goodbye 2019

saying goodbye to another year has always been hard. i think this started back in 2014, right after one of the hardest years of my formative education i.e. the gruelling, "make it or break it" culminating moment of a-levels. back then, it felt like i'd worked too hard that year to say goodbye to it too soon and hit the reset button. i'm not sure if i'm wired in a different way but goodbyes are generally difficult. even if it's to a man-made construct like time, like the turning of a new year. but good things are what make goodbyes so difficult. i'm lucky to have had such a precious year that makes refreshing this already passé chapter incredibly wistful.

2019 was a particularly phenomenal year. just piecing together the one-second moments of my year is enough to make my heart full. the good, the bad, the ugly - they all seem sweet now that they are coloured in the hues of retrospect. akin to disparate jigsaw pieces that each carried their own fragment of a grand picture. when disparate, they didn't make sense - some moments were so wearisome they wore my heart out but i still had to carry them with me nevertheless, until the tidings of time brought good outcomes - outcomes i had yearned for, outcomes that are now past, outcomes that i may take for granted in this moment. i read somewhere that we tend to live for the future, but if only we would pause and realise: we are living in the moments we had so desperately wanted to be in (or the clarity of knowing we'll get here) just a good six months/one year ago. 

denise a year ago would have loved to know that she successfully graduated from college on schedule despite taking a semester off for aws - those insane, consecutive 28mc semesters she got accustomed to but would have loved to run away from in a heartbeat. she would have been ecstatic to know that capstone turned out to be a possible feat to accomplish, after an entire year poured into churning and cutting an academic piece into a 10k individual word thesis. she would have been so proud to know that her capstone advisor became her biggest champion as she presented that synthesised work to the global affairs faculty and her peers (and that her eye-candy prof was smiling and nodding the entire time to her presentation). she would have soared to the moon knowing that she made it to a tech enterprise that has since given her access to such great leaders/mentors invested in her growth, to an eleven-people strong fy20 cohort that has made the transition to working life seem too easy, that she would have visited san francisco on a work trip just to witness how big this company is, to meet with the co-founder and drink the kool aid, and begun her journey towards learning the one thing she had wanted to learn starting her career i.e. gaining client-facing experience. and in terms of love, that she would been able to visit osaka/kyoto and go on a junior-suite royal caribbean cruise with her favourite person. how comforted would she have been, denise from a year ago, to know that everything she had worried about eventually turned out to be not just okay, but blessed beyond expectation? 

i search for words to describe how some moments were so dull or difficult that i could only sit at utown green and find solace in being alone, in faith, in longing and in the in-between. one of the hardest weeks was that week that contained back-to-back the final capstone presentation and concluding round of case presentation & interview for the current company i am in. i never realised senior year would be so tough with the collective pressure of capstone (and bc this is a college that everyone feels the implicit pressure to show up with their best work, it made it all the more harder. yes, capstone was not going to land me a job but i couldn't let it flop - in spite of everything), the terrifying prospect of joblessness upon graduation - made more so pressurising bc i was juggling with almost twice the academic workload of my peers on top of everything. i remember that monday i was literally shrivelling in stress that i could barely eat. i had worked all day on my capstone slides and forgot to eat dinner till it was past nine, so i made myself some tom yum cup noodles. tom yum's my favourite msg flavour, but even so i recall eating one mouthful before puking it back into the cup and throwing the entire thing away. i had shrivelled to the point where my body didn't allow itself to eat. thursday evening was when the weight of those two momentous events lifted off my shoulders. i remember that night fondly: i had dinner with gym bud fred and we bumped into one of the case presentation panel k at the train station - he told me i did a great job, which gave me so much hope. it was drizzling and i dropped by seven-eleven to buy a beer. that night i cracked it open and savoured it (or the victory of ending the week) while slumped in bed, deliberating my performance, anticipating the monday afternoon call that i did not know then carried my offer. but all these are just fond memories now in retrospect. in the moment i felt like i could barely bear it, but that too, did pass. i have a fond memory of my capstone prof (who also became my favourite career advisor and all-in-all bae prof ) meeting and shaking hands with bae saying "i've heard so much about you!" "guess denise's just been shuttling between spending time with us both." "aw cute! i saw she wrote about you in the acknowledgements". date nights with bae (when he was not on month-long overseas exercises) became my weekly respite. they kept me sane and grounded, just like the familiar feeling of coming home. and now we're finally in the same stage in life - after waiting out two good years. we did it, love. we did it, together.

