the adventures of penny goose

On listening to...

2009-10-02T00:22:00.012+08:00

Skunk Anansie’s Twisted (Everyday Hurts) again after all these years:

Oh no, there it goes again. The plump bass drops and brings in the beat thumping and twanging robustly and tightly against a backdrop of silence, forming its limited range of dips and peaks; that same one that defines the melody. After a brief conscientious round, the percussion explodes in and drums together the skeleton of the song. The siren Skin wails into life and slams into our souls her husky lines, expounding on the wonder of existential angst; marred by soured romance, of course.

Electric guitars singe the aural landscape as rapid successions of quick zaps of lightning crashing down close. Yes, right behind you. The boom and bang of all that sound and fury climbs to a crescendo, hangs on to the zenith for a fleeting few seconds before diving deep down into the imaginary mosh pit of a million high and wasted kids who probably know nuts about love and all that jazz but will sing along to the chorus, scream that they love you anyway and help you crowd surf.

Listen to how her voice builds up something strong only to tear down into absolute useless weak shreds sailing in the gale of the music as the story continues to overwhelm, even though it’s only a smattering of senseless lyrics now. Short of destroying herself, Skin justifies her standpoint, repeatedly confirming that it is eating her up. And then completely destroyed, she emerges moments later from the razing pyre, hardly the phoenix, for all the smokin' old bird knows to say now is, ‘Everyday hurts.’

---

To think that I once owned everydayhurts.com and drew in a respectable fan base for putting up a wonderfully aesthetic, delicate blog-cum-showcase there. I guess that sensibility has indeed left me for good. Wait up, it seems even Plath has nothing profound on me anymore but I suddenly miss my teenaged years. At my age, moshing is Over.

life goes on

2009-09-16T23:51:00.025+08:00

LL has turned out to be a source of many things. Spending this whole day with her was entirely stressless and made my visiting very enjoyable, so much so that we clocked 7 quality calls in total.

Perhaps it's a maternal thing or maybe it's just her but her genteel presence was like comforting balm to frazzled nerves. Not that I'm having much frazzled nerves now as compared to then, thank God.

We broke pretty early for lunch. She showed me a nearer parking place than where I usually head and as we strode into the mall, she most casually rescued my gloomy response to a question of hers by telling me,'Don't we all go through that same fix? Get better.' As we tucked into the birthday lunch she bought me, we began a distracted conversation swamped by a sudden flurry of sporadic phonecalls but stacked full of moralistic anecdotes and an easy flourish of humour. Somewhere, a sparkle of a quote escaped her lips - 'Always treat people with a lot of heart. Whether it's customers or other people. Cos that's what the heart's for, right?' And she brightly followed it up with her trademark beam at that:)

I remember now why I love hanging out with mature people and why they in general, like my company too. It's that eagerness to learn from them, to tap into their previous experiences so I may be able to learn via proxy and not have to go through all the pain. And because I guess I'm quite a puppy when I try to pry into their caches of vital life lessons, they're only happy to have me. And yes Cl, I can see clearly now.

I think when I finally take leave of this place, LL'd be another one of those few people I'd miss (who're still) here. For the sake of posterity, let it be known that they're namely, El, J, Ps, Adl and Ee. The list is small but hopefully growing till that fateful day.

Much later after registering my second life, I was entreated dinner by my aunt but what we talked about would be another story for another time.

戴爱玲 - 爱自己
作詞娃娃
作曲 Terry Tye Lee

他爱的像一个无赖
吃定你百般的无奈
深夜他还流连在外
为他你苦苦等待

朋友说他对你太坏
用沉默你为他辩白
溺爱他像对个小孩
看不到你的未来

(爱自己) 为他忍受的寂寞
(留下他的人心却早已离开)
就算你动了真心他却伤你的心
无数一晚又一晚

Gotta give him up
他,有什麽可惜你多爱自己
他,不过是回收的爱情
他,是什麽东西什麽(不是)东西
就让你的心从此 Free

他,有什麽可惜你多爱自己
他,不过是回收的爱情
他,是什麽东西什麽(不是)东西
就让你的心从此 Free

他爱的像一个无赖
吃定你对他的依赖
每一次他若无其事
走了还有脸回来

朋友说你软弱不该
你说你瞭解也明白
可是你还是会想他
当你又孤单难耐
(别再说你) 是欠他的情债
你要学会爱自己现在开始爱自己
再找到你的爱情

P/S
When I saw the long text, I was aware part of it was recycled and then I read the following lyrics from the song 还是好朋友 by 梁静茹/古巨基 :

相爱这一场可能是为了
能拥有一个好朋友
还是好朋友比爱人长久
不能牵的手按在心头
在最寂寞的关头永远在左右

The Chinese language drives me crazy for being so poignant and poetic. Framed as lyrics and set to melody, it just blows your mind doesn't it? At first sight, I thought that hell yeah, it jives with my current state of mind of letting go.

On understanding it, I realized that this is just one of those things that I will never be able to accept now that I'm recovering the large part of my original identity, ie. how I allowed myself to endure much shit over these past few months. That it is a duet between seeming ex-lovers just took the cake for pure irony.

相爱这一场可能是为了/ 能拥有一个好朋友
That can probably only apply if there'd been a period of real and solid romantic exchange between a couple. What we had was a one-sided applause. Random reference to the famous kōan,"Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?" Analogous to this rs, the sound of one hand clapping is you disrespecting and totally ignoring me; is me, feeling angry yet at the same time, still eager to please; it's your back turned away from me refusing to even utter goodnight after an evening of silence and me, staring haplessly at your back before uselessly reaching over; it's me, endlessly trying to salvage whatever's left and it's you, absolutely refusing to give a hoot.

还是好朋友比爱人长久
The very notion that they believe their staying as friends as compared to being lovers can be more lasting indicates that they
1) either believe that the durability of friendships exceeds that of romance. Oh really, is this what being in love means to you?
2) or are now lifelong friends and not lovers any longer but they're alright with this arrangement since they've probably really tried equally hard to be together. Can't say the same for us, can we?

