the sandcastle.

"play with me," he half-commanded, half-pleaded. his dad glanced at the clock on the wall. "okay," he said, offering his hand to his son. the boy pulled his father towards the sandbox, letting go of his dad's hand to clamber into the sandbox. his dad perched awkwardly on the ledge.

together they shoveled sand into a sandcastle mould, the boy gibbering away, his dad nodding in apparent understanding. the boy was on his knees in the sand, oblivious to the fact that he was getting damp sand all over his clothes and into his shoes. he added sand to the mould steadily, not seeming to mind when he missed and ended up throwing the sand back into the sandbox instead. his dad put in sand every once in a while, just enough to keep his little boss happy while staying subordinate.

when the mould filled up, they patted the sand down to make sure it was compact and then added more sand, repeating the process until the top was level. then with a jubilant "one, two THREE!" they turned the mould over. the dad eased the mould off the sandcastle while the boy hit the top of the mould with his shovel to make sure all the sand got out.

it was a perfect sandcastle: its ridges were perfectly defined, the sides were smooth, and it stood straight up, not crumbling to one side like the sandcastles in this sandbox usually did. the boy smiled at his dad. "well, ezra," his dad said. "that was fun, but i have to get going now." the boy's smile drooped a little, but he gave his dad a hug and a kiss before he left.

"wow, ezra," i said, walking up to him. "that's some sandcastle. it looks amazing!" and i meant it. i wasn't doling out the obligatory praise that smudges of paint on paper and unidentifiable blobs of playdoh usually got. he didn't look at me, but half-smiled at the sandcastle.

a girl climbed into the sandbox, her foot narrowly missing the sandcastle. "be careful, jori!" i exclaimed, rushing to put a protective hand between her flailing limbs and the magnificent monument. "we don't want to hurt the sandcastle ezra worked so hard to build with his dad."

the boy didn't seem to notice my efforts, but continued to contemplate the sandcastle with satisfaction, waving his shovel in the air gently and unconcernedly. i wondered what he was thinking. maybe he was remembering that he had built the sandcastle with his dad. or maybe he was just admiring it's sharp corners and clean nooks. i hoped he would be okay when it got destroyed, as it was bound to be eventually. pity though, it's such a beautiful -

"thwack, thwack, thwack!" ezra completely demolished the sandcastle with his shovel, leveling the ground for good measure. then he smiled at me, dropped his shovel, and climbed out of the sandbox.

que sera, sera.

wow i haven't blogged in a while. and don't worry, this isn't gonna be a long one... i just decided to put something up because i finished "the joy luck club" last night, and i needed to do something while my brain wound down.

i'm officially all done with my classes for the term... but two finals, one paper and two or three more appl-ick-ations (i'm thinking two, but i'm also thinking two's kinda reckless) before i can celebrate.

it was funny that the only "last class" that i felt sad about was my ballet class. since i was gonna be ballet-deprived for a few weeks (i'm taking it again next term!) i decided to try stuff i didn't think i could do well enough to do... and ended up doing three almost-perfect double pirouettes, which i think is my new lifetime record for one class.

i got my official gre results, and did worse on the writing than i thought i did. better on the verbal than i expected though, percentile-wise. hopefully they balance out. i had a grad school application all put together to meet the deadline (yesterday/today - the 5th), and got an email from the professor on the 3rd saying she wasn't accepting doctoral candidates for next year's intake. then again, i was already thinking of not applying, so maybe that worked out for the best.

i've been neglecting people, and am very thankful for their understanding. i'm doing my best. but sometimes i still wonder if i'm doing it right... if someone else in my position would be able to perform a better juggling act.

i'll end with the song i didn't get to dance to, because i was cooking nasi lemak, rendang, kurma, bak choy and bubur cha cha for 20 people =):

"when i was just a little girl,
i asked my mother, what will i be?
will i be pretty? will i be rich?
here's what she said to me:

que sera, sera,
whatever will be, will be
the future's not ours to see
que sera,sera."

que sera sera, doris day.

my class performed to the version by pink martini, not the original, and if you can you should listen to it. i love it.
haunting.

still.

be.

what it is doesn't change what it was, but that doesn't change what it is.

what will it be?

dancer.

i was blog-surfing (because i'm sitting for the gre tomorrow), and came across part of the lyrics to "human", by the killers on val's blog, so i decided to listen to the song online and look through the lyrics (because i'm sitting for the gre tomorrow). i was intrigued by the line "are we human or are we dancer", and i really wanted to know what it meant, so i looked that up too (because i'm sitting for the gre tomorrow). then i came across this blog (http://hesawhore.blogspot.com/2008/09/are-we-human-or-are-we-dancer.html) and found the comments in reply to the post pretty amusing (maybe because i'm sitting for the gre tomorrow).

so. if you have anything pressing to do, here's one way get your priorities mixed up. =)

seriously tho, i've been working at it for a while now. =( i think i'm as prepared as i'll ever be, so i just wanna get it over with! of course, then there's a whole bunch of other stuff to sort out... gah. i foresee more blog-surfing and song-researching in the near future.

at mass today.

