Settling in Seattle

I'm not exactly sure why I decided to write this post, given that my trip took place over a year ago. But I was perusing my iPhoto and got a teensy bit nostalgic, so here goes.

If you can believe it, in the six years I lived in the United States, I didn't get to travel much aside from the annual trips to California (and one long backpacking trip across the East Coast but that's a whooole 'nother story). I had completed my thesis in December of 2014 but I decided to stay an extra semester to do some research, and I had one additional goal in mind: to see parts of the States I had never seen before. After weeks of planning, I settled on Seattle. Unfortunately, I was only able to stay for two days and one night. So I packed in as many things as I can in those 48 hours and with the help of Yelp and Uber, I left the city feeling satisfied and excited to visit again.

What would a visit to Seattle be without going to the Pike Place? We arrived around 8 AM and immediately headed here with our backpacks in tow. It was a chilly Spring morning but the sun was out and there weren't many passerby. It made a very pleasant stroll around the famous strip. But let's be real: it was 8 AM and we were two very hungry girls who just had a rough morning of early flights, so we didn't enjoy the view for too long and immediately went on a search for some grub.

@ The Crumpet Shop

Thankfully, the place Yelp recommended was one short minute walk away! And our one minute of hard work paid off at the sight of the crumpets. These babies have a similar texture to pancakes (in that they're the perfect balance of moist and dry), but are shaped like English muffins. Confused yet? Don't be. They're delicious. Don't let the size fool you, though. That tiny circle of pesto, tomato, and cheese goodness filled me up and kept me going for a good five hours of walking and exploring. Don't ask me how - they just magically do.

Obligatory visit to the Space Needle

(though I didn't go up, and I'll expand on why later).

@ Grecian Corner

Simple. Relatively fast. Delicious! I reckon this spot is where a lot of tourist go to eat after venturing to the Space Needle. Usually those places aren't very good, but the thought of their gyros alone is enough to make me want to fly out to Seattle again and have some. (Yes, it was that good).

@ Kerry Park

A fantastic spot to get a view of Seattle's skyline from afar

@ Sky View Observatory, Columbia Center

The reason why I didn't go up the Space Needle was because of this view! We were told earlier on by a very kind gentleman at Pike Place that the highest point of the city is actually this observatory. It's also cheaper than the Space Needle. And boy... look at that view.

@ Seattle Public Library

Now this... this was the highlight of my trip. Upon research, this became the one thing I was the most excited to see in Seattle. And while it looks spectacular on the outside in all of its post-structuralist glory, the inside is even better! It took everything in me to leave after settling down with a book on one of their comfortable couches.

@ Original Sul Lung Tang

My friend and I went out to Lynwood to catch a movie and proceeded to eat here for dinner. The 설렁탕 (which is a soup dish with broth made from ox bones) was perfectly light and rich, but the BBQ was the winner. You can never go wrong with heaps and heaps of meat, really.

@ Biscuit Bitch

Ahh.. just the name of biscuit bitch makes my stomach growl. The place is a local favourite and the queue (despite having multiple locations relatively nearby to one another) reflects its popularity. It's basically a paper container full of greasy Southern goodness, which is perfect for the chilly northwestern morning weather. Somewhere underneath all that gravy and greasy sausage lies two pieces of soft and buttery biscuit that melts in your mouth.

@ The Gum Wall, Pike Place Market

Oh yes. I went there. And it was as gross as it sounds and looks.

@ Union Station

Nyeh.. I'm a sucker for these kinds of old architecture.

By a little after noon, my friend and I parted ways at SeaTac and it was back to real life (literally, since I went from the airport to work until 7 PM that evening). The trip was short and while I wish I had more time, I think the time limit gave me a jolt of adrenaline to really explore the places that I could. There were other places I visited and didn't get pictures of (like the Chihuly Garden and Glass), and they were all gorgeous views of city life and art. This trip was like a brief and sizzling love affair that made me fall in love with Seattle for all its diversity and modern charms.

