Sunday Serenade: waiting outside the lines

This is quite an inspirational song, sung by a teenager.. telling us to seize the day and take a chance.. A meaningful song.. "Waiting outside the lines" by Greyson Chance..

Waiting Outside the Lines
You'll never enjoy your life,
Living inside the box
You're so afraid of taking chances,
How you gonna reach the top?

Rules and regulations,
Force you to play it safe
Get rid of all the hesitation,
It's time for you to seize the day

Instead of just sitting around
And looking down on tomorrow
You gotta let your feet off the ground,
The time is now

[chorus]
I'm waiting, waiting, just waiting,
I'm waiting, waiting outside the lines
Waiting outside the lines
Waiting outside the lines
[end of chorus]

Try to have no regrets
Even if it's just tonight
How you gonna walk ahead
If you keep living blind?

Stuck in the same position,
You deserve so much more
There's a whole world around us,
Just waiting to be explored

Instead of just sitting around
And looking down on tomorrow
You gotta let your feet off the ground,
The time is now, just let it go

Don't wanna have to force you to smile
I'm here to help you notice the rainbow
'Cause I know what's in you is out there

[chorus]

I'm trying to be patient (I'm trying to be patient)
The first step is the hardest (the hardest)
I know you can make it,
Go ahead and take it

I'm waiting, waiting, just waiting
I'm waiting

[chorus]

You'll never enjoy your life
Living inside the box
You're so afraid of taking chances,
How you gonna reach the top?







Have a great week ahead! Live life large but stay safe...

Sunday Serenade: someday (ok)

My trip back to Malaysia for CNY allowed me to get in touch (sort of) with the English pop music scene as my sis listens to songs on top of the charts.. thus I was 'acquainted' with songs that are relatively new.. and this is one of them..

Here's Someday (OK) performed by Joe Brooks. Enjoy!





Have a great week ahead! Be safe!

Poetry Solace: Of dreams before waking

Continuing with another poem from Adrienne Rich..

Dreams before Waking
.........
What will make it for you?
You don't want to know the stages
and those who go through them don't want to tell
You have your four locks on the door
your savings, your respectable past
your strangely querulous body, suffering
sickness of the city no one can name
You have your pride, your bitterness
your memories of sunset
you think you can make it straight through
if you don't speak of despair.

What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other's despair into hope? ---
You yourself must change it. ---
what would it feel like to know
your country was changing? ---
You yourself must change it. ---
Though your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
what would it mean to stand on the first
page of the end of despair?

(1983)



Enjoy your weekend! Stay safe!

Sunday Serenade: better than i know myself

"Better than I Know Myself" is the song I would like to share this weekend.. it's by Adam Lambert.. I like his songs because he sings with an intensity that I can relate to..

Better than I know Myself
Cold as ice
And more bitter than a December
Winter night
That's how I treated you
And I know that I
I sometimes tend to lose my temper
And I cross the line
Yeah that's the truth

I know it gets hard sometimes
But I could never
Leave your side
No matter what I say

[chorus]
Cause if I wanted to go I would have gone by now,
But I really need you near me to
Keep my mind off the edge
If I wanted to leave I would have left by now,
But you're the only one that knows me
Better than I know myself
[end of chorus]

All along
I tried to pretend it didn't matter
If I was alone
But deep down I know
If you were gone
For even a day I wouldn't know which way to turn
Cause I'm lost without you.

I know it gets hard sometimes
But I could never
Leave your side
No matter what I say

[chorus]

I get kind of dark
Let it go too far
I can be obnoxious at times
But try and see my heart
Cause I need you need now
So don't let me down
You're the only thing in this world I would die without

[chorus x 2]







Have a great week ahead! Stay safe and be happy!

kittens II

After Tom and Jerry, there was Garfield and Kopi.. :) These two little kittens were only a few weeks old when they came over to our garden.. Dad said that their mum must have given birth in the tiny shed within our backdoor neighbor's compound.. They were just so adorable!

There shouldn't be any surprise as to what name I gave the orange-colored kitten.. :) 'Garfield' just popped into mind.. Garfield in Chinese is 加菲猫, with 加菲 sounding similar to 咖啡, which means coffee, so I named the greyish/black kitten 'Kopi' which is the Malay word for coffee.

These two little rascals were having tons of fun in my dad's garden.. running around, playing tag, pawing the soft earth, rolling and tumbling on the tarps my dad put up for shading his vegetables.. it was strangely therapeutic for us to watch them having so much fun and being so wide-eyed to everything around them..

Garfield & Kopi: "Aaahh... this is Life... "

Yummy yolk...

Garfield: "Peek a boo..."       Kopi: "......"

Kitty Obstacle Course 101

sibling love...

One thing that's different between Tom and Jerry and Garfield and Kopi was that the latter pair was not afraid of me and my camera.. I was able to take their photos really up close..

Garfield: "haven't you seen a cute kitten before?"

Garfield: "Take my no-shadow paw!"

ready to bounce..

"I won't get wet hiding here.."

Although Kopi was more shy than Garfield, I still managed to get some pretty good close-ups of it too..

