Training: Thinking in Japanese

今日私は嬉しかった。私の大好き先生はお茶をあげました。そして、私たち一時間ぐらい話しました。あの時私の心ドキドキしました、ちょっと恐かったです。でもね、トーム先生はすごくやさしいひとです。先生の笑顔が大好き。あ、そです、先生の茶碗とても可愛いですよ。スターバクスで買いました。高いでしょう、先生に聞きませんでした。

そ、そ。今日の天気はよかったです、でも風は寒かったです。あ、ロンドン毎日もさむいです。私は好きでも嫌いでもないです。大学の生活ちょっとすまらないよ、それからたくさん宿題です。比較文学はすごく、すごく、すごく難しい。何で私はこのせんこうを選択した．．．何で。

私の日本語はどうですか。五月にテストをあります。

One small step at a time towards becoming a polyglot someday. One day, maybe: definitely maybe. 

Waiting, Let the Time Pass

When I was young, I told myself that when I get older, I'll have more freedom.

19 years later, in a foreign country, a city in which only those who grew up here could learn to love all its grey; alone, isolated-- my idea of being free? "more freedom" I thought. I laugh now, because freedom, there is none, and more of it, where will more come from when there is none?

Kafka's ape. He understood more than we did, do, and ever will, that freedom is nothing but a thought that takes shape in our wistful minds, a result of our borderlessly trapped lives. A way out, that is it, that is the only way. A way out, an escape, to escape. I've been pushing through doors and doors and doors, exiting, escaping, looking for a way out. Out, out, out... It is endless. Only in my mind do I see a way out, and when I step through the light-laden door, I find myself back on the other side, facing again, myself and my uncertainties. And so I cry while stuffing cheap Mr Kipling lemon swirls through my trembling lips.

When I get older, it'll get better, right?

I looked forward to growing out of my restraints and I am still waiting for the day I'm truly unbound. However, I fear that the day may only come when I breathe my last and understand that my whole life, I've been chasing for nothing but the end-- the end that I could have had at any point in life, so long as I wasn't afraid of a little pain, a little suffering.

She looked me in the eye and told me nothing is worth throwing away my life for, but I wondered, silently, why didn't she have children of her own?

At times like this, I wonder why people should get offended when one chooses to leave life. Who has the right to say that we should enjoy living, the gift called life? It is marvelous, miraculous, appreciate it! But when there is so much to be grateful for, so little to live for and no will at all to carry on, how do I go about enjoying it?

I spend days bright and dark alike under the duvet, waiting for time to pass because there is nothing else I want to do. Positive motivational speeches won't work anymore at this stage. Nothing, I think, would rekindle the life in me.

The future I wanted, I'll bid it farewell. As for the future we are planning for, I might have to abandon it as well. Though I regret having you, because you are just that one reason I couldn't bear to leave just yet.

Condemn me. Condemn me. Condemn me!

Beauty

I suppose you’ll have to see to know.

Now, describe to me the physique of YOUR perfect lover, a body which you may desire and never tire of. Can you do it? That one being of your own faction of imagination which you could love. Perhaps we have grown out of this senselessness, or maybe we are just sensitive beings.

If the day comes that I meet the encapsulation of my perception of beauty, I would not even recognise it. And if I did, I would be horrified by it, not gratified. It would appear to me utterly grotesque instead of purely exquisite.

But why?

Because ideals are not meant to be touched and beheld by the worldly senses—they corrupt the glorious perfection that can only exist in the mind. In a transcendent realm that is not known to our inferior existence and that which we may never reach in our disgraced lives, there, is where it should belong. It would take no form and its abstractness, its formlessness would be the reason why it is beautiful. Beauty is horrific in this life as there can be no beauty, only vanity. That is why I fear that I should see the embodiment of my perception of beauty in this life.

I see instead the ugly as the beautiful and behold their spectacular deformations, admire them as they are. A hunched figure, skin clung onto protruding bones, mouth that should have been in the middle and eyes that should have been closer together—I am deeply captivated, my eyes should not avert, my attention is all yours.

Do you understand? There can be no beauty in this life.

Once, I think, through the windows, the light of the ochre evening filtered through and landed on your sleeping face. You were beautiful then and I wondered if I could be wrong.

Saturday's Plays and Midnight Memories

Plays after plays I see them on stage, while I sit quietly in the audience. My buttocks hurt, the benches aren't cushioned and it is cramped up in this Pit. I smell the woman next to me, she is wearing black. We're in a vault, the trains running above us. The spotlight bounces off of her face and I wonder if one day the ceiling would give way and the train would slip through the cracks. The stage is small, very small. I suppose I wouldn't pay to be here though it isn't half bad. A place that catches one's attention, yes, underneath the Underground, but the plays... Maybe I'd just explore the bar next time, with him. I didn't pay today, no, I was invited by my flatmates, extra tickets because a friend bailed: hoes before bros. But I don't know him.

On going on night walks through this city I know not well enough to describe: The bridges, so many to choose from, all within a walking range from where I am and will be for a few months more. With who, that is the question? But it is out of the question. In the night when the wind blows, only behind doors will I feel satisfied. Those strolls that I have taken after dark with another I know not well enough to speak of, they still bother me. The possibilities that they lay bear before me-- endless. How many days and how many nights and how many of them could there be if-- only if. I don't suppose I'll ever forget a name like that. I still buy grapes every time I visit the supermarket.

"爱在月光下完美"　

I listen to Jay more and more these days, though I replay the same old songs that I loved and love. Should I venture more into the world of Mandarin pop? There certainly is no harm in doing so as my mind is already as corrupted as the regrets that inspire their work. Maybe I'm just afraid of finding disappointment in that world.

The emotions are strong this evening. I look at the bus ticket that has been pinned up since Monday and the crooked crosses marking down the days to the Friday I would leave this town until the next Monday morning. I'd say I'm going home but home is far away but it feels like home to me and I feel at home: I know the smell, I love its scent and I love the people there who trust me with their keys, dog and son.

0004: "Do you want Domino's?"

Supper. It reminds me of my nights in Malaysia, the months I refused to go home because of sheer stubbornness and pride. Arabic food, Mamak food and that one unfortunate time at that Korean bar with alcoholics who wanted to play a drinking game. My African brother needs to join me in this part of the world.

0025: There is no reply.

Off, off, I go. Glittery eyes, but puffy.

Week

Sunday: To wake up free but to go to bed enslaved by the remembrance of responsibility.

Monday: Tom. 

Tuesday: At first there were many... Now, we are with six. Who to enter the oral examinations with? 

Wednesday: To not leave the flat, pretend to be busy-- do assigned readings; distraction as guide. 

Thursday: To see her hair. 

Friday: DR's head is always so shiny. 

Saturday: I'm a little piece of shit. 

maandag: Winkelen of niet? 

dinsdag: Beetje Japanse. 

woensdag: Ik heb tijd... 

donderdag: Haar haar is heel leuk. 

vrijdag: Ik heb niet lekker geslapen.

zaterdag: Met Jor? Maar hij werk of niet?

zondag: Opa en Oma en soep.

日曜日：べんきょうします。

月曜日：ともだちはげんきですか。

火曜日：あ、にほんごのクラスに行きます。

水曜日：朝ごはんと昼ごはんと晩ごはんは何を食べますか。

木曜日：ぜんぜんわかりません。

金曜日：眠い眠い眠い眠い．．．

土曜日：私は何をしますか。そして、何時におきますか。