不能牵的手按在心头
在最寂寞的关头永远在左右
This statement is steeped in gross romantic aestheticism. I abhor its message. When at your most lonesome moment, who do you hope appears right that moment to comfort you - your current committed lover or your ex who's now become your best friend? I may not have the maturity to understand what that conjecture stands for but I hardly think it's aligned with normal reality.

Coming back to loving and being true to myself, I do see now that conforming and surrendering to another's belief system that is very antagonistic to your own, without the truce of critical compromises, can only enhance the Pain factor so that whatever Pleasure's left in the ratio is entirely masochistic, illusional and dysfunctional.

Sure, we may remain acquaintances but to be as good friends? I wonder if I can be that in love with you to be able to continue being there for you, even if just as a good friend. If you're wondering, the answer after these few days' deliberation is swinging towards No.

Lastly, I shall now regress to the happy way of life that is encapsulated by what's been one of my favourite albeit more flippant catchphrases since always.

*Drum Rolls*

Whatever:)

一个人的浪漫

2009-09-09T23:03:00.011+08:00

分手一周又一天，已能在不用依赖安眠药的帮助下入睡。没有特意去尝试放纵或再次拾起烟酒的陪伴，可能因为知道自己已经遍体麟伤了吧。只是这几夜会在熟睡中突然醒来，深深感到我已真的失去你的爱了。黑黑的夜、风扇的转动、你的脸孔浮现在脑海导致我设想你可能已熟睡在他身旁。。。这种孤单寂寞的痛叫我在迷迷糊糊中不知是好，只能紧抱着枕头等待睡意再度降临。

最后的小遗憾竟然是在分手后，舒畅的感觉也来得太快了吧。舒畅的感觉不一定代表快乐但肯定的是我们都应该不再那么折磨痛苦了。。。只懂我现在也还蛮舒服的。

可能是因为不用再为你和那批朋友的种种事吃醋不安、不用再愁你是不是还放不下他、不用再着急你心情是否开始发闷了、不用再为了想爱你而纠缠。。。也会逐渐不用再想爱你了。

到了这里，理智终于又重现。也开始找回了我的尊严、自爱、大方一面。回想到数月前，我是以第三者的身份和你交往。现在领悟到当我们在一起的短短几个星期，我总的来看也还是你们的第三者。我也莫名奇妙的允许了这种亏待，但我也是心肝情愿所以怪不了谁。也许这就是坠落天使的愚蠢吧呵呵。

好，现在就让我最后一次以那讨厌、搞家庭分裂的第三者身份向你们致上最诚恳的歉意。

A，我只能说声对不起。

B，谢谢你努力爱过我也让我爱你；也对不起，把你弄疼了。

你们放心，我已撤离你们的故事了。。。你们要幸福。

一个人的浪漫 - 俞灏明
爱盛开飘雨的那条街
有一种很温暖的感觉
就在一瞬间是怎样的错觉
雨再大也不会熄灭
爱轻抚着飘下的落叶
记忆中还停在你的肩
关于爱情我有太多不了解
该怎样去告别
一个人浪漫的情节要怎么跨越
我怎么让心慢慢冷却
就快要分不清誓语轻轻的分切
只剩我换成泪光妥协
爱轻抚着飘下的落叶
记忆中还停在你的肩
关于爱情我有太多不了解
该怎样去告别
一个人浪漫的情节要怎么跨越
我怎么让心慢慢冷却
就快要分不清誓语轻轻的分切
只剩我换成泪光妥协
一个人浪漫的情节和孤单重叠
听你最爱的那首音乐
让怀念渐渐变成了仅有的一切
希望他能爱你多一些
希望他可以代替我爱你多些

你真的离开了。

2009-09-05T15:59:00.002+08:00

周蕙 - 只能做朋友
想把你说的话寄的信
堆满一屋子的曾经全部丢弃
恍然发现在伤心的背后
原来我也伤了你
给的太多爱太多
反而变成了你的压力
以为对你多关心一些
感情就会更扎实一点
以为有了爱真心永远不会变
在下过雨的天空寻伤心的理由
找到一片看不见却存在的痛
我在寂寞的天空想像你的自由
究竟是要求太多还是我给你的爱
只能做朋友
想把我说的话寄的信
塞满一肚子委屈通通忘记
试著戴一张微笑的面具假装不曾喜欢你
旁敲侧听朋友说一切关于有你的消息
就算我们没有在一起
就算你不知道我想你
就算从今后我们只能做朋友
在下过雨的天空寻伤心的理由
找到一片看不见却存在的痛
我在寂寞的天空想像你的自由
究竟是要求太多还是我给你的爱
只能做朋友
在下过雨的天空寻伤心的理由
找到一片看不见却存在的痛
我在寂寞的天空想像你的自由
我还是想不明白怎会我给你的爱
只能做朋友

---

这首歌的歌词几乎能完整地描述我和他之间的恋情。是的，我们真的分手了。我可能也要答谢他近几个月来三反四次地频频提起分手。排练了至少五次以上，我不肯放手的矜持也终于无能为力的彻底蒸发。遗憾的该是这一路一起走过来，我们各自努力的东西和力度都不同；更无需再重复那些是什么了。

现在想他的念头也没那么强烈了。但现在真的觉得饱受了前所未有的委屈。可耻的是，所换来的只是一场空。。。要是能把时空调回那就好。

在一个人独行到邻近岛屿试着整理心情，发现了友人所说的一句话字字确实。‘如果他真的在乎你，不会想到丢下你一个人自己出国旅行。’而当我边望着岛屿的美丽风景边设想把爱人丢在家，才发现自己完全办不到。也还是那句---地点永远不是重点；陪同的人才是。所以，我现在真的明白了我可能根本都没牢牢地挂在他心上。