"I like the smell of pandan.. I like to stretch too..."

"Zzzzz zzzzzz"

"Mum.. I can't get down... Help?"

Alas, both of them disappeared a few days before I came back to Taiwan.. one fell off the wall into the compound of a neighbor with 3 very fiece dogs.. :( while the other disappeared  overnight, most probably 'cat-nap' by someone... :( :(   

Even though I can only hope that both of them are in a better place/hands right now, I am grateful for the fun and joy they brought us during those few short weeks.. 

world health day

It's World Health Day today.. and this year's theme is high blood pressure. This theme seems eerily coincidental to something that had happened recently..

The sudden passing of a classmate of mine made the dangers of  this disease very real. It shocked everyone.
My classmate, a man in his late forties, was not obese nor was he a heavy smoker. He did have a beer belly that was typical for a man his age. And like most of my classmates, he was juggling work, family and studies obligations all at the same time, so to say that he was stressed out was an understatement. Then there was the environmental factor. The temperature here has been fluctuating sharply since February with a daily difference of 10-degree being the norm, which is bad news for anyone with hypertension. According to his wife, my classmate stopped his hypertension medication without consulting his doctors because he thought it was interfering with the medicine he was taking for his cold. Then on that fateful evening, he was found collapsed in his office. He had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke and fell into a coma that he never came out of.

have lots of vegetables and fruits daily..

This case may not be an isolate case as people, especially older folks, tend to get complacent when it comes to adhering to their long-term medication regime. In fact, my sister and her colleagues are used to having patients who kept being admitted for not taking their high blood pressure medications, especially after every festivities.

People are living longer thanks to the advancement in medicine, but there's only so much doctors can do. We need to take responsibility for our own health. We can't keep on abusing our bodies, with poor diet, lack of exercise and other dangerous habits, and expect our medical teams to make us healthy instantly with a jab, a pill or a surgery.

So dear friends, do take good care of yourselves.. You live only once..

Sunday Serenade: count on me

Let's have a song by Bruno Mars named "Count On Me"..

A song that celebrates friendship.. the bond and connection friends have is something that's rare and precious.. I know, cos I don't have that many friends thus I value and treasure each and all of them..




Have a great week ahead! Be happy and stay safe!

Poetry Solace: Of destiny

Another poem from Adrienne Rich..

Sources - XV
It's an oldfashioned, an outrageous thing
to believe one has a "destiny"

-- a thought often peculiar to those
who possess privilege --

but there is something else:  the faith
of those despised and endangered

that they are not merely the sum
of damages done to them:

have kept beyond violence the knowledge
arranged in patterns like kente-cloth

unexpected as in the batik
recurrent as bitter herbs and unleavened bread

of being a connective link
in a long, continuous way

of ordering hunger, weather, death, desire
and the nearness of chaos.




Enjoy your weekend! Be safe!

a very sian situation

Two nights ago came a request from my Prof's (aka my PhD adviser) other PhD student to help her with her paper.. she needs to get it translated from Chinese to English and my Prof suggested me (that's what she told me over the phone, anyway). She is willing to pay me, but frankly remuneration is the least of my concern for this case.

I am in a dilemma.. If it were somebody else, I would have rejected her straightaway.. the simple reason being that she rubs me the wrong way with her constant bragging about her 'close' relationship with my Prof and the hypocritical 'compliments' she gave me..  Also, I don't think she would be appreciative about my helping her cos she's one of those people who thinks paying me means no favor owed.. Yet I couldn't say NO since my Prof was the one who asked her to look for me for help.. How could I not help without being seen as selfish and unhelpful???

In any case, I am certainly going to charge her for translating, although I can't really ask for my full rates. I am expected to give 'preferential rates' as she is a fellow student of my Prof... :(

Now you know why I hate all those kinds of 'hidden/unspoken' social rules that I'm 'expected' to abide by.. I don't like to ask for flavors because I don't like to be asked to do flavors, unless you are my family, close friends or someone I like/admire/respect/click with... I chose my adviser with care, and unfortunately I got her as a tag-along.. Just hope all these are worth my time and effort..

Update (Apr 05): This 'classmate' of mine called me last night and asked me to start translating from section 2 instead as she said that our Prof has done the introduction for her. She also asked me for a 'favorable' rate.. Bloody hell!! If she doesn't mind her paper appearing disjointed and inconsistent (sad to say, but I'm not impressed with what my Prof has written for her), who am I to argue? As long as my name doesn't appear on that paper, I will do whatever she asked..

* sian is a commonly used word in Malaysia and Singapore. It is wonderfully explained in TalkingCock.com here. 

4.4

Today is  ..

4th of April (04), 2013 (the last 2 digits: 13, if you add them up, you get four), Thursday
四月四日，星期四。
lots of fours here.. ^.^

Today's a public holiday in Taiwan, both Ching Ming Festival and Children's Day.. all the highways are jammed up as people are rushing home to pay respect to their ancestors.. and both the railway and bus stations are packed with people too.. so not a good time to go out.. not that I want nor like to go out.. :p