Reacquainting Myself With my Religion.

Hey Chikas,

I know a lot of people who, when feeling particularly lost, turn to religion. It's a sort of comfort, and well I don't really know how I currently feel . I am sort of at a loss. I'm almost done with my first year of university. Here at Bucks, we only do the 2 years, and I'm suddenly overwhelmed with the thought that in one year I'll be searching for a job, 6 years and I'll be getting married, 8 years or so until I'm popping out children! 

I'm beyond freaked out, and I feel like I need to take a step back and evaluate life right now. I'm not ready to give up the safety of my childhood, to say a final goodbye to certain people, to lose that excuse of childhood. 

So here I am, accepting adulthood, completely fearing the outcome. For once I can't predict what will happen, I can't rely on my family and teachers to help me out when times get tough, I'm totally vulnerable, but I know my faith will keep me protected. 

In my last post I explained how I never felt connected to my Thai half, but I always considered myself Christian. When I was a baby, I was blessed into Buddhism, my father who was a Christian agreed that he thought Buddhism was a good religion for me to be born into, for my mother it seemed a natural thing to do as she and her siblings were blessed as babies too. But why did I choose to ignore that path, why am I seeking it now?  I now find myself wondering why, there was nothing wrong with Buddhism, in fact it's an amazing religion, why was I trying to distance myself? Was it my blatant childhood rebelling against myself? The fact I never found myself connected to it? In my childhood, I was constantly surrounded by the "Thai community" and their children with masses of food. But we hardly ever went to the temple, unless it was Thai New Year, even then as I previously said, It was 5 years ago since I last went (not counting this year).

So I decided to research into the religion to see if Buddhism was something I could connect to, or would Christianity the right path for me, here are some of my favourite quotes I found:

"Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free."
- Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation.

"Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it."

- Ray Bradbury

"You only lose what you cling on to"
-Gautama Buddha

“Purity or impurity depends on oneself,
No one can purify another.” 
-Gautama Buddha.

“It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of mankind.” 
― Mike Norton

"You see pictures of Buddha and he’s sitting, reclining, at peace. The Hindus have their twelve-armed elephant god, who also seems so content but not powerless. But leave it to Christians to have a dead and bloody man nailed to a cross.” 

― -Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

It's The End Of An Era

Now there are many things I could dedicate this blog post to, the end of term, the end of the current me and what not.

But no Lisa decides to dedicate this post to..... GLEE!

Don't stop believing! I am actually writing a blog post on Glee, now this may be embarrassing to admit to, but I realised, I don't give a crap. I like Glee! I like Rachel, actually fuck that, I LOVE Rachel!
I have grown alongside Glee, from secondary school, where Alice and I would discuss the previous episode instead of doing Gym, to morning Cory Montheith's death in the episode "The Quarterback" which weirdly enough aired around the same time of Alice's passing. When the Gleek's left high school and moved into University/College, I shortly followed. Glee has always been supporting my life in a weird way.

I know its cheesy, and we all say that in real life, no one just breaks into song, but in my life we sort of actually do, like not everyday and just to start grooving, but like sometimes in the mac room, we'll all be stressed out and working and then Zoe will put on some tunes and we'll start singing like we're in Lima at Mckinley high! Or sometimes I'll look at Philip and we'll break into a bit of Iggy, or you know you sing how you feel instead of saying it.

But Glee helped me to think of how others must be feeling, how scared and frustrated we can all feel. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own lives we don't realise others are struggling too, more so than we are. Glee taught me to think how hard it must be to come out to your family, to realise you're pregnant at 16, or to be handicapped. But at the same time, there's all sorts of characters, to represent all cliques, to show us it's not just the unpopular kids who struggle, that there's not just the sad crowd and happy group. We all hurt, we all have our own shit. Sometimes we need to unite and help one another like the kids on glee, remember how Sam had to be a stripper because his family lost all their money? The gleeks got together bought back his guitar and brought him back to school and found him a job! Okay so maybe you don't have a friend in a similar situation, but do you know someone who is in need? How can you make their day just a little bit better?

But most of all Glee taught me to fuck what others think! I am me, I love me, I'm not going to bring others down because they aren't me, yet I'm not going to be put down for being me. I thought of all the things I have said or thought about someone, why did I do those things? Society encourages us to, we have our cliques, if you don't fit in, you're an outcast, it's our duty to mock you and make you feel shit enough until you conform. NO. Glee shows us we can all be painstakingly annoying, but we all have our own unique good traits which makes us, us!

