A whimsical adventure

Post-work last Saturday. It was a beautiful summer's day. And I didn't want to go home.

As I happened to pick up a Broadsheet the day before, I was taking the chance to read it while eating lunch. When I saw the words, NGV, of course no words had to be said.

二話不說，飛奔過去。

There is a lot of room to explore in art galleries. Especially people photography I think. Really wish I'd brought canon.

And I think this is what I will miss most about Melbourne. That I can do just that.

There's just enough hustle bustle. I finally understand what travel writers mean by 'vibrant city'. Because it is and after six weeks away, it's enough for me to see Melbourne again from the outsiders' perspective.

Blog under construction

I locked it up because it got too raw.

Half an hour

I wondered why they kept looking at their phones and wondered if they had an argument which is why the elderly lady moved to sit behind me. But it turned out to be nothing I thought, why did the old man get up to wait by the doors so early?

At Darling Station - everything came to light. How ept. Darling. For when their darling grandson was swapped from this parents' loving hands to the grandparents.

So unbelievably utterly endearing and lovely to watch unfold. Such a beautiful little boy and his grandparents who'd probably just finished shopping at Queen Victoria Markets.

The waterfall

When you first look at The Waterfall, it is merely water, streaming down. Just as it has for so many years. But this is the first time I've looked at it so intently - in it, I see fast moving, moderate and slower moving sections of water. Calm amongst calamity. Chaos, intermingled with incessant calm.

Better living

Whether it's because I got enough sleep, Vitamin D or generally ate enough nutritious food whilst in Taiwan...

I wake up everyday feeling well rested. Even if I didn't sleep all that long. Either because I'm waking up early and well or because I'm actually in a good state blood wise.

Could this be life as a non-anaemic?

Hahaha, but this is great.

I really want to check my bloods now.

The Fortunate

I actually think I've been the luckiest, hands down this trip.

From afternoon blue skies, thunderstorm afar, to now, my favourite kind of moon hanging in the deep black with stars as company...

I wonder if I will see the sunrise tomorrow. I won't get my hopes up. But this flight in terms of scenery has been just beyond amazing, and I'm so glad for it.

*3.29am TW time - add dawn to this. It's the exact opposite of coming home from Cairns. The moon looked the same also.

And yes, I saw the sun rise. It was so quick. As it etched its way up. Like a baby crawling.

Might I just say - this flight felt like a dream.

Spaceship flying

At first I saw only the evening star.

It disappeared while we went through some turbulence. Understandable, after all - we could've been travelling through a cloud.

But then I saw a flicker in the periphery.

Not the flicker of a plane wing at night.

And I waited. And it happened again and again and my friend, I saw a thunderstorm from above. The sky as it flashed in the distance. Thunderstorm raging down below this calm, calm veil. Underneath calm calm stars that stretch out and are so damn close. And a shooting star. If my eyes did not deceive me. It was a shooting star and I tell you, I wished for something I've always yearned for more blatantly than ever. Something I didn't even speak aloud myself inside my heart. And whether or not it was because I'm watching wish you were all here (I think) at the moment which by the way I am loving. Paused at the moment because the thunderstorm was too amazing. And this is a new year. So many weird and wonderful things happened yesterday - from this crazy occurrence of meeting a girl inside of MUJI, having her approach me at first saying: are you korean? To I really like the way you're dressed. To can we meet for coffee? Then actually meeting for the said coffee and me while talking to her, unbelievably in Chinese where I have limited higher up vocabulary to realising there are so many of her thoughts that I've had. To the freedom of having to hide nothing, talking to what was a perfect stranger about deep dark things. Having the same said thoughts uttered in exactly the same fashion all be it in Chinese, and then after that coffee, choosing to walk the way I did. Looking up at that precise moment as I turned the corner and meeting Cindy there. Laughter tumbling out. All worryless. Going to big egg and friend. Life is really made of choices. Although you don't know you're taking it. Actively, you don't think it. But those same choices lead us to such weird and wonderful things. Like me choosing to go back into MUJI after seeing the girl look at me with interest. And us ending up again at the same spot. So many things and so many choices. That create the person we are today. That make us who we are.

