lili's footnotes ♡

 Last night I tried to go to McDo's Night Classroom. It starts at 8pm and ends at 6. I would have pulled an all-nighter, but the biggest concern was their lack of outlets. Understandably, they are not a cafe or a study place. They are literally a fast food restaurant. Anyway, I walked back to the dorm around 2 a.m. I plan to go back later, because they couldn't serve me my free meal as they ran out of ice cream. I arrived there around 10. It was my fault. -- Recently I've been eating too much fast food. This is cancer. I hate this city and being distinguished while I walk. I do not want to be known any longer. Why do people look at me with a certain eye? I'm genuinely curious. I do not want this anymore. Is it them or is it just me? I believe it is just me. It must be, it can't possibly have the same effect on everyone. -- I walked home again tonight. My friends would say I'm crazy if they knew about this. It is normal fact by now, for me to walk home from dista...

 Currently listening to Big Star by Lorde, and it is 2:22 a.m.     I feel disappointed for many reasons. My life has gone astray, so much more than I thought it had during my down moments before stepping foot in this city.  It has been four months of my being here. So much has certainly happened, and as much as I've wanted to keep track of it all, I was too conscious of living in the present. This is what I wanted, anyway. I remember writing a journal entry about it, living in the present. It always seemed I was behind or too forward. I have been at the present, finally. Now, perhaps out of routine, I resent it. Whenever we get what we want, something always takes the fulfillment away from us. "There's always something," I recall both main leads saying in the second episode of the Netflix show, Beef. (Great show, by the way. Finished it in a day despite my looming school deadlines.) There's always something.  I finally revisited this blog--never forgotten, just ...

 sunday. grass smells like grass. children playing, people taking photos. church was okay. I'd listened more intently to the foreign homily than I ever did back home. It's funny. The way I'd hoped to hear something in English, praying there'd be some sense smacked back unto me. i cried for the third time this year during the first song when the ball rang to signify the start of the mass. last night was my second, in the shower, repeating affirmations because my thoughts were starting to get ahold of me again. it sounds exaggerated, but once you actually live through it, it would make sense. it makes so much sense to me now. sometimes i think these tribulations are vital to my development, as it would allow me to understand others better by wearing their shoes. it sort of makes me wiser somehow, despite me wanting to kill myself every time. what is wisdom if I can't apply it in my life because I'll be dead. I won't be dead. i always wonder when I'm going ...

 Despite having a rigid memory of useless things, i.e. things I would benefit from none at all if by nostalgia, I have little to think about in that one-time experience in Vigan. Actually, I have a lot to say, they're only waiting to be unlocked when my brain is involuntarily capable of doing. Referring to the videos, however, they have stayed there for four years. Now, they are free. I've always been overwhelmed by the thought of editing the clips and compiling them together. I thought what a waste of pretty clips only to be edited by a novice like me. I really wanted the outcome to be great, perfect if possible. That's how it dusted away in my CapCut drafts for four years, taking up storage space. In all honesty, I still find little edits that could be made better in the uploaded video , but I'm vowing to create and share despite the apparent flawed outcome--mostly only apparent to me, but you know. My camera broke last year. For the first time in three years also, I...

 I forgot the purpose of this blog was to swap Twitter. In that silly bird app where I used to feed the void of about two-hundred followers spam of text that doesn't make sense, but which I considered funny, I wasted hours, but it felt comforting. And funny. I love that bird app, though if I were to live a better life as some say one should, I'd have to find alternative ways of coping. For a while, I thought I could never get around things without Twitter. Instagram worked for a while, but soon, I became too annoyed at myself for oversharing with my face as the backdrop on the screen. Even without my face, talking about my thoughts on that camera app felt too open. I realized I'd prefer oversharing with text and text alone. Photos just make things more real than they are (i.e. thoughts). Thoughts are only best in theory, well, sometimes there may be benefits to actualizing, but in my case, most of the time it really is otherwise. It is 11:44 p.m. and I decided to sleep abou...

Holding up a toothbrush in one hand and a glass of soymilk in the other reminds me of that one night in Malaysia. There were no teaspoons, though teacups, hot water, and packets of Milo were available. With three toothbrushes on the table, we had makeshift teaspoons. They were sanitary, being packed in wrappers of plastic.       It's not every night I get to dance in the apartment. I used to never even dance in apartments. There weren't any apartments to dance in, but back home there was also no space to move around. I mean there was, but not that much to really look silly. We have windows that overlook windows from the buildings across the street. Imagine how Amsterdam's buildings are. That, minus the colors. And there's moss everywhere. I feel like it's less romantic given the clothes being hung outside their windows. Though, it is a step closer to Pinterest architecture. They look pleasing during the day, in the night they look okay. Each window light isn't e...