It seemed not too long ago when I was just recapping how ‘dashing’ a year 2010 has been for me and today, 4 days later than a year ago, here I am doing the same for 2011.  Coincidentally, it is of the same cold, windy day when I last wrote, except that this time around, I’m home in Kuching.  Perhaps it is only in such chilly weather that my muse awakens.
 
2011 is a year bestowed with abundance of joy as well as sorrow.  It is honored to mark the wedding dates for up to three of my very, very, very close ‘friends’… this noun seems inadequate to sufficiently describe what they are to me, perhaps ‘sisters’ comes closer.  And trust me, witnessing them bonding to their lifetime happiness to come, is an ecstasy no other bliss can better. Congratulations again to the three beautiful brides of the year.
 
Yet, as if proving to me the yin and yang philosophy, these three most blissful events of the year were interlaced almost logically with three similarly emotionally impactful episodes of the contrary.  Three incredibly significant icons in my life left, with me bidding my last farewell too late to all.  They are either unexpectedly shocking news, or that I was physically half a hemisphere too far away to pay my last respects, making 2011 also the year abundance of worthless regrets and remorseful tears.
 
The birth of my second god daughter, then the departure of a friend to overseas, the enlightening heartbreak of my lifetime, then the stumble into unforeseen arms of love, the burning of much-planned vacations, then the surprise of unforgettable celebrations, it is definitely a year of emotional roller coaster � of heights I never imagined.  It is a year of days where tears dissolved the smiles I have yet to extend, also months of smiles that draw before my tears are dried.
 
There are times I feel way beyond:
 
My heart raced in faltering pace, my mind triumphed in glorious conquest,  my soul soars  beyond floating clouds, whenever you light me up to beam the sun to shame. I rejoice in foolish daze, I celebrate with wary care, just like a kid who fears finishing his favorite ice cream a mouthful too hasty.
 
Yet there are days I feel no less than:
 
From the crying to sleep and waking to cry, it was startlingly a very physically tiring as well as mentally exhausting, not to mention emotionally challenging and health deteriorating process.  The tug is so tight, so brutal, I feel bloody all over, my bones feel crushed by the bind, my skin feels gnawed by the grazes of the rope, I feel burnt all over from the struggle, yet they illustrate nothing compared to what my heart and soul experience, nothing at all…

2011, has been pretty even. Merry Belated Xmas, Happy Holidays & Happy New Year 2012!

My right hand's a total goner now.  I mean, I injured it back last Thursday when I fell down in the zoo after this over-enthusiastic baby elephant rushed towards me and I fell backwards, spraining my wrist then.  I wore a splint for few days and it was gradually getting better when tonight, a friend just had to pick a fight with me, then another crack was heard (coincidentally, I happened to rest my hand from the splint as I thought it was getting better).  Now, my right arm feels lifeless from elbow onwards, and is hurting even if I just needed it to comb my hair. And there is a certain spot on the elbow, where if even slightest pressure applied, it hurts me to tears.


Lucky, I tried writing and signing and it still performs satisfactorily...  and the fight is over...

ROS is usually where I turn to whenever I feel like there is no other better options to vent, human wise that is. I’ve been trying but somehow those that I try to convey just couldn’t find its way out of my lips.  Some messages are so hard to convey maybe just because they aren’t meant to be?

Human tend to make mistakes, but how far a mistake is forgivable?  I’ve made many, and recently I made one so bad, I still find it hard to believe it actually happened.  I learnt in the past, that although I’ve made countless mistakes, I’d still want to make them to learn from it.  But this certain mistake I just made, I’d really wished I have a time turner to undo it somehow.  It gnaws me from within, kills me to learn I am a person of such sin, drives me to the edge because I just cannot accept such self yet, or ever...  I do not know what good feeling overwhelmed with guilt and drowned in sinful regrets would do me, but I just can’t help feeling so… 

What I had done, what I should do about it, I really don’t know, I only know I see her face everywhere I go, and the disappointment I must’ve caused her.  After promising to be good, this is where I wind up to be… I’d feel ashamed to face her, yet she appears just about everywhere I look to, anywhere I run to, there is just none corner to hide…  I’m left with only one option, a single direction, that is to face the music of my terrible sin, yet everytime I do, it feels like a dagger’s stab,  it swells futile tears, it twinges throbbing aches…  No matter how hard I bite onto self to silent my cries of pain, it subsides nothing…

Remorse, regret, redefined, where everything changed yet nothing erased, the future distorted as the past remains, and I ask not for forgiveness, but for wisdom to live with this new blemish in life… 

Grandma has passed for more than a month now, yet it seemed just like yesterday when I got that heart wrenching phone call from Mum and then my chaos of getting a flight back from my overseas business trip.  I have not shed a tear, in front of anyone that is, or showed that I’m at the very least affected by this, as in the past, I most probably appear emotionless throughout to everyone else who is very much shattered by this ordeal.


