Of Friends And Those Who Come Close

To say the internet changed my life would be a crude and easy way of putting it. The internet greatly contributed to my self would be much more apt.

I started blogging New Year’s 2004 on Blogger after reading Liyana’s faeriesinmycoffee, thinking, ‘Hey having your thoughts read by - basically - the whole world sounds scary as hell but it’s pretty cool. You can pretend your thoughts are worth a damn.’ The blogging world is divided into many subcategories: among them there are those who yammer on everyDAMNday about how their day went and put up scans of their shopping receipts, there are those who post bad poetry and fiction (which I’m guilty of too), there are those who keep the drama out, and there are those who blogging is their outlet for drama. Blogging gives a false sense of security; on one hand, it is what it is: a journal, so you feel comfortable typing out your deepest darkest secrets. Also, you think that because you’re one in several million who blog, what are the chances of the ‘wrong’ people stumbling upon your blog? I kept in mind that when I started blogging that my words, once I press the ‘publish’ button, become public property and that I have no control over who reads it. Because of the journal aspect of it, when people read your blog, it gives them an insight into a side of you that would take real-life friends weeks/months/years to catch a glimpse at. You spill your heart out to a stranger, things you would think twice about telling your classmates whom you see everyday. But it goes without saying that I love my ‘real’ friends to pieces and I’m sure you do too. There’s something to be said about the people who’ve actually known you forever, who could tell even more embarrassing stories that you conveniently leave out of your blog and at the same time, wait for the mechanic with you when your car breaks down or wordlessly offer a hug when you feel like your world is crashing.

The beginnings of friendships (and all relationships platonic or otherwise), I believe, are built on differing quantities of two elements: attraction and chemistry.

Attraction: yakni daya tarikan seseorang. Ini tidaklah termasuk daya tarikan worked-up-so-sexual; daya tarikan yang dimaksudkan ini adalah daya tarikan yang paling asas. How most new friendships are started is an element of attraction. I remember in Form One when I would see the Angsana crowd whooping it up. I was immensely attracted to their closeness, thinking ‘Now that’s a fun group.’ Of course I was in Anggerik, so whatever.

Chemistry: for me, the level of comfort you feel with each other - not in a group dynamic, but on a one-on-one basis. How much instinct tells you that this person is a good person, how you can gauge how much you can trust them. How much you feel you can let go and truly be yourself. It’s obviously more important than attraction alone. This is something that’s difficult to explain, but I’m sure you know the chemistry that I speak of so I’ll move on.

Friends on the internet have no attraction to base their pull to you on. You need to physically see the person, to know how they speak, how they carry themselves, how they shovel food into their mouths (pakai tangan ke sudu&garpu?) to have any attraction. So what’s left? Chemistry. And since they’re already reading about you slitting your wrists or your alcoholism, it cuts through a lot of red tape. You knowthey’re not going to run away screaming because if they haven’t already then it’s going to take homicidal confessions to put them off and even that might not work either. You start chatting with them, trading songs, and eventually when you do physically meet up, you feel like you’ve known them for a while even though you’ve only started talking to them less than a week ago. A very bad analogy that works would be this: with real life friends, you meet them fully clothed. Time goes by and you slowly take each item of clothing off and sooner or later you’re down to your skin. With the internet you’re naked at first glance, and since you’re already at that level, you feel no need to put a shirt on when you physically meet (ada orang terasa? Tau takpe). This doesn’t make one kind of friend better than the other, it’s just different.

I’ve sobbed before, about what-the-fuck-am-I-gonna-do-when-Maryam -leaves. It’s not just her leaving, it’s her leaving on top of everyone else that’s left. I’m running out of physical shoulders to cry on, out of physical hands to hold while we jump around the playground. The old crowd is scattered across the globe chasing papers and falling in love, the older crowd has long since fallen out of touch - we didn’t have much chemistry to begin with, I hate to say. This is why I think that I’ve been latching onto my internet friends of late, why I’m speeding up the ‘friendship’ process. I think I’m doing good. No one’s kicked me out of their bedrooms yet. There were bad moments, but my cyber life has been nothing short of awesome for me. If it weren’t for the internet, I wouldn’t have met Pa’an. Or Federico. Or my LJ friends whom I heart immensely.

So (since I don’t know how to end this entry).

“Y’all come back now, ya hear?”

