New Moon, Full Moon

It's been a while. =) Standard explanation would be "real life just caught up with me" but as you know neither work nor my usual "toys" could quite stop me when I got the drive, so yeah, it's really just me not getting any writing itch recently.

To sum up the past weeks.. Watched Music & Lyrics and loved it. Watched Just Follow Law and loved it. *grin*

And oh, for some period, got hooked up on the songs from M & L too. Huhuh. You are gold.. and.. sil-ve-e-er!

Finished Paulo Coelho's The Valkyries that Eka lent me. Finally. =D I lost interest halfway through and was taking an awful long time getting back to it, but once I did, the suspense was good enough to pull me through quickly. Both of us agreed that this book was a little weird. =P I thought it was a little more "preachy" than the two books of his that I read before. Still, there are some good points in there, and I'm looking forward to borrowing another from Eka, my personal Coelho library. Heheh..

Meanwhile I'll make do with a murder mystery from my own second-hand collection. Come to think of it, my collection is quite littered with books I'm not really interested to read.. =P those that (1) I sort of "inherited" just because they were going to be thrown away otherwise, (2) I bought during warehouse sales (yeah, I'm occasionally guilty of The Bargain Temptation(TM)) , or (3) I *was* interested in when I chanced upon them in the second-hand store.. but didn't get around to reading them until my taste/interest/mood changed.

Ah, change. This kind of self-testimony should teach me not to brand people so permanently. =P

Lunch with Eka today, and I found that I said some things to her that were a self-discovery to myself at the moment of speaking (actually, most of my self-discoveries are made in this manner). Well, the pace of our conversations is always so fast (this girl is so efficient =D -- gotta love it!) that I sometimes missed giving the proper credits, but I'm sure she'll read this at some point too. =D

The topic we chanced upon was work attitude. We talked about how we needed to spend more than "regular working hours" to get the work done well, and how some colleagues didn't quite agree with spending private time for work.

I've always been surrounded by hardworking people -- not in the workaholic sense, but in that they take healthy responsibility for their work and they put admirable amount of effort in there. I used to do just the necessary work since I had many side interests that always took up my free time, and it was partly due to looking at these people, including Eka herself, that I realized I really should turn my work the way I want it, and for that, the usual working hours were no longer enough.

I was reminded of a Dhammapada verse about the importance of wise companions and how it was better to be alone than being in a fellowship with "the fool". Never has this felt so true until that point in the conversation when Eka and I agreed wholeheartedly that we do need companions who can pull us up rather than drag us down.

So all in all, at this point, in Eka's term, my "life in general is good". =D It's the point I'm feeling comfortable with mostly everything I do and am involved in. I'm sure this confidence will go downhill at one point in the future, as it has been several times in the past... and as it should too, I guess. No slump means no growth, means no confidence, all over again..