Glee was a harmless show that showed us how cruel society can be, but also how amazing it is at the same time, It perfectly showcases the harsh realities of the modern youth, yet how we overcome them as a united force.


I followed the story of Rachel religiously, saving up episodes just to watch them in bulk, I thought if she could overcome all this shit, I could deal with my own. I suppose I sympathised with her character especially after Finn's death, I felt she was portraying or voicing out the emotions I was so desperately trying to conceal. Watching her move on as I moved on made me feel much less guilty, yet when I still missed Al and had times where I just wanted to cry all over again, I felt relieved when I saw her character expressed that too.
But Glee also helped me to learn and acknowledge signs of weakness, so when I saw them in my friends I could help them before it was too late. Glee was very much a learning curb for me, it was as much of an education as those philosophy lessons we had in school.

I know people mock Glee, and call it cliche, and personally I can't watch the first season (cringes me out to see some of the old characters and their noob mistakes), but Glee was great, I mean it had 6 full seasons! But the original cast were the bomb, the 2nd cast were kinda cringy and boring, and the 3rd cast we didn't have long enough to get to know them, but I liked how we saw that all these people have their own stories, which we got to explore.
I will miss Glee, I'll miss Rachel, but I guess we've learnt all we can from Glee, we've seen the characters go through so much to get where they are, and it ended just perfectly. I seriously recommend watching the last season of Glee, you may not get it if you haven't watched the previous seasons (I think I missed season 4) but there are some serious topics in there that are worth thinking about, and some lighthearted stuff that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
As much as I don't want to say goodbye to Glee, I have to, but it's not really goodbye, its more of a see you later, afterall..... I do have netflix ;P

Thank you for everything Glee, see you in 10 minutes as I watch the whole show from scratch again. 

I'm Coming Home

Hey Snowflakes,
So today I'm going to blog about something everyone has to go through, Goodbyes.

So as the exam periods comes to an end, all the students are going home, whether that be 5 hours away in Newcastle or a whole flight away in Italy! It's strange, as you think you'll be super duper excited to go home, chill out in your house and be with friends and family.

But yesterday I was seeing my best friend, Daniel,off before he went home today, and we were saying how weird it was to suddenly pack up your room, and see how empty it was. Your whole life in just a few boxes... To go from seeing all these familiar faces everyday to not seeing them at all for 7 weeks. And what makes it more surreal is that you realize that these people, who have now become your family, you've only known them 10 weeks.




 Yet you love these people, I know I rely on my friends way too much for example, if I ever have an allergic reaction I now come to expect Daniel to be there with my tablets, soothing me to sleep and Shanghai randomly turning up 10 minutes later out of the blue, if I'm crying my eyes out Philip is just a phone call away and if I need solid, cold hard truthful advice Elysia and Rhys are literally just 5 minutes away. My neighbor Alice, is always up for a wine session and Zoe for girl nights. Its weird to think that these people will be all in different parts of the country and I can't just turn up at their door with a cup of tea and a pack of sweets.

But when your're back home, all those friends you left behind, what do you say to them? Its inevitable that we've all changed, we were never that close to start with, being apart made us realize that. Do I want to socialize myself with them? I know Dan said he was scared when he saw me eating sweets that looked like purple tablets, I know my friends do that stuff now. Do I really want to get involved in that scene? My other group I know, the group I actually love with all my being, left that all behind, so I could hang with them like I did when I visited home previously. But what do I do when my old group comes calling? It'd be good to see them, and I'm excited for it. But its scary at the same time.


But then you face the fear of when you do come back to university, will everything be the same? or will those fragile relationships you built up come crashing down? Will he be awkward, will she still want to talk to me or are her walls back up?



All in all, I'm actually really excited to be going home. I know when I see my friends, everything will go back to how it was, I'll go out with them every night on the lash, we'll go clubbing and we'll dress up and have big get together's. I know I'm making a fuss over nothing. And my Uni friends? Well I decided to stay in University until the 14th of December even though I finished my course on the 26th of November, so I could spend time with my friends here and also celebrate my birthday with them. Daniel is coming up from Newcastle on the 12th which is my actual birthday and Matt is going to try for the 11th or 12th! All my other friends are still here so I'm super excited! I know everything is going to be okay, I'll text everyone everyday and my journalism class even swapped Skype's! so we're having big group powwow Skype sessions.

But when you're driving home maybe you can listen to this music, get you in the mood for all those huggles you'll be receiving: