IT'S A PANDAN LIFE ...!

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~Marcel Proust I am content With what you say And don't say What you do And don't do I am content And grateful For the here and now Even if that is all you can offer me.

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery Time is slow Patience is dry I wanna go And fly high. *Pantun- inspired. Korea-inspired. Also can't-wait-for-semester-to-end-inspired.

Home is not where you live, but where they understand you. ~ Christian Morganstern. They're gone The house has never been so quiet So empty And so huge I just had to get out of it fast What's worse is it's Monday I didn't think I'd look forward to going to office on a Monday But today I did I should be okay by tomorrow I hope.

The day I see a leaf is a marvel of a day. ~ Kenneth Patton. As I lie here In my bed I see clusters of tapioca leaves Through the window Green and joyful Oblivious to the heat Nothing is as perfect Soon I am lost In this sea of green I run and walk Fly and float And giggle in my own carefree madness Yet this faithful canopy Dances along And shields And protects Until reality jolts me back. Oh, how magnificent it is To be under this super shade I wish you were here, my dear I wish you were here. *Segamat 16.02.10*

You are today what your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. ~ James Allen It just so happens that I come back from class And think about you I have no inkling of what you're doing Or even if you're thinking about me Still it would be marvelous To think that you do.

This techno word is not new. Pandan first came across this word in the 90s. At that time, YM was the craze and people used avatars to represent them in the chat rooms, most often in the form of customized animation. You choose the face, skin color, clothes, hair, makeup, shoes, accessories and so on. You play God, so to speak. She did this, and that was that. After watching the blockbuster Avatar recently, she kept on thinking about the word. A quick Google returned a lot of results linked to avatar. Most often, she ended up on some websites that said ‘Create Your Own Avatar’, which was tremendous fun since she got to choose from so many avatars, ranging from plants to sci-fi goddesses. Kinda like escaping from her real self and drifting away, getting sucked into a vortex of her own make-believe world. Hmm…if only that is possible, like in the movie Avatar. Well, anyways, Pandan was able to recap that an avatar: 1. Is an icon that represents one in the virtual reality (kinda like how a...

by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and thanks to your love the tight aroma that rose from the earth lives in my body in darkness. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where I love you directly without problems or pride: I love you like this because I don't know any other way to love except in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams. This is a poem by my favourite Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. Known for his love poems, I like the central idea of this poem that it is just so hard to put into words why you love someone. Irony is at play when the speaker actually describes how, ignoring and oppos...