[Ramblings] Justin Bieber

I caught myself being too emotional again while watching Justin Bieber’s recent performance at Coachella. This, being the third time, is the reason why I immediately took my laptop and started typing.

me in bed

Justin Bieber is more than a household name. For most millennials such as myself, his music is literally embedded in our psyche. We grew up listening, dancing, and enjoying his music. I even remember specific periods or events in my life whenever I hear some of his songs. He was that big and, let’s just say, well-broadcasted. When we reached that awkward teen phase, we were also there to play down how much we used to enjoy his music and, in some instances, we even tried to make fun of his songs. Some even went to such great lengths as to call it childish and/or cringe.

Then he started changing his appearance. He let go of his iconic side-swept bangs and turned towards edgier outfits. His music, of course, changed as well. He had to work with puberty, which was understandable, but a lot of people were not ready for that change. It was either they loved what he had been so far or they didn’t want to stop mocking him and his music just yet. I remembered reading somewhere online that it seemed like Justin was ‘rebelling’. As if he was the world’s son, OUR kid to be castigated.

Everyone also started noticing his growing collection of tattoos. Some were disgusted by it, but some found him more relatable. He seemed like a proper adult then and was finally owning up to the man he was becoming. When he first released ‘What Do You Mean?’ along with ‘Sorry’ and ‘Love Yourself’, I found myself enjoying his music once more. It seemed more mature and not heavily focused on being someone’s boyfriend.

When ‘Yummy’ came out, there was a lot of controversy over it. I never really got into that because I was just there for his music. I hadn’t even seen the music video well until 2023, maybe. There were also some heavy and quite personal discussions about Justin’s drug use and/or abuse and his concerning mental health issues. He was also plagued, and still is, by the presence of an annoyingly ‘constant’ female figure in his life, even after his eventual marriage to Hailey Bieber. I will never name her because she gets mirth from that. Controversy after controversy, all I can see is a man being forced to lower and lower his head as some kind of submission to something bigger than him.

And then, Coachella. I was not there myself, but the fragments of his performance online that I have seen sent a wave of nostalgia. There was a gnawing sense of familiarity and warmness, something that I know but I am not quite sure about. My auditory senses remember, but I don’t really know why.

Justin grew up in front of us. Some of us are even his age, such as myself. In a way, it’s like looking in a mirror and relating to him. His seemingly carefree youth, the pressures of the world as he grew up and expanded his horizons, the adjustments that he had to do as he went through young adulthood, his successes and the struggles and the pains that came with it, and in Coachella, seemingly finding himself somehow happy again.

I do not claim to know THE Justin Bieber, but I know that he is human too. At the end of the day, despite his global fame, success, and fortune, he lives and breathes as a person. He has to come to terms with who he was, who he is, what he has experienced, what he can change, and what he is becoming. Every one of us goes through this regardless of our social status.

As to why this performance of his makes me emotional? I still don’t know why exactly. It could be that I see myself in him, the struggles that we have to endure as we get older. Or it could be the fact that he was able to look back on who he was, forget the hate, and just appreciate the things that he has done and accomplished. Or it could also be that he never knew how many people truly love and support him despite feeling an excruciating sense of self-hate. Or that, watching his happy and young self doing the things he loves healed something deep within himself. Projection, one might say, but seeing him happy and passionate on stage made me happy too. It was as if it brought warmness to my broken older self and I was reminded that it is okay to be happy again.

[Bio] Yin’s Notes 22.03.2026 - XM Limassol Marathon

I wrote this AFTER my run almost a month ago. I just forgot to publish this, lol.

[Bio] When in Germany

I was 27 when I first stepped foot in Germany.

It is kinda weird that I have always felt a special “connection” with this country. I was in 3rd grade when I first had an encounter with it when my classmate brought her aunt’s German language book to school. I was so fascinated by the language that I tried to make sense of it on my own based on the illustration (this was pre-internet, of course. I couldn’t Google things yet). I even borrowed it and brought it home with me only for her mother to dash my dream of interpreting the language. She saw that we were looking at it one day while I was visiting and she gave us a scolding. She said that we shouldn’t touch it because it was super expensive.

In university, I had this yearning that I want to do my Master’s degree in a university in Münster and I don’t even know why. Mind you, I don’t even know to this day if there is a university there that offers a master’s degree in Geology but my mind was so set back then that it would happen. Apparently, there is a word for this in German which is really fitting, “Sehnsucht”. You just yearn but as to why, no one really knows.

And when I met a German guy and eventually ended up dating him, I thought that was the clearest sign from the universe that Germany was my destiny. When he first sent me a photo of the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, I told myself that I will stand in front of it one day. And surprisingly, not even a full year after he sent that photo, I found myself right in front of it.

That photo overlooking the Cologne Cathedral and of course, the Hohenzollern Bridge

It was April 2022 when I first stepped foot in Germany. My plane landed in Cologne and I felt a sense of belonging immediately. I soaked everything around me, tried currywurst and even watched ferries in the Rhine. Everything felt right and it was as if I was living the life of the many protagonists I have read about. It was as if history was flowing right through me.

inside the Cologne Cathedral COVID times

currywurst!!!!

