I just did something really stupid last week. I thought of moving all my poetry and stories into my external hard disk, which I thought was a safer place to put them. As it turns out, I pulled the USB cable before the transfer could be completed, and so, I lost everything. EVERYTHING!
I spent half of today trying to figure out how to fix the mess I got myself into.
For the stories I could restore most of the work, but for all my poetry, let us just say I was lucky to have made back ups of my completed poems, and unlucky for not doing the same for the poems that I had typed down so I could work on them a little more...
I feel like I just killed my own kids. I feel horrible, not to mention I had a major panic attack because of the idiotic stunt that I pulled on my own work. URGH!
Note: I wrote this a really really long time ago... in 2005 for a class assignment... so excuse the immaturity if any
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To me silence is threatening...
Before every storm there is stillness and silence in the atmosphere. Every animal can smell it but humans can tell it.
It is always silent in the dead of the night. This is the time when thieves think best to raid venturing people in the streets. A dead man says nothing and is silent as people bury him. In a funeral people silently pray for the departing person. When a person wants silence it must be because he or she is sad. Remember, both silent and sad begin with the word ‘S’.
People say “How can a person stay silent forever?” When they know that the other is upset about something.
This is true. A person’s emotions always make the best of him and he can never stay silent.
There is noise everywhere. There is the jungle music in the jungle, the buzzing of busy bees, the chattering of a lady and the busy streets of the city, the list goes on and on. A human is filled with joy when he or she hears the voice of a companion. A mother, at the time of birth giving is never happy about silence.
As a child, I remember I used to put on music before sleep because I could not stand the silence before bedtime. I would not be afraid of the creaking of crickets at night. Instead, I would be afraid of a room without the whirring of the fan, the scrapping against cardboard made by rats and the wonderful sound of my mother.
How can one live in silence? Thinking of it sends chills down my spine. The ghostliness of an empty silent house has no movement inside and no life. A silent house is always targeted to be a haunted house. Silence, in my opinion, signifies lifelessness.
I remember once, when I went to Murree, the place where I was staying had children. But at night, when they were sleeping like little angels, I felt as if something was behind me. It was because of the silence of the house.
I understand that silence is also peaceful but even when the hippie style was ‘in’, I guess that the people who loved silence, must have put on slow and low music in their homes.
A graveyard and my house share the same wall on the side. I dare not look at it whenever I cross it because of the silence. I do wonder how the people, who live in it, tolerate the silence.
What silence is; I do not know. What I do know is that my sixth sense always clicks when it occurs. The big mystery of what silence is will always remain a mystery, just like life itself. It is not a thing, it is not a feeling, nor is it human or an animal or a spirit. Perhaps one day philosophers might figure it out. But I care less. The thing I do not feel is yet a feeling and that I cannot stop. Silence is silence and it will stay like that forever.
1. A woman with really strong moral character (my dad revealed this to me only recently)
2. Dew drops on baby grass at dawn (my dad told me that when I was younger)
I'm Chinese, but born in Pakistan, but my family is still very traditional, and insisted on giving me a Chinese name, and thus Yi-Yin, from Vicky (Victoria) Zhuang Yi-Yin. It is also the most difficult to write characters in the Chinese writing, and rare names, apparently my dad told me it was a name only royalty used in ancient times. I chose this user name because it was unique and just me and I liked the name. The Chinese characters of this name is also very interesting. It consists of two characters. Yi's character contains the heart and human characters in it. While Yin is written in such a way that at the heart of the character, there's a character symbolizing 'big', and I call it big heart. So, I kind of feel special about this name, and am proud to be named that. I wish I could show you the characters but it's impossible because I can't find the characters anywhere online.
23rd March 2011: I just can’t believe that I would ever say this. It started off when the entire team decided to hang out on a Sunday, but apparently someone figured out that there was a holiday before that. Although some people couldn’t make it, it turned out awesome.
We did all those things that desis do on a public holiday and hung out at places where desis do. I truly had a Desi day in my last semester, without having the need to dress up though.
Detours and delays made us late, but it was worth it.
We had an addition to our team today: little Shakir from Shakir. I miss Aamna’s epic face when we all had a glimpse of Shakir’s new look, oh and Sarah decided to look like someone from our near history. Awais had his hair pinned up for some reason, and his contagious disease of confusing left and right got to me and Sunny at the end of the day. Amel’s surprise was an epic fail, due to poor miscalculation of time, but then we went straight to her home to make the day complete. Welcome back to Lahore Amel!!!
Amin was sleepy as usual, and Sunny was enjoying his Gay Shah ways at his hostel, and wouldn’t come out until Hamza called him. Samara and Fatima ditched us at Jinnah Gardens, and Hashim was trying to be a model at Shalimar Gardens. And we shouldn’t forget Shakir’s spontaneous randomness. Oh and the paper chicken surprise for Mathour was the funniest.
Everything we did was random and spontaneous. Who could ever forget Shakir jumping into the filthy canal.
So here’s how the story goes:
- Shakir picked me up at 10 from Main Boulevard, and then we went to Hamza’s place
- Made a detour, and went to Aitchison to pick a kid up
- Went to 14 Tollington
- Went to Multan Road to pick Awais
- Went to NCA’s hostels to pick Samara, Fatima, Mathour and Sunny
- Went to Badshahi Mosque for breakfast of Halwa Puri and Lassi (Shakir drank two glasses! And for some reason Fatima was competing with him on who could drink the fastest.)
