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It’s basically this, by the way.

Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.

When it comes down to it, I think that sex education is directly tied to being comfortable with your body. I don’t mean necessarily that you feel comfortable to put it up on display or even to expose yourself. At its core, knowing how your body works is an incredible sense of empowerment.

You know the phrase, “Knowledge is power?”

Basically that’s it.

The knowledge that you know your body, that you know how it will react, what pushes it to its most efficient, how it helps you get the job done… All this is empowering when you realise just how much information you have.

~~~~~

So what does knowing your body have to do with sex education?

Well, it comes down to basic protection. The thing about sex education is that it is supposed to demystify the process of having sex and/or everything related to reproductive health. And reproductive health is more than simply sex.

What is sex education anyway?

In most definitions, sex education is more than sex. What is sex? It’s a mating activity that two (hopefully) adults partake it. Sometimes there may be more adults. Sometimes there may be only one. Sexual activity varies, but involves one human being (or more) touching themselves to achieve orgasm.

Where do they touch?

Usually the genitals, but there are other parts of the body, called the erogenous zones, which also serve to stimulate sexual desire. In females, such stimulation will lead to the lubrication of the vagina. In males, it will lead usually to the stiffening of the male penis. The desire, when accompanied by physical stimulation, is supposed to peak to the point it culminates in what is called an orgasm.

And now, here we get into a somewhat murky part of the syllabus.

Traditionally, it has been taught that orgasm is the ultimate aim of sex. What makes it murky is that a female’s orgasm is not as obvious as a male’s, and is often thought to be harder to achieve. For males, it is taught that ejaculation is proof of orgasm. Another word for this process is “climax.”

However, while it is true in many cases that orgasm accompanies the male ejaculation, it is not true in all cases. Google says that orgasm is characterised as a feeling of pleasure at sexual climax. In males, it is considered to be an accompaniment to ejaculation. However, in cases of rape and non-consent, it is possible for the body to be sexually stimulated and achieve climax without actually achieving orgasm.

Hands up if you followed me through all that. Good. You know now a little bit more about mechanics of sex than you did before. Would you be surprised to learn that the Malaysian education syllabus doesn’t include that bit of information?

And we haven’t even gotten into the topic of how sex can be pleasurable, how to protect yourself, and taking good care of your reproductive health. We teach our kids about how eating fibrous food is good for their digestion. We teach them that exercise is good for their health. We teach them the importance of keeping clean.

Yet when it comes to their genitals, we are strangely silent. The genitals is another part of the human body. It is used every day, as part of our natural bodily processes. It is as part of us as our arms are. Where is the shame in that? In learning how it works to keep our kids safe?

We tell our kids not to play with knives because they can cut themselves. We teach our kids how to play sports in accordance with the rules so they will keep their limbs intact. Yet we will not arm them with the information they need to make safe reproductive health choices. Are we not failing them as parents? As adults?

Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.

I find desire to be a very powerful word. To me, it has more connotations, more strength, than just a want. A want is something you would like to have, but you can’t have right now, for whatever reason. And you’re aware of it, and you realise that it’s not necessary. It’s not something that will spur you to action. It’s just… there. And a want can be ignored. It can be tied up with necessity, but more often than not, it’s often something you’d just want to improve on.

A desire on the other hand, now this is something else entirely. There’s a certain sensuality in the way desire sounds, in the imagery it evokes. A need, perhaps, is to drink something to quench your thirst. Want is to have something cold to swallow, perhaps a cool isotonic drink. A desire, on the other hand, may be to have that drink served to you in a tall chilled wine glass rimmed in gold. With the fragrance of blueberries wafting up your nose as you sip.

And that’s just the imagery it evokes. Desire, in contrast to a want, is to me something active. When you desire something, you go out and make it happen. Or you get someone to help make it happen. It dresses up a want into something more. Makes it respectable. Take this exchange, for instance:

“I want that car in my garage,” said the Shah.

“Ah, now that, sire, is a very good choice. Perhaps… we could discuss the price privately?” the dealer replied, rubbing his hand in glee.

Compare it instead, to this.

“I desire that car,” said the Shah.

“It is yours, sire. If you would step this way, we could get the arrangements out of the way…?” the dealer could not abase himself fast enough.

A desire, I suppose if we go by the exchange above, also means that you would not be putting a price onto what you want. It’s an active component after all, not a passive one. Desire makes you go do things, because you feel you deserve it, that it’s something you should have after an ordeal. Want, on the other hand, is something you see by the wayside, as a by the by. It’s not a necessity, and perhaps never will be. Desire, on the hand, can and will be a necessity, even if it is just a dressed up want.

This entry is brought to you by an overdose of beautiful new tech gadgets I am convincing myself can wait for at least another 18 months before I even consider them, much less lust over.

Seriously, look at these beautiful Z3 Compact colours! Image from http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/

Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.

Full moon over Osaka, July 2013

Trigger warning for depressing content. You’ve been warned. Also a lot of self-indulgence, so um.. yeah.

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Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.

What does a kiss taste like?
Soft, gentle, undemanding
A chaste kiss
To say Hello.

What does a kiss taste like?
Hot, hard, fierce
Unrelenting desire
Passion unleashed.

What does a kiss taste like?
Hints, teases
A memory made
Changed forever.

What does a kiss taste like?
Skin on skin
A tug, a pull
An intoxicating emotion.

What does a kiss taste like?
Dominance, submission
A battle of desire
Passionate days.

What does a kiss taste like?
A beginning, an end
A greeting, a farewell
A journey.

