Everything is Illuminated

I love the title of this book.

I just came back from Dhaka, Bangladesh last Thursday and took a day off on Friday to get my toe checked out at the hospital. I slipped off a sidewalk there and scraped my toe during a field visit to a government preschool, it was bleeding more than usual over there and the wound was turning black. Normally I probably wouldn't go to the hospital but being that it was Dhaka and the roads were so dusty and dirtier than Bangkok, I decided to get it cleaned properly just to be safe. So I got a tetanus shot and have to get two more later.

It's Loy Krathong today but I'm not in a festive mood at all. Not that I would normally be joyously celebrating it or anything. I've been feeling pretty blah lately. Blah meaning sometimes sad but I'm not really sure why either. It's weird not really knowing the reasons why I feel sad. Or maybe I do. Maybe one reason is because I'm worried about my mom. It makes me sad every time I think she's going to be alone. I don't like thinking of old people being alone. It really makes me depressed. I still haven't decided yet about whether I'm going. I remember watching Up and it made me so sad.

I also worry about Ginger and her health. I'll try my best to bring her to Singapore.

These days I feel lazy about going out to meet people too. I feel like just staying in. Maybe it's my PSP.

I really like the title, Everything is Illuminated. I don't really know yet the entire meaning behind the title because I haven't finished the book, but it gives me such a hopeful feeling, that everything CAN be happy and OK. Or that everything has a value and can be meaningful.

It's basically about an American guy going to the Ukraine to find this girl who saved his grandfather's life during Nazi occupation. I always wonder a bit about how it would be like to trace back my family's history, all the way back to my great-great-great-great-great grandparents. I never really thought of them much, but I think it would be nice to know who they were and what they did. Maybe it's sort of like paying respect to the dead, by remembering them still in my memory. Thinking of my grandmother who died last year still makes me sad. Thinking of my mom gone would be really painful. I do remember my great-grandmother and remember how she was such a sweet old lady. I also realize that my mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother all kind of share this similar aura around them. I mean, they look similar, but it's not just that. I don't know how to describe it. I don't know how to explain how the air around them can feel so familiar to me.

I'm also thinking about taking my mom to Hong Kong for a weekend in December.

Sometimes I just don't know. Sometimes one feeling gets so overwhelming.

I watched this anime called Kimi ni Todoke (Reaching You) and I really like it because the girl has problems expressing herself and everybody around her misunderstands her. Sometimes I feel the same way.

The God of Small Things

Where all the little things in life is more important than the bigger things.

I love the details.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

Twilight the Book

I just finished this book at Sukhumvit Hospital on Monday while waiting for my mom. I don’t know. I have mixed feelings about this book. Sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I think the characters are pretty typical and boring. There are other times I started liking the characters because they kind of grew on me. Sometimes I think I don’t like this book because it’s about love. And these days, especially, I’m not really in the mood to read about other people’s love stories. But by the end of the book, I must admit that I wouldn’t mind reading the next book, New Moon. I think it’s because I started something, and I just wanted to see where Edward and Bella’s relationship is going to go. If I don’t have Edward’s face (from the movie Twilight in my head), I think I would actually like Edward more. And Bella, well, she hasn’t really done anything to make me like her. When you think about it, it must be great to be Bella to have a vampire boyfriend who is super good looking and super strong protecting her.

Anyway, I’m almost done reading The Alchemist. And I also bought another book today for my trip to Malaysia this weekend. I bought The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Hopefully it’ll keep me occupied on the plane.

I'm having difficulty sleeping. Which is pretty rare considering how I usually fall asleep by 8.30, 9.00 or 10.00 most of the time. I haven't been up this late in a while, except for weekends. My throat has also been hurting because I caught my niece's cold. To tell you the truth, I actually like this feeling of being sick a bit, since I hardly get sick ever, except for my usual stomach aches. It's going to be a pain getting up in the morning for work. I just know it already. But I'm also feeling slightly unmotivated to go to work.

You know, I was just reading the Alchemist, by Paul Coelho, and in that book he was talking about changes. This was the part where Santiago went to Africa, got his money stolen, started working in the crystal store and the business was expanding really fast. And the store owner was scared, you know, of this change, because he was so used to the same old thing, the routine, the comforts of running a small store although he was so sick, tired and depressed of it because it was getting him no where.

"I don't want to change anything, because I don't know how to deal with change. I'm used to the way I am." He said . "Today, I understand something I didn't see before: every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don't want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I'm going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don't want to do so."

