Q

Month: September 2013

memory

I have an incredible autobiographical memory.

In fact, the further away the time period, the better I remember it and the more vivid they seem. Often I’d recount an event from back in primary school in detail, and my friends involved in these accounts would be like: that happened?!? how do you even remember these stuff???

I just do. And i’m not entirely sure of it’s a curse or blessing. Because while everyone typically have a tunnel vision towards the future, my childhood – which was a very happy one – insists on being consistently compared to my present.

Everyone, I think, will feel a sense of loss when reminiscing about the past. For me this is all the damn time because I always remember exactly what happened 10 years ago and the creepy part is that they don’t seem that far back. On my personal timeline they’re just about a couple years back, tops.

This doesn’t just extend to significant happenings, either. I can in my head picture, vividly, meeting PJ at the exact crossroad. I remember what I’m wearing and what she’s wearing. I remember the route we took towards Hougang mall, I remember the exact location of the shop we stopped at and the exact thing we bought (me – a tuna and a black pepper chicken puff, her – a mushroom chicken puff). I remember sitting at the playground, and the exact timing we went up for science tuition. In fact I can even tell you the questions we were given for that very lesson. It was on the pulley system. The last question asked about the application of force for differing fulcrum placements. I remember PJ and I slathering glue at the top of the paper so that our tutor (we called him Caterpillar Eyes) would get his hand stuck on it while collecting them.

That was in Primary 4.

Almost every other memory of that time period I can recall in this amount of detail. I can even remember scents and sounds and texture. It’s difficult for me to believe how long ago that was.

Sometimes I wish it didn’t because they just reinforce just how much I want to go back to those times.

September 12, 2013
personality tests

I think the human race, in our desperation to understand ourselves, instead corner our selves into narrow labels.

We want so much to define our personalities (what myers-briggs are you? what’s your horoscope? are you an introvert or extrovert? are you artistic or logical?) that we forget how various things are.

There are theories we can use as frameworks to understand aspects of ourselves, but it’s dangerous to try and fit yourself into any one type.

In doing so we undo our complexity and allow arbitrary descriptions tell us what we should do and what we are capable of, and the last thing we need are unnecessarily brakes on achieving our full capacity.

September 10, 2013
under the weather

I ought to stop being so ridiculously affected by the weather.

Have been mired in quite a funk these days. Probably the combined stress of schoolwork, weather, and homesickness. Also nostalgia.

I find myself missing everything – people, places, times.

There seems to always be a correlation, much as I wish it didn’t, between my mood and the weather.

It’s not conscious, and would usually take a couple of days into melancholy before I realize how rainy it has been. It upsets me mostly because I don’t like the idea of my entire self being so wholly manipulated by something this random and changeable.

But it happens.

The chinese side of me likes to attribute this to the dominance of sun in my name. 炜 with all that firey fire and 晴 which literally means a bright, sunny day. I’m just innately incompatible with the damp and the cold and the general lack of sunshine.

That, or I’m a plant reincarnated.

Rain makes others want to curl up into their cosy beds and feel all safe and protected but no bed, no blanket, no roof can keep the rain from bogging me down.

All it does to me is make me perpetually moody, needy, and massively hungry. And also unproductive.

I hate it and I want it to pass so badly.

I want the sun back.

I want my summer back.

September 8, 2013
Braces: before, with, after

Before braces.

Bunny teeth and distinct canines and a very messy bottom because of small Asian jaw. The spread was also pretty strange, with lots of spaces at the side when i smile.

I’m not sure how I lived 17 years being okay with teeth like that, now that i have them straightened… And I don’t just mean aesthetically. In fact, that’s the least significant difference (to me). Having properly aligned teeth helps in the so many areas: sleeping and breathing and chewing and speech.

Right after getting my braces on. Hurt like a bitch and I had to live on soft food. It was horrible.

They straightened really quickly, this was a few months after. For a long time it was stuck at this gap-tooth stage, which I secretly liked.

After more than a year. Straight but my bite was not yet adjusted. Had to wear rubber bands for awhile to reign in my overbite.

The day I got my braces taken off! I think the last photo I have of me in them.

AFTER. Oh god just compare this with the Before. Also idk why they seem so white here.

YAY.

ALTHOUGH.

I’m still stuck on retainers (at least until end of this semester). Need to have them on almost all the time and it’s a huge pain. They impede my speech more than braces did. Also just really uncomfortable, troublesome and horrible.

Nyeh.

September 2, 2013