into the void

today i miss LA.



I miss recognizing LA.



I miss knowing LA.



I miss the familiarity of it's places and sights and shapes and looks and the feel of it.



It's different when you look at a picture of places you've been to-- there's always a sense of attachment to it-- it's just a different feel, looking at pictures of LA and looking at pictures of Paris where I've only visited once. It just looks and feels different. There's just a feeling of "Yes, I knew this once" and there's always a personal memory or a flashback and a feeling of closeness and familiarity that a picture of Los Angeles evokes.



I miss LA.



and right now, today, I really wish i was back there once again.

Sept 24th: 20 days till Homecoming:


How do i tell michelle that the most mundane and normal things that she does everyday like hanging out with her friends and going for shows are like fragments of a real-life dream to me?


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So went for the Japanese Student Association (JSA) barbecue with Justin in the afternoon. Met Hirota Sensei, Maya, Ai, Brandon, Rob and Daisy there again, so that was really nice.... nice and WEIRD to see that people you know from different social circles are all associated at one point! Either that or there are ALOT of Japanese students at CSUN and somehow or rather we all end up here lol ;)

Had a nice time just chatting and not understanding alot of stuff that was going on haha... BUT ahhh damn, let's take up Japanese again dammit!


HUGEEE skipping rope haha ;)


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Michelle Brown and The American Dream

Michelle drove up from Anaheim to get me so we could go for a show at Spaceland at around 3:30pm...

Somehow... hanging out with Michelle always gives me this weird feeling... Like I belong here, like I have a life here in this country... Like, I could be just like one of them...

It was the best feeling ever, in her car and The Format was playing on the car radio, looking out through the window and at Michelle... THIS was hanging out, you know, American style lol ;) I don't know, i guess.... it's the feeling of being part of something... part of this country, and not just an immigrant, 20 days before depature back home nevertheless...


She should be driving.... NOT taking pictures!

We went back down to Anaheim and then to the place where michelle's friend Heather was living. And the most surreal thing happened. So I go into this big big house, and didn't know anyone, and then i follow michelle and heather through the house to this bedroom and there was this guy giving a tattoo to a girl and 3 other girls were there... And i was like "wtf? where did this come from??" it's like walking into an episode of the OC hahahahaha or Laguna Beach or something, haha whatever!


Tattoo!!! Michelle took this pic on her sidekick..

Anyway... We stayed there real long and i was just sitting the room...

I know for a fact, I would never belong in this world because I don't. I can't carry a normal conversation, I don't know why... Maybe I don't know enough American pop culture, I don't know enough about American culture, or simply, maybe I just don't know....

But the thing was that though... Michelle came to sit with me and asked me if I was bored and I was like thinking "totally no man..." I mean... sureeeee i felt out of place (cause heck! i didn't even know whose house i was in!) but.... it was just great being able to just be there, you know...

Being so close to depature date, the end of this dream, here we were just hanging out with a bunch of people (and a bunch of people i didn't know to add to that!) but hell, you know, THIS was an experience in itself... these were the times that I had never imagined 5 years ago back in malaysia, that I would get to experience one day... what it feels like to just hang out with a bunch of people... American.... OC style ;) lol! But you get me?

And then Michelle went smoking with heather outside the house and DAMNNN the most surreal conversation happened... Heather has that depth to her that I can't explain... But they got to talking about Heather wanting to leave California for Washington state and Michelle not wanting her to go... and I swear it was like a conversation that popped out of some movie... It really did!!

"Why do you have to leave?"
"Because I can't make it out here"

Really!



Anyway... We met up with Michelle's best friend Kim and left Anaheim to get to Spaceland near Sunset for the Reuben's Accomplice show... We we travelling down the 10 i think... and we approached LA by night... And I love the LA skyline... Something about it always reminds me of a dream come true.... And I think it will always do that to me... But today... That night, that whole day travelling through the freeways across LA county (i never realized poor michelle has to pratically drive through the entire LA county to get to me)... that was wonderful you know... to feel like residents of this place and to still feel the magnitute of this dream...

the lights in LA were beautiful... they always are...

We were coming back from the show and Kim played Reuben's Accomplice's song Lost Sun (it's the song playing on the blog right now)... and it was just such a lovely sountrack to a very surreal day... driving under the night lights of the Los Angeles skyline through the streets and freeways... I just couldn't help but feel... how surreal, how beautiful, it was all like a dream...