I really like the word possibilities. That was actually one of the reasons why I used that word in an early childhood photo contest at work, because there's so much possibilities for children to become anything in the future. And we are the same. No matter how old we get. No matter how long we've stuck to one job we hate. No matter how long you've been in a relationship that's dying. Once the change happens, the possibilities exist. And it's truly exciting. And liberating. And before you know it, everything that you're doing becomes a will to make that impossibility a possibility.

September 11, 2008. I created a vision. It actually sounded cheesy now that I think about it. To create a world where I can fall madly in love with. And to make everybody that is a part of my world, fall in love with it too. I admit honestly, that along the way, I think I did lose sight of this vision some times. There were times I fell back to depression, times where I became snappy and irritated, times where I felt so alone I started to cry, times where I just stared blankly because I don't know how to express myself. But you know, these feelings comes and goes. I still try though, whenever I revert back to my self, to move forward with my vision. The best thing I found was to really stick to doing a small number of things you really enjoy, and becoming good at it. It's really something ordinary. Like exercising to be healthy, stronger, confident and beautiful. Or reading to be in touch with other people's feelings. And blogging to at least keep one part of my dream alive. You know, that one, to write.

March 1, 2009. I turned 27. And a lot of feelings died that day. For example, I knew that I was no longer a hopeless romantic. I tried telling myself that I still was. After all, I've always called myself a hopeless romantic since I was a kid. That was probably the biggest death to the "me" that everybody knew, more than anything else. But I think we have different definitions to what a hopeless romantic is. I guess for me it means a person who believes faithfully in the concept of love. And that's the other feeling that died, or more like the ability to believe in anything. Words and love are probably my two biggest loves of my life. And that day alone, I stopped believing in the sanctity of words and love. For me, love became an earthbound reality. It was no longer an ideal. It lost its magic. And I moved on.

And today is April 2, 2009. Just another day that I have to go to work, go to the gym, eat at my parents, play with Ginger briefly, read a book, write, hang out with Nick and then go to sleep. It's really a simple thought and procedure, to do all the things that I want to do, that makes me look forward to the next day. And I've really come to look forward to the next day because it is filled with so much possibilities. You can do whatever you want with the minutes and the seconds. It's so exciting. How will the day unfold? Now that you have slept and awoken? You will never look at each morning the same way again when you realize the day's true potential.

On Living

I finished the book, Life of Pi. It was such a good read. I haven't read anything this good in a long, long while. I'm so happy I bought this. Anyway, I was trying to find this part that I really liked in the book and I finally found it. Here it is:

"I speak in all modest as I say this, but I discovered at that moment that I have a fierce will to live. It's not something evident, in my experience. Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others - and I am one of those - never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constitutional, an inability to let go. It may be nothing more than life-hungry stupidity."

On Farewells

"What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. I'll tell you, that's one thing I hate about my nickname (Pi), the way that number runs on forever. It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse." Life of Pi

Life of Pi

This is my favorite new book. I haven't finished it yet but I'm about half way through it now. I've laid my eyes on this book for years already, probably since it came out, but never came around to buying it. It's one of those books where the words really leaves a smart imprint inside you. It's definitely one of those books where you flip back to the pages where the words were so strong that you couldn't help but re-read it again, and even possibly write it down for further referencing. If anything, I think it has such a unique perspective on religion, life and animals. I'm definitely not a religious person. But reading Life of Pi actually made me appreciate the mysteries and wonders of religion more. It's really hard for me to describe why I like it so much. But it's honest, funny, sad, interesting and serious at the same time. And I guess that's what I think life is about, I suppose.

It's about an Indian boy name Piscine Molitor Patel. His name really cracks me up as it reminds me of a dental cavity. But he gets teased so much in school (people were calling him Pissing Patel) that on his first day of his new school he scribbled on the chalkboard, "My name is Piscine Molitor Patel, known to all as Pi. Pi = 3.14." And then drew the symbol that looked like a slanted shack with a dented roof. He grew up in a zoo, which his family owns. He went on to study zoology and religious studies in Canada. He is a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian.

Some things he said about animals that I thought were really interesting:

"I have heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about God and religion. Well-meaning but misinformed people think animals in the wild are 'happy' because they are 'free'... This is not the way it is. Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of freedom in such a context? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor in their personal reations."

"I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both."

When Pi met an atheist:

"Some people say God died during the Partition in 1947. He may have died in 1971 during the war. Or he may have died yesterday here in Pondicherry (Pi's hometown) in an orphanage. That's what some people say, Pi. When I was your age, I lived in bed, racked with polio. I asked myself every day, 'Where is God? Where is God? God never came. It wasn't God that saved me - it was medicine. Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die."

Pi on comparing atheists and agnostics:

"It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are also permitted to doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immoblity as a means of transportation."