~~~~~

Been meaning to write something simple for some time. And then today, that line just popped into my head. What is the meaning of a kiss? Is it in the lips? Is it in the body language? Is it, in the grossest sense of the word, the saliva transfer?

It’s probably all this and more.

A kiss.

Such an innocent thing. So much meaning. Much impact.

Ok I’ll stop with the doge thing. XD

It’s more intimate than a hug I feel. And more private though. But it’s a gentle reminder. Of being loved. Of being cared for. Of having an intimate bond.

A bond that might not break no matter what.

I like hugs. I love kisses.

I think it’s mainly because I don’t have that much opportunity to kiss. So the hugs help make up for it. No, I take it back.

I love hugs.

They’re awesome. And it’s more comforting than a kiss. A kiss, no matter how you look at it, is brief. It doesn’t happen for long. But a hug?

That lasts as long as you need it to. Three minutes. Four. Even an hour. Holding someone until they feel comforted. Until they feel someone else loves them the way they do.

I’m blessed to get both. Well, not the intimate kind of kisses now, but the others, yes.

I’m blessed to be loved.

More importantly, I’m blessed to be able to love. Even if it doesn’t seem like it to the receiver (sorry, I admit I’m somewhat a tsundere.)

Thank you, for loving me.

Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.

Here, cute pic before you click on wall of text below

So, testing this for the first time. I kind of regret not signing up for 750words.com before this. Should have done it a long time ago, but I thought that daily word counts were not a thing that I could do. Shows what I know, huh? Now that I’ve resorted to this, I have nothing more to do than to keep doing it. :D

On a fun note, this service is free for the first 30 days, then after that you have to pay USD5 a month to keep using the site. Usually I avoid subscription services like the plague, but this site has a few gamification and data features that interests me (which reminds me I need to look up that Big Data course on Google).

There’s badges here! As in badges that you get when you sign up, when you complete achievements, and so forth. They also pull your IP and display the weather it was when you were writing; I find this quite amusing and would probably be a good way for me to gauge further down the road what keeps me writing and what probably keeps me in bed.

Now, for the features that caught my eye; this site also has stats on when you write, your speed, the words you use, etc etc etc, all stuff that I usually find very useful. These stats are kind of hard to collect though, and even harder to display meaningfully (aka I am too lazy to see if the scripts for this exist). They also have monthly and weekly stats, which are far more useful to me.

Yes, I’m using this site as a way to keep myself writing. 750 words, I think, is a pretty hefty chunk to write. It’s three pages long, which, for a blog, is pretty lengthy. But I think it might work, and since they’re talking about writing a little bit every day, I think it’s a good habit to start again.