Somewhere towards the end of the night, michelle and I were sitting in the lounge in spaceland, trying to get warm and feeling sleepy.... And.. I don't know maybe it's because I was going to leave so soon and all these are coming to and end soon and I knew that... It was just weird being there you know, just lounging there like I was part of this, like this life could last, like this life was what my life is... like this was normal... that was just the weirdest best feeling I had you know...

and it was sad... that at that moment i was thinking that "how weird" because I knew I was leaving soon and this will probably never happen again, and that tonight, this whole day out with Michelle, surreal it was... was probably the last I'd have to touching... the Ameircan Life.


Anyway, if Michelle is reading thsi right now she's probably laughing and thinking I'm weird to be thinking all these... But really, Michelle, the most normal and ordinary of lives that you have, being able to see and be part of that life even for a moment, for a day, for an hour, it is a living a dream for me... And thank you, you know, for all those times you have opened and shared this world with me, to allow me to experience this dream for real... and I'll always love you for that, and I'll always miss you for that.... you're what makes America so great, remember?



Michelle singing The Used... MILD Michelle!

Times Square, NYC last weekend


This is crossing 8th Avenue.... i think it's 8th. But anyway, this is Times Square :)


This one's for Ching Mun.

Sometimes when i take pics of America, i do it coz i want to remember the place when i'm gone from here. Sometimes though, i take it really, because i want Ching Mun to see it.

I really want her to see these and to share with me these experiences here. It's sad that she can't so i want to try to show her how America is like because she can't be here.

But pictures, videos and descriptions are never enough. It will never ever replace Ching Mun being here herself to see for herself what America is like.

To put it short, I wish Ching Mun was here so that i can show to her this world i live in that i love-- so that I can have experiences here that I know the both of us share together.

Ukrainian couple has 17th child, lays claim to largest US family
condoms my dear that's what they're called. geez. Abit of a marvelous invention (unless the rubber breaks) unless the word "family planning" has never occured to you. geez.


Death Penalty Sought in Pa. Slayings
LANCASTER, Pa. - A prosecutor said Friday he will seek the death penalty against a man already accused of shooting to death his 14-year-old girlfriend's parents, and announced he does not plan to charge the girl.
Prosecutors said Ludwig killed the Bordens after an argument over his relationship with their daughter. He was captured the next day following a high-speed chase that ended with him crashing his parents' car.
Police said Ludwig dropped off the girl at her house at about 5:30 a.m. on the morning of the killings, after the teens had spent the night together at Ludwig's house.
After Ludwig didn't receive a text-message that she had made it into her room undetected, he called the girl on her cell phone and learned she had been caught by her parents and needed him to come over, according to the court filing.
He returned to the house at her request � sticking a Glock pistol in his waistband and grabbing some other weapons, authorities said. He had two guns and a hunting knife when he showed up at about 7 a.m., police said.
Michael Borden told Ludwig during a 30- to 45-minute talk that he could no longer see his daughter. It was then, Ludwig allegedly told police, that he then decided to kill the couple. He shot Michael Borden from behind as he was going down the hallway to the front door, and then Cathryn Borden from six feet away as she was getting of out a chair, according to the court papers. Both were shot in the head.
Ludwig then started to drive away before turning back to look for the girl, who came running after him and got in the car, authorities said.
He told detectives that the girl wanted to "get as far away as possible, get married, and start a new life," according to court documents.

Suddenly life is no fucking fairy tale now is it? Dumbasses.


Sorry but i am running out of sympathies. It's called digging your own grave, nailing your own coffin, whatever the idiomatic pharses are to describe things that stupid people do to themselves.

For the first dude, u might as well just shoot all your 17 kids in the legs and cause them permanent disability cause isn't that what you're doing to them to begin with? If you like kids, for goodness sake, go run an orphanage or work as a school teacher or something. geez.

For the second dude. I have nothing to say. The stupidity of kids these days who grew up watching shit like the OC or what-have-you-not. Suddenly it's not like the fucking television now is it? dumbasses.

-

FALL. huh! REALLY!


guess dis is why they call Fall Fall huh?


NEW ENGLAND IS (NOTTTTTTTTTTTT) GREAT.




Looks nice and all hor????
NOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.
Jesse Lacey LIED. No wonder he needed the GIRL to make New England great. at the rate this place is going, it's gonna be more shite in the future months wid da farking SNOW and all. ppl are DAMN UPTIGHT AND UNFRIENDLY. place is farking COLD. food is FRIGGING EXPENSIVE (and they said Los Angeles was BAD!). Da hell. where da fuk is the SUN? why the heck is da food so expensive?? why da hell are people so uptight??? shite...
The more the wind blows the more i miss california. And SERIOUSL-FUKING-LY da people here are SHITE, REAL SHITE. da hell are they all sooooooo farking unfriendly???? No wonder so many of my friends had a shit time in America and wanna go back to Malaysia so badly. With this shit weather, these shit ppl, this shit place, who da hell dun wanna go back???

