New Planner!

If you’ve followed my ramblings long enough, you’d be very aware of my wish to own a Cher eco tote bag. Although I’m still not that close to owning a bag, I came close enough. My very own Cher 2010 planner! And what’s awesome is that I don’t have to wait for January 2010 to crack the spine, I can start this November! Which does wonders for my impulse control . And what’s great is that I can re-use the cover for a future journal! My Moleskine phase hasn’t waned though, I’m still hoping to buy the watercolor one as an art journal and a cahier for notes.

Over at Livejournal there’s this community called organizers and the members there have done great stuff with their planners, here are my recent favourites:

Do you keep a planner or an organizer? Or do you just use your phone/PDA/laptop? What type of planner do you prefer? Is there a certain brand that you favour most? What creative ways do you use to make your planners aside from being functional but also pretty?

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There are two kinds of light — the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.

- James Thurber

Whoever said that too much of a good thing is wonderful seriously doesn’t know me. There are times when something that I thought is good for me is actually detrimental. Like a pastime would end up swallowing my whole time, forcing me into a paralysis.I have a tendency to get addictive or severely dependent on anything or anyone that touches me in a way that I can’t shake off.  How can something that keeps me awake and motivated be so toxic to me in the end?

When I get hooked it becomes my whole world - every.single.waking.moment.even.in.my.dreams! And yes, I’m passionate that way. Like my phase with NANOWRIMO, going to the cinema every single week, collecting insane amounts of fragrances, musicals, Japanese entertainment and idols, Korean dramas and idols – I just can’t seem to function properly without getting my daily dose. It’s worse if I am fixated on a person, everything seems to revolve around them and at the same time I place them in such high regard.

My like can be pushed so far it can be to the point of distraction. It’s like getting addicted too, I (violently) deny the space and priority that this thing/person is occupying in my life.

Recently, I’ve just weaned myself of a possible distracting force, although I’m not out of the woods yet, I still am feeling relieved that the force of attraction has grown weaker as each day passes by with my resolve to remain undistracted and wholly focused on my goals gets stronger .

 

Butterfly Love

This music video is lovely, instead of focusing on the song, I was busy taking in all the eye candy goodness! The song itself is a refreshing departure from GD’s style, I mean c’mon the prsence of an acoustic guitar in the song is groundbreaking Usually, animated music videos turn me off but not this time. I absolutely think it’s stunning and breathaking, like Alice in Wonderland!

Watch the video here. Source for the screencaps here. And a picture from my Halloween preps:

busy

Who knew that even with being unemployed, I can still be haunted by deadlines? Anyway, it just means that I’m preoccupied with stuff…good stuff. Aside from a secret project I’m working on, here are a few things that I need to do from this week till the midweek of November:

1. Teach S to sew a pillow as a gift (October 28)
2. Sew my Halloween Costume (October 29)
3. Submission to M’s zine (November 1)
4. Operation Kyuuto with A (November 15)
5. Sew S’s pouch (November 17)
6. Guest Post for A’s blog (November 20)

What have you guys been busy with? I have been so inspired by a lot of things I’ve read and listened to that I just feel the urge to create and withdraw myself from blogging for awhile…or just come up with scheduled posts

Things I Love Tuesday // 10-04

source: 1,2

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” -Vincent van Gogh

It’s the last days of October, don’t you notice that 2009 flew by so fast? It’s almost a year since I started this series on my blog and I am always thankful for the wonderful comments that readers leave And with that, I have greater confidence, I even went out on a limb by submitting something over at Le Love Image, please check it out and leave a comment there too

♥ Dressing Up: This Friday we’ll be having a Halloween party! I haven’t been to one in a loooong time probably because in previous years I had been to caught up with school to really enjoy myself (Yes, I was one of those students ). Anyway, I think I’ll go the DIY route because I’m painfully broke for the time being. Here are some ideas that I might run with:

alice in wonderland

faeries

witches & a spinoff from edward scissorhands

(love,love tim burton x tim walker)

or go as Edie Sedgwick!

♥ Tiaras: Since we’re on the topic of dressing up, I really think that at least once in a girl’s life they should wear tiaras!

♥ Still channeling my inner “girl”, honestly though people rarely see this side of me because I’m more of a jeans and shirt person than someone who glams up, it was only a few months ago that my friends realised that I had legs, when I wore a dress for the first time since…forever? Let’s talk about tulle:

source: darren keith

♥ Or I could go as Elle Woods from Legally Blonde! I loved the musical so much:

♥ 33 Ways to Keep Yourself Motivated : I so need this right now and I’m so excited for the next few weeks!

♥ Kraso Calligraphy Set: I love how the colors just pop and I’ve never really tried to play with calligraphy tools and inks before.

♥ And you guys should check out Michael Bublé’s Crazy Love album, love the songs especially Haven’t Met You Yet

♥ Laisse Passe Dresses: Floral and flowing, I love these cute dresses, too bad though,  my body wasn’t built for flowing dresses .

