Guiltily Inactive

I looked up. Star­ing at my Machine Dynam­ics 2 lecturer’s ever so vivid body lan­guage as he tried — fran­ti­cally — to liven up a class­room full of stu­dents wear­ing that unmis­tak­able wtfarey­outalkingabout expression.

Words find them­selves hard to stick in one piece as they escape his mouth rid­ing on a heavy Middle-eastern accent. Incom­pre­hen­si­ble syl­la­bles col­lapse into hyp­notic mur­murs that mutes the world into a muf­fled silence as I resorted to lip-read his 350-WPM bullet-train of sen­tences. All the awhile draw­ing my dreamy gaze onto every silent flap, sway and whirl of his arms.

I shifted my focus to the pro­jec­tion screen in front of the class that’s sup­posed to show fig­ures and for­mu­las and notes but noth­ing came into clar­ity. I squinted, but my weary eyes did the oppo­site — the world around warped into blur­ri­ness as my eye­lids fell shut at the opportunity.

Large. Blank. Void. Noth­ing.

A new dawn
Clue­less in the morn­ing light.

The mid-term break right now does lit­tle to slow down what I feel is our tough­est semes­ter yet. Yes, it’s been a whole half of a semes­ter since I wrote any­thing or uploaded any pho­tos. Speak­ing of which, I guess I have been tak­ing my lib­er­a­tion off Project 365 a lit­tle too heavily.

End­less piles of assign­ment, tuto­r­ial and lab work dic­tates fir­ing up Adobe Light­room an unnec­es­sary lux­ury. What more click­ing around with my dSLR. Not that I feel great about it. I left behind read­ers of my now-dormant pho­to­blog and if I may say so, a fol­low­ing on Flickr that accom­pa­nied me through my 365 jour­ney. Danbo’s lying beside my lap­top enveloped in a thin but unmis­tak­able layer of dust. Com­ments such as the one ejana left on my 365 finale shot broke my heart.

Yet another dusk.
Lost in a sea of sand.

My inner shut­ter­bug wants more than any­thing to get out.

But as they always say: desper­ate times, des­per­ate mea­sures.

11 thoughts on “Guiltily Inactive”

  1. Jon

    Hey Embr, great pho­tos 🙂 The sec­ond photo is really nice, it reminds me of the beaches that are not far from my home, one of which I helped my father plant coconut palms along when I was a small child. They have become an iconic part of the beach and hold fond mem­o­ries of mine that I remem­ber each time I go there. That’s what’s great about being a pho­tog­ra­pher, whether you reg­u­larly cap­ture moments or not, some times the sim­plest ‘sub­jects’ can bring joy to your audience.

    1. ember Post author

      Wow, it sure is great to see the results of the seeds you sow when you were young. I’d def­i­nitely love to do some­thing and come back years later and savour the results of my ear­lier efforts.

      I have a rather nos­tal­gic con­nec­tion to beaches in gen­eral too as I grew up in a costal town but since moved to a river­ine city instead.

      I’m glad I was able to bring back your child­hood mem­o­ries with such a sim­ple photo. You’re absolutely right — a sim­ple photo does go a long way in con­jur­ing feel­ings and mem­o­ries of the audi­ence. I see that in a lot of pho­tos of fel­low pho­tog­ra­phers too!

  2. Oridusartic

    To be hon­est, I also miss your well-written blog updates that were beau­ti­fully dec­o­rated with breath­tak­ing photos. 🙁

    But it’s okay if you’re busy or expe­ri­enc­ing some kind of bore­dom and need to take a hia­tus. I believe the cre­ativ­ity is still in you. I still wish you’ll come back with new kind of blog­ging project. *wink wink*

    Speak of the inac­tiv­ity, my blog is kind of dusty too and worse I’ve just deleted the data­base acci­den­tally. Wew! (._. )

    1. ember Post author

      Aww thanks! I can’t think of any other blog­ging project though, unless I restart another Project 365. I actu­ally wanted to embark on a Project 52 for this blog by post­ing at least one entry per week for the year but I failed early into the sec­ond week, pffft.

      Wow, that sounds really bad. DB mess-ups are the most dreaded of all. But then again, you’ll get a chance on start­ing over in a clean slate — some­thing I’ve been want­ing to do but never got myself to hit that delete but­ton purg­ing six years worth of entries. Maybe you’ve got to have fate to do that for you. =D

  7. Robin Wong

    Hey there,

    I come to know of your blog here through Sarawak Bloggers.

    When I first loaded your page, I have to say I am very impressed by your graph­i­cal lay­out !! Your design of this blog is seri­ously stun­ning. Well done, and please keep it up.

    As I dived deeper into your blog entries, I find myself con­stantly amazed by your pho­tog­ra­phy work. They are all rather impres­sive. Again, it is always great to find great pho­tog­ra­phers from Sarawak.

    Just when I am in my huge thought bub­ble scream­ing engi­neers are peo­ple who are void of cre­ativ­ity, artis­tic sense and orig­i­nal­ity, I must say you have proven me so dead wrong. Your blog is the evi­dence that destroys my con­stant belief that engi­neers are mun­dane, dull, and colour­less peo­ple who think solely inside the square box. We really need more peo­ple like you.

    Also, great job on spread­ing the love for Sarawak, and also the infa­mous Teh-C-Peng. My favourite drink, anytime.

    I shall link you up on my blog. Cheers.

    1. ember Post author

      Hey there Robin!

      I’m flat­tered, really. And I don’t blame you for that stereo­typ­i­cal view of engi­neers, haha! Engi­neers gen­er­ally focus their juices in the art of problem-solving, but I know quite a few fel­low engi­neer­ing course­mates who are sur­pris­ingly good in pho­tog­ra­phy, design­ing and film-making.. seri­ously. Makes you won­der what are these peo­ple doing in this course. =P

      It’s only my plea­sure to spread­ing the teh-C peng love! Glad to know you’re a fel­low fan too!

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