从这段五、六个月的恋情里学到很多很多也证明了我以往一致那么保守的去接受爱是因为清楚知道对方和我不适合。而在和他投入之前，也明明意识到这点---他无法彻底离开他等等---但我还是不惜一切地和他开始了。

再说上一千遍、一万遍也是于事无补，所以。。。不说了。

你的离开---第二天

2009-08-09T23:54:00.003+08:00

是国庆日、是全岛普天同庆的一天；连油站也给汽油打了折扣。今天我一个人度过国庆日。也不是真的没有人约但就是不想出门。

下午闲着去洗车；一个人洗车花的时间精力都多了不少。

今天除了在早上阅读你报平安的简讯后，也没什么想你。我想你也没惦记我因为今天的那两则简讯都没有提到想我。

可能因为有了距离所以能平静的看待我们到底有多需要彼此。很可能我们都不真正有这需要。能有人帮忙做事总是好的；但不可能为了这点儿忘了相爱不单是要有人在旁帮忙而已。爱是不停地扶持着对方。

陶晶莹-离开我
曲:袁惟仁词:袁惟仁

我把你的电话从手机里消除了
我把你的消息从话题里减少了
我把你的味道用香水喷掉了
我把你的照片用全家福挡住了

你让我的懂事变成一种幼稚
你让我的骄傲觉得很无知
你让我的朋友关心我的生活
你让我的软弱陪伴你的自由

离开我你会不会好一点
离开你什么事都难一点
车来了坐上你的明天
车走了我还站在路边

离开你你会不会好一点
离开你什么事都难一点
风来了云就会少一点
你走了我住在雨里面
---
我必须停止这般emo的情绪化。但真奇妙的是这两天过得还蛮舒畅的。也许这种短暂的距离对我们而言是件好事。

你的离开---第一天

2009-08-09T02:38:00.010+08:00

不知何时又开始讨厌吃酸的东西---刚才在饭后点的恾果柚子希米露被递到饭桌，而我吃上一口后还要阿姨确定了味道不是很酸后才敢吃完。

我也不知道从何时你对我们的爱情产生了倦念。更不知道你怎么能这么快就舍得潇洒弃权、想放弃、求我让你独自远走高飞？

和阿姨逛着旁晚周六拥挤的购物商场，我们聊着、走着，不知觉的解开了腰包买了靴子、纯银戒子和手链。因为知道可能等不到你买枚戒子送我的那天，所以索性自己刷了卡买下来。可笑的是我没什么戴戒子的习惯但是还是很喜欢为自己买的戒子。戴了一晚，我想我能培养出习惯来。

就像你我种种不同之处，也不是在各自努力调整自我后得来的共鸣吗？

只是，你需要和那帮朋友在我无法参与的情况下继续远行的要求我还是觉得很过分。也可能是我无法报容你的唯一一点。尤其是因为他也在那帮朋友之中。我把我们的事描述给阿姨听后，她听了都为我觉得涩涩的。

阿姨的故事充满了悲愤。姨丈娶了她之后，渐渐不再珍惜。姨丈也热爱他的友人，有几次明确跟阿姨说过他可以没有老婆，不能没有朋友。这点我现在听起来也耳熟能详了。所以，他每星期四至五晚都会和他那群朋友喝酒聊天。

阿姨怀了孕，姨丈不但不乐意接送反而在那几次搭他车时，冷言讽刺，‘车子开不动了。’阿姨入院生产那天，他又不拿假陪她，还在宝宝生下后看了一眼掉头就走。三天后阿姨和宝宝要出院时，他也很没兴趣地以工作忙而敷衍了接母女回家的责任。阿姨身无一文不能出院。幸好有奶妈在，替她缴付了住院发费用还送她回家。

之后，女儿小一至中四的每一个圣诞阿姨都提早恳求姨丈陪她们去乌节路看看圣诞灯饰，他都依依以工作忙推掉了。阿姨不太拜金且对生活、伴侣也毫无要求。可是她这么简单的小小希望姨丈都不肯给她。他们的爱情随着女儿的成长也终于来到了尾声。我也为阿姨松口气。

然而，阿姨的建议和所有我曾向他们吐过苦水的亲密友人完全吻合---就如同你近来常挂嘴边的那句，‘长痛不如短痛，我们分手吧。’还记得吗？这是我们刚开始交往时我对你惯用的台词。什么时候换成你是那不想拖泥带水的狠角色？

在我们一天交谈的结尾，换了场所、饮料和心情，阿姨向我说了一句，‘你很矛盾。’知道应该放手而且知道可以坚强好好的振作起来，但又要死撑不肯停止继续有机会造成彼此更痛。

我还是坚决我执着的理由---我们是真正用心的来相爱的。这几个月的努力不能就这样胎死腹中。我也许疯了愿意如此活在没什么期望的世界里。

以下可能是我下几年的主题曲；请注意它的结果是喜悦的。

动力火车和林志炫 --- 《爱上你不如爱上海》

我不想再一个人醒过来
所以在街上徘徊
幻想你会迎面走来
我不想太清醒面对未来
所以跟自己喝开
用酒精将自己掩埋

我从外滩顶楼看海
我想你在千里之外
检查手机有没有开
我想你会打来

爱让我学会等待
让我脾气变坏
怀疑自己何必要存在
爱你让我好孤单
面对所有人看坏
都说爱上你不如爱上海

想想我们这一路走过来
冲突多过了愉快
愉快多过对爱坦白

黄浦江已流大海
我想你在千里之外
夜深了你还不打来
我想你在你在

爱让我学会等待
让我脾气变坏
怀疑自己何必要存在
爱你让我好孤单
面对所有人看坏
都说爱上你不如爱上海

爱(爱) 让我学会等待
让我习惯失败
怀疑自己何必要存在
爱你让我好孤单
不要连你都看坏
你是我永世依赖
今生最爱的最爱
别说我爱上你不如爱上海
---

请为我们祝福吧。

Welcome to Land of Happiness

2009-06-15T22:19:00.001+08:00

The mind steeped in doubt puts on its bleak harness
Of black swan wings; every single feather tingles against
Your window glass beaded wet of rain. On it, you read the fortunes
Of your umpteen lifetimes and understand nothing.