No words can account the amount of regret I felt for not seeing her one last time before her warmth fades physically, yet regret is something of utter nuinsance and hopelessly futile.  What difference would it have made if I saw her one last time, it would make a world of difference that I was in time to let her know, she did not wait in vain to deathbed for my return, at this thought alone, it brings tears I carefully banked in my heart, I know no one will ever see…

Much has happened, in the months this blog is silenced, yet where do I begin, and where do I go, then where should I end?  There are some people whose presence and existence were once so important but now became less significance…  There are people who you knew not their existence yet today unmistakeably is someone you can no longer live without…


Soo Kwan is a friend whose birthday just recently passed.  We have worked together in the same department for probably 2 years, yet it is only a year ago when I gradually got to know her.  Today we are friends so fast people tend to doubt if our ‘relationship’ is more than friendship. Haha… Despite our closeness, do not think we do not have our disagreements, for what are friendships if we do not even dare to disagree with one another?  I remember our two most ‘explosive’ rows were one back during last Raya season, and another is a very recent one, also just before Raya season (fasting season).  Perhaps it was my coldness and my barrier I have put around me, that I tend to make her feel insignificant as she mentioned, yet her weight in my life, probably no words can justify. 

To that point of date, I have yet let out my emotional despair bottled within me, but the evening when she left me with words more throbbing than slashes and stabs of a poisoned knife, I could not help breaking down in the office washroom.  With work, with life and with friends, I asked, what have I improved, why have I failed to this stage, to this embarrassingly dismaying state? I have no answer, but I have a wayforward, that is I must do better than my current best because it is just not enough.

Woman, if you ever read this, that birthday party, I only want you to be happy, being happy is the simplest yet most complex thing to achieve in life.  I wanted your birthday to be a turn around point in your life, to stop brooding, stop restricting yourself, because you can do so much more and you are so much more than what you are now.  But these two days when I hear you being sick and still not in a good condition just as in the past, I feel helpless as to what I can still do to help you…  I can only pray you move pass this hurdle as quickly and as painlessly possible…

Baiti is a friend I made two years ago, meeting her for the first time in a project meeting.  Her birthday coincidentally is a week apart from Soo Kwan’s.. She is also a friend I can no long imagine my life without.  Though our friendship did not bloom ‘overnight’ like mine and Soo Kwan, it is no less significant as we bonded boundlessly.  She is one who provides support and encouragement even when I doubt myself, she is one who has helped me survived through thorny times, period I am sure I would not have made it through alone and ensured I am still where I am today, and this year, I am sorry I will not be able to be with you on your birthday, but we will celebrate it together a day before…

Kim’s wedding coming up this 20th, Kim, we’ve been friends for years, travelled half the globe to meet one another, done many crazy things together in China, and time has been cruel to us that we are now more of friends in memories.  I like to think that one day when I gain back that luxury in time, we will once again be able to sit down and chat for hours just to catch up with one another or just over nothing like good friends do, yet that day seem to become more and more distant these days.  I am real sorry that I will be missing your wedding, I am preparing you a wedding gift, it is not expensive or anything, but it is done with every bit of sincerity from my heart, I hope I will have it ready in time, but my well wishes for your wedding, girl, has long been sent I believe.  Have faith and wishing you a blessed marriage and everlasting love with Francis.

These are people who have become significantly important in my life, or at least have at one point of time been, I do not know when these significance will fade, or if it has for either of you, but to me, you are people I will always treasure. 

And to my beloved grandma, I promise you to be good, I promise that you will only need to smile for me from heaven, and no longer worry like in the past, this I promise you.  I will give myself a one year long reminder, next year at your anniversary, I will be able to stand proudly before your grave and tell you, how good I have been throughout the year, and will only continue to be so for the years to come… 

Six weeks, whatever time I needed to recuperate from whatever it is, it should have been more than enough.  I came to come offshore ill - physically, emotionally and spiritually.  I was so ill, I chose to return to the ocean, because it is where I found most peace, boundless space and clearest channel to listen to what my heart has to say.

Although this is not my first time offshore, during my flight there, I still cannot help marvel how beautiful the aqua mat ocean connects boundlessly with the blue blanket of sky.  I tried hard to find a segregating line between the two, but could not.  For the two subjects that are supposedly impossible to come together, it is amazing how mother nature just merges them together so effortlessly.  The feeling of how minute  I am compared to this universe returns, overwhelmingly…  Yes, I am back in the South China Sea… I am tinier than that white speck down in the ocean, such an insignificant icon, surely what I feel too heavy to shoulder is even less trivial…  I seeped in a breath of freedom, and all load alights miraculously into air…

Because it is the turnaround period in Angsi, the first eight days I am here, I was basically on my toes running around getting things done, sleeping an average of 3 hours a night, and not sleeping straight on the last 2 days due to hiccups during startup of the platform.  It is only after that, that I finally found time to breath and appreciate what I have come to reminisce in the first place.

Sometimes, you do things that you keep recalling and ask yourself, “Why the hell did I do that for?”  There are two things, I’ve done in the recent past (one in Nov 2010, one in April 2011) that summons me this question and subsequently an unconscious smack on my forehead.  Yet did I really regret doing them? Not really, no, I did not, I would have done the same, given the second chance, yet why does the question surface time and again?  I have no answer, perhaps the question will remain a mystery just as how enigmatically the ocean and the sky comes together yet stays apart…

Sometimes, we just have to embrace the unfathomable mysteries of life and that ‘unsolvable’ is an acceptable answer as well.

Finally I see the line segregating the sky and the sea, change of perspective is important to see the 'answer' at times