just minishorts.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

I woke up rather early today, at around 5.30 a.m., to the sound of a defunct cockerel crowing outside. The insane cock has been doing this absurdly obnoxious business of crowing at the oddest hours, and I've been spending the past few weeks getting used to sleeping with a tight pillow closed over my head just to drown the random 'cock-a-doodle-doos' that disrupt my beauty sleep.

At 5.30, the sun's almost up where I stay, and in the dark you can make out the small prints of words in old, dog-eared diaries. Yes, I'm melancholic like that, making sleepy, noiseless steps in the middle of my room because of a-cock-crowing-at-every-five-minute-interval. So I switched on a light and started cleaning up the junk that's in my study.

I found my old diary with a newspaper cut-out slipped in between the pages. The dateline's Sunday, 9 March 2003, and its an article written by a certain Sylvia See. The article's on (ha!) lost love, and 'how the greatest lessons are those learnt in pain', all that sort of philosophical reflections, condensed in a 2000-word article that recounts the problems Sylvia faced with a guy she eventually drove out of her life because of her inexperienced actions of 'not knowing how to love'.

Actually, that was a digression of sorts. Because I've actually given thought to my journeys in life (not that many, considering the fact that I'm only 24), and the lessons that I've learnt. The conversations I've had with people, the men I've hurt, and the single one that has hurt me the most. I swear I could hear Sheryl Crow lamenting about the deepest first cut while I read this dated article of overtold stories.

We've all been there before. I've got a pretty good memory, so I remember the time when I first read the article over a year ago, I was just reeling from a very bad break up where the guy just walked out on me and 'never looked behind, never called to see if I was okay, never gave me a second chance, never gave me so much as an explanation…'. And I was in tears from the read (which explains the dried spotted splatters on the yellowed newsprint).

More than a year later, older and wiser, hopefully, I was reading it again, at 5-something in the morning, and smiling at the lines Sylvia had written.

Have you seen my quote-of-the-day recently? I got it from one of those daily office-spam that colleagues oh-so-love to pass around for destressing moments. Sylvia's got a more down-to-earth way of putting it, 'Love really does start with loving ourselves. If we feel bitter and cut-up and useless inside, then sure, we'll become clingy and insecure and self-righteous. We have to learn to deal with our pain ourselves and not dump it on our nearest and dearest.'

Have you ever heard this line before, when you quarreled with somebody, 'It's okay. As long as you don't make me sad, then we'll be happy.' ?

I was guilty of saying it too many times before, and then I had a very karmic-luck of hearing it said to myself quite very often. Because it hurt when somebody said it to me, I now know that when I used to say it to somebody, it must have hurt too. Since when did your own happiness depended on another person? At the end of the day, we belong only to ourselves, and we do not have any right to blame other people for the unhappiness we inflict upon ourselves.

When you reflect on ex-conversations, you remember the purpose of deja-vu being put into your lives. Over and over again, we relive arbitrary moments, and come to think about it, it really is like some huge test that God is putting us through, isn't it? You fail here, nevermind, He'll put you through it again, but this time, you're to play a different role. Sometimes, you pass sufficiently, but God probably thinks, you could have done better, so He puts you through a like scenario where you play a like role, just to see if you'll perform better again. If you fail, nevermind, after a while, you'll just resit the paper again. So it happens, over and over and over again. Until you find your niche, until it finally becomes, 'just nice'.

That's the beauty of life, I suppose. The process of growing wiser, and the stages you have to cross to realise you could have done better, and when new opportunities come, the things you do for yourself to make things better. That's a wonder and a miracle in itself.

Of course life goes on.

Got myself a 256MB thumbdrive for a hundred bucks on Saturday.

My CD-RW broke down so I've to go shopping for a new one this Friday.

My second trip to HK has been postponed until Mum is freer… she doesn't feel too good about me travelling overseas in 'the state I'm in.' What state, Mum? What state?'

Apparently, my ba zi says its not right for me travel extensively this year, because I'll get into trouble somehow or the other, and now what's happened is sort of proof, so she's not going to allow it.