in this year i resolve to do two things: (1) to think of God particularly in fun times (usually those times are when i feel like i don't want Him there) (2) to fiercely protect the part of me that loves to create. work has made me lose that part of myself increasingly, but it is this part of myself that i keep coming back to in order to find myself - it is what makes me feel alive, and feel at home in my own skin. 

writing this from the sun-deck of the royal caribbean cruise ship on my last night here. crescent moon in the pitch black sky, corona in hand, kygo in my ears. solitude and cathartic writing that forces me to think and reflect with greater clarity. am thankful, and this is indeed the best way to end the first day of 2020. 

happy new year folks. 

remembering

(actually incredibly proud of myself for capturing snippets of my most formative four years in such a consistent and tangible manner, such that that i can revisit at whim from hereon, in the years to come) 

nostalgia is a funny phenomenon: there is only the good left, and even the bad times are coloured in a rosy, almost psychedelic hue. i remember how badly i wanted to graduate and be done with formal education, but now that all is done and dusted i cannot remember why i chafed at college life so desperately the way i did. there was a moment when i sat in the elm courtyard past 10pm with qiken catching up on life and he told me something along the lines of my self-inflicted pressure with my overloading modules and what not, and that i should slow down and invest in getting to know the community better etc or i would regret dearly afterwards. for sanity, i had deliberately picked my battles and shut out the white noise with mind over matter as my guiding principle, but somehow some friends got shut out in the process as well. but you know what? i still have no regrets, bc now that everything is passé i only have good memories left. even the bad are obscure memories cast in golden hues, dull flickering lights of a past that has made the present me stronger and of better faith.

what do i miss? i miss the littlest things of life on campus and the campus itself:

taking away lunch treats (double taps for an iced cafe latte, a slice of pipping hot but mediocre-tasting cheese pizza and two mini-sized haagen dazs ice cream tubs) to floor nine room D of saga tower B and tucking myself into bed as i feasted and watched jennim for a short lunch respite before the reality of my 28mc workload hit me like a truck once again

feeling incredibly happy from gaining a small paradigm shift in the way i viewed the world from class, and excitedly texting bae something like "do you know why china's so adamant about claiming the islands in the south china sea? bc according to unclos, claiming the islands means they'll be able to extend their territorial waters 12 nautical miles from there and project their geopolitical influence across asia..." - so eager to share my new knowledge with the person i love

cafe agora with the senior crew - the camaraderie of being able to count on bumping into my favourite people and lament about capstone together: some days i would turn up and see vincent, mars, jon, jieying, annie, and/or milly already there (and the occasional guest appearance from qiken)

chilly night walks across the elm courtyard and around utown post-workout with my airpods playing "pretend" and "love drunk" on repeat - that feeling of a deep-seated quietness in the midst of a whirlwind of things demanding my attention

the rare but treasured supper nights walking out to the al-amaans stretch with vincent - those supper nights that made us wise ("our friendship will really be over if we can't even make one supper night before move-out")

night walks at star vista and rochester park with koi in one hand and bae's hand in the other, just like the way we first met in my sophomore year

and of course, spending our third valentine's day feasting on cheap but good clementi sushi in the comfort of my home away from home - magnum night and the mistake of getting wang wang's hotkid milk beverage (it screamed childhood), or holding bae's hands as he clumsily twirled me around and i tried to jump on his back for a piggyback ride in the utown green field.

time travel - part three

i am so grateful for work but practicality of the marketplace is slowly stripping my ability to feel, to write and to introspect. here's to not losing that facet of me that had loved to feel deeply and write freely:

read part one and part two

part three focuses on the year 2016. i am so lucky to have found someone i cherish so deeply now and for the past two and a half+ years, a man whom i am seriously considering to spend the rest of my life with. most of the time i forget how i was like before i got this lucky. year 2016 was the year i experimented the most with personal growth i.e. growth in different trajectories and the constant pushing of boundaries to see where i would break. and break i did. by the end of the year i was so barren that i called it quits and told jesus i needed to re-pivot back to the one Thing that matters most. it was then that i started to get lucky. but i am who i am today bc of all these collective experiences - heartbreaks, chopping off my long hair for the first time in years for a fresh start, feeling like i wasn't good enough and pent-up anger that spat at the world for making me feel that way when i knew my worth. it was through these experiences that i got to re-validate my self-worth again and again, and do justice to investing in myself.