In a matter of seconds, reincarnate.
Transcend your very life with paradigm shifts in mindset.
Erase and rewind, yet know that after all, life is love and
To reach love, are many avenues.

Bashing my way through possible avenues, I’ve finally arrived
Or so it seems. Perhaps a contemporary update on the couture of a certain Emperor,
I parade through my days and remain stark raving mad, until
Wisdom should crack open to leave me weeping, its ruined veneer.

Earth Mother now sighs and sweeps rainforests across her
Troubled brow, seeming to say I love you but look at how you hurt me.
Saying, I love you still in spite of how you hurt me.
Her words are gentle and weak, as if from moribund lips. Then, silence.

Her mammoth breasts heave and let go, powerfully and quietly.
My ear leans in to hear her softness
Bleat against the cacophony of ugliness and I
Hear nothing but the dull thump of my own unsettled pulse.

Her patience survives her, lapping at an endless stony island shored on self-delusion.
Skyscrapers of judgment tower a sky flecked with ashes of yesteryears.
Vehicles of pride and glory sear the highways every minute with fresh bloodshed.
The air itself is a rabbit cry, cringing with raw suffering, at every inevitable gasp.

The horizon is lined with ghosts. Yawning abysses of pain map out
New lesions and tear open the scar tissue of old wounds, bleeding again now from the
Nasty surprises of uncovered caches of hatchets, still sharp, and the skeletons that
Gaze at you dead in the eye, from a sliver of opened closet, bathed in soothing nightlight.

I always thought being in love is an anchoring in safe harbor,
Free from turbulent storms.
I always thought being in love is a final port of call,
Free from roving dissatisfaction.

Welcome to Land of Happiness!
Please partake in summery love affair
Where everyday hurts
And everybody falls in love, absolutely head over heels.

世界末日音乐电台~在我们还来不急真正快乐之前

2009-05-24T21:47:00.007+08:00

固执算不算任性的要求
付出也可能看不到结果
终于你还是选择了放手
用逃避让感情犯错
孙燕姿 - 任性

猜不透为何我们距离那么多
永远只是开花不结果
爱了一个人我赔了自己又卖了灵魂
猜不透为何距离总是那么多
不想只是开花没结果
失去你的人我赎回灵魂
我找回自己又有什么意义
伍家辉 - 远距离

我很想你听见了吗?
这是唯一我无解的困境
那些过去不肯过去
不管我后来遇见多少人
只能叹息
都不是你
都不是你
我只想爱你
张智成 - 很想你

想念是会呼吸的痛
它活在我身上所有角落
哼你爱的歌会痛
看你的信会痛
连沉默也痛
遗憾是会呼吸的痛
它流在血液中来回滚动
后悔不贴心会痛
恨不懂你会痛
想见不能见最痛
梁静茹 - 会呼吸的痛

我为什么　那么爱你
爱到什么都说可以
发誓绝不做的事情
现在做的不想放弃
张惠妹 - 我为什么那么爱你

而关于你选择了现在的他
我只能说我有些难过
我真心真意的等过
有一种想见不能见的伤痛
有一种爱还埋藏在我心中
我只能把你放在我的心中
这一种想见不能见的伤痛
让我对你的思念越来越浓
我却只能把你把你放在我心中
林忆莲 - 听说爱情回来过

你的爱就像星辰
偶尔很亮偶尔很暗
我不盼绚丽的灿烂
只求为光能挡风寒
是甘愿也就不怕难
不甘愿早放声哭喊
我要你别的都不管
倔强变勇敢茫然变释然
彭佳慧 - 甘愿

如果当时我们都能够勇敢的承认
因为太在乎对方所以才倔强的等待着
后来每个失眠的午夜时分
还不愿意后悔却忍不住会问
说好决定要努力忘了啊
为何还有泪停在脸角
你身边是否还是那个他
取代我在你睡前吻你吗
萧亚轩 - 吻

on watching milk

2009-02-01T01:10:00.003+08:00

In the aftermath of watching Milk I opined to v that while I also find that it was nothing more than a sensational enactment of the tragic life and times of Harvey Milk and that it'd had quite successfully milked audience emotions, I found it to be curiously engaging too. Segments of the film caught me unaware and roused tsunami waves of intense emotions so that while I started out rather bored by Gus Van Sant's style of storytelling, I was choking back on rage, empathy, frustration and the whole gamut before I even knew it. So in a word, I guess he'd been effective. Not exactly a romantic tearjerker, inexplicable tears still managed to flourish (soundlessly and most macholy, of cos).

For me, Milk's fight for public office wasn't so much a miraculous political effort than one man's fulfilled determination and belief in the principles he'd based his very life on. I take my hat off at the sheer power of having such a strong sense of self that one is able to not further deny but fully embrace his own unique set of flaws some of us may term societal problems, simply because we do not have the wisdom, courage or patience to understand life from that perspective; and to externalize whatever intrinsic values there may be so as to remain beneficial to the society at large.

Milk wasn't just another gay diva with an activist heart whom needs to tell his tale. Milk was a leader rising to the occasion unfazed by the formidable surges of homophobic sentiments in legislation and in the media, banding together a tight community of like minds fueled by the same vision, all brothers suffering the same plight of discrimination and hate.

To say that Milk was fighting for homosexuals would still be narrow-minded. For by merely enlarging the scope, it's plain to see how Milk's fight was really for human rights but where do we really draw the line on this? I remember some character remarked on that and at questioning myself, I wonder if one day somebody'd be demanding equal human rights for paedophiles, necrophiles and other subversive subgroups --- the non-mainstream of the non-mainstream, if you get my drift.

