“In the end / I want my heart / to be covered in stretch marks.” —Andrea Gibson

We are a generation of hyperboles. Big, bigger, biggest - brobdingnagian! Great, greater greatest - gigantuous! Huge, huger, hugest - humongous!


Our exclamations have gotten bigger

To fit the expanding of our wandering heart.



"There's nothing uglier than the first week of school handwriting."

"It was, literally, the largest sandwich in existence."

"I think I'm going to die if I hear her talk one more time."



There are poems about

How a wanderlusting heart would travel millions of miles in her sleep

Crawl through the oceans of her dreams

Break her bones to dust, shed her skin as she spirals against gravity

To reach the face of the moon where her lovers kiss awaits


There are love songs about

How he would burn

Against a hundred blazing suns

Against the objections of a thousand

Against a million miles of separation,

Combust as he tears and pulls at the layers of atmosphere

To reach the soil of the earth where his lovers feet have planted

Even if he himself were burnt to ashes




An awakening has begun -

Hearts are expanding, trying to grasp the edges of something greater

Trying to tug glory they do not know down to earthly limits

Trying to heighten itself to

Satisfaction?

Nirvana?

The highest level of being?

I think the answer is

A hyperbole of the soul.




I want to transfer my love

Into hyperbolic expressions of love for Love Himself -

Spread my heart out so big

So wide, embrace beauty in the big

The small, the dirty, the broken

Want to love stars heading for black holes back into existence



I want to transform my hyperbolic exclamations of delight in this world

Into a whirling tornado of exaltation for the Exalted

Into every single raindrop that touches the face of the earth, worship

Into the very vibrations of my soundbox, praise

Into my heart,

Truth.



“In the end
I want my heart
to be covered in stretch marks.”

"August rushes by like desert rainfall, a flood of frenzied upheaval - Expected, but still catching me unprepared."

August has been exciting! I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone and done many things I have never, ever, ever imagined I would attempt to do (and succeed at!) in my life.

First up is the trip to Bako National Park. Apparently it’s one of the must-see things here in my state (or country?) and I’m ashamed to say I’ve never been there. Till now that is, haha. It’s one of the few places where you can get many different kinds of ecosystems all in one place, which is why we had our A-Levels field trip there since it was relevant to the Geography, Biology and Economics subjects (And each of us takes at least one of those subjects).

It was a jungle trekking trip, and first we had a boat ride to the trek place and had a ‘leisure’ trek around to see the animals and plants! 

Poisonous pit viper! Gorgeous colour and markings. God is such an artist.

And wild boars that were surprisingly tame. I guess about God being an artist, every artist makes mistakes sometimes... HA, kidding. God doesn't make mistakes and the boars were pretty cute when they slept in the sun. Saw one of the hotel residents pet a wild boar, and the boar rolled over on his back for the man to rub his belly. 

"Naughty monkeys around watch out"

The naughty monkeys. They've learnt to recognise plastic bags as having food in them so we were warned not to carry any plastic bags around because they would steal it. And apparently for all their cuteness, they're also quite aggresive and we were told not to make eye contact with them because they see it as a challenge and might attack us :(

 After the first trek, we went up another much harder trek to see the kerangas forest area. Kerangas means ‘land which cannot grow rice’ and it’s called a ‘heath forest’ in English, growing on acidic and sandy soil.

Up on the kerangas area. 

There was a plateau of limestone. Pretty exciting for me, because this is what I've learnt in Geography! The erosion of limestone and development of clints and grykes... Yeah, I'll stop now. My nerd is showing.

Then the tour guide brought us all the way down again…… To see a branch of tongkat ali OH MY GOSH. We were all like groaning and face-palming at that time but now when I look back, it’s pretty funny that he made us trek all the way back down just to see a small branch. (Tongkat Ali is used as an aphrodisiac. Some jokes were made about nibbling on the branch so that some of us could have extra energy for the next trek, haha!)

So after poking the branch, we went up again on yet another trek up and down to the shore for the boat ride back to the counter, and to see the famous sea stacks along the boat ride. 

There's my super cool Geography teacher crouching there taking pictures of the scenery. She's from Cornwall, England, and she's a huge, huge, huge lover of nature. Always going on about saving nature and animals, but the amount of paper she uses sometimes for her lessons is ridiculous...

Lovely scenery along the boat ride

Sea stacks! This is the most famous one, it's in the shape of a cobra head.

Next up was the 4 days, 3 nights International Awards camp at Permai! Now this was quite possibly the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life. Aside from swimming coaching back when I was much younger, the only physical activity I’ve been doing the past few years were… Uh… Climbing up the stairs in school, probably. Okay, maybe not that bad, but I’m not exactly the fittest person out there (Although I have been making an effort to work out the past few months :D).