♥ After Lovely Complex, I decided to watch Ristorante Paradiso because I saw it being advertised in Soup magazine. It’s about Nicoletta who goes to Rome to find her mother who had abandoned her when she was just five years old. Her mother’s new husband couldn’t accept any woman with a child so Nicoletta was left alone to the care of her grandparents. Now twenty-one years old she’s prepared to confront her mother’s husband about her existence. She finds herself in a lovely restaurant where the staff are all elderly gentlemen who wear spectacles. I am drawn by the lovely animation and coloring, plus the fact that it’s set in Rome and there’s food involved! OK, my otaku side is showing, I’m gonna stop now 

♥ Sandra Suy’s Illustrations via iulias@tumblr, find more of it here:

So do you have plans for Halloween? What are you going to dress up as? Can’t wait to hear from you guys!

Meant to Fly

Airplanes, have you ever seen them?

Like waiting ships on the ground

Idling away, humming their song

When I watch them through the glass

I wonder.

In some ways I am one of them,

Waiting, keeping still,

Wondering when I will finally,

you know, take off…

Because all my life, I’m waiting

to take flight…

I wish I could say it straight out, and not speak figuratively.

But would it matter to you?

No, it never has and it never will.

And it saddens me, because I’m holding out, holding on,

when all I’d rather do is fly. That was what I was made for.

Book Rec: NP

When you’ve fallen in love, broken up,lost a loved one, and start getting older, everything seems the same. I couldn’t tell what was good and what was bad, what was better and what was worse. I simply didn’t want to have any more bad memories. I wished that time would stop, and summer would never come to an end.

I have read and reviewed Banana Yoshimoto’s Hardboiled and Hard Luck earlier, but I’ve heard a lot of buzz around NP so I opted to read this first instead of Kitchen. With themes revolving around Love, Death, Grief, Sexuality and even the taboo topic of Incest this novel gave me a lot to think about. When I thought the st0ry will go one way it completely took me for a different ride.

Sarao Takase was working on his collection of short stories which he called NP, he was writing the 98th story when he took his own life. Since the stories were originally published there were Japanese scholars who decided to translate Takase’s stories into Japanese. Kazami Kano’s older lover Shoji was one of three people who tried to translate the stories, but he too along with the other two people, a professor and his assistant also committed suicide.The manuscript was left in Kazami’s care and the story really takes off when Kazami meets Takase’s children – Otohiko and Saki.

Suicide and obsession are the central themes to this novel, sometimes when I was reading this I bordered on frustration and despair. There were a lot of things going on like incest, lesbianism, grief, and loss but it’s still beautifully written nonetheless. I would try to read this again when I’m not pressed for time or when other books are not clamoring for my attention.

I love Banana Yoshimoto’s smooth prose and her skill at touching a wide range of topics without being too heavy. Two down, a few more to go, deciding between Kitchen and Goodbye Tsugumi!

Who Are You?

Reading Sandy’s latest post made me think about the “masks” that we wear. As Sandy quoted Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage.And all the men and women merely players”, I’ve always been interested in the roles we portray and the masks that we wear. Some roles are dictated to us by society, some fall on our laps because of our circumstance and there are masks that we choose to wear.

People think that it’s better to have a “what you see is what you get” personality. But the problem I have with this is that when meeting someone for the first time or an old friend, what they see is really what they get when it comes to me, but it doesn’t mean that they see the same thing. Clarisse and I talked about this before, there are some topics or behaviours that we engage in with a certain group of people and not with others. We’ve learned to adapt ourselves to those we come into contact with.

The ideal is to, borrowing again from Sandy’s post, “achieve a singular identity” and granted we’re not one-dimensional people or have linear personalities, but to have consistency in “what we perceive ourselves to be ” versus “what we display in everyday life”.

Going through my previous blogposts since 2006 I’ve noticed that my style of writing and the content that I post have greatly changed. Where I used to spill my thoughts like diarrhoea and blog about my depression I now post inspiring things more. And I really am grateful for this blog because aside from knowing how much I’ve grown as a person I’ve also pinpointed the five distinct masks I wear:

*inspired to create*

click on the images to view source

Visual Journal: Game Show

There are times when an epiphany just makes everything clearer in my life. It occured to me while doing the most mundane thing on earth – wiping a mahogany table with washcloth.

I realise that my relationships with people are like a game show. Like the one that is shown every noontime just before the variety show. There are a set of players who start at the far end from the game master, with each question they answer correctly they advance one step. Like this game show, my friends, family and acquaintances are players. And the degree of intimacy that I can have with them depends on how “correct” they are – tiny gestures, shared moments that build up trust, love and commitment. But one wrong move  – a lie, betrayal, or disappointment can make them go back a few paces. Or sometimes a relationship just remains stagnant, we could always be halfway from each other.

The problem is that in being overly cautious in my relationships, scared of being vulnerable and of getting hurt, there is never real intimacy with anyone. In the end, even if I have a lot of people around me, no one can really be close to me.

I was talking to K yesterday about this and I knew that in order to have a full life, I have to pour myself out and let love in. Slowly, though I’m opening up .