On religion:

"We are all born like Catholics, aren't we - in limbo, withour religion, until some figure introduces us to God? After that meeting the matter ends for most of us. If there is a change, it is usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life's way."

And the way he describes Hinduism is beautiful:

"First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first. I owe to Hinduism the original landscape of my religious imagination, where those towns and rivers, battlefields and forests, holy mountains and deep seas where gods, saints, villains and ordinary people rub shoulders, and, in doing so, define who and why we are."

And I love his take on Jesus Christ, and the comparison between Hinduism and Christianity:

"I couldn't imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified - and at the hands of mere humans, to boot. I'd never heard of a Hindu God dying. Devils and monsters did, as did mortals, by the thousands and millions - that's what they were there for. Matter, too, fell away. But divinity should not be blighted by death. It's wrong. The world soul cannot die, even in one contained part of it. It was wrong of this Christian God to let His avatar die. That is tantamount to letting a part of Himself die. For if the Son is to die, it cannot be fake...Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love."

"This Son (Christ), on the other hand (when compared to a Hindu God), who goes hungry, who suffers from thirst, who gets tired, who is sad, who is anxious, who is heckled and harassed, who has to put with followers who don't get it and opponents who don't respect Him - what kind of a god is that? It's a god on too human a scale, that's what. There are miracles, yes, mostly of a medical nature, a few to satisfy hungry stomachs; at best a storm is tempered, water is briefly walked upon... This Son is a god who spent most of His time telling stories, talking. This Son is a god who walked, a pedestrian god - and in a hot place, at that - with a stride like any human stride; and when he splurged on transportation, it was a regular donkey. This son is a god who died in three hours, with moans, gasps and laments. What kind of a god is that? WHat is there to inspire in this Son? Love."

And that was why he turned Christian, because he found Christ, whose humanity to be so compelling.

Pi also turned Muslim a year later:

"I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion."

And the last thing I read before I started typing here that I thought was interesting:

"Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizons? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult? The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life."

I don't know if this is true for many people or not. But I guess for me, who wants to travel and have been travelling a lot, there is a ring of truth to it.

August Books

1. The Highly Sensitive Person In Love by Elaine N. Aron. This was a book I looked up when I was browsing through the Urban Monk website. The author of the blog mentioned that he was a HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) and immediately I wondered, am I one too? An HSP makes up 15-20% of the human population. They are those born with a nervous system genetically designed to be more sensitive to subtleties, more prone to deep reflection on inner experience, and therefore more inevitably overwhelmed by outer events. I've only read about 30 pages or so and I really like it because I felt as though it kind of made me feel "normal". To be able to believe that possibly the reason why I'm hyper-sensitive, overly-empathetic, deeply-emotional is because of my genetic makeup. The truth of this research, is of course, questionable. But so far, I'm enjoying the read. And, I really wish that my boyfriend would read it too.

2. Why We Love? by Helen Fisher. An anthropoligist, she studies the phenomenon of love, scientifically. I haven't gone through this book yet, but I heard of her when I went to this website call Ted.com that contains a lot of inspirational talks in vdo (youtube) format.

3. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. This book was also recommended in Urban Monk and by a lot of people who commented or guest blogged on his web site. I decided to check it out. So far, it's a bit too religious but I can see how it can really help people. I thought what was interesting was his input about the Ego, dis-identifying from the Mind, and living in the Now. I've only read 30 pages here, but will probably finish the first two books first before I come back to this one.

Do Ants Have Arseholes?

I was at Kinokuniya (Siam Paragon) on Saturday when I came across this book. The title and illustrations were so funny I had to stop and read through it.

I couldn't find the answer to the question posed on the book cover because we were too busy flipping through the pages, cracking up at the funny drawings of ants checking out their rears in the mirror.

But, after doing a bit of research on the Internet, the answer is yes, ants do have anal passages. Although they are probably the size of an atom.

That Bathroom Girl

Every time I go to the bathroom at work I see the same girl. It's weird. It's as though our bladder functions at the same time.

Or is there a deeper and hidden message in our frequent bathroom encounters? Hmmm....

There was this book I read a few years ago during college, The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, which says that there are no coincidences in life, and that there may be a deeper meaning to what we may think are coincidences.

This event is also known as Synchronicity. It is an experience in which two unrelated events occur in a meaningful manner.

This idea or philosophy was developed by Carl Jung, who suggested that a larger framework plays a part in synchronous events. By this, he means that the coincidental events that occur is actually a manifestation of parallel events that occur in the past, that there is a governing dynamic that isn't necessarily governed by chance.

Jung's favorite quote about synchronicity is from Through The Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll:

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." - The White Queen, talking to Alice

Books I Want to Read

Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierle