With this ring, I thee wed...

"I dreamed of a wedding of elaborate elegance,

A church filled with family and friends.

I asked him what kind of a wedding he wished for,

He said one that would make me his wife."

Words of Wisdom

"Let me tell you something," V began.  "Do you know how I survived the corporate world?  I have this little note by my phone that reminds me this: People who don't matter, don't bother..."

The E.T.C. Issue

Expectation or experience?  The same way I have not been able to figure out why it was so hard for people to understand this - "The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch swing with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had.", I'm intrigued by something I chanced upon just now: "Movies is spending time together?"

Absolute or perceived time?  Like the inconclusive answer to a random question I've been asking for the longest time, does not one already have the answer?  Maybe this might help: Do you choose to sit beside your friend or across the table?

Circular argument, or not?  You decide.

What is the meaning of this?

Sometimes, I reckon I surprise even myself with random quotes that I never knew exist in my word bank.  One of my creations, circa 2006, was this: Words become superfluous when there is nothing [more] to say.

A word is defined as a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning.  Meaning, however, likens an onion.  No, it does not make people cry, well, not all the time; it has layers, layers to be unveiled and revealed.

What makes comprehension of meaning perplexing is the place of meaning.  And truth be told, Semantics, or the knowledge of meaning, is hardly easily decipherable.  If meaning were the interpretation of words, and if meanings were given to objects, people and ideas according to our cognitive systems, which are inherently based on our experiences and conditioning, then meanings do not remain constant even to each person using the same words in similar situations or contexts.

Now, wiser in the person through Jesus that I reckon I am, I am grateful to guard my heart and my mouth, lest I may have to eat my words.

And so, two months and two emails later, there's nothing, no words, still...

His love endures forever

While waiting for the ATM to dispense some cash this morning, I couldn't help but notice the quote from Les Miserables (Victor Hugo, 1862) on the little blue screen.  It read, "Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved."  And almost immediately, I felt for this phenomenal playwright, for I knew he'd missed it.

And I reckon I do know better.  I don't have to be convinced I am loved.  I know I am.

Because God's love never fails (Psalm 136)...

What dreams may come

"We all have dreams,

and sometimes they get complicated;

And sometimes we have to stop and let go of one dream

so that we move forward with another one."
[Quote from Private Practice]

Reassuring Jo

Even in my darkest hour
The Lord will bless me with His power;
His loving grace will sure abound,
In His sweet care I shall be found.

~ Our Daily Bread, March 11

Money 101

Never good with money or in the planning of the use(s) of it, I've come to realise that I've been (trying to be) prudent in the management of money, or rather, the lack of. These days, I surprise myself asking: Is it wallet-friendly? Admittedly, I reckon I've not given much thought to something I take for granted all these years.

And as desultory a thought as this is, it all began when I chanced upon this:

"Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem."
— Bill Vaughan (1915 - 1977)

Hard to say I'm sorry

I'm often baffled how infrequent it was to hear "sorry" when I got stepped on, or bummed into on the streets (which happens more than very often, honestly!). And for the longest time, I thought it was me. Maybe I'm a klutz in more than one way; I reckon I may possess the most dangerous walking e-break in the history of mankind. But after countless "ohh..." and "ah!", I figured that perhaps it's just hard to say "I'm sorry".

On a lighter note, I fondly recall this from Taiwanese drama Meteor Garden: 如果道歉有用的话，还要警察干嘛？

Communication

"A complex thought is encoded in a limiting coding system, transferred through unreliable channels, to be coded by another unpredictable thought process. The encoding process is restrictive, the medium is challenging, the decoding process is far from the encoder's comprehension and control."

(Hobke & Sept 1993:421)

Quotable Quotes II

"There's no home like the one you've got, 'cause that home belongs to you."

~ Bolt

Optical Illusion

Some people are adamant that seeing is believing while others beg to differ. Me? I'm not so sure now. What I'm sure is vividly remembering this quote from Le Petit Prince, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart." But what if the heart doesn't know either? What then?

Quotable Quotes I

“All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”

~ Luis Buñuel (1900 - 1983)

More than Words

"...it takes a minute to make an acquaintance, perhaps a day to be an associate but a lifetime to find a friend..."

These words were written after Dear Jo in the card and they didn't fail to send a sniffle.

Words...somehow they just get to me. Perhaps it's just me. Or maybe, it's my professional training that makes me read [a lot] more into words than anyone else but many a times, the 26 letters that make up a gazillion vocabulary aren't just mere words to me.

*Ponder*

Strangely, I find myself on a roller coaster ride this week. I can be bubbly one moment but all quiet the next. Perhaps it's my impending departure. And maybe, I'm just having cold feet. The future taunts me in a funnily cruel way and nothing speaks more of it than this quotation from George Moore - A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

*Sniffle*

I think I am already homesick...