The cast turned in a glorious performance. Sean Penn became Harvey Milk. Penn was phenomenally real and ultimately lovable, at once flamboyant and tender. Josh Brolin, previously seen in No Country for Old Men, as Dan White was just as amazing. Brolin provided access to the profound character that is White. And I shall applaud Van Sant, especially on the lead-up to the assassination of Harvey Milk. It's such an effective framing it makes you wonder why.

---
I guess I needed to watch this film. We had a choice of films between Milk and Doubt but I chose this, not just because it's ending its run or that the timing's great for our dinner. v wanted to throttle me when I keep saying I'd definitely watch anything with Meryl Streep in it but keep snubbing her on seeing Doubt.

Anyway, it's timely since the questions surrounding one's sexuality have been bugging me. Is one's sexuality so important as to command further attention outside the bedroom? Is it important enough to forsake 'important obligations'? Is it to define one's reactions simply because acting otherwise would detract from all that's familiar? Etc, etc.

I know for certain there isn't a Harvey Milk in me and that's all I've got to say.

Success is my only motherfucking option, failure's not

2009-01-14T22:30:00.003+08:00

True to the perfectionistic (read: shitpicking) ways of the Virgo stereotype, I'm coming down with a bout of iffiness. The cause of infection is the iffy-virus of a hitherto unobserved strain; therefore, indicating both viral mutation and breakthrough from the vaccination administered in Nov 2008.

I've thought about it.

It's probably the information overload that's eating me. Yeah, while I pride myself to be pedantic, I've been nursing the nagging unease that I ought to be out there selling something to somebody, instead of sitting there mugging through thick files of biology notes and product info. Of cos, this is only my aggression speaking. Furthermore, I've realized publishing a paper is almost easier than reading it.

Well, what's not to love really? Great company and corporate mission, great people, top-notch market-leading products, beautiful managers, great pay, niche specialisation, great office location, etc. and also, that Cl has come onboard too; except I just can't help comparing it to b & f. I should've gotten over it already and remain thankful forever that my paper chase has gotten me to these places farflung from its original intention. Critical like me, you'd have called this a euphemistic packaging of its equivalent observation - I've strayed so far from my original path, I can no longer get back.

So, WOOT!

For the umpteenth time, the roses started talking about their wedding day/dream wedding over lunch. An alarming number of staff here are married. The typical employee profile is female, Chinese, Singaporean, under 35, quite chio, married with kid(s). Sticking out like the sore thumb I was, I bounced back tepid one-liners on their feminine topics ranging from shoes to cervical cancer and contemplated over and over, why these large bunch should be so lucky as to have found their better half and gotten married. There's not one Sumiko Tan here. Underlying that was the more weighty question of how did they know that that person's The One.

Hmmm...

I'm gonna sleep on everything, consult both the Bible and the zodiac horoscope forecast for 2009 Year of the Ox (funny ver). Cabin crew suddenly seems like a very sexy alternative again. Dope that the walk-in's this Sat. OK, let's now relish some Eminem for moral support. Circa 2005, the lyrics are gold.

Take it easy!

stocktaking

2008-12-29T23:18:00.002+08:00

WARNING: Verbosity Ahead

Stocktaking 2008:

Barring any further cataclysmic event that should occur outside of my control, I think it's safe to close the book for the year. So, I shall write in the past tense. A wink to the memory of all my English teachers, love y'all. Helen S, pls get in touch.

2008 had certainly been no banner year. Personally, this year bore a lot of similarity to the debacle in the global financial industry. Everyone's a victim, hurt in some way; only, how critically injured. Going by metaphors, I'd be AIG. Probably not 'too big to fail' but rather, becos I survived with a collective bailout pieced together by, amongst many helping hands and support channels, Our Ally in the sky aka God, definitely.

On the last day of 2007, Mum took an abrupt turn for the worse and in the gathered presence of my extended family - less my bro, whom was on holiday - succumbed to metastasized cancer and passed on peacefully, without any struggle. When the flat line appeared on the ECG, we still didn't believe she's gone. The fucktard of a houseman came, did his recording and left without a word. There we were still gazing at the screen for a sign of life, unbeknownst to the fact that she'd left, until the nurses came to tell us. I'd half the mind to go out and destroy the fucktard had I not started bawling like crazy then.

Mum and I had some kinks in our relationship which got worked on when she first got sick and even as her sickness got progressively worse. I look back and feel that generally, no matter how bad a parent was, - not saying Mum was really that evil, incidentally - come crunch time, the filial piety instinct will kick in and take over. That's what happened with me.

Full closure came bright and early on New Year's Day. Slumped weak on the couch in the living room after a night's wakeful sleep, my sister came over and asked me to go wash up and get dressed for the wake, I only looked over at Mum's favourite armchair with her cushions on it and began again to wash my face with tears. Knowing that no matter who she was, what she had meant to me and what she was really all about, Mum's gone and not ever coming back, that I'll never get to see her again; it just broke me. When they say a bit of you dies with the death of a loved one, know that it's true.

If I'd been primitive, I'd have taken Mum's demise as an omen for the rest of this year but no. I don't merely survive, I go from strength to strength. Missing out on a fortnight's worth of sales in the programme is a bitch but honestly at that point in time, putting things into perspective, I was actually ready to throw in the towel already. Horribly short on my sales quota, I came back to the job with a vengeance. Partly becos I was trying to numb my grief with work and also, becos I'm aggressive - I'm a fighter whom hates to give up without a good fight, amongst other issues that might qualify me for anger management therapy.

So, I went back on roadshows and canvassing. The turning point came with this retirement showcase that we had boothspace in, together with the launch of that stellar bancassurance product. In one weekend, I chalked up a total of S$320k worth of separate sales. Well it was a record at our booth, anyway. This renewed my mood and thanks also to the constantly-supportive ally that R was to me then, I even came up top in the zone. OK, there're only 4 of us altogether but the achievement disparity is quite significant.

Unluckily, that also meant being assigned The Mall. Wonderful! R and I decided to try our best and survive there for as long as we could. Right from the start, I unknowingly began my career tailspin. As J would later let on, I'd came on too strongly in that first month. I don't need him to tell me when I'd heard it myself as V bitched about it to B supposedly behind my back except, I unwittingly caught him doing so. And I already got an inkling even before that, since I'm actually sensitive like a mimosa/seismograph even if I don't look/show it.

My agenda had always been clear from Day 1. I'm here to work and earn comm, so fuck your politics and what you may think about me. But as they say, no man's an island and don't know about you, but I wasn't too hot about being well-hated so I tried to play nice. It only got things from bad to worse so that even R hated my guts and when R decides to hate someone, it's forever. Hate to say it but to date, I've not regained R's friendship.

Furthermore, the long hours, shitty shift work, low customer quality didn't help, neither did outpost duty. I can't recall the number of times I just lock up the outpost for extended breaks, think 3 - 4 hours, returning to collect my bag and leave, hours ahead of time. On more rebellious days, I've even contemplated going to catch a movie.

And don't get me started on the extremely juvenile way the management tried to play hardball by concocting a series of punitive, intensely immature and humiliating penalties to shame staff whom fail to meet up to sales quotas. Retooling on Sundays? Give me a break. To wit, I've only been to 2 such sessions. To all the rest, I'd not spared any innovation on the reasons behind my turning down the RSVP.

One day, probably at outpost, I did my math and saw that the scales had crashed down on the side of Push Factors. I awoke and observed, like Buddha in his hour of enlightenment, that this is nothing but a Shit job, a prosaic but most fitting adjective.

There and then, I just gave up and began focusing on quitting. All glamorous visions of that corporate ladder and career advancement faded away to the typing out of my resignation letter, that waited for glory in my thumbdrive for not a few months of my salaried languishing. K told me he hates to lose and when he's to fail, he'll make sure things fail according to his whims. I guess that's just my way of getting back, although it's more like throwing feeble infant punches at an ogre.

On and off in all those months, I alternated between being a frequent smoker and a social smoker. This takes the whole cake for being the dumbest thing I did this year. Not to say I've never smoked before, just not as much. Resigning was the next best thing I did. The best thing was ending my backsliding ways and coming back to the Lord in the last quarter.

By mid-year, I may even have been depressed for a bit from my career or the lack of it, and my love life, blighted by so many false starts. Sitdowns with the good doctor actually prompted her to offer a bit of career advice, namely, to consider quitting my job. Becos she said that while going through my health report with me, which was thankfully super healthy but for that marginally high blood pressure, there was an added air of poignancy.

I got to talking with friends from another side of the industry and got really sold on the whole business. My original plan upon resignation was to join with friends at a certain company, which I did all for oh, a couple of weeks?

So, I quit. By end September, I was out of the job. Only a handful knew about my resignation but news spred like wildfire in that circle so before long, all sorts of rumours and name-smearing tales came to my ears. I lapped it up, wishing only that the rumour mongers had a bit more creativity in their skulls.

Over at the new place, it's a drastic selldown in terms of glamour and other superficialities, which I realized are actually quite important personally. The Bowerbird in me shakes his head at the offending crassness of it all. It's little wonder I tendered my resignation one day after signing the appointment letter. OK, I lied.

In September, the financial giants started giving up the ghost. By October, things have reached some kind of stalemate and checking out the efforts of the people at my new company, it proved to be very strenuous moving forward. I wondered at the intelligence of my move, feeling that continuing on might mean adding too much hardship on my plate this year. Like a stroke of luck, an acquaintance came then to pick me up. I became a Business Development Manager for his mortgage business and tried my hand at loans.

In a matter of weeks in October, the banks here started to feel the repurcussions and entered versions of credit crunch. The loan business started to slow down as even quality loans took much time to be approved. As it turned out, a lot were rejected. New loans were accorded amounts of only 70% of property value and in spite of cheap SIBOR-pegged interest rates, doing a loan refi might actually burn the homeowner ultimately, due to fallen property valuations.

When my mate told me explicitly to restart my job hunt, I damn nearly fell off my chair. By November I was free as a bird again, just not happy as a lark. Then, I decided to just find a stable job. And I did, within a month too, thankfully. Except, the job only begins in January so effectively, I've been wasting for the past few weeks. Not a nice thing, to be sure.

OK, getting tired of my own wordiness. To fast-track this last bit then:

- I went around with V behind someone's back. Very racy! Very homewrecker! We hung out, wined and dined. She took me to private events and got me acquainted with some of her connections to the movers and shakers in town. Very sexy! We hung out a fair bit at her posh neighbourhood, walking her dog round and round the estate. Very sweet!

- Backpacking trip w Thailand buddy got busted due to my crazy expenditure and not enough interest in the region, so ZoukOut became the next best thing. Rounded up by a friend, we reached to confirm that 5 of us were ZoukOut noobs. It was a riot. Partied with friend's friend's group of crazy Jap kids, eyeballed hot babes and hunks, Sasha'd, Dimitri from Paris'd, djb'd, Above and Beyond'd, Guitar Hero'd with the bunch, hanged out at Chivas' private area with a mini celeb, made knowing smiles at my ex-GP with his arm wrapped tightly around another guy's waist, drank, camwhored, danced, and generally celebrated what's left of our youth there on the beach.

- For more than one full week, the whole family was home when it started out only with my retiree dad and I. Everybody's clearning leave but it got rather intense when my sis also started bumming around too, having gotten a better offer that starts in the new year.

