Where?

Achievements over the week:

I handed in my 48-paged Marketing Plan! When the book store guy asked me and Chitra which type of binding we needed, we just answered, 'The cheapest one enough ady la. . . ' Shows how much love we have for dear marketing.

Impulsively, I baked a cake on Tuesday! And in case you are wondering, it is not moldy. This was a green tea cake, FYI.

The best achievement yet! Eating durian! Eating durian! Eating durian!

No further explanation needed eh?

To label baking a cake and eating durian as an achievement must be a bit far out for some of you. True enough, this would pass as an everyday-thing for some of you, or even for me if I was back home where the sun would shine bright and rain would fall hard. But now that I am here where the sun is weak and rain is usually a mere drizzle, such simple and ordinary activities appear significant. For I feel as if it links me back to somewhere, someone and something close to my heart.

I was on the bus to Caulfield, listening to my Glay when I caught one of the lines in a song which said something like this, 'If the place where I was born is to change, what should I do?'

For some reasons, it invoked memories and thoughts inside of me. Suddenly it occured to me, everything I have known or everything that pieced my life together in the past, has slowly dispersed. Not only physically but emotionally as well. Will the place where I came from still be the same when I need a place to return to in the future?

'It’s surely no coincidence that we’ve wound up together.' - 100 mankai no kisu, Glay.

It is considered fortunate to be able to establish yourself somewhere else. You get to know new people, build new networks, discover all sorts of kindness and ugliness in people, and enrich the story of your life. But, the wider the geographical scope of your life, the more dissipated the people in your life becomes. It is easy to say 'it doesn't matter for we will meet again someday', but not without some doubt or sadness. For, surely, to reunite, is not that easily done.

With each of us being at a place of our own, going through our busy life, seeing different views, walking on different soil, celebrating and sulking for different reasons - how connected can we be?

'The busier I get The more I think fondly of those days with you' - Mirror, Glay.

With each decision we make as a lonely individual leading us further and further away from each other, I wonder if the destination will eventually be the same. And if the destination was the same, I wonder if the feeling will still be the same. Will the place I return to, be a place I am familiar with or just a place I have known?

If it is not, how am I supposed to feel?

I will feel like there is no one, no place, no nothing - holding on to me in this world as I drift further and further away into the darkness that is the busy everydays that easily blinds us from the purpose of life and the belief in dreams, hopes and faith. Without all those, life is but a routine and I am nothing but an empty shell that breathes without a will to live.

'But to chase your dreams means being ignorant and cruel, as we walked, we've lost our gentleness' - Layla, Glay.

Are we just not trying hard enough to reconnect with the people around us or to treasure our home? While we are blindly chasing for superficial things we now call 'treasures' like money, status, luxury, career, have we lost sight on the real 'treasures' we should be holding on to in our heart, like memories, friends and family, love, hometowns and even old family portraits?

'I took a gamble on our future, I worked and worked and worked, And sold out both my time and my dreams, But the money I earned Couldn't fill the hole in my heart' - Mirror, Glay.

'"The most important things are never things you can see", I pretended to understand' - Layla, Glay.

I guess no one can be blamed for this. It is due to the change of our times. In fact, we are just trying to survive using our basic instincts. Instincts so basic that, maybe, just maybe, we have forsaken the deeper meaning to life and our own identity.

'When I turned around, home wasn’t a place, it was you' - White Road, Glay.