Until next time, Seattle.

Guard Down

She was right there.

I'm not sure what she was doing because everything around me moves at a lightning speed as adrenaline rushes through my veins for twenty minutes straight. This game is my life. Every one of these games is my life, and I play as if it depends on it. But that also means that I miss things. Not just hoops, but also people. I shut things out completely to let myself be one with the game and my eyes just don't stop for anything but that rubbery orange ball I've loved ever since I could barely speak.

But that night... mine stopped for her.

Her ducking while shrieking in fear, to be exact.

My instinct immediately had me running towards to slap the ball away from hitting her. She looked up, eyes still filled with fear that turned into a smile in an instant.

"Thank you," she mouthed, still too stunned to speak properly.

Little did she know that somebody/something took control of my life at that second and I was never the same.

A/N I'm supposed to be finishing up my presentation butohwell. I've had this scenario running around my head since last weekend's basketball game. Pure fiction, guise.

To travel is to...

I was just goofing the net, trying to muster up the willingness to start writing. I stumbled upon a crazy load of quotes in one page about traveling and here are some of my favorites:

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road.

They are the destination, and the journey.

They are home.” 

― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.

I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.” 

― Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,

and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men

and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” 

― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

“But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” 

― Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again;

we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life” 

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” 

― Gustave Flaubert

“Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.” 

― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.” 

― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost.” 

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” 

― Cesare Pavese

“I didn't know that the world could be so mind-blowingly beautiful.” 

― Justina Chen Headley

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.” 

― Pico Iyer

If everything isn't going your way, I pray that you at least get to travel...

Compartmentalizing

There's comfort in boxes. One for this, one for that. One for you, one for me. There. Everybody's happy. No fuss. No mess. Hurray. But there's a point where it's unbecoming and simply... messy. (I know, what an paradox) Note that this is coming from me, who is the queen of organization and order.

I think I'm currently hitting a certain wall where I have far too much boxes than what my head can handle. Pick an aspect of my life and I assure you that there are some form of boxes there. For instance, social media. Ah, easy! I have not one but THREE Twitter accounts and another one that I manage. I have an email address for personal use, school-related things, and fandom matters. Even in my phone, I have folders that categorizes each app according to my preference.

See what I mean? I'm an organizing maniac. It's getting to the point where even my bookmark bar's folders are giving me headaches.

Do I stop, though? Because frankly, I'm not sure how well I'd be able to function without these boxes. I'm not ADHD but I get as fidgety as they if things aren't categorized. It's as if my brain refuses to process things if it's not yet labeled accordingly.

Sigh.

La la la.

There I go again.

Poof!

When Coldplay Sung About Being So Tired That You Just Can't Sleep...

I have no f***ing clue what they're talking about.

Tentang Rindu

Gue belum pernah ngerasain kangen seumur hidup gue sampai gue akhirnya pindah ke negeri orang. Mungkin ketika gue di tanah air, rasa kangen nya masih manageable karena segala sesuatu dalam jangkuan. Tapi begitu pindah ke tempat lain, rasanya kangen nya seperti di kuadrat seratus dan munculnya sporadik, seperti ngga ada pola nya which means mengatasi nya susah.

Tapi gue salah.

Ternyata ada pola dalam kangen. At least, pola ini berlaku buat gue pribadi.


Kangen gue menjadi-jadi ketika gue lagi sarapan pagi di hari Minggu, karena biasa nya gue selalu makan bareng keluarga dan/atau teman-teman sepulang gereja. Kangen gue meningkat drastis ketika gue lagi scrolling timeline dan teman-teman di Indonesia pada nge-tweet tentang makan malam mereka. Kangen gue bertambah ketika gue lagi ngobrol sama teman gue yg lagi kesusahan atau lagi merayakan sesuatu, karena gue kangen berbagi. Kangen gue jadi nyelekit ketika gue lagi naik sepeda sepulang kampus, di bawah matahari yg menyengat, dan pikiran tentang orangtua gue and everything (everyone)  I'm fighting for melintas di kepala. Dan kangen gue ada di puncak paling tinggi ketika gue sendirian, berusaha menyelesaikan tugas dan kerjaan, sementara temen-temen gue asik menikmati liburan mereka.