WHERE'S MY CALIFORNIA???

argh!!


PROUD OWNER OF NANO IPOD!


damn depressed when i got here to Boston. STILL damn depressed actually. Then i found i LOST my Ipod charger so i had to go to a Mac store. I had a BADDDDDDDDD ass feelin i was gonna buy a Nano iPod by the end of the day, AND I DID! hehe. And guess what???? I INSTANTANEOUSLY felt HAPPYYYYYYYY *wuahahahahahhahahaha*


WORK


3rd October 2005; DAY IN HISTORY: Elaine Loh FINALLY has worked ONE DAY in her damn 23 years of life! geez.

forest fires cosume the mountains once again. ashes falling from the sky that morning in San Diego.

And it's sad, but true
Out of cash and I.O.U's

I remember luis singing that to me. it was a day i was taking the bus with him in the morning after i had stayed over at his place after a show. LA underneath overcast skies the sun yet to shine too bright.

music dates so much of my memories. when i woke up in aunt mei's place that first morning feeling that this was beautiful. mr children with aya in the sunset. brand new outdoors at kimmel and feeling like home with Matt, Michelle, Luis. northstar in summer walking down reseda. brand new and mom's first visit A Blink-182, 5 years reason why america dream come true with Michelle, Jessica and Johnny. Saves the Day and Allison around LA taking poloriod pictures. Days Away, SoCo screaming at Palladium with Michelle. Salt Lake City. Denver. Friends. Nicole and New Found Glory a Universal Amphiteater... and yes, movielife was there too... Joanna between Sunset and Hollywood after Blink. Finch at Soma, Palace the glue that held us together. I met them all there... either Finch or..... taking back sunday, always taking back sunday, spring, summer, fall and missed winters. new years, with everyone... really.... and so many, many, many more that memories fail within months because they were always there... the music, the bands, the friends....

how can you ask me to move that easily when this IS home. The past weeks hanging out with friends and saying goodbyes, you can't say that this wasn't home, you know. It just wasn't a university experience, it was life, and it is life that you're asking me to say goodbye to. to drop and go that easily. and i can't do it. i wanted to stay in america till december because i couldn't say goodbye to my friends, i didn't want to leave them... and in so many ways i should just stay with Michelle instead of relocating and have the time of my life for the next few months instead of worrying.

what is the measure of life in the end? It is measured by our own yardstick, really, and i have found myself to have lost sight of what MATTERS to me... and in so many ways, that job in Boston is NOT it. and yet.

I always want to feel like part of this was mine.

I was going to Ventura Blvd the other day, to get the bracelet i lost in the Taking Back Sunday mosh pit. It's called an affrimation bracelet, and it was "believe" that i go.

I was on the bus and i didn't know what to listen to, and so i simply scroled and on it's own so happen, Jimmy Eat World's Praise Chorus played... and there's a line in that song that went "I always want to feel like part of this was mine"

and i was thinking about Joanna, Michelle, Jessica, Nikki and Luis who were coming all the way up to Northridge to see be before i left, and i remembered all the times i had spent with them... and at that moment it dawned on me that I WAS part of it. It was MINE. As much as i wished that i was, that i could have been in the LA emo punk scene, the whole ride, the whole life i had longed to have in america, as much as i wished i had it... truth is that i DO have it. I WAS PART OF IT. and THAT is something no one can ever take away from me... Looking into the eyes of all those friends who actually came, who remembers so much of the stuff that we did, who had never treated me as an outsider, whom i met when i first got here and welcomed me into their world and made me PART OF IT, I know for sure.... I was in the heart of it all... Like the whole britpop thing i missed, i missed... But this, this life, this life here for SURE, i know, i was part of it...

and i am really sorry i have to leave... because believe me, i would have rather stayed here till the bittersweet ending... because i know that the friends that i met and have over here, and all my experiences in LA... has made this place, truly, HOME and LIFE for me for the past 2 1/2 years...

I love you, and you will always be part of my heart till will stay fond with me, always.

jaa, mata aimasu...

5) California here we come.

anyway here are some scapes of "california"... erm... okay, part of southern california.



these are from the Reagan Library at Simi Valley.



third street promenade at Santa Monica



going down the 101..... ahaha actually no, non of them were taken on the 101 freeway... it was on Wilshire or the 405.



One Wilshire!!! wow! hehehe


Sunset in Sunlight


Malibu.


