My writing skill has gone a little bit rusty. I’ve been so busy lately. I can’t seem to think beyond the stuff I do at work and what to cook for dinner. Perhaps I’ve reached that point in my life where everything is taking a backseat to work and dinner? I guess it official now, I am growing to be a boring old woman.

I also found out recently that I can’t speak English as well as I used to and I can’t even speak a simple sentence in Mandarin anymore. I got so frustrated about this. I began listening to Mandarin Songs and reading English books aloud again and this must have frustrated my cousin because I was making so much noise late at night.

I’ve gained back some of the pounds that I’ve lost. August is a bad time of the year to realized that I really need to exercise. It’s car insurance and webhosting renewal month. I am so broke this month and a gym membership is out of the question!

August brings me closer to the age that will officially put me in the OLD Spinster Zone. So you can probably tell how frustrating August is for me – If only I could charge RM1 for every marriage related questions I get, I could at least use the money to buy a ticket to Spain or somewhere where it’s okay to be 30 and unmarried. If my mother is still alive, she would have a peaceful approach to address this issue to me and IF she is still alive I would probably feel secure enough to say that “I don’t give a flying eff about marriage”. But she’s long gone and I have been feeling insecure for quite some time now. No, Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t want to get married, but I am afraid of loneliness.

Look at me. When I talk, I am like a broken jar. I spill out things that I should have kept safe inside me.

August is not a good time to write about anything at all.

Sometimes I would look inside myself, trying to find the pieces of my old self; trying to find evidence to show that she, the girl I used to be, is still inside of me; still very much a part of me as she was before.

But the girl I would find would be a stranger, sitting at the strangest corner of my memory, a faceless phantom I hardly know. Completely unknown and invisible but still very much a part of me as she was before, my old-forgotten self.

Sometimes I would miss her so much. I would cry all night and long for her. I would tearfully bid for her return. But like an empty shadow she would remain, within my grasp but totally out of reach. Sitting at the strangest corner of my memory, a void remnant of my past; my old self, forgotten like a sunken continent at the bottom of the dark sleepless sea.

Outside this stillness. Outside this room. Outside my rain blurred bedroom windows, down on the streets where the neighbourhood children play with cobblestones and dirt, time is in motion. It is the time of the year again, when the world is pressed with the need to get things done, to get things settled and in order. The normal stretch of time shortened, as the hours speed by. Minutes and seconds fly and time begins its race towards another predicted closure.

From the inside, it all resembles a rich motion blur you see outside a bullet train. Fragments of random blurry images burn themselves into my head; mysterious, like series of unanswered questions but at the same time, plain and disposable like the non-shocking truths. Inside the room, clipped nails, hairs, chipped tooth, dead skin cells and emotions lay lifeless on the floor. Quietness is no stranger. It sits on the darkest corner of the room humming its silent tune.

If death is stillness then this is death; quietly tucking away from the recklessness of velocity. But
death has neither soul nor breath. So why does this heaviness press upon my chest and whose sobbing do I hear underneath the silence? When life is gone and death is nowhere near, where do you place yourself?

Outside of this stillness, outside of this room; down to the streets where children play with cobblestones and dirt, to where time is moving at break-neck speed. Rushing towards the closing line; reaching for new beginnings….. While I sit motionless inside a room – where clipped nails, hairs, chipped tooth, dead skin cells and emotions lay lifeless on the floor.

The free site where I kept all my writings exercise is finally making its graceful exit. So they are giving us time to pack our stuff and leave. I am reserving my lunch hour for this very purpose and it is more time consuming than I thought. Bummer.

The Tiny House is currently my dream house. I would really like to build one in the future. Believe it or not, I have been researching these tiny houses for more than five years. It’s safe to say that I am obsessed with them. Some of you might feel that it’s ridiculous to want such tiny houses, but I am spinster – I am allowed to have tiny dreams and a tiny house.

Tiny House Blog
LoftCUBE
TumbleWeed Houses

I am ten times undone with fear. I am afraid to wake up one day and realized that my world has changed again. Time moving forward taking everyone and everything that I hold dear with it and I would be the only one left – holding on to the past.

I would be like a little girl whose shoes got swept away by river. I would sit by the river and weep and with variety of pain and sorrow distract myself from what I had lost.

Yeah. People tend to mistake me for being a little crazy, but guess what, I kinda am! *INSERT CRAZY LAUGH HERE*.

and I keep a diary.
Just in case.
Just in case the flood takes me away
From here.

And drown me.

So later, you could read it.
And pretend that you know me better than anyone else.

When I read the book years and years ago, I never thought that it could make it to the big screen. First of all, I thought that no one could probably visualize the story perfectly and turn it into a decent movie and even if they could find someone to do this, there’s no way anyone could tell the story as beautifully as it was written in the book. Clearly, I was wrong. Clearly I choose to forget about Peter Jackson. Actually when it comes to stunning visuals, he did come to mind but I was never quite sure that he could actually capture the essence of the story perfectly.

This is why when my friend told me about this movie I was quite reluctant to see it. I was afraid that it would be very much like the Time Traveler’s Wife, a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, The Time Traveler’s Wife was okay but I didn’t get the same feeling that I got when I was reading the book. When I was watching the movie I kept thinking how the book was ten times better at expressing the undercurrent emotions of the story. I kept thinking how it could have been better. I guess, some stories are only meant to be told in books which is probably why some great books are still not adapted into motion pictures.

Alice Sebold did a wonderful job writing the book. I never thought that a story of a gruesome murder could be told in such a way that it was less painful to read it. The story was beautifully written and was almost magical. I thought it would be hard to make a movie where the main character would be looking down from heaven to see how her family is coping with her death. Frankly speaking, I don’t know how one could visualize it perfectly without turning it into some ridiculous Hallmark type movies with glowing ghosts and floating angels. But Peter Jackson did it and not only did he nail down the visual effects department he also kept the story true to the book. The essence of loss, sorrow and forgiveness in the book was captured beautifully by the movie. I loved how they begin and end the movie with the opening lines of the book “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973 … I was here for a while and then I was gone”. I thought it was the perfect opening for the movie and was also the perfect closure.

Credits should also go to the cast. Saoirse Ronan did a brilliant job as Suzy Salmon. But much of the credits must go to Stanley Tucci’s for his chilling portrayal of Mr. Harvey. I had goosebumps every time he appeared on screen. That man could make a very convincing villain. Both Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg also gave good performances but nothing exceptional. I enjoyed Sarandon’s potrayal as the eccentric grandmother of Suzy Salmon, too bad for the brief screen time and I also didn’t get much from the two cast playing Suzy’s siblings.

I have to admit, I read the book five years ago. I didn’t remember the story very clearly but I do remember most of the important parts of the story. I remember thinking that the title of the book had something to do with Suzy’s missing body that was never found till the very end of the story. But after watching the movie I realized that the title of the book came from the very last chapter of the book:

These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life.

I came to understand the story even more after watching the movie and not many book adaptations could do that. By that I mean, give the story more depth. I am happy to say that enjoyed the movie as much as I enjoyed the book itself and admitting this is my way of complimenting the people who have made this movie possible. I hope more great books will be adapted into great motion pictures.

I am still waiting very patiently for Life Of Pi.