We're all just passing through

I still remember frying scrambled eggs and singing "wait for me to come homeeeeeee" in my Parisian apartment. That, was six months ago. Going to Hong Kong to find Charity and Joey - friends whom I've made during my stint in Paris - just reminded me of how quickly time passes on. But like what this French poet wrote:

"Time passes on, times passes on, my Lady -
Alas! Not time, but we pass on, 
And soon we shall be laid beneath the tombstone

And of the love of which we are speaking,
When we are dead there will be no more tidings
Therefore love me while you are beautiful" 

Not time, but we pass on. How very true. That's how I view the change in sceneries when I take long bus or train rides too - we are the ones who are passing through and moving forward while the trees remain in the same position.

And I'm going to keep going forward, even if certain things are left behind.


This is a short video I made to commemorate my time in Paris. I could only register those few memories though, and it captures mainly my daily life over there. Touring and living in a place are two very different experiences.

Life in Paris from Yong Huey Chyi on Vimeo.


I try my best to recount my travel experiences through films because I have always liked videography, on top of photography. It's an art to match the most appropriate song to the videos in the best possible sequence to bring out the feel you want your audience to enjoy. So of course I have made videos for the people I like before :-) To me, video-making is equivalent to a handmade gift (yes I made scrapbooks before too)? All the thought that goes to personalising a gift for someone.

Coming up next will be a video on my travels in Hong Kong. Stay tuned.

Littlest Things

"It's important to write about the small things, as well as big things."

Hyung and I came to this consensus yesterday during our last studying sesh together at YIH Starbucks. I was telling her about this irrational fear I have now of blacking out at any random time of the day after the recent incident of alcohol poisoning. Trust me, I am really ashamed of myself still, for landing myself in that situation (though it's a golden story to recount during group gatherings). I was caught off guard by how rapidly the events had unfolded. My body took me by surprise. As much as this sounds like an excuse, I push myself hard in most areas but not in this aspect. It was a close shave with death and frankly, this would be the stupidest reason to die for. Nobody will grieve for me. When I was much younger, I wrote a blog post on how I intend to meet death (lol how silly could I get) and I wanted to die saving someone or an animal (facepalm, too much drama). So nope, alcohol intoxication does not and will never make the cut. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

Me: "What if I just black out now?" 

Hyung shot me a concerned look. 

Me: "And um, wake up at the beach in Bali." 

Hyung: "Then it's actually kind of cool eh." 

We both burst out laughing. Sometimes I talk so much nonsense I wonder how my friends take it. I was being serious though, about the part on blacking out; just that I have this tendency to make jokes to lighten the atmosphere. This is perhaps due to my jovial personability.  

Blacking out and losing not just absolute control, but awareness, is one of the scariest things that can happen in life. When your conscious mind is not even functioning, it's not even about exerting self-control anymore because self-control involves conscious decision-making. You simply lose all control over what's happening to you. It's so possible that the next moment you regain consciousness, you have lost a limb or two and are in the hands of a ruthless group of human traffickers. They are going to strip you of your identity (clothes even) and make you beg on the streets of Thailand. So yup, I can't be lucky all the time and I will never allow myself to be caught in this situation ever again. 

Then, we moved on to talk about losing memories. I was just thinking, if we lose the memories in our mind due to old age or an unfortunate accident, do we lose our muscle memory as well? Can our muscle memory help us remember who we are? If I hold a pen in my hand, will the muscles of my hand guide me to write your name? I tried to google this but there are no relevant results.

Does anyone know me well enough to jolt my memory of who I am? 

Hyung: "Your blog posts. Your blog posts will help you to remember." 

So, it's important to write about the small things as well. Not just big concepts, reasonings and feelings, but even small details of my life happenings. I told her I like song lyrics that tell stories. Such as the song "Littlest Things" by Lily Allen: 

Drinkin' tea in bed
Watching dvd's
When I discovered all your dirty grotty magazines
You take me out shopping and all we'd buy is trainers
As if we ever needed anything to entertain us
The first time that you introduced me to your friends
And you could tell that I was nervous, so you held my hand
When I was feeling down, you made that face you do
No one in the world who could replace you

Not just abstract notions of love and hope, but simple depiction of details in a relationship matter a lot as well. They are very relatable, and personal. 

Littlest things keep me going for a long time.

-

It has been 3 hours since my last paper was collected, and here I am, sitting at the Orchard Library typing my thoughts away, alone. I decided to skip the usual tradition of feasting on a celebratory post-finals meal with friends because I feel like having my own company today. Sometimes, I wonder if I am really that outgoing as other people make me out to be. I know for sure I am not a social butterfly (not because butterfly is beautiful and I am not, okay). I have been so used to being alone - eating, running and running errands - and feeling happy by myself, that occasionally I think in my head I am okay with dying alone as well. I have 0 luck in love life; I have come to to terms with it long ago. I don't anticipate a change in fortune in the foreseeable future. 

There are many perks that come with being alone, at least physically. Today, finally released from the clutches of academic readings, I go back to doing this activity that I'm particularly fond of - people-watching. While I was eating alone at Tori Q at Orchard Gateway, I noticed this extremely lanky girl with pretty facial features sitting next to me. I couldn't help but to stare politely and discreetly, of course. She was in the company of two others - one tall geeky-looking guy with thick-framed glasses and a plumper woman with questionable fashion sense. The three of them looked around the same age, but the pretty girl was a lot more youthful in her dressing. She's wearing a caged bra (I know because she's clad in a black tank top with gaping holes), a high-waisted shorts and a pair of pink and grey adidas trainers. I was trying to figure out the nature of their relationships. Are they classmates? The geeky guy was rambling on about grand theories such as Western hegemony and democracy while the pretty girl was half-listening half-busy-with-food, giving him occasional nods of acknowledgement. She was sharing a bento set with the guy by the way. I don't know, to me sharing food requires a level of intimacy, but the two of them don't seem romantically involved to me. Perhaps they are siblings? 

I know all these observations seem so inconsequential, and maybe I would have gained more knowledge about the world from reading a book instead. But. Well, people interest me. Human interactions interest me. Like how MBTI describes my personality type, I enjoy my alone time - but with people, strangers around. I like looking at changes in facial expressions - for example, someone hard at work is scrunching her eyebrows but breaks into a smile when her phone screen illuminates upon an incoming text. I enjoy their look of epiphany when they finally solve a difficult mathematical equation. I like how people cannot contain their excitement or even hunger, all their small little actions that are telling of their perspectives of life. And maybe I have vivid dreams (just recently, of a murder case, supposedly the most infamous one in Singapore's crime history lol) because of all these observations. And maybe because I can gather all these intelligence without talking to some people, I usually have short attention span on individuals as well.

I have a pretty strong intuition about people and my guts are seldom wrong. I know who are special to me from the moment I lay my eyes on them. 

And special people are those whom I can't tell who they are and what they are thinking from their behaviour, of course. 

They don't come by often. 

-

Now, I can finally embark on my post-finals plans. Yes I made a list. While reading through I can't help but to laugh at myself. I am, indeed a very idealistic person. There is this quote on how life is a colossal joke, but I think, I myself am the joke. How many can I possibly check off? I will find out and update this space in due time. 

When I wake up I'm afraid, somebody else might take my place
When I wake up I'm afraid, somebody else might end up being me 

I haven't found another person who actually enjoys his voice as much as I do. Tell me if you do?!

-

Also, may I just add that, this bearded Caucasian sitting next to me at the library, is very easily frightened.