How are you?

In Australia,
When I ask people:
How are you?
They immediately answer:
I'm good. Thank you. How about you?
Then I normally reply:
I'm good too.

However,
there's  no point in asking a question that has the same reply all the time.

Hence I've stopped rushing off as much,
and now I actually pause and look at people
to demand for longer, more legit answers
that convey more meaning than just a society norm.

Getting to know people and
trying to understand them requires effort,
and there is no short cut in communication.
Even though the text language has permeated through conversation times.

Reading but not understanding

I went to the library today.
Just to prevent myself from hitting the sack again.
The weather has been absolutely perfect for hibernation.

I meant for myself to be productive.
However, as the sun set,
my concentration dimmed and I started looking at blurry lines all over again.

And so I napped.
Waking up ten minutes later only to flip back three to four pages to the front.
Going: 'Did I even come across this just now?'

Presented my friend a necklace for her birthday.
She was happy and so was I.
So was the injured person whom I offered to carry her bag.

A trip to Clermont Ave

I joined this club called Servesoc.
A trip was made to the nearby old folks home.
It was an interesting one.

After sanitizing our hands, we went up.
There were so many rooms, some dreary looking, some touched up with pink hues.
There was a nurse's station nearby with four blue uniformed staff.

The weather was gloomy with a grey overcast.
Everyone felt like dozing off in their chairs or beds. Even the volunteers.
There were four goldies in the lounge room.

Elaine and I talked to one lady who's tongue muscles were not as agile any more.
Expressing herself was quite a task. We could not understand her even though she tried talking.
We tried looking at her eyes to gauge her reaction when we posed a question to her.
She was tearing up most of the time and well, I realised I needed to polish my understanding skills a bit more to comprehend her. I need to have sharper sensitivity to slight nods and the batter of people's eyelashes to understand them. Observation skills in development.

I also talked to an interesting lady named Florence who has worked as a clerk all her life.
Until she had to retire, that is.
With three cases of broken hips, I'd say that she's a pretty tough cookie.
Seven months of being not able to walk is pretty depressing.
We talked about the weather (how the farmers need rain for the crops to survive), my studies, my family. About how breakfast was her favourite meal of the day because they had scrambled eggs, baked beans on toast etc. I hope that she will be able to walk with her wheels someday soon. Maybe next time, when I see her.

There was a nonchalant looking lady name Brenda.
She's cute. Her teeth were gone and she reminded me a little of the granny from Tweety Bird.
She's been in the home for years and did not want to talk about her family. She told me to stop talking then.
So I talked to her about how I have been procrastinating my homework. She seemed amused by this.
Apparently, 3.30 pm is too early for tea time.
She likes Elvis Presley and so, I told her that I'd learn a song of his for her. Love me tender, perhaps?
She told me about the piano upstairs. I was informed that the folks like performers. :)
She was annoyed with the staff and probably a little, with life itself.
She was feeling warm under her stained blue fleece blanket.

I gave them hugs when I left. Just cause, I figured that they would like hugs loads? I guess it was a habitual sort of thing too. I should converse with the goldie who has lots of soft toys next. :)

I liked doing what I did today. Not forgetting the salsa moves I learned from Claudia who's really amazing at dancing as well as the singing session with my neighbour :D So I have been told that I can sing.

Like Crazy

The Movie.

My first thought was:
It may be a movie made by the government to educate people on the implications of overstaying your visa.
Staying the holidays over an expired visa and not being able renew it easily later on would irk anyone off.

Then it jumped along the lines of:
Well, long distance relationships are well, hard to maintain. Even for family.
I still remember this one period of my life where I tried to catch hold of some of the people that I cared about but it was so difficult, due to different time zones and life schedules. I missed them loads until I started avoiding them. It hurt too much to think of them or hear their voice or even look at their pictures.Not that it helped. The action of avoiding that is. But at that time, it was all that I could do. 

Upon watching the last scene, where they both reminisced their moments together, I went:
People are fragile. We think we know what we want. We live in the past, the beautiful past that can remain eternally wonderful because it cannot crack where it ceases to be so. We hang on tiny sewn seams to the little glimpses of hope, forgoing the weights of reality that can easily snap our threads. We use the favourite phrases of our parents :'Everything is going to be fine' whilst praying that circumstances remain the way they are, without realising that we change, ever so frequently.

Love embodies another person's development. It accepts that things change and understands that a tremendous amount of effort and dedication are required for it to be alive. My friends asked me the other day:' Do you believe in one true love or do you reckon that you can make it work with someone compatible?' And I told them that I did not know the answer to that question. My mother believes in fate. I only know, in my young age of life that love requires compromise and the willingness to give. What if your one true love does not love you? What happens to you then? Do you live life alone for the rest of your stay on the planet? That would be quite a sad scene.