"I ask you to love me with same love with which I love you. But for me you cannot do this, for I love you without being loved. Whatever love you have for me you owe me, so you love me not gratuitously but out of duty, while I love you not out of duty but gratuitously. So you cannot give me the kind of love I ask of you. This is why I have put you among your neighbors: so that you can do for them what you cannot do for me--that is, love them without any concern for thanks and without looking for any profit for yourself. And whatever you do for them I will consider done for me."

- The Dialogue, St Catherine of Siena

happy anniversary mommy and daddy! =)

what if?

how do you put your heart and soul into working towards something, while at the same time keeping in mind that it is not the be all and end all?

how can you want something more than anything but still tell yourself you'll be okay without?

and how do you come to terms with the fact that you've invested such a big part of your life into something you might not have wanted in the first place, but that you now can't help but want by virtue of your investment?

i'm scared.

if at first you don't succeed...

my first attempt at soft-boiled eggs.

mm mmm... soft-boiled eggs and hot milo. my current favorite breakfast. =)

ps.

i wonder what sasha and malia understand and feel.

firsts and seconds, hours and days.

i have so many different things to blog about and most of them are unrelated so i have no idea how i'm going to get it all down without writing too much or being too incoherent! i'll try, and i'll go in chronological order so there'll be some rhyme and reason to my rambling.

last week i talked to two different people, one about how isolated he felt from everybody else, and how people who he thought were his friends weren't being there for him. he said i was the first person in a couple of months to have taken the time to talk to him and to ask how he was doing. the other person i talked to asked me if she was a bad person for not missing her family. she spent most of her childhood living with her aunt and then her grandparents before going back to stay with her parents as a teenager. she said her parents were hurt and asked her why she didn't miss them, and she asked me what it was like to miss my own family. i haven't completely processed both conversations yet, but they gave me a lot to think about.

on friday i went for the halloween dance thrown by the international student association. esh, bryan, sean and i dressed up as bumblebees, with sean as our drag queen bee. =) it was fun watching the thriller dance and finding puke on the dance floor, but there were two other things that affected me more. one was that it was my first second with my friends here in eugene, especially sean and bryan. almost every other (major) experience i've had here so far has been a first... and i suppose it being my first second also makes it a first, but it was incredible to think that a year ago i had my first halloween, first met romandy, had my first ethnocentric friday and first danced to soulja boy en masse, among other things. the other thing was bryan pointing out that this was going to be our last halloween at the u of o. i haven't completely digested both of these reflections either.

on saturday, we had a cocktail party at bryan's, which i really enjoyed too. i can't remember the last time i wore a dress two nights in a row! there was lots to laugh and talk about, and i like that there was a balance of gravity and lightheartedness that night. on sunday i went to watch the last ever staging of telling that sean was a part of, which is a play put on by veterans about their experiences. it was my second time watching the play, but i was even more affected this time than the last. i don't know why, but this time it struck me even more that this was what sean was getting himself into... and i felt both proud of and worried for him. i can only imagine what it must have felt like for family members and significant others of people who have enlisted. and for the people who have enlisted themselves.

on monday we had our first full rainy day here. it poured, and it was very cold. i made it for my first class, and then i had to rush to register for the graduate record examination (which is basically the sat for grad school) in the one hour i had between classes. there was some complication with my registration and it took longer than i expected so i decided to skip ballet, since getting this done was more important than getting to use my ballet shoes again. despite me starting to work on my grad school applications what seems like very early on, i have somehow managed to land myself into a very stressful time crunch which i can only blame my pushparatnam genes for. anyhow. i got myself all worked up about grad school stuff and started looking up information and ended up running late for econs. i was halfway out the door when i realized that a) i had forgotten my laptop charger so i had to run back upstairs, b) it was raining very heavily, and c) i really, really did not want to go for class. so i went back upstairs, watched a bit of desperate housewives online, and had a nap. i don't think i had skipped a class intentionally before this, but as sean pointed out rather depressingly, i skipped class for school-related matters, which makes me feel both better and worse at the same time. i'm really glad i did it though. oh, and i'm sitting for the gre next friday - i feel unprepared, but as prepared as i ever think i'll be. we'll see how that goes.

the highlight of today was the announcement of the election results. although i am not an american, i'm psyched to have been here to witness the election of obama as president. i wish i could've watched cable tv the whole evening to have seen the unfolding of the events every step of the way, but i had class and by the time i got out obama had already won. still, i got something out of tonight's class that almost made up for it. i'm happy for obama, but at the same time, i have a lot of respect for mccain and i admire the elegance he showed in his concession speech. i also recognize how this is a mark of how far america has come, and rather significantly in a time of sobriety for the country. it will be interesting to see how things go from here in the states... and also back home in malaysia. it's exciting to see how much more involved my generation has become.

now for bed.