I spent a lot of time in North Rhine-Westphalia. The name of this state alone gives me goosebumps to this day because it sounds so regal, so official and European to an Asian like me! I have come to love the very romantic city of Aachen with the Aachen Cathedral serving as the domineering backdrop of the city and of course, the Rathaus itself. I couldn’t believe that I was able to walk the very same street that Charlemagne once roamed. I have been to Bochum, Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Bonn and of course, Hattingen. The latter being a place that was once quite dear to me.

outside the Rathaus

inside the Aachen Cathedral

somewhere in the Aachner Wald

overlooking the Tranchot-Obelisk in Lousberg

I forgot which Eifelsteig this is in Nationalpark Eifel

Monschau

On a trail in Stolberg

Düsseldorf

Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth

Inside the House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn

Hamburg

Aachen Rathaus

At Burg Isenberg

Historische Altstadt Hattingen

in a field at Witten

I remembered how I travelled across Germany in the summer of 2022. Deutsche Bahn introduced the €49 ticket around that time so I took the opportunity to make the most out of it. I travelled from Stockholm to Copenhagen for 10 hours via FlixBus and spent another 4 hours travelling from Copenhagen to Lübeck. We crossed the Fehmarn Belt and it was kinda surreal seeing the Danish flag behind and looking towards the fast approaching German soil in front of me. I felt so alive during that trip! I met interesting people along the way, one of which was an Afghan national that escaped Afghanistan with the Danish embassy personnel when the Taliban took over again after the US left their country.

During the ferry ride taken by the Afghan guy

That FlixBus ride dropped me at the heart of Lübeck, a city in Schleswig-Holstein. My mouth was agape when I first saw the Holstentor! This imposing gate would be the first thing one would see upon arriving at Lübeck. At that moment, I knew I made the right decision despite travelling for that long. I fought so hard to plan this trip because everyone thought that I was being ridiculous travelling for 14 hours from Stockholm just to spend two days in that city. But my mind was set, I wanted to see Lübeck. I wanted to see the “capital” of the Hanseatic League in the olden times.

HOLSTENTOR!

Around this time, I already knew that I was going to Bergen, another Hanseatic “city”, so I have this desire to tick off all the main cities (key historic cities such as Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, Gdańsk, Riga, Tallinn, Visby, London, Novgorod, and Bergen among others). I am quite whimsical like that.

that little devil himself up close and personal

 The Devil's Stone

A statue honors the local legend that the devil helped build St. Mary's church after being tricked into thinking it was going to be a wine bar.

Stadtverwaltung Hansestadt Lübeck

if you like Marzipan, this is the place to go

I spent two days in the historically-fulfilling and gorgeous-looking Lübeck. Afterwards, I have spent another 18 hours or so travelling across Germany. First it was from Lübeck to Hamburg, then Hamburg to Bremen, then Bremen to Osnabrück, Osnabrück to Dortmund, then Dortmund to Düsseldorf and finally Düsseldorf to Aachen. That was a painstakingly long ride but my eyes were satiated by the things I have seen and experienced along the way.

photo after surviving the long trip from Stockholm to Aachen

The last time that I set foot in Germany was the summer of 2023. I did a tour in Koblenz then as one of my main activities on that vacation. It is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate and I have really wanted to see it for quite some time. I walked across that city as if I belonged there and took a lot of photos at the Deutsches Eck. There, I was trying to memorize all the 16 Bundesländer of Deutschland which were gracing the wall of the Memorial of German Unity as I need to know it for a future citizenship exam.

Historiensäule, Koblenz

inside the Kaiser-Wilhelm Monument, overlooking the Deutsches Eck

inside Ehrenbreitstein Fortress

view from the Biergarten Festung Ehrenbreitstein

Deutsches Eck

coat of arms of North Rhein-Westphalia

I remembered how I was surrounded by friends and loved ones at the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn. They took me to one of those screens where you can try out some questions from the German Citizenship Exam. I only got 3 mistakes then and everyone was cheering me on. When the time comes, they laughingly encouraged, I will definitely ace it.

That summer, I was so sure of my life path. I love and enjoy Germany and I know that I can thrive and even grow there. I was readying myself for the final move after Norway since the former has always been the final destination. But while hiking in Stolberg, I saw one of the final cracks of this illusion. Sometimes, even when someone claims to love you, they would still do things that make you realize they actually don’t. They wouldn’t watch their words and there will come a time that you would just feel numb and dream that everything will be alright in the end. But that was just a dream, an illusion of a life you want to live and so you are forced to move forward.

Stolberg castle

birthday picnic then 2023

Germany is now a distant dream. I know I can always go there to relive a past self that longed for it but I am now a different me. This current self still dreams about travelling the Romantic Road and visiting Trier, walking across Berlin and having a day tour in Chemnitz. I am still Aileen but no longer that self that dreamed about belonging in Germany.

in memoriam of that past self who dreamed of making Germany her home