a) It’s actually a really long journal and I don’t have enough hours in the day to bother to type it up
b) I’m not sure anyone would really want to read it, irrespective of its brilliance or lack-thereof
c) I don’t think it actually only contains any true insights, just trite recitations of what I saw and what I ate, with the occasional mention of how I felt.

However, I did learn a few things from my trip. One of these things explains just why that journal fails to explain what I experienced – it’s too hard to try and compress something so overwhelming into words. I may pride myself on the way that I can talk incessantly and usually find a phrase to meet every occasion, but when what you want to share with people isn’t just what was happening or where you visited or what you ate, but also the smells, the way that someone smiled on the side of the road, a tiny boy trying to learn to walk but falling over in the dust, the hope that you can feel in the air at an opposition party rally but the resignation the people feel that nothing will change, the stickiness of my fingers after eating rambutan, the anger at seeing an unregistered Lexus when 50% of the population live on $1 or less, and the sense of awe at the sight of rice fields beyond the horizon, beyond what the eye could possibly see… Yes, its hard to compress the entirety of that phenomenon into words.

So, I did expand my worldview, and saw some things I’d rather have not seen (fried tarantula, land mine victims, street children gulping down restaraunt left overs before the staff could catch them), and some things that I’ll never forget (Tuol Sleng Prison, the atmosphere of Ta Prohm, and being followed by a veritable tribe of children on an unnamed mountain – the site of a massacre).

But ever notice how hard it is to maintain that air of ‘oh, wow, the world’s amazing’, when you have three assignments glaring at you and 300 pages to read in two days?

Ungrateful, I know. I apologise.

PS: Shout out to, well, myself (and Amelia): Overheard in Auckland. Intended to be a slightly closer-to-home version of Overheard In NY, except that the people who say stupid things seem to be hiding from us, and so no awesome conversations are really up there, and the only ones worthy of ridicule seem to be the ones that we ourselves have. But become our eyes and ears! Hear anything strange? Flick me an email.

Scary? Yes. But at least I get my eight hours sleep.

Hopefully, that’s about to change. It’s about time for a life altering experience, methinks; time to expand the worldview. If the culture shock/humidity/Japanese encephalitis/muggers don’t break me down into a quivering mess (a la Linus without his blanket), I’ll be back with some shiny new trinkets, a few stories to tell and a heck of a lot of photographs.

See you then!

These last few weeks I’ve been what one could only term ‘a basket case’. It was a matter of looming exams, the ever-encroaching prospect of freedom just over the horizon – with which comes responsibility, a film whose production seemed to be opposed by the Gods and the pile of novels and text books piling up beside my bed. I was making plans for my future, applying to university and for multiple scholarships. Everything seemed a matter of scheduling, of planning. If I could find the right colour-coding system, my troubles would disappear. The only problem seemed to be the amount of hours in the day.

But the lunar eclipse had grabbed my attention. A red moon is something out of the ordinary, and it begged me to glance upward, away from the trivialities of my life. And while I was lying flat on my balcony, staring out to space, the universe became simultaneously more comprehensible. I remembered that I wasn’t really looking up at the stars, but out. All of a sudden I was dangling there on the side of a rock, with only gravity to keep me safe. I could look up above my head and down below my feet and see the giant expanse that was the height at which we float.

It’s dwarfing. One forgets the linear surface of the earth: that which hosts our egos, political borders, celebrities and banks. Instead, I am merely a singular human, dangling on the side of a rock. The sky starts at the ground beneath my feet. I’m as close to deep space as I can get – I’m in it. And I’m thinking that I might stop and say thank you once in a while. What else is there to do while we dangle?

Life is a bizarre thing. We don’t know why we’re here, or quite what the absolute rules are. We try to experience things in our short lives, try to dance and play on the surface of the earth. But how often do we feel thankful for not being flung off its surface? Where would we be without the yellow line in front of the rollercoaster tracks, the safety belt protecting us from oblivion? How often do we thank gravity for the rain? For skydiving?

We’re so caught up in our issues that we forget to look up and out. Granted, knowledge of our world is important, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all. Certainly our own personal problems shouldn’t swamp us like they do. Instead keep in mind that we’re all dangling, every single one of us. So I’ll stop making plans, looking to the future. Aim for ‘delicious ambiguity’, as Gilda Ragner termed it. I’ll dangle here and remember how, at the end of the day, I am simply a speck glinting on the side of a rock in the middle of nowhere. I am small, unique and irreplaceable. And I am thankful.