Sejauh ini, gue belum berhasil menemukan formula buat mengatasi isu ini. Dan konklusi gue cuma bahwa kangen itu ngga pilih-pilih dan selalu ngga enak.


Buat semua yang lagi rindu, I feel you. 


Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

The Day I Turned Into Somewhat An Adult-ish

"Presents don't really mean much to me. I don't want to sound mawkish, but -- it was the realization that I have a great many people in my life who really love, and who I really love." Gabriel Byrne

"I'm lost in the middle of my birthday.

I want my friends, their touch, with the Earth's last love.

I will take life's final offering,

I will take the last human blessing."

Rabindranath Tagore

"Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that can never end." Richard Bach

"May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine." Frank Sinatra

"It takes a long time to grow young." Pablo Picasso

Now that I'm no longer seventeen, what do I do?

Luck.

I don't believe in luck. The only times in the world when I use the word 'luck' is when I'm being modest about my accomplishments or when I'm jealous of something that my friends get to do. But in its essence, I don't believe in it.

But I've been thinking, and I realize that I'm luck --ehem, privileged, to have been a part of the blogging movement five years ago because through that, I've gained wonderful friends that I'm still in touch with until now. Five years ago, blogging was ultra cool. We would blog about the most random thing and other people would actually read it. We'd share personal stories of our struggles in our blog, and people would care enough to read and give us advices on the comment box. It was okay. It was cool. It was... fun.

...and then came Twitter.

The blogging hype died down for non-fashion bloggers. Some of us, like yours truly, still tries to blog every once in a while. Some of us completely abandoned the concept of blogging. The short, 140 charactered updates takes precedence of our online activities. Not saying that it's bad. It's just... different.

I miss those times when blogging was still a mean of friend making.

I know that by saying the following sentence, I would contradict my opening paragraph but I can't find a better way to say it. I'm lucky that I was a part of the blogging hype. Because without that, I wouldn't have friends who lives in just about every corner of the world. I wouldn't have witnessed so many wonderful people grow and change. I wouldn't be smiling in utter joy when Indita, one of the loveliest people in the world, got accepted into the college she wanted, and this list could just go on and on.

So, for once, thank you, Luck.

For Those Who Loves the Rain

Listen to this song by Imelda May while simultaneously play the sound of the rain from here.

It's magical.

P.S. I found that this song works wonders, too (not that it needs the boost).

Nightmare

I'm not the type of sleeper who dreams a lot. But when I do, it's typically very vivid and quite long. Lately, my dreams have been filled with something K-pop related which I'm quite thrilled about since it's better than dreaming about the other occupant of my life (*cough* school *cough*). It's enough that I have to deal with it in reality, and I'd like to keep my sleep as school-free as possible. But last night's dream was different.

It was a nightmare, really. The first one I have in a long time.

I was somehow taken into a prisoner by the Nazi (dear G-d, I know). I knew that resistance was futile and that my life won't be spared. So I did my best to make sure that I'm able to send something to my parents to let them know about my situation and possibly end the regime of these monsters. For some odd reason, I have my BlackBerry with me. It has about 1% battery life but I managed to snap some photos of the leaders and the people involved. I typed a draft, explaining the circumstances here and what they're really about.

Then, I spend the rest of the dream trying to figure out a way to get my Berry to my Mom without them finding out. I was cooperating with them. I did what they ask, I smiled when they walk by. Then... I woke up.

Even though it was horrific, I didn't feel shaken or afraid when I woke up. I simply sat there and thought, "Holy sh-t. I need to have my phone with me at all times, then."

Anyway. Weird post, I know. I'm just trying to get my fingers and brain warmed up for the papers I'm supposed to write today.

Adios.

Easterness and Eagerness

One of these days, bros, I might quit trying to make the title of my post somewhat clever. But that day is not today.

So, some of you probably know that I've been a college student for the past four months. It has been nothing short of hard and exciting -- all at the same time. Before I started college, I've been given warnings by my friends about the horror that awaited me.

I didn't believe them when they sent me that picture above. I thought, "Really? Is it really that bad? I mean, c'mon, bros. Don't exaggerate, here."

But then, I realize by the first week that it's like this:

Which clubs do I join? Where should I work at? Which classes should I take? Who should I befriend?

(Those who have started college, you know what I mean.) The first couple of weeks of school is insanely overwhelming! There seem to be just thousands of opportunity laid out in front of you and you just have to choose. Be careful, though, because your choice affects your life for the next five months of your life. I made my choice and that automatically alternates me between being a part of the Nerd and the Zombies (I'm a Zombie about 70% of the time).

Sadly, this is not an exaggeration. Consider it a warning.

Cray.

Also, I've recently mapped out my life for the next year and it is official, ladies and gents. I will become a permanent resident of both the Nerd world and the Zombie world. So, to those who intend to survive the apocalypse in December 20, 2012: please don't shoot me in the head.

College may sound oh so terrible based on what I've said up until now, but it definitely has aspects that you cannot get anywhere else. The one thing I love about college is that I could freely run towards the direction that I'd like without having to worry about peer judgment or even slowing down for others.

It's my life. I'm in control.

Although I'm not the best driver in the world ("Do NOT go anywhere near the steering wheel, Sash," is what my friends would say), I'm confident enough that if I do so fail, even though I have no means of any safety in a form of a net or even a string beneath me, I'll be okay. And even though it's crazy busy and exhausting, I'm excited because I know that with every second I spend attempting to pay attention to some professor's lecture, I'm getting closer and closer to my dream. So to you who are starting college: be eager. Happy Easter.

I hope you guys are having a blast so far in every aspect of your life. If not, make it happen, folks. Go out there and have a blast. While you do that, I'm going to chase my dream with ardour -- starting with these final projects and papers I have coming up.

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you.
And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you.

No, I don't want to fall in love (This world is only gonna break your heart)
No, I don't want to fall in love (This world is only gonna break your heart)
With you (This world is only gonna break your heart)

What a wicked game to play, to make me feel this way.
What a wicked thing to do, to let me dream of you.
What a wicked thing to say, you never felt this way.
What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you and,

I want to fall in love (This world is only gonna break your heart)
No, I want to fall in love (This world is only gonna break your heart)
With you.

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
I never dreamed that I'd love somebody like you.
And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you.

*Chris Isaak - Wicked Game

On Not Getting What You Want and the Hardship of Finding A Job

Here's an equation for you:

2C = GROWING UP

2C + 4(H + M) = GROWING UP

C = change | H = hardship | M = Money loss

All you brainiacs, you're free to correct my flawed formula.

Travels.

You may or may not know that I've been traveling to the East Coast during the past two weeks. There are stories after stories I could spill to you all, but since I'm about to head off to my bus for Boston, I'm coerced to keep this post short --making it an update, perhaps.

Anyway, here's a repost of Ika Natassa's (one of my favorite Indonesian author whom I had the privilege to work freelance for) thoughts on traveling.

Stories, I promise. But for now, enjoy!

Travel is the simple chance of reinventing ourselves at new places where we are nobody but a stranger.

Travel is the discovery of what and who we miss the most.

Travel is the same pair of jeans for a week and different experiences every day.

Travel is finding new things and new people to miss.

Travel is discovering the part of yourself that you never knew existed before.

Travel is that one song in your iPod that will forever remind you of that one sexy afternoon somewhere.

Travel is the discovery of who misses us the most.

Travel is answering the question ‘business or pleasure’ without blinking.

Travel is deciding who will be the last call before you take off and the first call after you landed.

Travel is a test of your physical and emotional tolerance.

Travel is a one hour conversation that could lead to a lifelong friendship.

Travel is that one boarding pass you keep in your wallet to remind yourself one day when you’re gray and old that you were once cool.

Travel is waking up in a strange bed and feeling home and waking up in your own bed one day and feeling like a stranger.

It’s learning not to take every second for granted.

Travel is learning that the journey is as memorable as the destination.

Travel is discovering that random act of kindness does exist.

Travel is learning to communicate with just a smile.

Travel is not wanting to sleep because for once reality is more interesting than your dream.

Travel is not being afraid to fall in love with a complete stranger.

Travel is where broken English is welcomed with a wide smile instead of greeted by a grammar nazi.

Travel is where people that you talk to really try to understand what you’re trying to say.

Travel is finding out more reasons to write. And more reasons to live.

Travel, sometimes, is the rediscovery of our nationalism.

Travel is that one stranger across the street you will always wonder if he/she is your soul mate.

Travel is wearing those clothes you couldn’t wear back home.

Travel is realizing the things you cannot live without.

Travel is realizing that maybe you know nothing.

Travel is wearing a stranger’s jacket and feeling home.

Travel is meeting you.

P.S. Happy new year, my dear readers! It is yet another year to live, laugh, love, and cry. In that note, it's been over three years that I've blogged. How long have you blogged? Drop a word, I'd like to know.

Stories, I promise. But for now,

A Time To Kill, A Deal To Seal

Don't you just love it when you come up with a catchy and rhyming title for your post? :-)

I have about half an hour before I have to leave again so I decided to type this post up.

It's two weeks away from my Christmas getaway. It's crazy exciting but it also means that I have to finish ALL high school assignments before I leave and I have to finish ALL the final projects and papers for my college classes. Sounds fun? Umm... not really. But I brought this upon myself and each day, I remind myself to stay focused on the task ahead and not let myself slip into a hole.

Because Christmas is just around the corner, I'm going to spill my thoughts on the holiday itself. Yes, I celebrate Christmas but I'm not going to preach to you about what it means religiously or anything.

Christmas, to me, has always been simple.

It's about family and love. Growing up in Indonesia, we've never really made a big celebration of Christmas and I think, my family have only actually put up a tree thrice in the 15 years that I've lived at home. It's not that we don't appreciate Christmas. We just see Christmas as celebrating it with our family, without the fancy ornaments and gifts.

As you'd imagine, moving to the United States where EVERYTHING is about decorating and gifts and shopping for the occasion, I experienced quite a bit of a culture shock.

My first host family was your typical American family and they too celebrate Christmas like every other family in America does. We decorated the house, although the word 'decorate' wouldn't really represent the activity since we completely revamped the whole house with Christmas decorations. We had Christmas sheets, towels, plates, pillows, mats, and other household items that you can name. We also put up a huge Christmas tree and spent a whole evening decorating it.

...and then come the gifts.

I've always been taught to give and spending a sum of money for gifts have never been a drag for me. But it was so heartwarming to see a tree with boxes and boxes of beautifully (and Christmas-ly) wrapped presents under it. To be honest, I don't think I've ever received so much gifts from such few people in one day than I did during the two Christmas I was with the Edwards. The inner child that I am yelped in joy seeing that many presents and for a second (a loooooong second), I felt ungrateful because I wished I've celebrated Christmas this way all my life. By celebrating Christmas this way meaning the abundance of presents, of course. Such a selfish thought indeed.

But as I go through each day of my life in the past six months, I've been constantly reminded that I'm able to stand and breath because of grace and that Christmas is really about gifts. A gift, to be precise. It's important for me to remember that the best gift I could ever give to anybody is by loving them and to constantly remind them that they matter, and the best gift I could ever give to myself is to stay thankful no matter what.

