ping 400

what is it like to live without romantic love? zi lin has gone fishing admits to being one who falls easily for others, perhaps that is why it is usually surprising to people around me when they find out about my current attitude towards love. falling easily for others otherwise means that i almost always have someone in my mind, and it has almost always been a staple in my life, to go to class each day looking forward to seeing someone – it makes days and thoughts go by so much more excitingly and interestingly. which of course begs the question of what happened during my rgs days, but i do not really recall much of the love life then… perhaps when removed from the sphere of guys i really had the ability to not have anyone on my mind. such a characteristic has made me find it weird when people tell me that they have never had crushes before, or have no one in mind – prime example: js. LOL. being attracted to others is just so much part of me that i find it hard to imagine that some of my friends have never felt attracted to anyone before in their life.

however, in recent days i have perhaps realized that there may be a more extreme version of me in others – the inability to live without being in romantic love. for me, attraction has always been a pastime, something that made days go by more interestingly, it was never really about loneliness and companionship. 9/10 of the time, i would hardly even have any contact with the guy in mind. but i think there are some who require this romantic love as a form of combat against loneliness… almost as if at every point of time, there has to be someone in mind in order to live out the day together. but is it really different? perhaps it is merely that my attraction is not as deep as that of the others.

life sometimes makes it so hard for some people to live, i feel.

letters arabic

oh my freaking god.

i am still reeling from the number that appeared on my new ikea weighing scale.

judge mata mata

ok.. > ok… > ok.

counter service

as another set of my friends get into a relationship, it suddenly struck me that the union of two people is such a special thing. i was weirdly happy for them, though it is not as if i brought them together or something. there is no doubt that maintaining a relationship is hard, but i think even starting a relationship is an uphill battle. finding someone you like, and then finding that someone who likes you back, and having to deal with all the teasing and gossip of your friends around you, wow i think for it to happen at all is one amazing process that i feel the people in the relationship should treasure.

throughout my conversations with the people around me (more like my incessant questioning of their thoughts), i learnt that people often have a term “non-serious relationships”… questioning this makes me feel like a judgmental person, so i never really pursued what it really means until today while talking to another friend. he said “non-serious relationships” were kind of like a relationship that you enter without really thinking of marriage – that made sense to me as i really do hold the idea that dating is for the eventual goal of marriage. but off the top of my head i think i can already imagine more than 10 of my friends shaking their heads at me, as most people tend to see relationships as companionship… it does not really have to have a destination. well i guess no one ever really enters a relationship thinking you will marry this person since that’s just weird – if you already think so then there is no need to test! but i feel that there must be at least this idea that you are looking for marriage eventually and not just for the  companionship. if so, you could just be really good friends, no? hm but it is complicated since perhaps marriage today may no longer be what it was yesterday.

but i still had the “huh why is it a non-serious relationship? when you were in it, didn’t you think that you really really really like the person?” judging it as “non-serious” seems to be more of hindsight bias than anything. i just think opportunities are so hard to come by, and time only travels in one direction – people should perhaps cherish them just a bit more. i am not saying that i am good at cherishing, just like how an art critic does not profess to draw better than the artist – in fact i am just plain horrendous at cherishing people. but i feel that when one agrees to commit, there should be something beyond the here and now.

anyway i learnt today that i am a very scary person. not only scary, but scary in a weird way. oh wells.

and well while i continue to gaze at the back of the person with #67.

mascara drip fly

just two days ago, my friend was ranting to me about his absurd room mate, telling me about his various annoying habits and what not. some of these habits were really ridiculous, and i had to agree with him about why some people are just so weird. which kind of reminds me that i was incredibly fortunate to have met joy as my room mate over the last 2 semesters, we were really similar and kind of understood each other, leading to an lovely first year at berkeley for me. but something else that my friend was ranting to me about struck me too, about how his room mate still thinks of himself as an amazing room mate, and is completely oblivious to the fact that my friend hates him to the core. two things were really interesting to me – 1. why we can be so completely blind to our own flaws, and 2. the disparity between how others see us and how we see ourselves.

why are we so incapable of seeing what is wrong with us? i think many would probably agree with me that it is not that we are incapable, but because we don’t want to. but then again, since this is once again a fault, i doubt anyone would agree with me afterall. haha. our self-image is something that vital is to our continued journey in this world – it gives us confidence and boost our self-esteem. we like to see ourselves as perhaps someone who is better than who we are really are. i am not saying that there is anything wrong with this – confidence in your life and actions is one thing while arrogance is another. in order to maintain our self-image, it then becomes easy for us to magnify our strengths and minimize the times that we notice our flaws.

then again, there is also the fundamental attribution error, whereby we attribute others’ flaws to their disposition, while at the same time attributing our flaws to the situation – when we are late for a gathering with our friends, it is because something came up or the train was packed; when our friends are late, it is because they are just naturally lazy and always want to get on our nerves. so in the same sense, it is not that we are incapable of seeing the flaws, or that we don’t want to see the flaws, it is that we just do not see them as flaws!

sometimes, i think it is really scary to find out that there is such a great difference in how people around see you and how you see yourself. this knowledge makes me feel insecure, kind of like unrequited love? you think that you are projecting this image that is acceptable to your friends, but in actuality, your friends see a completely different image that may not be acceptable to them at all, but they are just too nice/mean to say it to your face.

so at times, when my friends are ranting to me about their friends, i think to myself – is this a sneaky way of telling me that this are the things that i do as well?

i definitely hope not.

i just want to go home now

mishamasha

snippet of my trip around US of A!