- Has it only been about two months? It definitely feels more than that. I hate bumming around. However constructively I fill my days with thoughtful activities, it still falls short. Probably becos I'm not earning a keep but instead, am splurging. I feel like Holden again. I swear I'm more Zooey Glass or Buddy Glass actually. Esp Buddy Glass, probably. Here, have a parenthesis rose @}-'--,-{---- My Holden days are over, OK! On a tangent, I don't think I can ever retire. On its trajectory, well not unless I got kids/grandkids to fawn over. As much as I love kids, it tires me out just thinking of the things required to pass down. Going to outer space now, Daniel Goleman wrote that what quality EQ a kid learns from his parents before the age of 6 pretty much sets the tone for what kinda success the kid will one day become. Whoa! Coming back to my bumming record, I've also officially B/T'd about a HD worth of space. 111GB, well done.

And as for Other Exploits, unelaborated and in code for my own sake:
1. K
2. H
3. Th
4. Te
5. C
6. J
7. X
8. Va
9. V
And to think that after it all, I still qualify as celibate. I really should go jump down from a high place.

I've also seen that the people who really dig me and I kinda dig back, will turn out to be truly psychotic. What's the deal huh?

Wrapping to a close, it's not too soon for new year resolutions except it's always the same one for me and that's to be a better person that I have been before. Breaking it down yields a lot of possibly painful changes I don't wish to expound or enumerate here but I'm a sucker for change so I'd say, BRING IT ALR!

For posterity, here's a toast on imaginary wineglasses. Imagine that it's post-dinner at our gorgeous balcony-seating dining table after a sinfully ambrosial and horribly overpriced gourmet 10-course dinner in the company of you, some mutual good friends and me. Now, imagine that we're served chilled icewine from a good vintage which will leave an almost cloying aftertaste in our mouths. A breathtaking picture that is the night sky awaits the tipping of your head to take it all in, that whole black velvet with shimmering diamonds masquerading as stars. Breezes from the Grecian seas below us are making the candlelights on the majestic antique candelabra centrepiece upon our table dance. Most romantically, I might add. Our faces, which have all become fat with the many sweet years of opulence and successful careers, are all aglow now with good health and good fortune and flush with bliss and hope. Raise high your wineglass now, buddy! To a FABULOUS 2009 and many, many more good years, cheers!

after-dinner Scrabble

2008-12-18T01:06:00.002+08:00

The aftermath of our game just begs to be written into a stellar, racy bestseller. Had either of us been clairvoyant, we'd have read something in those tiles the way some people read their tea leaves. I mean, better than tea leaves here, we got actual words waiting to be decrypted. But no, we only marveled for a bit, took a snap for kicks and swept it clean for a next game.

Cool breezes whipped the tents around us as the troubled night sky seemed to threaten rain. Smokers huddled nearby, further curtailing their numbered days with every carcinogenic breath off the stick. I looked at them and wished they'd done Biology in school, or at least be a bit skeptical to write off the so-called findings funded by tobacco companies, which hollowly challenges the actual possibility of contracting cancer through nicotine use, as agnotology. A middle-aged passerby walked by and remarked that Scrabble's such a great game. Bemused, I invited him to join us but he politely declined and returned to his laptop of work.

A rash of jokes erupted after we saw how the missing tile would never be found, collected the bags of grocery and decided to go walk the dog anyway.

P/s Therefore, I suppose I'm fast regressing back to my Beat roots. Oh, angelheaded hipster. Howl, desolation angels. Either that or the Jazz age, which is an even further throwback.

in loving memory

2008-12-06T13:09:00.001+08:00

One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.

Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald

It's coming up to the first year anniversary of Mummy's demise. Has it been that long really? The trickling sand in the hour glass is certainly not letting up as every grain continues falling inexorably into history. Even if one holds himself at a standstill, life is flying right by so fast, so numb.

While the tears have stopped a while ago, I guess one never ever really recover from a beloved's passing. One might find some way to survive it. Reason, perhaps; to logically figure how amongst other things, he/she would only want you to go on with your life best as you could. Relocate, perhaps; to establish displacement from all that remains to remind you of him/her. Or religion, perhaps; and shore up solace in the sanctuary of His Grace.

But what's for sure is that a wound has lodged itself somewhere deep within one's being. Although healed by now, it continues on with its legacy of pain by laying down that angry mess of scar tissue in a violent, random criss-cross pattern; so that sometimes, totally out of the blue, your eyes well up with tears and you know very well it isn't the story/movie/music/onion/etc.

My creative vein conjured a rather vivid vision of Mummy the other night, which inspired me to write. The pen just glided on the paper, describing a scene of Mummy leaning back on a soft lawn of white fluffy clouds and attended to by cherubs. Mummy was communicating with the cherubs whom she loves and when she saw me, gazed at me and smiled peacefully. A beautifully soft, crisp white light lit the whole scene. I hope it's a case of the Holy Spirit talking and not my own wishful thinking for at the end of it, I've even inked a picture of Mummy.

New Year's Eve will forever serve a dual function now. While I can get sentimental and foolish at every year's end, I suppose it might get a bit more intense moving forward. On a tangent, Christmas has all but lost its meaning hasn't it? Which mallfront still bothers to put up a Nativity scene instead of Santa Claus, the patron saint of Xmas Consumerism, amidst beautifully wrapped giftboxes? But Christmas is really my type of holiday. I get to indulge my inner hedonist with the gorgeous, opulent holiday decadence. Bring it on, already!

Back from digression now: So, I surmise that what they say is true - to live/love is to let go. Am I being considerate or plain stupid for not releasing to Him all that I cannot fully undertake, for fear of troubling Him with my trivialities? Note to self: Guess what?

Leona Lewis - Run (Snow Patrol cover)

How fragile is this mortal coil? I'm on the verge of feeling like Holden Caulfield at the end of the book, missing every single person he's came across in his life, even probably, the bastards.

I leave you with my fav quote from Paul Bowles' masterpiece, imo.