I know that last paragraph is mega cheesy and mushy mushy. But as I listen and let my mind be swayed by Christmas songs that talk about nothing of the true meaning of the holiday, I can't help but to realize what I privileged life I've been living to be here, in tiny Twin Falls, Idaho with the wonderful classmates and friends that I have, and to having an amazing group of people just a BBM away in Indonesia and all over the world.

Sometimes, we forget that the little things we have matters. That the people we have around us matters. More than anything, we should be focusing on how we can make others feel loved and important during this month.

So if any of you readers is feeling exhausted or lonely or hateful during this most wonderful time of the year, remember to look around you and set your eyes away, for once, from yourself but to others. I guarantee that once you start worrying less about what you're going to get or what you're going to do or what's going to happen to you, the world will be much much brighter.

Because it always has been and it always will be.

So here's the deal I'm sealing with this post: Christmas was, is, and will always be about loving others.

"Christmas is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas."

Dale Evans

Growing Older, A Day at A Time

No, this is not my birthday. In case you've missed it, it was June 7th. Drop me a word and I'll send you a message of my home address so you can send your long overdue birthday present to me (preferably a 13" MacBook Pro... or a Nikon D700... or a new stereo system)

Just kidding.

I've made a promise to my Twitter account that I will update my post as soon as I'm done with my summaries, and here I am!

Yesterday, a friend of mine sent a message, asking about a picture of us singing in a YouTube video. I was singing Dewi Lestari's Grow A Day Older while he played the piano. The video was made on the occasion of Azrina's birthday (August 10th, ladies and gents. Do not forget!). But somehow, as I start singing the song in the shower, thought swirled around my head about the true meaning of the song.

The song is simple, really. It's about growing (yes, you've guessed it) a day older. It was written in correlation of the short story Lestari wrote and compiled in her book, Recto Verso. A brilliant piece, really. Definitely one of my favorite. But being the literature enthusiast and logophile that I am, I've highlighted some lines that stuck out to me in that piece.

"We still have our bitter sides that we share from time to time, and that's what I love the most about our connections. For me, a perfect chocolate bar should be bitter sweet, not all sweet, and certainly not all bitter, for then you lose all the fun." (Pg. 70) 

"He had appeared in my night sky like a white dwarf, a star feeble in light but so dense that I was sucked into a gravity field where my normal self was either shattered or flattened." (Pg. 71) 

"...But deep down, I'm just in love." (Pg. 72) 

"Love is surely blinding at a certain range. Better just shut our eyelids and join forces with the darkness." (Pg. 72) 

"...not wanting to come across as too eagerly seeking closeness. It was such a lame idea in the first place, now that I realize even a skyscraper of a fence wouldn't work either. I need a line of faith as the real border between us. A strike of amnesia, perhaps." (Pg. 73) 

"But I can only carry one romantic connection in this claustrophobic heart of mine. And once I anchor my heart, I'll be heading to a destination from which there will be no return. It's going to get ugly." (Pg. 75)

Clearly, she was in love and to me, nothing is more beautiful than witnessing the expression of love. You're open to disagree but Recto Verso, both the album and the book, is one of Lestari's best work yet. Whatever stage of life you're at, you can relate to it one way or the other.

The past couple of months, I've been drowned in school work due to the choices I made in the beginning of the year in choosing my classes. I'm not gonna lie, I regret my decision just about every other day. The image of what's ahead keeps me going, along with the endless verbal and non-verbal support from my loved ones.

But even with that, this newfound busy-ness of mine has caused my tendency to worry to magnify by a thousand, and the last little piece of line in that song has that sigh and smile effect. Like when you're rambling on and something stopped your words, and you then sighed and smiled because you realize how silly you're behaving by complaining and worrying about things you don't have power over.

