggle with the exceedingly grown up responsiblities that prop up a life with some measure of deliberate consistency and reflective dignity: i don't feel like trying hard or doing the right thing all the time, and i'm happy to leave my blind spots under the musty carpet for just one more day, plus i find it exhausting, truth be told, to be pushing myself to relentlessly grow and mature ad nauseum.
but i am now at a good place where i am able to actualize a need, a gift, if you will, just for myself. life is an intricate ebb and flow of giving away and receiving back, isn't it? so my need within this dynamic cycle is to carve out a snug space solely for me where i can rest, i can heal, i can renew and i can continually learn to be glad for all that i am.
i know myself. and i know what needs to happen in order for me to give the important moments in my life broad wings to fly. so i'm no longer going to apologise for wanting to make each of them count.
this fifth incarnation of the man with allegedly the most recognizable profile in the world feels exactly as it should. the producers should be praised for carefully retaining the style and mood of the indiana jones series which, i believe, is no easy feat to resist in this age of expensive and extensive cgi-overkill.
shame, then, about the chemistry-free cast and the tepid script involving a very bland villianess (a completely wasted cate blanchett!), a very shady best friend, a very easy-to-discover lost kingdom and a very fake-looking crystal skull from the no-holds barred title.
i can see how it could have worked in concept though. perhaps time hasn't been so kind to indy after all. he says it best in the trailer,
"it's not as easy as it used to be."
best enjoyed as a nostalgic stroll down memory lane; just don't expect to enjoy it too much.
i wearily click on the submit button and stare, half-awake, at the little progress bar indicating my last assignment for the semester is making its way to Perth, Australia byte by byte.
i realize, to my annoyance, that i have a headache; and that my chest hurts from hunching over the laptop all day.
everything about school appears like a blot in my peripheral vision; i know it's there but i can't focus on it. what have i been doing?
i close my eyes, shut out the throb, and it all starts to materialize: the demoralising in-class role-plays, the disasterous placement interview, the panic at being client-less, the overnight assignment sprints and now this pointless dawning that i didn't make this semester count very much.
the assignment reaches its destination safely. i hope i will, too.
all the reasons why i should tender my resignation have never been more vivid than at last week's staff meeting where they spilled from my lips in an unplanned and emotional outpouring.
in the queasy, possibly stunned, stillness that ensued, a flicker of regret arose as i calmed down but there was an unmistakable core of peace as well.
honesty is the best policy, or so the saying goes. what is not often said is that it requires a herculean effort to be truly honest when it really counts; or at least for me it does.
well, the deed is done, now what's next?
i have no idea. let's just see where the road ahead leads to.
pushing boundaries is risky and it's even harder to predict outcomes from it. the wachowski brothers, who achieved ridiculous fame and fortune from the matrix trilogy, have gambled with an old japanese cartoon from the 60's and innovatively repackaged it seemingly for audiences diagnosed with adhd.
nothing remains static in this explosively vibrant work which feels a bit like chewing a crammed mouthful of skittles, m&ms and jelly tots. the extensive and psychedelic cgi pound your senses along with the action-packed races while the storytelling blends past and present with split second transitions.
i also didn't care for some campy sequences but i thought speedracer was by and large a stylish ride; however, style, as the critics will attest to, is highly subjective. all the same, despite its obvious flaws, i left the cinema with a grin - read into that what you will.
thursday morning: i crawled uncharacteristically out of bed while it was still dark, in part because of an extremely disturbing nightmare which i will avoid detailing here (thank me!), and because of a throbbing left shoulder which felt like it had been viciously yanked about.
the day's inching progress didn't alleviate the mounting pain and by mid-pm i was ready to admit, albeit grudgingly, i needed relief:
"yes, i'm not fine and yes, i need help."
why does it feel like i'm betraying something sacred when i say those words? but it was either that or massive sedation with drugs i don't have, so i basically went with help.
there's something masochistic about subjecting oneself to the hands of a masseur/masseuse because they very often feel like demented claws of unrelenting torture. each stubborn knot gets squashed and mashed as i fight the instinct to release muffled squawks into the massage chair. i suppose it's really no different from working through the knots in life - they both hurt, they both take time, and did i mention they both hurt?
having survived the first session, i went back sheepishly two days later for another and signed up for a package. i could get to like this.
wedding dinners are usually not particularly fun nor memorable. fancy table settings, soft lighting, cheesy love songs, lots of flowers and maybe candles, oh and perfectly coiffed strangers at the table picking at dainty morsels while making polite conversation for 3 hrs layer into a glittering blur in the wedding dinner compartment of the memory bank.