SLK on the PCH... wuahahahha... such a "dream" come true... except that i am not suppose to be in the car NEXT to the SKL!!!! I shud be the one DRIVING the SKL down the Pacific Coast Highway!!!


Surfer dudes at Ventura....


Santa Barbara.


Farmer's Market at the Northridge Mall.


alvera St... this is where LA originated.

and finally....

LOS ANGELES!



I hate to say this but i am a sucker for Los Angeles... I came here to chase a dream and i feel that... i dunno... i like being in LA because it reminds me of how surreal life can be.... i love seeing the LA skyline and being able to call that home or had the chance, perhaps, to call that home...

4) Day Out at Hermosa

Well on the last day my brother was here, we wanted to go Catalina Island... Cause we couldn't get a ticket back we ended up not going. So, my brother, Norika, Josh and I ended up just loitering around the South Bay area and we ended up at Hermosa Beach (cause i've gone to Redondo before, we decided on Hermosa).

All we did that day was walkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk and i do mean WALKKKKKKKK cause the whole damn coastline were occupied by private houses and there was no a single cafe by the seaside. But anyway, after that we just chilled out by the beach...

It was a good day, it was abit cloudy (as always) at first, but it became hot, but the breeze was blowing so it was also cool to just lay down on the sand, which was exactly what we did.



can u believe it that even on the beach they had all these banners being flown by planes across the beach for ADVERTIZING????

gosh u can't even be out at the beach without being bombarded by advertising... and it's not just ONE plane u know, there were MULTIPLE planes flying around with adverts!

3) Idiot Tourist in LA

So my family went on trips around LA... and so one day we went to Universal and Hollywood and i decided to be the idiot tourist in LA!!!!

funny, i was the one who lived here. hmm.

2) GRADUATION!

there's a song by Third Eye Blind... i always remember those words "can i graduate!" hmmmm...

anyways, so... an american graduation was really an american graduation. my poor parents wore such nice garments for the event and then i told them "mom, u have to sit on bleachers". yeap. so it was outdoors.
And then we had the whole do, mexican waves, twice, and a 99cent store beach ball bouncing around all during graduation speeches. go america! geez.

anyways... the experience was... abit surreal... the surreal part when was they were playing that song (i dunno the name but the one u hear on TV shows everytime u see an american graduation) and we were all walking in and all these ppl were talking videos (like my bro). Reminded me of Reality Bites u know....

and it's scary cause i am 23 and everything i had watched on Reality Bites about these people who's lines were mottos i lived by since i was 14, suddenly became so... real... and so scary i guess... because i am a graduate at 23... and really... "i always thought i was going to be somebody at the age of 23"... "honey the only thing you can be is yourself..."..."I don't even know who's that anymore."

and u know what? those lines... rings so VERY true... i was more certain about myself and what i wanted in life when i was 14 when i first watched Reality Bites than i do right now at 23, a so-called, graduate.



Actually... the part i didn't like most abt graduation was how my parents felt. I was sitting there and the president of my university started point out like these 5 people graduating and talked about their achievements and shit. (my brother thought this was really bad taste). And i really hated the university for doing that. Fuck u for pointing out that 0.5% of graduates who did REALLY exceptionally well because u know what?? it had NOTHING do do with the university. It was their fucking personalities. And it was just shit that the stupid president was praising these FIVE people and how do u think the rest of the graduate feel?? it's like u think this is ur WONDERFUL day cause u FINALLY get to graduate u know, and then what does the university do? indirectly they show u how much u have FAILED instead of how much u have achieved...

and the bad part abt that is how do the parents feel u know? that their kids weren't "as good".

I felt fucking bad for my parents. Cause u know, they probably waited for this day for like YEARSSSSSS u know.. and more than that they've sacrificed EVERYTHING that they had for this one moment. And what do they get out of it? what is it worth? to me, it's worth nothing. I pity them because they came soooooooo far, did soooooooo much just for that moment only to have it be like that... only to see that i was ONE graduate out of like a school of what? 500 people... what's the pride in that??? what's the POINT in that?
That's why i mean like, my dad kept wanting to go back to the university after my graduation to take pictures (actually i FORGOT to take one with him on my graduation day, poor dad) and i kept thinking "what for?"... It's not only cause i felt embrassed or lazy but i felt like... what's the point? what's there to capture? it's not a great achievement u know.. it's not like i graduated with honors, top of my class, valedictorian or anything like that. WHat's the point?

I feel sorry for my parents because really, in my eyes, i have achieved nothing at all....

and apparently, my mother saw that too.