So to all of you who's struggling, I'm going to leave you with that powerful little piece of line:

"If everything has been written down, so why worry, we say. It's you and me with a little left of sanity..."

Happy Thanksgiving :-)

P.S. Here's the video I was talking about earlier in the post

Falling Into Fall

I had the day off and had a chance to take a walk around my neighborhood with my baby Kenobi. The title of this post may not be completely appropriate because everything hasn't turned completely orange and brown yet. But it will have to do.

My fetish towards nail polish still persist

Imagine how I felt when I saw these flowers on my drive way when I walk out the door

Don't you just want to make leaf angels?

A little burst of red

My lovely and somewhat tilted neighborhood

The blurriness and the bokehs just makes this picture... perfect (in my amateur-photographical eyes)

The remnants of summer

I sent my college application this afternoon and I feel like a thousand ton of weight was lifted off my shoulders. But I did receive my quarterly progress report and I must say that I'm not particularly happy with one class' grade. An Asian F is simply unacceptable! Pffft.

On lighter note, I made my first Indonesian fried rice ever since I moved to my new house and it was a success! Even though it was lacking shallots and sweet soy sauce, it was regardless quite delicious. I was more than happy to have a little taste of home.

A little snack that've been chewed on repeatedly by my brain: Twitter is cool. Twitter is fun. Yes, it's a freedom of speech. Blah blah blah. But not everything that comes out of our mind is pure gold. Thus, we should filter what we're going to tweet multiple times before we hit that Tweet button.

I speak from personal experience that your tweet can bite you in the ass before you even have a chance to delete it. In other words, Google and think before you tweet. It's bad enough if you're tweeting stuff that nobody cares about, the least you can do is make sure that your grammar (punctuation, capitalization, word order, verb tenses, etc) is correct. That should leave you a little dignity ;-)

Have a great weekend!

"New is always better!" Right, Mr. Stinson?

Hullo.

It has been a grueling month and goshdangit I need a break. Lucky me, I was granted a four day weekend! But it wasn't really a weekend to relax because I still have things to do.

My life for the last month and the next two

Those, my dears, are letters that I've received from colleges and universities all over the country and three secondhand SAT subject test practice books. I'm currently walking towards an intersection that will set the course of the rest of my life. But I'm not going to ramble on that today. Some of you may know that I moved to a new house earlier in August. It has been a b-b-blast.

I absolutely adore the French accent on the wall, nightstand, and paintings

The view outside of my window

I'm literally living on the edge of a canyon! How awesome is that? Each morning I would take a couple minutes to take in all the beauty and magnificence of the natural phenomenon. I'm super psyched for winter when the canyon would look like a line of chocolate brownies with powdered-sugar topping. I'll be sure to snap a couple shots for you readers to see. New may not always better and old may not always be bad, but for my case, new is certainly better for one Eliysha Saputra.

That's it for now because I have a few poem analysis to do and a couple college application to fill out.

:-)

The Baby Post

So at one point in the past two weeks, I've decided to not even have a Blogger blog and instead use my Posterous instead. But you see, Posterous (as 'efficient' and 'revolutionary' as it is) is not nearly as fun as Blogger! That's why I cave in and made this blog (while I'm supposed to be reading twenty pages about the nervous system, draw a diagram of the human brain, and write a ten-page reflective essay on teenagers' brain).

Let me explain what happened to my old blog (don't even bother clicking the kaput link because the blog is completely gone):

Some moron decided to hack into my primary email account and sent weird email to a few of my friends. Them, knowing me well enough to know that I always type with proper punctuation and grammar, sent me a BBM message to inform me about what happened. So I took charge and deleted my email account since it's not the first time that it's been hacked. Unfortunately, I was moronic enough to delete my blog as well.

It wasn't intentional, believe me.

Bottom line: this is my new and only blog (I've deleted the Posterous one), so follow and all that good stuff.

Cheers!