The 2013 To-do List.

It's February, hardly the first month of the year but hey, Chinese New Year's still not over yet so I'm not too late in posting my New Year's Resolutions for 2013. (It took me a while to think of a proper list, might get longer along the way with updates.)

1. Enjoy life in Melbourne So maybe I'll try not get homesick as much, be more familiar with surroundings (yes I'll try to enlarge my 5km radius perimeter from my unit alright?), balance work and play, experiment a lot more in food and cooking, make full use of the high-speed internet to indulge in more anim-- erm, I mean... Yeah, you get the idea.

2. Maintain first class honours in my course and not go green with jealousy at people with day-offs. 
/hmph.

3. Try something new. Credit to Mr Fortune Cookie, could be anything. Paintball seems like the first on the list though.

4. Read a bit more (not just manga, but proper english articles /gulp.)

5. Exercise. I realized I don't exercise much. Okay, scratch that. My only form of exercise is walking to uni and back. So maybe this year I'll try going jogging or go on the treadmill once a month or something. Just to build stamina so I can kick butt when I come back for Galactic Laser and DDR.

6. Write again. Those unfinished stories and novels aren't going to write themselves after all.

7. Learn at least 3 more songs on the piano this year. 
May seem very little but hey, I can't bring my keyboard to Melb so this shall be done only during my winter and summer breaks. Unless I find a piano there.

8. Kanji. By the end of this year, I expect to have at least memorized all the kanji in the JLPT N5 list. Even if I don't /touchwood manage to enrol in Jap2.

9. Be myself. 
Because that's the only person I'm comfortable being and I'm not changing that anytime soon.
Phew. That's it for now I guess. Let's work hard this year, Ayame. :)

All it takes is one flick of a finger, and then it'll all shatter.

I've long realized life's been imperfect (Though at times, everything was perfect, even if it was only that small frame of time.) But since when did imperfection become so bad?

I won't lie. I haven't exactly been living in a castle built on a rainbow with cute little unicorn ponies galloping around the lush green meadows with bright sunflowers and peonies surrounding the castle. I haven't exactly been living in a hell-hole either. There has always been this somewhat careful balance in between everything. A silent weighing scale that holds a little bit of the good and bad on both sides. And there was always a veil, a veil to cover the mechanism behind the machine so that everyone would be kept in suspense as they continually try to figure how to make the scale tip more on the good side.

Everyone except oblivious old me of course. I liked the balance. I liked what I had, I never really wanted more. The machine can do what it wants, to me it didn't even exist. And this continued on for I can't remember how long.

Then I grew older. Somewhere along the way my veil got torn away, forcing me to open my eyes and look properly for the first time. I don't know if I like what I saw, or am still seeing.

On the one hand, I saw things that piqued my interest. Things that I thought I knew, but had much more in them to discover than I had initially thought. Songs held deeper meaning, I could relate to them better now. Those complex Chinese characters I always thought were alien compounds began to look like simple combinations of more familiar elements that I know.  Things that I used to regard as difficult turned out to be no big deal. These things made me smile at the naivety of the past me, the plain simplicity of the things that used to baffle me was unthinkable. Seeing these made me feel like I had come a long way, that I have grown and matured. I am different; I am the newest and latest version of myself, an evolved smartphone from the once contentedly indestructible Nokia 3310. It would have been nice if that was all I had seen.

On the other hand, there were things that frightened me, made me feel uncomfortable. Made me REGRET the day the veil was torn. Things I don't want to see. Feelings I don't want to associate with. Thoughts I DON'T NEED. People I should have never cared about. I saw the tensions in the weak strings of what I thought were strong ropes of human relationships. The frailness of the glass of trust that kept all the insecurity in it. The hollowness of hearts, the injustice of the just, the other side of the silver coin. Pandora's box. The mirror of truth. It was like a double-edged sword. Because I knew more, I could understand more. Because I understood more, I saw more of the truth. And sometimes, the truth will hurt. And it will hurt bad.

Now then, do we embrace it or deny its existence? The happiness you once knew came with an unknown price. Its like unknowingly having extra charges made to your credit card while you were on a bargain sale purchase. Everything feels awesome at first and then you realize you've been scammed, in fact you've lost more than you would have in a normal purchase.

But this is not a bargain sale. This is you and life.There is no turning back. You open that veil and you see the weighing balance. You find newfound happiness, you also experience immeasurable loneliness with its absence. You find the wonders of faith and trust, but not without a bitter taste of betrayal. You'll achieve great understanding of others, but you'll also have to live with the disappointment when you understand why they did what they did. The greatest triumphs come with tantamount losses as its prologue. Yin and yang. Black and white. Up and down.

You either take it all in or lock yourself in a sheltered world of glass. If you choose the latter, remember, all it takes is a flick of a finger and then it'll all shatter. And then you naturally get cut from the fragments.

Oh. So this is why I'm bleeding. Time to put on some band-aids myself. It's faster when you don't have to rely on anyone else, after all.