The first day was pretty relaxed, unpacking in the cabins and a few team-building games. One of the games was to scale up a huge wall with only our body parts to aid us, no rope or ladders or anything! But we did it cause we had strong guys that climbed to the top first to help pull us up and more strong guys at the bottom to help carry us up on their shoulders. Poor guys with their aching limbs after that, but they were all macho and all that and said they were fine. Right. 

Anyhoo, the next activity was trekking through a part of the jungle blindfolded with only a rope, one single guide at the front of the line, and the voices of our other (blindfolded) friends to help us. It was pretty scary because you couldn’t see anything, and irritating at the same time because I kept getting whacked by branches, haha.

The 3 girls cabins, side by side

The second day we had to do one of the most terrifying things ever – high ropes. Basically walking on scary trapeze rope thingies that belong in the circuses with safety nets and skilled tightrope walkers! Looking at the ropes, it didn’t look that scary… Watching the lady in charge walk through it, she made it seem pretty easy… Uh, yeah, I was totally wrong. It was the most terrifying, horrifying, pants-wetting, petrifying thing I have ever had to do in my life. 

Who needs horror movies. And those who are saying this photo doesn't look that scary, it's just the stairs going up to the flying fox for the instructor to use okay! I couldn't get a good picture of the ropes because it all looks like jungle.

Just imagine. You’re afraid of heights. You’re afraid of falling to your death (hello, no safety nets, other than a wobbly harness whereby if you fall, you basically have to climb back up yourself up unto whatever rope obstacle you’re on). You have an extremely limited sense of balance (Read: Major klutz). And you have 7 different rope obstacle challenges to go through like I don’t even know how many feet up into the air before screaming down the flying fox.

I don’t know how I did it, but thank Jesus I got through it. Although I pretty much nearly cried on one of the challenges where I had to change logs midway and the logs were shaking like mad (from my fear and a sudden wind blowing). At least now I can say I’ve walked on a single rope up in the air like those cool circus people. Even though I was totally not cool. Like, awkward white guy dancing in a club not cool. 

Random picture of nature for your viewing pleasure

We were supposed to go kayaking in the afternoon, but the weather wasn’t looking good and the instructors were afraid the winds might make it too difficult to kayak, so we boogie-boarded and body-surfed the waves with life jackets on instead. It was super fun, I’ve always loved being in the water and doing water sports, so this was one of the best experiences in camp for me :D (Putting aside the sand in my pants..)

At night we did a night trek in the jungle (Another trek!) to see glowing fungi and mushrooms. It was weird. Like halfway through the trek we’d be told to switch off all our torches and we’d be in pitch darkness with the noises of the jungle all around us. We’d take some time to readjust our eyes to the darkness, and then we’d see small spots of green glowing things around us. It was totally weird, in a cool way. And when we switched the torches back on, the places where the glowing things were were super inconspicuous, like just brown mud or bark. Pretty cool.

The third day was filled with the most ridiculous and insane activity I have ever done in my life - if the high ropes was the most terrifying, this was definitely the most insane - climbing Mount Santubong.

It was super tough, super tiring, & challenging. The only mountain I've ever climbed before was Mount Singai, and that's not really a challenge to get to the top. There were rope ladders at nearly 90 degree inclines and nearing the top we basically had to climb like monkeys using our hands and feet. A third of the journey up I was so ready to give up, even the scary PE teacher that came along couldn't motivate/threaten me to continue. Until a classmate of mine who's been poking me the entire year (I am really ticklish!) said, "Hannah. If you climb all the way to the top... I'll stop poking you for the rest of the year."

Man. I don't even know where all the energy came from - it was like the instant effects of 10 red bull's in a second. I climbed up that mountain so fast I could have put monkeys to shame.

The view at the top. For all my sweat and tears and blood (Okay maybe not), this is what I get?! Okay yeah, maybe the satisfaction of climbing a 3km+ trek up a mountain makes it a little bit sweeter...

Going back down was fun! If someone could fly me up to the top and drop me off, I'd willingly trek down again.

This is the jungle pool where we cooled off our aching muscles! I'm not in the photo. The pool is divided into two sides, the side on the right is filled with fresh water coming down from the upper rivers. It has small fish in it! And the one on the left is filled with rainwater :) Its really, really, really cold and in the morning it's really clear. (Lets try not to think what it means when it becomes murky in the late afternoon.)

We had a campfire on the beach that night. There's Wee Yang doing his ridiculous fire dance. Until a few minutes later it started pouring like mad. 

Yeah, totally not his fault. 

Last photo with Grrrraaaccceeeeee mah super quiet classmate, super sweet friend! I got so brown after kayaking on the fourth day! Kayaking was great, and we got to play in the sea a lot. So we went home exhausted but really happy. :)

Back home back to homework! 

Exams in about 3 weeks! 

See you chicas soon. :)