Sandakan

It was all 

unexpected love. 

To You.

I never thought that you would be the one to hold my heart 

But you came around and you knocked me off the ground from the start

***

I have many thoughts running through my mind. 

You are here and yet you felt that deep within you, something just doesn't seem right. You felt like you shouldn't be here, that you should be at somewhere else, doing something else. Living a different life. 

 It's funny how such feelings comes visiting again after taking such a long hiatus. So long until you thought you have overcome and finally be freed from it. You thought you are an overcomer just like how they always tell you to be. But it's always there. It has always been there. 

Who are you?

You are way too timid to talk about change. Let alone living out that change.

Who are you?

How can you leave behind that you, pretending that you never existed?

***

You are just a human. 

Stop being so selfless. It costs you way too much. 

rain.

there's no word to describe the state which i am in at the moment.

Fire.

up and up!

i won't give up. 

one step at a time.

You kept me going.

*

Even through the darkest phase

Be it thick or thin

Always someone marches brave

Here beneath my skin

And constant craving

Has always been

**

please don't lie to me.

i'm too tired to continue with this kind of lies.

the day has come

The long awaited event has finally come.

It was worth the pain and struggle to go all the way up to Mt. Kinabalu.
I walked on my own most of the time. And after talking with a few friends, then only i realised that actually it can be pretty dangerous to hike alone. ermm..


The whole trip is like my own 'song of ascent'. and indeed, psalm 121 turned out to be very real.

we took the Mesilau - Mt K - Timpohon.
For more pictures, you can go here.

this was taken during the first stop upon reaching KM 1.

South Peak.
We didn't get to see the canggih-manggih sunrise scenery.
It was very cloudy and the wind was blowing very strongly.

as a conclusion, it was a really good trip. i didn't expect myself to reach the summit and get the colourful cert. :p
I am truly thankful that God has sustained me throughout the journey. He has been my help thus far.

the risk.

this is one of my favourite picture. there's a plane at the upper right corner.

sunsets and seaside always have such healing effect on me.

it has been a struggle to carry on.

the risk is not worth taking.

i may end up losing everything.

clouds

Lihat ke arah sana

Serakan warna dan berarakan

Awan

Pabila terik panas

Segera hadirnya memayungi diri

Pabila kau dahaga

Sesegera turun hujan melimpahkan kasihnya

Pabila kau katakan

Akulah awan itu yang kau mahu

Begitulah awan nano

Setia melindungi diri

Tika panas mencuba menggores pipi

Dan bibirmu

Begitulah awan nano

Sering saja tak terduga hadir

Dan tak akan tercapai jejarimu

Kasihnya

Kasih tiada banding

Setia tiada tara

Bagaimanapun jua

Awan kekasih sebenarmu sayang

Walaupun tak akan tercapai jejarimu

Lihat diriku ini

Yang sesekali pernah kau bagaikan awan

Sehingga tak mungkin terlupa

Berikan belas sedari dulu

Sehingga tak mungkin termampu saksi

Setitis pun air matamu kasihku

Sehingga kau katakan

Akulah awan itu yang kau rindu

Akulah awanmu yang sedia

Melindungi dirimu tika panas mencuba

Menggores pipi

Dan bibirmu

Akulah awanmu yang sering kau rindu

Dan tak terduga hadirmu walau tak tercapai

Jejarimu

Kasihku

Kasih tiada banding setia tiada tara

Bagaimanapun jua

Aku pelindung dirimu sayang

Walaupun tak akan tercapai jejarimu

Begitulah awan nano

Setia melindungi diri tika panas mencuba

Menggores pipi

Dan bibirmu

Begitulah awan nano

Sering saja tak terduga hadir

Dan tak akan tercapai jejarimu

Kasihku

Kasih tiada banding setia tiada tara

Bagaimanapun jua

Aku pelindung dirimu sayang

Walaupun tak akan tercapai jejarimu

**

27.

Life has been super busy ever since the year started.

School events one after another. I have stopped my extra classes for a few weeks due to tests and other stuff. The recent week was the toughest. School replacement on Saturday. And almost everyday i worked from 6 to 6. what a record!

Next week is going to be the zone basketball competition in Miri. Yet, i won't be going with the players. I am hoping for the best and may all the time spent practising doesn't go wasted. And i will be heading for The Climb.

The stress at work can be pretty overwhelming at times.

I have got an unending to-do-list. and that includes covering other people's asses.

it's only march and 3 more quarters to go!

I will fight til the end! ROAR!!

If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out,

how can you compete with horses?

If you stumble in safe country,

how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?

Jer 12:5

**

There were times i gave serious thoughts about that.

I wonder if that risk is worth taking.

Moments like this is probably one of the weakest times a person can get.

Kasihku

Kasih tiada banding

Setia tiada tara

that's it.

nothing will change.

where to

i'm back.

we have worked really hard

i have worked really hard

to be where i am today;

it may not be 'physically',

but it's definitely

mentally and emotionally.

