Ever had smells and sounds transport you back in time to a period that bore certain significance or charm? I do. A whiff of Polo Sport Woman never fails to throw me back to the June of 2000. The 10 or so of us J1s had a ball of a time with the Chinese students. I relished walking along the streets of Beijing and Cheng Du. Polar Bear was my hotel room mate. Explored the Great Wall with Denise and Stephen - we made it to the furthest point open to us, which was ironically, a dead end.

Images. They seem less significant nowadays in the face of the free reign that digital cameras give to shutterbugs. Heh. I still think it's those that are captured au naturale on film that hold the greatest memorializing power. Like that one of the evening sun setting on a bunch of GB girls on the river bank. Magnifique.

And then there are songs... Hillsongs' You Said. I would listen to that over and over again, not so much because of the lyrics, but rather the memory attached to it. I even found myself going into a reverie of sorts whenever the song was played or sung. Nothing of that sort happens now, but I wonder whatever happened to that emotional energy of youth. There are other songs of course, and a sadistic streak within moves me to listen to them in succession every now and then, just so to see if they'll make me blub.

It's amazing how the human mind is able to encase the essence of a moment within a physical medium, isn't it?