it therefore came as a surprise to be part of one last weekend which felt, well, different. it seems the right kind of friends can easily tip the scales in favor of boisterous and rowdy fun.
half-drunk buddies aside, i'm not sure why there appears to be an innate and unspoken disdain for these romantic gestures. is it unnatural to genuinely be happy for the happy couple taking that big step down the dry-ice covered carpet towards a new life together? we love it when love conquers all on the big screen in tandem with lush violins, but when it stares us in the face without the glitz, without the glamor we can't even recognize it.
i hope i never become so cynical, or so blind, that i forget what love really looks like. 
so i very nearly lost my phone today, and no, it wasn't a deliberately devious act to grant myself an excuse to go shopping. to trim the un-gripping story short, i stupidly left my phone in the washroom (i hate using the word toilet) and it was found, an hour later, in the hands of a scruffy worker who was doing some installation work in church.
at the initial awful dawning that there was a good chance i would never see the little sony-ericsson again, it wasn't dismay at losing a sleek piece of technology which surfaced, but rather, annoyance at the thought of having to replace my sim card and painstakingly reassemble my contact list. that and a i-deserve-it-for-being-a-moron feeling were curiously intertwined in a kind of pouty resignation.
i suppose i have always been the stoic type; shrugging off horrific injustices like getting served with stale cake at coffee bean. i don't mind getting the shorter end of the stick, as it were, or perhaps i just can't muster up the energy to tantrum and rail.
even at the unexpected recovery of my phone i merely thanked the red-handed worker for finding it when it was quite apparant his intentions were less than honorable.
maybe i'm just a wuss.
the last time hollywood decided to make a film about the exotic far east, 3 of asia's leading actresses were paid a ton of moolah to fortune-cookie-speak their way through the very weighty and somber 'memoirs of a geisha'. this year, we get another borderline-insulting attempt although this one, thankfully, doesn't take itself seriously at all.
once you get past the inexplicability of the characters vacillating between heavily accented english and heavily accented mandarin, as well as the obviousness of the villans from their heavy eye makeup, a playful core is revealed and it becomes difficult to resist appreciating the ride on some level.
strong production values, slick choreography, hammy dialogue and a likable michael angarano as the gawky teenage lead add to the fun, but it's the energy and chemistry which veterans jackie chan and jet li bring to their roles that elevate this goofy american tribute to the classic asian martial arts genre to enjoyable heights.
the morning began with the dreaded conundrum i've been evading for months now, "so what are your plans after graduation?"
since a pefectly happy solution to the perfectly reasonable question doesn't exist yet, my response was another frantic dredging up of a pat reply which appeared to narrowly deflect an alarmed interrogation this time.
so a crisis was averted, albeit very temporarily, until the next concerned and/or curious person innocently asks. it is of no respite that each passing day brings me closer to the end of the year when i'll supposedly graduate and reminds me this has been simmering on the back burner since before the course began even. i guess time is running out for me to keep running away from working it out.
how do i ready myself to say goodbye? i hate this.
nearly 2 years of anticipation faded too quickly under the garish lights of downtown east's grand opening of e!hub last sunday. the massive amount of tacky flashing strobes wrapped around its entire facade can't distract from the dismal revelation that this project was helmed by someone with no interest whatsoever in architecture, design, taste or sense.
i am bewildered at how a seasoned mall-culture such as ours could possible produce something which does nearly everything wrong. with the oddest selection of stores, the most awkward layout possible, the bland interiors and the overcompensatory exterior, it very nearly feels like *deep breath* this was intentionlly put together as a joke - a really bad joke.
i, of course, find it decidedly un-funny that i'm now living right next to the worst mall ever. however, on the bright side that could do with more wattage, at least cathay cinema is there, as is coffee bean & tea leaf.
i should learn to count very loudly, and cherish very fondly, this teeny blessing.
despite having no background whatsoever on the iron man character from marvel, i found myself easily drawn into the logical and controlled unfolding of this summer's first superhero blockbuster. maneuvering deftly between rascally and serious, the always surprising robert downey jr leads us on a believable journey of one man's mammoth quest to right his past wrongs.
together with the lovely gwyneth paltrow in another elegant portrayal as downey's razor sharp assistant, and a nearly unrecognizable jeff bridges as the hulking and snarling friend turned foe, it feels like the genre has finally decided to respect its audience.