Jessie's Journal

Some of the best books are the ones that helped us to overcome a challenging moment in our lives. Reading these books a year or even five years down the line make us realise how we have overcome these challenges and how there are new battles to face in life. A lot of the books that sit in their pristine condition on my book shelf have entered my life at various points in time, as if fate knew that they would help me to continue on my journey.

I bought Private Peaceful at a school book fair when I was 13. I fell in love with Michael Morpurgo’s style of writing and resulted in me trying (but failing) to imitate his techniques. If I recall correctly, it’s also the first book that I cried to and subsequently, opened my tear ducts to cry to anything remotely poignant or sentimental, be it books, songs or films.

I read The Great Gatsby during my relationship with he who is known as: My First Love. As I got lost in the moment, I desperately wanted him to love me as intensely as Gatsby loved Daisy. Of course, I was naïve because now when I read it back I notice how Gatsby’s love is imbued with flaws and how the persona of Daisy is nothing but pitiable.

That leads me to One Day, which entered my life when I needed to get over said My First Love. Incidentally, whilst the book is wonderfully written and a firm favourite of mine, it didn’t do a very good job at helping me get over My First Love; rather it told me that it would never happen and that he’d always be the one I turn to. I wish I could personally tell David Nicholls how right he is on that one!

Finally, I read Blindness when I was searching; I was searching for acceptance from my peers and acceptance from within. I’m not sure if I ever found those, even to this day, but the ending left me pondering for hours. Consequently, it is the first book I recommend to people. 

I am currently half way through reading Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist at the same time as I’m thinking about careers post-graduation; for those of you who have read the book, I hope you’ll agree that this is a good omen - a motif that litters the novel. No novel appears more apt than one about following your destiny and fulfilling your dreams, and after being rejected from two different internship programmes in the space of 24 hours (ouch!) much of what Coehlo writes rings true. In this case; ‘there is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure’. Fear and rejection may be terrifying, but they cannot be avoided. They are a part of life. Don’t let fear and the possibility of rejection stop you from pursuing your life as you want it to read.

So with the help of Coehlo, I continue my internship search with perseverance and determination. After all, it’s ‘the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting’. Wise words. On that note, onwards and upwards!

Five years ago whilst as the day changed from 21^st January to 22^nd January, I experienced the biggest loss in my life to date. My grandfather had 15 hours previously suffered a heart attack in Heathrow Airport after his returning flight from a business trip in Hong Kong. It’s not something I want to write about in detail because the events that unfolded that day are still difficult for me to think about and I believe they should only remain between my family and myself. To this day, I still only remember snippets of the day, many of which is incoherent in my mind yet I still remember the irrelevant details. I still remember the blue checked shirt that my uncle was wearing that day and that of all the books on the bookshelves in the waiting room in Hillingdon Hospital, the only one that stuck out to me was one by Jilly Cooper. I’m still not sure why considering I have never read a novel written by her. My 11 other family members and myself filled the small, outdated waiting room; travelling from Norfolk, Suffolk and even further afield (Amsterdam) to be at my grandfather’s side. Out of this tragedy which still haunts me, I remember the importance of family; through the generations we have learnt to stick together in times of strife and loss. 

Family is the greatest gift anyone could be given. Cherish it.

The hustle and bustle of businessmen pushing their suitcases behind them as they walk briskly to the gate; the overhead voices with various announcements and the bright signs mapping out each zone and airline - welcome to a typical European airport. The sheer size of Heathrow is easily comparable to the airport at Lahad Datu which on the outside looks ‘a bit like a shed’ (as my father describes it). Whilst there isn’t a significant difference in the number of runaways between the two - Heathrow has two, L.D. has one - Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest airports, whilst unless you’re well-travelled or from the area, the latter remains pretty much unknown.

One of my travelling objectives is to travel the LHR / LDU route, in either the summer of 2013 or 2014. My joie de vivre is about family & travel; so combining the two on this trip seems perfect. I’m lucky to have family and friends in different countries. The negatives most definitely outweigh the positives (such as not seeing my grandmother and cousins for six years), but it excites me that there’s a part of me in all corners of the globe. The world beyond England doesn’t seem scary, it’s waiting to be explored.

There’s always been something stopping me from putting this plan into action before; I want to be able to explore the country that is such a big part of me and I want to be able to finance this myself, and quite simply, I want it to be perfect.

I have recently become a contributor to the student online magazine, Kettle. I wrote a piece on whether social media has taken over our way of communication ahead of emails. It wasn’t until I wrote the article that I realised how much social media really has taken over our everyday lives. 

I would love it if you had a read of my article here. Let me know what you think of it by either commenting or rating the article. I can’t wait to read your views on the topic!

‘It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.’ - The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

Ever since I could hold a pen, a passion for writing was instilled in me. Like most students, I hate essay writing at the best of times but after attempting to pull 3000 words out of the magician’s hat, there’s nothing more I love than writing a bit of fiction. I started writing fictional pieces; short stories to poetry, now I write about just about anything with occasional lines of wisdom thrown in the mix. I have an unusual interest in etymology and a love of words. What I love about writing (and reading) the most is the pleasure of getting lost in the words; whether these are someone else’s or my own. Whether it’s any good is another matter.

My name is Jessie and I love to write. I’m a BBC (British Born Chinese), born and bred in the heart of Suffolk. When I was four and a half, I wrote a one page ‘story’ about my soft toy rabbit’s day trip to Felixstowe. At seven, my first piece of work was published…. in a school magazine. I started writing songs on the piano at the age of 13, and I was so inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway during my A Levels, I decided that I wanted to write a novel and bring life to a fictional character as vividly and poignantly as she did with Septimus Warren-Smith. Now I’m 20 years old, inspired by words and as a consequence, I find myself writing on old receipts and anything I can find before I forget the poem I have just written in my head.

This blog will feature what I love most; my thoughts on anything and everything and my writing (fiction and non-fiction). A pen and paper are two of the world’s simple and underrated items in a society infiltrated with technology. However it is these that are the most effective.