part three: 

take me somewhere nice - mogwai 


[2016]


wrapped in my college jumper like a dumpling but it still felt like the dead of winter. the sound of fingers gently striking keyboards like the pattering of rain drops, breaking the otherwise oppressive silence of an unusually quiet library past nine. it was a chilly night. a night walk to starbucks and butterflies in my stomach - here it was again, this familiar feeling of a nascent something that eventually turned out to be a false alarm. silly me, but of course i wouldn't have known that. the dull ache of loneliness juxtaposed against the warmth of a boy's company. a takeaway paper cup worth seven bucks nestled in my cupped hands, fingers stretched out and parched of warmth in the chilliness of an enclosed performance hall with the ac turned on to full blast. the windows and doors were frosted from the cold. it was empty, save for us. a safe place to mutually trade stories of how prior things ended. a note of finality - yes i was done and i was proud of myself for moving on
(or so i thought). drunk on exuberance from a vulnerable conversation. a brownie bar for me from the convenience store. finally i'm not an afterthought, but someone worth remembering in the little things. maybe this was it. (it wasn't). silly me.


yes i'm changing - tame impala 


[2016]


"the circle is full and now it's closed". there was so much anger, but the suicide of a cherished member of the community completely threw things into perspective - it made me realise the way we trivalised death and held on to our petty pride at the expense of things we did that we might have regretted at a later stage. a reconciliation followed by an indefinite truce - i was no longer going to be angry, and so we became friends again. there was still alot of comfort in an old friendship that went in a special direction, ended, mended, soured and then got mended again. the lines might have appeared to have blurred again - that celebratory night after four consecutive shots (inebriated but i do remember), but no i'd changed by then - it was zhuangzi-rsque of me to have separated the physical from the emotional. inside i was hollow and felt nothing anymore. yes i'm changing, yes i'm gone. yes i'm older, yes i'm moving on. 


one dance - drake, wizkid, kyla


[2016]


this song was the song to top the charts in the usa when i was alone in new york city. my iphone wallpaper read "twenty is prime" - somewhere in the recesses of my soul i wanted to shout out to the world: LOOK AT ME! A SMALL GIRL IN THE CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OF. "i feel so alive, so alive so alive!" my heart drumming in my chest as i took the metro from my workplace in franklin avenue, going above the brooklyn bridge back to halsey street back "home". even then i knew i would miss the sun setting in between two mammoth-like buildings, the warmth of a pinkish-orange hue still imprinted in my memory, so vividly.

hi, i'm back

in the time i've been away from this space on the internet that i've carved out for myself, i've:

1. completed my final 28mc semester
2. received my first ever full-time job offer 
3. accepted this job offer after considering what remains most important to me at this stage in my life
4. concurrently completed my capstone thesis that i could never have envisaged as ever being completed 
5. said my goodbyes to ten college avenue west 
6. hit my personal best semester cap despite eight additional mcs 
7. walked the stage and made my parents beam with pride 
8. gone on all three of my planned "grad" trips, my favourite being frolicking in osaka/kyoto with bae
9. watched all the korean dramas i'd staved off for my year-long 28mc semesters 
10. started work for good (screams internally: i'm no longer an intern!!!!) 
11. achieved two industry-recognised company certifications in under a month, with three more to go! and may i never tire of onward learning~

reviving this space bc today's retrospective meeting reminded me of the importance of reflection and introspection. growth has always been my guiding principle - i followed my heart and ended up here: am slowly building up my own community, but most days i've been exiting work with a light heart and tummy hurting from laughing so hard throughout the day. it is no doubt still our honeymoon phase until post-san francisco come mid-august, but i just want to take this moment to savour the now. at the end of the day, what i remember and treasure are still the small wins and little moments of boundless laughter; of being shown kindness and human warmth; of being treated as both valued and valuable. i am so lucky to be here, to be chasing after what makes me feel alive. 

a reminder to self that growth can only follow a concerted effort on my part to insert myself into uncomfortable and inconvenient places/situations. i tend to forget that, especially once i get cosy with a community that has grown on me. i also tend to shun away from difficult situations, particularly if they take a toll on my psyche. but i also know i've never regretted the eventual fruits of exposing myself to discomfort bearing growth. those have been the truest gems of my life.

another reminder to self to carve out time for people i want to keep around for a long time. 

time travel - part two

read part one here

don't let me down - the chainsmokers

[2016]

my first memory of this tune is me asking why geoff brought his bose speaker to lit hum ii class, and him introducing me to the "sick beats" of this then-new hit. it holds memories of freshman year - the nights i spent pounding out one foot in front of the other on the treadmill with a heavy and lonely heart, angry at the microcosm of this world for making me feel like i was not enough. the wee hours of the morning when the beats reverberated through the stereo like the steady pulse of a pumping heart, bringing along with it a body of bodies with their arms strewn up. eyes raised to the ceiling, i gave myself up to this rhythm of emptiness, unsure if the numbness i felt was due to the alcohol or my psyche. just tonight, i told myself, just for tonight. i would let myself go, just for tonight.