- Said goodbye to Amin, Umer, Sarah and Hamza, apparently Hamza’s stomach was upset, and Sarah and Amin had to go home
- Went to Mariam Zaman’s mosque, where we took pictures, while Shakir was praying
- Shalimar Gardens! Epic funniness, and realization that 10 year old kids are way too advance than we were, when we were 10
- On the way to drop Arham, the Aitchisonian, and Shakir randomly, purely randomly, stopped the car and said, wait a minute, and then jumped out of the car, walked across the road, and took off his kameez and jumped into the canal, which by the way, according to Awais, is filled with sewage water from the near north. Oh and Mathour followed
- Dropped Arham at Aitchison
- Lawrence Garden’s tour, and the quest to find the epic-est gol gappas, and that’s where Fatima and Samara ditched, when we climbed up the hill to see the TREE!
- Then Hashim and Sunny had this weird urge to eat Chinese food, and after discussing what to do, and whether or not to give Amel a Daewoo surprise, we went to Tao Yuan Chinese Restaurant, or as bhaiya puts it Humayun Restaurant
- Went to Readings after sending Awais and Aamna in the rickshaws to their preferred destinations
- Went to Daewoo for the epic surprise which turned out to be an epic fail, because we were 10 minutes late
- Went to Amel’s place
- Home
- Chatted for almost another hour with Shakir and Amel on Facebook
And that’s how my day went. I’m not going to give too much details, because all the epicness is in my brain right now. Thanks guys for a wonderful day, made me look at Lahore in a different way. Oh and Awais’ history lessons and architecture lessons were interesting too!
Random quotes of the day!
- Making awesome since 1989 – Shakir
- Right! (while pointing left) – Awais
- They could be land rich bankrupt aristocracy without a penny to their name! Just like you… and me (while walking down the steps, spoofing Hamza) – Hashim
At Shalimar Garden: Apparently there weren't enough poles...
Alright guys, so the previous entry "Flipside of Friendship" was just a thought about friendship. I was thinking about the dark side of friendship, following the recent themes of this Harbinger's Diaries.
When I click on the word friendship, this is what I get on the synonyms’ tab: companionship, amity, acquaintance, comradeship, camaraderie, closeness, familiarity and alliance. But the true meaning of friendship is just the horrible truth, and the horrible opposite; it means hurt, it means pain, it means being ready to be put down by your own friend, and it could also mean being ready to be back stabbed, and in the most painful manner as well.
The main thing that causes most of the problems is the fact that one friend could ask for the other to give in to a sort of trust. However, that’s not true. This trust is in fact the key that opens up the Pandora’s Box of all friendships. It opens up to expectations that are to be broken, secrets to be exposed and all in all, pain of loneliness. Friends aren’t there to be forever. We all know the meaning and the phrase really well by now: everything comes to an end.
There’s not one thing that is not immune to this ending disease. Even friendships are ended. A friend is someone whom a person gets really close to. A person learns to look up to his or her friend. A person trades secrets with a friend. He or she also learns to expect that the friend would be there for him or her. What happens when it all comes crashing down?
Everyone knows what happens, yet we are all prepared to accept that downfall, or do we? Some people would just crash and burn, withdraw themselves from ever making friends. Others, who don’t give a damn, just seriously don’t give a damn. To them, it is a person who enters into their lives and leaves. True there might be some sort of disappointment, but it can be shaken away easily too for them. Those who cannot shake it away are the crashers and burners. They can stay hurt forever, and never move on.
If vampires were real, what would our world be like? Would we be cowering in the shadows, masking our scent and donning religious symbols all over us? Would they look like what they have been designed to look like: colorless, faint, beautiful but dead?
For all we know maybe they really do exist. They're already in our systems. They're already sucking on the life blood of our economies. And the major blame of this so called "recession".
It's us.
We're the vampires of this so called fantasy. We've been sucking away the blood of the economy, hoarding it and not allowing it to flow. Our collective logical thinking brought about one big problem, the paradox of thrift! And still we won't start to let the blood flow unless we see others do so. No one will start the move. We all want to save it for ourselves. That's what we are. We are vampires in this world economy.
Ode to ye, oh wagers of wars
Lakes of blood and ponds of tears
Cries come thundering to your ears
Yet ye wish to start more wars
What is the logic behind your heart?
Bring forth the requiem for the dead
The innocent, the people all full of dread
They shout their fears yet ye dost not hear
Their voices quiver to your hushing words
Oft not reaping desirable results
Oh pray, oh wagers of battles for long
What about the graves piling day by day
Of the men and women and children long gone
What of those who still survive seeing today
Souls now shaken and hearts left fully astray
Seeing with eyes and hearts all open
Pain; our price to see it end
Oh wagers of conflicts, see the strife
And please doth lead us to hope and peace
Oh pray you dost lead us to a better life…
By Vicky Zhuang Yi-Yin
Contributors
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- Vicky Zhuang Yi-Yin
- Blogger, Singer, Actor, Boredom Destroyer, Writer, Otaku, um... no idea...