I’ve been toying with the idea of blogging regularly again since last Saturday, when I took a trip back to our old house in Berakas to finally sort out my room. Moving can be pretty exhausting – I spent a great majority of the afternoon rummaging through all my drawers, finding things that have been stashed away for years and years, which have outlived their purpose. Most of these ended up in a red trash bag at my feet, which grew steadily bulkier as the afternoon progressed. And maybe it was a good thing I got to my room before my mum did – because I found them.
My old diaries.
I don’t know how it all began, but I kept a physical diary for about three years back in secondary school. The first entry in my diary dates back to early 2001, when I was in Form 2 (otherwise known as Year 8 ) and apparently, absolutely boy-crazy! Flipping through so many of those old entries, I couldn’t decide whether to be mortified at my 13-year old self, or to actually revel in the memories contained within the pages of my strawberry-scented tome (SO TACKY!). After briefly scanning through two volumes of what I used to regard as mature thoughts and prose, I tore up both books and resiled the torn shreds to the plastic bag at my feet.
Had my diaries been in an electronic format, I wouldn’t have done the same thing to the entries. Physical diaries are simply plain messy – there’s no way to bar someone from reading them, from coming across them by sheer chance. Online blogs give you the option of locking your posts to prevent them from being objects of general consumption, and I’m glad for that one extra measure of security. I’m no longer the 13-year old girl I was in those entries, but she’s still a part of who I am today – and in the same way we choose our words carefully when putting them into the public arena, I’m not too keen on having my frankest thoughts, teenage insecurities and occasional angst being readily available to someone who happens to pull open the drawer I stashed these tomes into.
And from now on, all my journalling happens online. (:
Summer 2009 has been … interesting, to say the least! The three weeks I spent at a small law firm in Brunei which specialised in criminal litigation taught me that court-room drama is merely the tip of the iceberg where a legal career is concerned, and that paper-pushing, legal research and heaps of office time encompass roughly 95% of a lawyer’s day. The sporadic coffee breaks in between court appearances and more office work seemed to be welcome reprieves to most lawyers in my firm, and I guess my tenure with the firm really grounded me and gave me an eye-opening insight into what practising law here is really about. And suddenly, I’m not sure if it’s the career for me.
And in the midst of nutting out future career plans, I managed to find time to take a four-day break in Jakarta to see Tim. I arrived in the middle of what seemed to be mosquito season there – and I’m sure the mozzies were able to spot a fresh-faced young Bruneian traveller from miles away. I was severely bitten on my face, which kept me up for hours at night – but I wouldn’t have traded the holiday for anything. Jakarta was good fun, and Tim and I spent the whole trip coming up with food ideas, because I was so intent on sampling every single good bit of food I conceivably could within my four days there! I’ve covered the basics: nasi padang, amazing seafod, murtabak, pempek (and I’m sure there are more, but they’re not coming to me at 3 am!), but there’s loads more left for another few trips down to the city. And despite all the food I managed to chug down in such a short length of time, my metabolism decided that it would compensate for all my eating (at last!) and I returned to Brunei not having changed much! And most importantly, of course, it was the best feeling ever to see Tim, to be able to break up the summer holiday into two manageable lengths of time when I wouldn’t physically be in the same city as him. His family and him were such good hosts, and I couldn’t have asked for a better summer vacation this year.
In other summer news, my two big toenails have gone chao after a Lufbru Summer Games netball disaster in which my shoes decided that they wouldn’t fit me right anymore, resulting in two subungual haematomas (in non-medic speak, two painful blood haemorrhages under my toenails) which lifted my nails off the nail bed. Seeing as it wasn’t able to repair itself in time – I know, enough with the detail already! - suffice to say that I’m big-toenail-less at the moment. Apparently, I have a knack for being absolutely princessy when I want to be, and incredibly gross during a few select moments, during my need to share information like this.
There are approximately 5 days until the end of Summer 2009. What Fall/Michaelmas 2009 has in store for me, I have absolutely no clue – but I’m looking forward to the start of the new school term.