No Alarms And No Surprises Please

_{(Originally written at 8.46pm, November 19th 2005)}

Earwax: 30 Seconds To Mars’ ‘Attack’
Eyeboogers: Yann Martel - Life Of Pi

I am not your mother. _{(I did not give birth to you)}
I am not your sister. _{(We did not share a womb)}
I am not your cat. _{(So stop petting my head)}

I wish not to be just one of the girls in your wake.
I wish not to be ‘one of the guys’.
I wish not to be someone you’re indifferent to.

Really now. I do know how to pick ‘em, don’t I? I know you have groupies: gaggles of 15/16/17 year olds who swoon everytime you even look in their direction. I know you could have your pick of the litter. But I’m not going to change myself and turn into a mengada-fied teenybopper twirling hair around her fingers for you. I’m not going to call you to discuss my outfits (heck, I don’t even do that with my best girlfriend). What I want is to be someone you have fond memories of. I want to be a part of your life. But I also don’t want to be set so far apart from the aforementioned giggly girls that for some reason to you I have an extra appendage between my legs and you feel that you can treat me like one of your cronies. Just because you’re my friend it doesn’t mean that I’ve lost all sense of sexuality. I’d like to know that in some infinitesimal way that I’m desirable, that to you I’m still a girl. I’d like to keep that tiny window open with you, for mere chance of a possibility; though I’ve shut this window with some, and I tell them so. I may not want you (now) and you may not want me (now), but I need that tiny opportunity to still hang in the air. In short: I may sometimes I act like one of the guys, but I’m still a girl. Treat me as such, but at the same time, don’t treat me as such. If nothing else, that maybe-confusing statement should remind you that I’m a girl.

(Some parts of this refer to certain individuals, some parts to men in general. If you’re too daft to get which is which, then it doesn’t refer to you at all)

(I’m cranky. Where are my pills? Where?)

(The modem AND the Astro got fried on Saturday’s storm. Lovely)

Alive And Well

[To appease a certain friend (I’ve been seeing ‘Seattle, Washington’ show up on my site location meter too much), here’s a quick update that I’ll delete off once I can write more/coherently.]

I’m trying my best to stop ‘and this is how my day went’ entries, but I haven’t been having any profound thoughts of late, or at least ones that I want to share, haha. So here’s what I’ve been up to these days:

- My baby’s back! I’ve been on an install/download frenzy and I must say the NEC has benefitted greatly from the upgrade.
- I have Myspace. I succumbed. But it is teh pretty even if I do say so myself. Go here.
- Bittorents! I’ve discovered the holy amounts of fun to be had from bittorrenting. Three episodes of Kitchen Confidential and the pilot for Supernatural downloaded with season 5 of Queer As Folk and the pilot for Prison Break on the way. Whee!!
- The number of friends I’ve made in cyberspace is growing. And I heart every last one of them. (Hazeryl, you’re a dork but I’m a dork too so kita dork bersama-sama ye? More games, more lollipops! Haha)
- I’m on a hunt for a good modelling/rendering software that won’t kill my braincells too much. Either that, or I have to pick up on my manual rendering skillz of zilch.
- What is it with me and Neopets? A life is what I need.
- I need to go on a semi-hiatus. Too much school work to do and only me to do them. (Danial, wherefore art thou?)

So as you can see, I haven’t left the computer much. Though I thought I was going to pass out when Streamyx couldn’t connect yesterday. I’m flying off the dork charts. Huhu.

How Many Churchgoers Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?

I’m not a churchgoer, neither am I a Christian in any way, but this is holy amusing. Found while surfing on here (I don’t usually nick stuff from other blogs either, but oh well). Read on..

Charismatics: Only one. Hands are already in the air.

Roman Catholics: None. They use candles.

Pentecostals: Ten. One to change the light bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterians: None. God has predestined when the lights will be on and off.

Episcopalians: Eight. One to call the electrician, and seven to say how much better they liked the old bulb.

Mormons: Five. One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.

Unitarians: We chose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the light bulb. However, if you have found in your own journey that light bulbs work for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb and present it next month at our annual l light bulb Sunday service in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long-life, and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

Baptists: At least fifteen. One to change the light bulb, five or six professors to search the Bible for authorization and then two or three committees to approve the change. Oh, and some faithful women to make a casserole.

Lutherans: None. Lutherans don’t believe in change.

Methodists: A whole congregation. One to change the light bulb, and the rest of the congregation to be sure that he doesn’t backslide.

Astrophysics For The Non-Beauty Queen

I’m reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet at the moment. I read A Wrinkle In Time years ago - Ma bought it for my 11th birthday, if I’m not mistaken - and I loved how it simplified the most complex of sciences that even now I can’t comprehend fully into the powerful yet almost whimsical story of faith and physics. Basically, the basis of the story is the probability of the fifth dimension. Most people who went through basic math would know the first three spatial dimensions: the first dimension being a line, the second being a plane (the line attaining length), the third being a cube/box (the plane attains height - the dimension we all consider to be real, where we consist of matter). The fourth dimension, to put it short, is Time. The fifth dimension, is as L’Engle puts it, a ‘tesseract’. Simply put, to travel through space without going the long way round. Imagine a bug wanting to go from one end of your skirt hem to the other. If the bug were to walk the whole way, it’d take much longer than if you were to bring the two ends together and the bug simply walks over.

Or here’s the MS Paint version:

Replace the skirt with the universe as we know it, and the bug with you. That, is to tesser.

This theory, among a lot of other things, is what compelled me to read the book over and over again. L’Engle was way ahead of her time - the book was written in 1962 - and it’s still as startling today, I’d like to think. I didn’t know it then, but I know now that this book made me love math and science in the nerdy almost water-tumbler way that I do now. I still do math equations for fun. That special issue of Scientific American on time has been read and re-read so much that it’s falling apart. I hated the crap that they taught you in school. Mostly because the teachers reduced it to pure drivel and made us do uninspiring experiments and exercises. But as much as it was annoying, it was that much more fundamental to my understanding of the science that I’m passionate about now.

Take this for example: time as we know it is either a) past, b) present, c) future. Easy to imagine everything on a straight line, no? So as far as we all generally assume, conventionally speaking, that time moves on a fixed line, simply forwards, nothing else. Only the present is real, the past ceases to be, the future is uncertain. But apparently there’s been some brill loonies in the physics world who are arguing this: okay, so the present is real. But the present moves into the ‘past’, no? The then-present has every claim to being real as the now-present. Their argument is that since every moment considers itself to be real, time may not be as linear as we thought. Objectively, past, present and future must be equally real, or, if you really wanna work your noodle, that everything is happening at the same time (they didn’t say it exactly, I’m just coming up with that conclusion myself). When you take it at surface value, now that just pisses away the cause-and-effect value of everything in history, but I’m not gonna discuss this bit further; you can drive yourself crazy with that notion in your own sweet time. Or have you already? Who knows?

Now I’ve just finished A Wind In The Door, the subject matter of which I shall bring up to discuss at another time. Just dwell on this in the meantime: what if size really didn’t matter? What if you could be so large as to hold the birth of a star in your own hands or be so small as to be within a mitochondria?

Think about that. I’m off to bed.

Updates, Updates

(Excuse my emo entry the other day. My mind needs a straightjacket, I swear.)

These past few weeks have been, all things considered, pretty awesome. I got to go out more than I used to, caught up with some people. There was the ‘buka puasa’ at Danial’s; so many firsts with the Happy Thursday crew, I must say. And, oh, the copious amounts of shisha at Shaheeran’s - twas a night of many amusing happenings. The lessons in serendipity with Fahmy the funny (who knew you could make friends over a McDonald’s counter, eh?) and texting Aidil on Raya (yes I will take part in your revolution against radio!). Raya itself came and went with no hoohah and reasonable amounts of duit raya and ayam masak merah. Today I went out with Dizzy Li and my adik the gempak and came back with no CDs (!)

Curling up with new books and my cats under the green bedsheets never felt bettah. Classes start tomorrow, which reminds me that I need to arrange my sketches properly. And my heart? Still firecrackered. But lots calmer.

p/s - Go John! Go here.

You Know You’re An Architecture Student When…

A litany of depressing behavours. Nicked off Architecture.

* The alarm clock tells you when to go to sleep. (Finals week, anyone?)
* You’re not ashamed of drooling in class anymore, especially during Structures lectures.
* You know what Superglue tastes like.
* You celebrate space and observe your birthday.
* Coffee and Red Bull are tools, not treats.
* People are nauseated just by smelling your caffeine breath.
* You are surprised when you see a new building in your school. (Though Alif is too small to have their own building, I’m surprised when I see newly-renovated rooms. ‘Wtf? Since when?’)
* You think it’s possible to create space.
* You’ve slept more than 20 hours non-stop in a single weekend.
* You fight with inanimate objects.
* You’ve fallen asleep in the bathroom.
* Your brother or sister thinks he or she is an only child.
* You’ve listened to all your CDs in less than 48 hours.
* You’re not seen in public. (I’m not seen in public anyway. Doesn’t matter, this)
* You lose your house keys for a week and you don’t even notice.
* You’ve brushed your teeth and washed your hair in the university’s bathroom.
* You’ve discovered the benefits of having none or very short hair, and you’ve started to appreciate inheriting baldness.
* You’ve used an entire role of film to photograph the footpath.
* You know the exact time the vending machines are refilled.
* You always carry your deodorant.
* You become excellent at recycling when making models.
* When you try to communicate, you make a continuous and monotonous whine.
* You’ve danced YMCA with excellent choreography at 3 am and without a single drop of alcohol in your body. (Hell yeah)
* You take notes and leave messages with a rapidograph and colour markers.
* You combine breakfast, lunch and dinner into one single meal. (Coming from me, this is extreme, yo)
* You see holidays only as extra sleeping time.
* You’ve got more photographs of buildings than of actual people.
* You’ve taken your girlfriend (boyfriend) on a date to a construction site.
* You’ve realised that French curves are not that exciting. (Ah, to be jaded)
* You can live without human contact, food or daylight, but if you can’t print it’s chaos. (OMFG SO TRUE)
* When you’re being shown pictures of a trip, you ask about the human scale.
* You can use Photoshop, Illustrator and make a web page, but you don’t know how to use Excel. (Hey, of course I can. Sheesh)
* You refer to great architects (dead or alive) by their first name as if you knew them (Frank, Corbu, Mies, Norman).
* You buy 50 dollars worth of magazines that you haven’t read yet.
* When someone offers you a Bic pen, you feel offended. (Not really, but hilarious, nonetheless)

The Hari Raya Hiatus

So to all those who read that celebrate: Happy Eid to all :)

(Things are great. Wonderful. Confusing. But isn't life?)

My Firecrackered Heart

(I lied. Ignore the previous entry.)

If I were to do another quiz like majiggy, one of those ‘what matters to you in life?’ things, I’d bet my Death Cab CDs that the result would be: ‘personal fulfilment’. I know fully well that I want to be satisfied, soul-wise. I want to write a book, play my songs, travel to South America and Europe, make a difference. When the answer options of the questions have the slightest mention of a partner in them, I always answer otherwise. I’d like to think that I don’t need a man. Or to be more specific, the lifestyle that I want, the things that I want to do in life, it’d just be harder if there was a man to encumber the whole process. It would have to be one helluva guy to trust me that much and let me go as I search for whatever it is that I need out of life. So that’s why, even though the quizzes would tell me to answer as honestly as possible, I almost never get ‘romantic relationships’ as an answer, not even close.

Then I look back at my short existence and realize: it does matter. Hematters. The slightest thought of a man, the tiniest possibility, the smallest inkling, it drives me to distraction. The amount of work I have doesn’t matter. The search-for-soul stuff? To put it in a Hallmark way, what’s the point if, at the end of the day, there’s no one to share it with? I feel an insane sense of longing when I see those pictures that couples put up on their Friendster/MySpace, wondering where is that guy, where is my guy? There’s always friends, I know. I love my friends to death. Everyday human connections to me are so important it’s almost emotionally immature. I need to speak to someone other than family at least once a day. Hence the phone bills, hence the hanging around the internet. But sometimes it isn’t enough. You want someone to hold your hand, you want someone to tell you that you look hot even though you have mustard in your hair, you want someone to love you back, to be as head-over-heels into you as you are into them. The one time I was in love it was too complicated to work out, and the one time I was in a relationship there wasn’t actually any love for me to hold on to.

I realize now that soulmates don’t exist. There is no One. But for those short moments, episodes of ecstasy-fueled words and touches and kisses, I’d give up anything. I need them more than I want to admit; I wish I didn’t feel this lost without a man. I know that being ‘in love’ doesn’t last, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting it so badly I almost cry. It’s bad enough when you’re wandering around wondering where in the world is Mr Right Now, but when you know who he is, when you know who you want to have this dance with and he’s too busy being the DJ? It makes for endless sessions of emo-ing at 2am, self-doubt and insecurity.

You’ve got to want something to have something.
He makes me want to.

So I pray that for at least a brief instant, before these emotions fade away, he’ll feel for me the enormous rush of what I feel for him.