***

i watched a show, and there's this one part where the guy went for a drink with his friends. His friends were all businessman - either have or are starting their own business. Yet, this guy was just a paramedic, a civil servant. Well, his friends always commended him for having such a noble profession that could save the lives of people. Secretly, he was jealous of his friends because he had always wanted to start his own business and be a boss instead of being bossed around. He was jealous because his friends seems to have a better and more prestigious job, etc. Being a paramedic is not in his plans for life! He got entangled into this job because he needed money and he needed to prove something to his family.

To cut the long story short, something happened and made him realized that he actually enjoyed being a paramedic. And from then on, he decided to continue in this profession that he may save more lives....

***

This guy changed his mind. Was it because he has gotten comfortable with his job? Or was it because he has really found the true meaning as a paramedic, the joy of saving lives, the strength to carry on even if the patient dies?

***

the many similarities

and yet

one thing i see,

we have worked really hard

to be where we are today.

what a wreck.

trains of thoughts going through my mind.

we are living in a big lie.

i am such a mess.

***

i don't know what else to expect in life.

i don't want to talk myself into believing something that is unlikely to happen.

what do you want?

Sandakan.

i was supposed to quit in june.

june left me with july. and july did the same thing to me and left me with august.

august. september.

any the many months to come.

how long more should i stay in this place?

i have been losing.. time after time. again and again.

Quitting would make me even a bigger loser, besides losing some great friends and the familiarity to life in this THM place.

And perhaps it's better for one to stay where she is when she's in a state of confusion over what she really wants in life.

"What is your passion?"

"I don't know."

"No, I think you know. It's in your heart, you know."

She knows me too well. She's right.

I know.

It's just that i'm trying to ignore it.

**

A relative passed away two weeks ago. it is a great loss to me personally and it's a regret that i don't have the chance to be there to bid goodbye. and her last words to me through my mum was 'keep on praying'. and that was during this year's chinese new year.

She had fought the good fight, completed the race and kept the faith.

***

and i have strayed a little bit too far.

this moment

it's like standing on one of the rocks

and super-undecided which is the next one to jump onto.

知足常乐

i don't know why they translated that into 'we care, we grow, we grow together'.

contentment brings happiness.

this was taken last Sunday, before picking up my housemate from the airport. i actually wanted to take picture of the plane landing on the air strip. so i stopped the car by the roadside and waited for the plane. so cool, right? the adrenaline rush was awesome. my heart beat so fast as the plane began to land.

:)

i didn't get any nice touching down shots but i got this.
contentment brings happiness.


it's something of positive encouragement but my eyes see only jimo-ness,
especially after changing that into black and white.

i do not want to get 'over-contented' and end up being stuck at the same place for the rest of my life.
how should i strike the balance?

school life has been super busy ever since the year started. last week was the worst week i ever had. it was disappointing and i was utterly disgusted by how some situations turned out to be. i tried to be helpful and i ended up being back-stabbed, being accused as an irresponsible teacher. it became my fault. how could they? it was really sickening. i could feel my heart being squeezed out of its blood the moment i heard about the 'story' that was being circulated. gosh. i couldn't believe how brainlessly unhelpful some people are, everything also i don't know i don't know. tell me, what do you know? it's really tiring. i work as a teacher, i don't sell myself into this profession. don't drive me around and make me your slave, oh you pharaoh! to teach is to touch a life forever. that can be true if you are doing things out of your freewill. with the kind of system i am in - it killed my joy, it robbed my passion, it poisoned my mind, it sapped all my strength, it crushed my spirit, it shrunk my mind.

that's the problem in this system.

i will be in KK next monday, and then in Kuching from tuesday til friday for basketball competition. And awesome, i will be going for my 2nd Kundasang road trip right after my Kuching trip. i'm hoping to get nicer pictures after having known how the place is like and with some better plannings. go to kinabalu park. go to the cow place. go for sunrise.

:)

we are all survivors in our own THM situations.

let there be light

photo by Karl Randay

i want to take something like this.

like an endless search.

.... Was this even possible - even hypothetically - that his life, his choices, had always been moulded by fears of which he himself was unaware? He thought back to the past: Lankasuka, Manju, Bela, the hours he had spent sitting on the windowsill, the ecstatic sense of liberation that had come over him on learning that he had been accepted into the Military Academy. Fear had played no part in any of this. He had never thought of his life as different from any other; he had never experience a slightest doubt about his personal sovereignty; never imagined himself to be dealing with anything other than the full range of human choice. But if it were true that his life had somehow been moulded by acts of power of which he was unaware - then it would follow that he had never acted of his own volition; never had a moment of true self-consciousness. Everything he had ever assumed about himself was a lie, an illusion. And if this were so, how was he to find himself now?

The Glass Palace.

picture taken from here.

how are you to find yourself when most of the time you found yourself being surrounded by a bokeh effect of everything?

the blue hours of 7th Jan

sunrise in a foggy morning. that's one of my few favourite things in this place, which tells my heart that i should work on a project to capture the beauty (or the ugly) of this place before there's no more opportunity to do so.

"There are people who have the luck to end their lives where they began them.
But this is not something that is owed to us.
On the contrary, we have to expect that a time will come when we'll have to move on again.
Rather than being swept along by events,
we should make plans and take control of our own fate."
~The Glass Palace~

see you soon, alligator

we (all) need a new year.