Words fail me

Ahhhh, those were the days...

Calvin and Hobbes. The source of one of my favourite lines in life.

Calvin and Hobbes. I remember all the craze in the duo back in the 90s. You can easily spot a Calvin and Hobbes tee...let's see, one in every 10 students! Okay, maybe I'd exaggerated a little but you bet it sure was popular. Of course, fashion faux pas notwithstanding, I had a Calvin and Hobbes t-shirt which I would wear every so often, until I was distracted by the equally cliché Hard Rock Cafe tees.

Calvin and Hobbes. It wasn't just a fad, at least not to me. In fact, my liking for these 2 characters was more than just satorial. I remember reading my comic books like a bedtime story, only that I would read them so carefully such that the spines don't get wrinkled!

Perhaps my abstruse affinity towards the fictitious six-year-old and his stuffed tiger will raise an eyebrow or two, but I sure am glad they'd brought lots of chuckle into my adolescent life. (^_^)

I have a cunning plan!

"I have a plan so cunning you can put a tail on it and call it a weasel."

Balmy afternoons have been spent in front of the telly watching the extremely vile, completely patronising, and repulsively cutting comedy series - The Blackadder. Here's one of my favourite dialogue from the episode of Sense and Senility in the third season:

Blackadder: Baldrick, I would like to say how much I will miss your honest, friendly companionship.

Baldrick: Thank you, Mr B.

Blackadder: But, as we both know, it would be an utter lie. I will therefore confine myself to saying simply, 'Sod off and if I ever meet you again, it will be twenty billion years too soon.'

And it is a surprise that I enjoy something this blasphemous and crass. *lol*

Blessing

"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."
Charlotte, Charlotte's Web

~ E.B. White

10pm

Snuggled in her warm bed that rainy night, she recounted the day in her mind. The movie, the walk in the park, the ice-cream at the cafe. The sneezing, the unfinished conversation at the sushi bar, the sudden comment at the traffic lights. And as if she has never ever realised it before, she suddenly felt really blessed for him in her life as she remembered a verse from the bible - I always thank God for you because of his grace given to you in Christ Jesus¹.

8pm

And even at quarter past eight, she did not have the slightest desire to head home despite the fact that his eyes had become teary, the sneezing more frequent and his house was a good 45 minutes away from the cafe. It was strange too, for the chatty duo did not talk much that night. Perhaps they were preoccupied with things on their minds, things which only they knew. But time was running out.

5pm

"Shall we take a walk in the park?" she asked and despite his getting-more-frequent sneezing, he subscribed to her incompassionate request.

1pm

She spotted him almost immediately outside the crowded cineplex and a sudden surge of unexplainable melancholy gripped her. He has only been gone for a while and she wondered how it was going to be possible without him for the next year.

Footnotes:

¹ 1 Corinthians 1:4

Rain, rain, go away...

Some time back, I came across a quotation which I liked a lot - "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." I hadn't given it much thought except the awe it left in me. In retrospect, despite its simplicity, it speaks not only of depth, but profound wisdom in truth.

It's like this: At a time when I've been feeling lousy for reasons underpinning that I have not yet identified with and/ or am in denial to acknowledge perhaps, it's easy to just hide in seclusion. But I'm sure glad I did not.

This is the reason... =]

Girl, Interrupted

Comfort Zone, Contested

Losing her sense of security was the last thing she'd wanted on this planet, but it seemed to be the very equilibrium she's failing terribly to grasp.

The letter that arrived on Monday led her peaceful world into a vortex where nothing seemed to make sense anymore. And it was paradoxical too, for she'd been waiting for the same letter for the longest time till it became too trying to even wonder about it.

And fear gripped her suddenly, and unexpectedly. With the what ifs swirling in her head, disorienting every logic and justification she'd worked out to convince herself she'd needed and wanted this, it was then that she realised maybe she wasn't sure after all.

Path Seekers, Limited

It was perhaps by some divine guidance that she found herself in an unfamiliar neighbourhood where she hopped on a bus that brought her to yet another unfamiliar neighbourhood and as she watched the countless people get on and off the bus along the long journey, it brought some strange form of solace to her topsy-turviness. And possibly, an answer too.

Today, Tomorrow

And she thought, if time really flies then it will soon be over, and though things may never be the same, but surely the future is made of the same stuff as the present. After all, Victor Hugo once said," There is nothing like a dream to create a future."

Anybody Out There

It's unheard of that I would take long to read something, but it's happening now. I bought this book excitedly in mid August last year, after a 20% off the RRP at Target. But even on the last day of April today (by golly, that's 8 long months!), I find myself only at page 254.

But here's something I really like...

"You don't have to be with a person for a hundred years before you're sure. Sometimes it happens in an instant. You've heard the saying: When you know, you know."