What will you do if you don't get into specialist? Take a year off and go to Japan. Travel for a few months in Europe. Throw all plans and maps to the wind and run run run. I'll let my steering wheel loose and let the currents take me where they may. Anywhere. I'll live with a goal, but at once aimlessly. These russet dreams as they are. As I lust for.

What has really change in me these past months? Thoughts like this go immediately and unedited on this space. No more read and reread. No more - am I being too honest here? No more - that's too private to go up. I don't know what has changed really.

Thinking back to the start of errant thoughts, when I agonised over public or private. When I chose not to write for an audience but instead for myself. That was when the private button went up and all was buried. But you know, I guess I ended up wanting not to let these thoughts fester away in the dark. That at least, here, they can exist. Not just lay waste in the deepest part of my soul. Cause these thoughts at least. Of me, me and me. I want to share. 

But you know. I can see the clouds as we travel through them at thousands of miles per hour. They leave almost as soon as we arrive. But we're the ones moving, actually. Dips and dabbles. Is this that feeling? Or meeting someone, doing something. Having it last only for s short while. But so much weight and meaning behind it. Short, significant, inspiring exchanges. I'll never be that person. There are too many flaws in me. (And my movie just got reset. How annoying.) But I'll work on it. I'll try my best. Set my goals. Not get too caught up. Not impose. Not lose my temper so easily or be so stubborn. And friend. It is so beautiful up here. 

Is this what it's like to fly in spaceship? 

To cruise up here. Watching the miles fall away. Rocketing along to the next new beginning. To a New Year. A new start, I haven't yet set my New Years resolutions. 

But it'll be something like this.

Food: Eat healthy. Learn to cook. Either learn to: ice skate, dance, yoga, go gym. Photography: 365 challenge, dig up more projects to do.

I won't ever play piano the way I want to. Itll never be as perfect as I want it to be my head. I can't replicate that. It all falls apart the minute I try. No patience.

Why don't I finish things in my head? Why must I write it all down to feel like I've filed it away? Means I accumulate too much dust and clutter in my heart.

I'm also happy all went well today and I managed to get a seat change. The window seat inspires me. People watching inspires me. I wonder how others perceive me. Want to see myself through another's eyes. There's s baby crying. 

Watching this movie and realising the importance of siblings. How easily we can talk. How we can insult and scream and fight all we want and how it will never change. I love you. I will always love you. Is the recurrent message from this trip. Fr my family and loved ones. That even if the sky falls down, we will still be here to hold it up. The kind of friendship that dog and deer had. Kate and Pippin. Which reminds me I still need to watch the hobbit. I think I'm now transcribing my thoughts as they run through my head. Fingers are not moving as fast as they can. Right. At the spot again. Almost went over the fastforwarding. Hush for now.

On top of the world

I'll meet you tonight on top of the world. 

Do you think we'll ever wake up one day to this view outside our windows? It's always been a dream of mine, to live above the clouds.

How long has it been since you saw so blue a blue?

We'll look up at night at the never ending sight. The sky as it is untainted by artificial light.

As real as it seems, you're only in my dreams.

我… 真的很幸福。

On the moment I press the shutter

Four years ago now, I wrote something on the then Hoffentlich voicing why I enjoy photography so much. It has long since been deleted, or lost in my poorly cateogorised archive of written thoughts. Since the introduction of Instagram, I felt like I gradually forgot the true meaning behind taking a photo and instead fell into a recurrent habit of thought: To take 'pretty photos', instead of a photo that tells a story of a thousand words.

Of course, 'pretty photo' is at the top of the list of 'good photo requirement', but this time round, I've been reminded of the initial 'why', encouraged to take a step back to reconsider the true significance of the existence of my dslr.

Before we press that shutter, many things run through our minds:

Who. What. When. Where. Why. How.

Aperture. Exposure. Light. Composition. Thought.

In my old photos, I could look at one and feel pangs.

Because those were the photos I took with my heart. I could look at a photo and replay the scene. Who was there. What was happening. Where it was. How this photo came about. Everything.

I can still do that with mine these days. But I get so lost in the heat of the moment, trying to note down everything, but then realising I got nothing at all. Having too many subjects. Too crowded a throught. This need to capture all that I see that is beautiful, the urge to press the shutter again and again, but then having walked away realising how little i got to see of the real thing. Ending up with way too many photos of the same thing. None outstanding. All slightly similar. This reluctance to delete one even though it looks exactly the same as the last, if not for a millimetre difference, but the perfectionist in me will try her best to pick out one, get too indecisive, then end up keeping both, run out of memory, force myself to finally delete one, two, no three. Or realising that none were good enough because none were taken with the deliberation, accuracy and heart behind the photo.