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Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.

Makishima-senpai on my phone

What is my identity?

When you talk about identity in Malaysia, it always comes back to race. To where you come from. To your culture. Chinese. Malay. Indian. Eurasian (colonial and not). Whatever.

Which always left me feeling a bit off, because I could never quite grasp them the way. I like culture, but not in quite the same others have internalised them. And then there’s the whole, “If you’re this religion and that race combo” mix, there’s a subtle way pressure to act/identify a certain way.

What is my identity?

I grew up in an English-speaking household. Always felt it was a bit off, because while my friends learnt at least 3-4 languages, in my mixed household we learnt only two.

And neither one was our grandfather’s nor grandmother’s tongues, at least not according to the ethnicity Malaysia had christened them with.

What is my identity?

Stories tell you a lot about the person in front of you. It’s not just the content of the story itself, but how it’s presented, by whom it’s presented, and why it’s presented… We’re all made up of different stories that have led us to where we are. Stories are a journey, but not an end.

Compared to most others, I have a fairly priviledged and safe story. I didn’t quite want for anything growing up, and I have enough to provide for myself, at least. My story’s rather tame, compared to most others.

What is my identity?

The roles we play inform our identity. The labels we stick on ourselves, these form our identity. The feelings, the emotions, the actions we take… this becomes our identity. It is how we identify ourselves to both each other, and to ourselves, a way of marking our presence and reality.

What is my identity?

A sister, I hope. A mother, maybe. A friend. A child. A writer. A spinner of stories. A privileged git. An overbearing and arrogant woman. A people pleaser. A lonely person.

So many, and yet none of these. I am the sum of my stories, and to narrow myself down to a single story, a single identity would be to displace my humanity and the humanity of those who have added to this story.

There’s always a way to move forward.

Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.

I’m still alive and am still here! Just been busy writing. Have submitted one story to Women Destroy Science Fiction and am now working on the one for Lost in Putrajaya. Aiep.

Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.

I can’t quite wait to say goodbye to 2013. In some aspects, 2013 has been kind. However, in other aspects, it’s been a horrible year.

Friends have been mugged, I got into a major accident, friends lost jobs, dad had a massive heart attack, the uke and I are no longer together, lost a few projects, house has been leaking etc etc etc.

On a good note though, I went to Japan for the second time, did NOT lose my job, had some new experiences at work, travelled completely solo to Penang and Singapore (separate trips), made my personal best at SCKLM and then at Penang Bridge 10KM, made level 7 in Ingress AND had my short story published in a dead tree anthology (by dead tree I mean printed onto paper).

So many new things, and yet so many old too. I’ve made some closer connections, lost quite a few, and overall, have been trying to consolidate myself. Pieces of me have scattered through the aether, and I’ve spent a long time picking them up. In a way it’s a lot like Lyra’s own story. She started off with knowing how to use the alethiometer by instinct, but by the end of the series, has to relearn everything that came so easily before.

My life feels a lot like Lyra’s. It wasn’t as full of feelings and hurts as it is now. It’s not quite the easy game I was led to believe. Trying to please everyone, including myself at the same time is a lot of work, especially when it turns out I’ve been wanting to please the people who matter only because they have rejected me. In the long run, they don’t matter, but like a lot of things, it hasn’t been an easy thing to accept.

So many things have happened this year, that I can only hope Hettar was right, “Events are like horses, they’ll gallop and then slow down again.”

Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.

Tattoos fascinate me.

The idea of ink leaving a permanent mark on my skin is something I used to fear for myself. It wasn’t the pain, it wasn’t the regret. It was the idea that I’d choose a design that I wanted to get rid of 5, 10 years down the line.

Airbrush tattoos are generally a great alternative. I got this as a timely reminder to myself. Been meaning to for the past few weeks, and finally kicked myself to do it yesterday.

Instant regrets: Not asking them to add some red to the tail for a more colourful spin and not putting the tattoo a little lower on the arm so when I type, the tattoo’s completely hidden.

Otherwise, today’s the second day and I’m finding living with the tattoo isn’t so bad. We’ll see how things go in a week.

Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.