Because of that blank, I've got a six-day holiday to look forward to. And because it rains kucing dan anjing daily, I'm stuck in KL, because Mummy says, 'Cannot drive out of state. I'm not going to hear of you stuck in some flood with one or two of your devil-may-care colleagues.'

At work, I'm editing a terribly difficult to understand book of 8 SPM exam test papers (the author's English is veli-the-fantastic you know!!!). The level that these people use is so atrociously HIGH, that it takes me 2 hours to cut a 1500-word comprehension passage to the appropriate 650-word target.

I've been getting a lot of comments spam from the online-poker idiots. *grumble*

Been getting along pretty well with colleagues lately, so that's a plus sign in life!

Entering fourth semester of my Master's degree and the thesis has never seem so far out of reach until this week.

Been blogging a lot for a stupid reason of 'NEED TO'. But fortunately, its not damaging to health.

Had a talk with Nick the other night, which was amazingly enlightening. Coolest thing he told me was this, 'Girl, I kid you not. You wanted this to happen so badly. You wanted it, you wanted it.'

Liberation has never felt so good before. Now to implement it so that it lasts. And the Yo-yo fluctuations are lessening. Thank Heavens for that!!!

My second break-up with a friend was with my ex-bf. Before he became a boyfriend, that is. I was nearing 18.

We were classmates for the 4th year in a row. We were the only two students from the same class in Form 5, and hence we were rather compatible with each other. Now I can't be certain of the exact reason why I started to have a fallout with the guy, but I know it was somewhere around the end of my first year in Form 6. And it wasn't just me. It was an entire group of us that decided to ignore the guy in retribution for the things he was doing to us.

You see, we were elected to the Sixth Form Council, while my ex-bf wasn't. We had major projects lined-up for the entire year, and here was a non-committee member in , affecting the work we were trying to get done just because he was closer to the teachers. After a while the lot of us got fed up with the sight of him sitting in board-meetings we decided to boycott the dude. It was extra obvious on my part because I had previously been a close friend of his. (I was only a teenager, and yes, very petty.)

Again, this deliberate choice of not speaking to each other went on for ages. In a classroom of only 25-odd students, it was quite apparent. But somewhere along the way, after the passing on of duties to the next board, and the commencement of serious mugging for the STPM papers, we started talking to each other again. We would meet up during night study classes, and go out for breaks together. A few months after the STPM papers, we sort of 'fell in love' and the rest, as they say, is history, and we dated each other for three years before heading into a bigger fallout (now, we're not even in contact at all).

The purpose of all this? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm trying to check the kind of friendships I've been making with the opposite sex, especially the stranger, more significant ones that have happened in recent years. Call it a revision of past lessons.

I've broken up with friends in friendships before. They were all guys.

I remember the first major break up. I was 16.

We were both leaders in a high-profiled school organization. We worked very well with each other, sharing the same ideals and same thoughts regarding policy-making and decision implementations. And then, something crept up in the middle of our term. About a triangular adolescent, unrequited love problem, that involved my partner and two girls in the same organization. Somewhere along the way, I was forced to choose between friendship, and responsibility. Seeing the severity of the situation I chose responsibility.

We didn't speak to each other for over two years following the problem. He resigned from his post and I had to bear the workload of a two-person-job. We would see each other in school daily, and always there was this sickening thud inside of me everytime I saw his face. I didn't know whether it was appropriate to smile, so in the end I didn't even nod at him. This went on for a long time, until in Form Six, after he went overseas for an international Mathematics competition. He came back, bearing gifts for the whole class… and I thought I would be ignored.

Turns out he gave me something, and called me at night to tell me, 'I think we're grown up enough to put this behind us.'

So we became friends again, sharing thoughts… but we never spoke again of that strange tiff between the two of us because of his involvement with a member of the same organization. Our friendship was special, completely platonic, and I was given updates on his improvements in life as we grew up. That friend's a high-flyer now, going places, rightly so because of his amazing intellect and intelligence. Here I am, still extremely proud to be his friend, even after so many years.

More so because my friendship with him has proven that people can actually let bygones be bygones, such a phrase actually really exists. As long as both are standing on mutual grounds and ready to forget mistakes and absurdities.