There are many types of photos - Documentary. Thoughtful. 'I was here. Yay.'

I don't condemn any. But I'm glad I've reawoken these thoughts.

Bringing back a meaning into the photo. Bringing back the moments I wanted to capture that says it all. Exploring this creative expression.

In the world of SD cards, USBs and infinite memory, many moments can be captured.

But which one will it be, to say it all again and again, in the many years to come?

On a foolish(?) pursuit of perfection

Say, I've figured out why it's so hard for me to update my blog. 

It's not the lack of thought or a lack of time.

But I think rather a stubborn pursuit of perfection in my letters and pixels.

I agonise over the exact phrasing, over how I want to represent my thoughts. Read and reread. Proofread again and again. A process that takes hours. So clearly not efficient at all.

Which leads to apparent neglect.

And because I know it will be an arduous task to come up with a competent post, I get lazy, procrastinate and end up avoiding and it leads to way too much internal mess requiring cleaning and reorganising.

So I'm going to go about this in a more reasonable fashion.

And get down all my thoughts while I can, without fear of only representing the most perfect.

But will all flaws and mistakes scattered about and within too.

And I'm thinking just maybe.

Maybe I'll export this into a my old photoblog tumblr, which might just be more manageable.

Or maybe not.

Appreciate

After I tried to take videos myself, I realised how hard it was to make even a coherent short of what I wanted to express. Which in turn made me appreciate and respect directors and filmmakers so so much more. Adding another dimension to the time I spent at Eslite this time, trawling through movies I wanted to watch and figuring out for myself certain things.

Holding a camera with a steady hand to keep it from shaking while adjusting the lens to gain the focus of you want and to express through that medium of the scene you want to note forever using your bare hands is quite an amazing thing. And you know, now that I've finally figured out how to use the recording mode of my dslr after more than a year (despicable and incompetent, I know) means I will probably use it more often. So much of what I want to capture shows on film and not as a still. But I suppose that too is a skill I would need to achieve, hey? To express it through a still. Finding my own identity and my 'eye' through my looking glass, so as to say.

That said, the gift of the 55-200mm lens is just amazing.

It renders the world into a completely different kind and has really brought about a whole new perspective on the everyday I see. I can see it now, every time I look at a scene or a photo and I can see that hey, it might have been taken with this, the thought process of the photographer.

And the recent trip up the mountains has also taught me how to appreciate binoculars. Of all things, hey? 

Adjusting to focus of the binoculars from near to far. Making it so the two visual fields overlap and it forms a perfect circle and completely widens your view of the world. It's so much fun experimenting out bush.

It reminds me of microscopes and year 11 and looking at plants in bio lab and then of me taking photos of how perfect everything looked under the microscope. I've got to find that photo again.

But for now, allow me to introduce: through the binoculars, I saw grass (蘆葦草).

Underwhelming, I know. 

But so very exciting for me.

Another year, welcome.

I always put off my yearly reflections.

Somehow, I'm afraid my brain and heart doesn't know how to process what I've learnt, doesn't appreciate from the bottom of my heart.

2014 was a year of love, loss, gain, deepened friendships, uncertainty, fresh understanding and reaching new heights.

I always think this; but each year, I push myself harder, and each year, I'm amazed by what one can achieve when they put their mind to it. Whenever I think: that's the limit, somehow, there's more and more return. 

If anything I've learnt this year is the power of small gestures and a simple, but so oft missed fact: Tell people how important they are to you.

How ironic it is that I thought I'd foolproofed everything, thought I'd had it all covered, thought I'd seen it all - but was so damn blind all the while when it came to myself. That I could be so logical, objective and coherent, but that it would all fall apart in the moment most important.

If I've learnt anything - Tell them you love them. Don't foolishly assume they know so already.

So onto 2015.

With hope in my heart, wind beneath my feet, with all the passion of what youth I've left - to a new year. I'll take my lessons to heart and embrace all that the future will hold. I'll strive to be worthy of my namesake. Come what may.