My days of education are now behind me. Days spent in labs with barely enough sleep, a bottle of red bull in one hand while I agonized over my grades and a girl. Somehow it simultaneously felt too short and too long. I'd like to think that at the end of all this I've grown as a person but I'm not sure I have. Sure I've grown in knowledge perhaps in confidence too but the world still feels far too big for me to take on. There's a dearth of warm places, people I can anchor my soul to.

It's been five years. I don't know how to celebrate it this year, coming back to the Philippines. It didn't hit me to remember the day, April 1. I was too exhausted after the pressures of the exhibit. Traveling on the skyway one day made me miss Singapore so much. Leaving school, I don't know if I really have many friends. No one to celebrate that last bittersweet day with. It's my fault I know, never made much of an effort. It was far easier to cocoon myself with studies rather than dealing with people.

I say I hate people but secretly love them.

I miss the sensation of writing, forming words into tangible moments of beauty. The following is rescued from my notebook.

A book is more than the words, thoughts, feelings that it conveys. It is the entirety, the whole, a sensual experience rather than mere intellectual exercise. You begin with searching the shelf, eyes gazing across an expanse of words. You are overwhelmed, feeling like a soul drowned out by the homogenity of the human race. You reach out for another that can fill you, so is like the sensation of finding that book, the one that is yours.

And so you reach for it, snatching like an eager lover or slowly savouring the moment. Fingers play over the cover, tactile proof that perhaps your search is over...

I feel so inadequate next to this