body gold - oh wonder 


without you - oh wonder


technicolor beat - oh wonder


[2016]

post-work out night walks from the gym back to the saga towers. now that the catharsis of pent-up anger was done, all that was left was just a sinking sense of loneliness. a benign kind of sadness, just like solitude's twin brother - the familiar, dull ache of sadness that was actually comfortable to dwell in. it was as if i were cajoling loneliness, my old friend: "loneliness, come sit with me in the silence of the night". with these tunes in my ears, even small actions could seem poetic in the stillness of the night. tapping my access card against the elm gate and watching it slowly open. crossing the threshold between both spaces and feeling like i was drifting back into where i belonged - alone, lonely but content. those nights spent sitting at utown green watching the lights from neighbouring towers brighten up the already starry sky. yes, i am content. yes i am mulan, in no need of any shang.


aloha - mome, merryn jeann

[2016]

this tune reminds me of fortuitous friendships in the most unlikely of places. new york city drinking nights with vincent. how were we not even friends in ync? weekends in this concrete jungle would have been so lonely without a friend to hunt for boba and get my chinese cuisine fixes with. thank God for the new haven-new york train that brought this gem of a friend here almost every weekend in the month of june. thank God for my yss summer pals who could come to new york city and spend some of their weekends with me. it was incredibly lonely being a small girl working in a big city, but i relished weekends in the month of june knowing i had company. this tune also reminds me of walking around manhattan with akash from afternoon till night - that friend from rj math class that i really couldn't stand, but somehow became friends and hung out with in a city on the opposing end of the globe from where we were. nights getting thai food, taking in the biggest blood moon i had ever seen hanging over the brooklyn bridge, talking about dreams, diplomats and raffles days. "god i love new york" is a phrase he heaved under his breath that i will remember for a long time.

through the night - iu

[2017]

of ediya cafe nights and solitary night walks from my apartment to hongje station, just to get fresh avocado juice. i remember texting you one night that the weather was perfect to take a night walk together. this tune evokes ambivalent emotions of sadness, loneliness and contentment on cold seoul nights, during the journey back to my small apartment with a korean ahjumma whom i still don't know the name of, except for rosie's 엄마. Sadness and loneliness because i could picture you so tangibly in my mind, but my hands were still so tangibly cold. i missed you so terribly much, but it was bearable at the same time, because i had you in my heart to hold. contentment because i didn't need no korean 오빠 - which had been a dream of mine when i first chose korea (in days before i met you). instead, i could go about my days knowing you were someone i could spill all my minuscule adventures to and vice versa - mostly consisting of solitary cafe dates doing online professional courses and internship searches on linkedin, korean bbq nights, pouts about the freezing cold and telling you i bought mcdonalds apple pie for supper.

my Steadfast?

"I am the Lord your God, I go before you now
I stand beside you, I'm all around you
though you feel I'm far away, I am closer than your breath
I am with you, more than you know
I am the Lord your peace, no evil will conquer you
steady now your heart and mind, come into My rest

oh, let your faith arise, lift up your weary head
I am with you wherever you go

come to Me, I'm all you need
come to Me, I'm everything
come to Me, I'm all you need
come to Me, I'm your everything
I am your anchor, in the wind and the waves
I am your steadfast, so don't be afraid
though your heart and flesh may fail you, I'm your faithful strength
I am with you wherever you go

don't look to the right or to the left but keep your eyes on Me
you will not be shaken, you will not be moved
I am the hand to hold, I am the truth, I am the way
just come to Me, come to Me, cause I'm all that you need"

come and saturate me, until my cup overflows

shake it out

like the old days, i'll channel all these emptiness within me into fuel - something my twenty year old self taught me how, and dance unfettered within.

sixteen year old me first listened to florence + the machine and it pulled her out of the trenches of stoicism & numbness by making her feel so powerful; twenty two year old me listened to florence + the machine this morning at dining hall breakfast and it was still the same - a kind of pure, cathartic feeling of empowerment that i don't know how to put into words.

i feel aimless, but i am not aimless. i have an overarching goal for my time here within these four walls, which is a crucial stepping stone for my time outside of these walls. it is time i stop feeling like i am a drifter. more than anyone i have a series of clear goals that cascade into one another as they take me higher & higher.