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles

tipping on the brink of a high cliff

2008-11-23T14:51:00.005+08:00

It's 35 mins past 1 am. In the other window is my rapturous discovery of the month/quarter and I'm finding it hard to sleep on it.

Earlier, I thought that today's greatest coup must be Yv's striking the top prize on lottery, which she didn't fail to immediately text me about upon returning from her day trip to Malacca and made promise to treat me somemore. Her incredible luck at winning things just builds on itself, I see now, to reach the present momentum that makes her continued winnings perhaps inevitable. Well anyway, congrats again, Yv!

Having finally recovered from the stomach upsets this whole day, understandably causing me to want to turn down any further North Indian fine dining for the time being, I was watching one BT'd romantic movie after another post-dinner, when my eyes started to hurt from all that viewing. And since I've watched Lost In Translation before, I decided to try and shut down my laptop. To no avail and thankfully, for as my OCD kicked in to the tune of my sentimentality, which always just fucks me up, I consulted the Oracle again on a certain specific matter.

Now I know OCD. I've got several friends whom are afflicted by it and not unhappily too, strangely. And since these are the friends I got to know outside of my shrink's joint, it makes one wonder just what is normalcy and whether each of us is actually afflicted by some complex to some degree. Friend of mine was skipping about the block motifs on the tiles of some place when I shoved him hard so he missed his intended block and we launched into a noisy discourse on OCD. He continued skipping about those bloody tiles much to my chagrin and I'm sure, that of incoming mallrats. Another obsesses over her personal belongings and refuses to let you crack open her books (even textbooks) wide enough for you to read the words near the spine. So yes, I do know I got OCD.

Being creative, the way I manifest my OCD is definitely new media. With the Oracle at disposal and a social network that's heaving to life, so to speak, I love to do a bit of sleuthing when idle and yet obsessed. The power of the Oracle is not to be limited within the scope of allowing one to complete all sorts of projects in school based largely on its findings. But frankly, it takes a gifted touch to join the dots sometimes.

This evening has been one such fruitful demo. The photo collection of the LOML has been uncovered!! In each of those pictures, my inamorato smiles brightly and sincerely at the camera. Maybe I've been watching too many reruns of The Nanny, the big fan I am - I've watched it all over from Season 1 through 6 and they're now showing Season 1 again on Hallmark. Of course, I'm watching it again. With endless back-to-back reruns of Friends and Seinfeld on Starworld at different timeslots, TV's fantastic again!

Pardon the digression and the unseeming blabbering but back to the allusion to The Nanny. Well I must've just realized that the LOML seems to bear some semblance to Charles Shaughnessy (or Mr Sheffield in the show).

The photo collection is largely familial and therefore, not at all risque. You get to see him in different places, enjoying himself in each holiday spot. The man's well-travelled and he looks even hotter with longer hair. Very Bond too since he actually flew over Mount Everest in a hired plane and hung out in Nepal... for what?

While it's great to see him, it's even more wonderful to see him and his sweet little family. Sigh... I wonder if this is God's way of telling me to just cease and desist this specific OCD subject. In other words, lay off. Otherwise to be all new age, it could be the Law of Attraction working its magic. Ok ok, I'll stand for anything that brings him nearer. Meaning, whatever.

I'm a P5 song now - Happy Sad. Doc, I will take that ECT session now. Mmm... YES, YOU CAN!

Addendum:

The more I view those pictures, the more I realize he's not the LOML for nothing. He has what I actually aspire towards. A lovely, loving wife and kid to go home to... make that a son, to be very specific.

Less and less do I see any value in my own hard work as all along, I'm hardly ambitious for my own gains. I think it's my stupid altruistic gene that's making me quickly attribute the reason for any success to an inborn urge to save the world and try to leave it a better place than I've found it. Sounds like a superhero complex.

That calling has recently mysteriously abated in intensity in favour of that emerging paternal instinct, which as a corollary, causes me to finally start paying more attention to the ladies. And being hopelessly Virgo, I've come to realize I'm one to be big on fidelity. So, I guess let's just be very happy for the picture of bliss that is the LOML and his family. I'm trying so hard to respect love and all that it stands for that I've taken on a friend's motto, 'Love is not lust.' The whole thing now, 'Love is not lust. Spit love.' Aha, creative censorship!

In a nutshell, life phases continue to puzzle me. Much as intellectual as I strive at being, I'd as soon write a book than figure my life out.

This WIP now bids you goodnight and thanks for reading!

LEGEND
Yv : some friend
BT : Bittorrent
OCD : Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
the Oracle : Google, if you must know
LOML : love of my life
P5 : Pizzicato 5
ECT : Electro Convulsive Therapy
WIP : work in progress

VENT 151108

2008-11-15T01:49:00.005+08:00

DISCLAIMER: Not v pretty writing. Caveat emptor.

Having reached the expiry on my thankfully shortlived shelf life as a so-called surrogate, I'm happy to once again pronounce the proven factual essence to the statement, thus produced verbatim, "Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned." Not like we're fools to begin with, but then nobody talks about the strange feeling that assails one when the walk gets closer; till suddenly, hands clap together and instead of finding lunch, wind up driving aimlessly around, viewing estates. There we were, Dazed and Confused.

Over an initial dinner featuring just the two of us, good but superficial friends like I thought, we were contemplating the predicament of our mutual friend aka her guy in his overseas stint. Even seeming to celebrate a little in fact, over expensive seafood too, which at one point had us debating if one of the dishes was actually stylized canned food. Too much extravagance in a time when recession looms large and near, so afterwards, we punished ourselves by doing window shopping. In gay lingo, window shopping is analogous to cock-teasing. What's the bloody point?

Good but superficial friend as I thought she was, until I realized she still remembers my telling her about the way I bat. 'You remember that night you got wasted?' And not just remaining tolerant but being able to accept and embrace it? Upgrade. Before the night was over, further plans were made to meet for more movies and meals and sending her home, we just had to drag the time having tea and prata across the road. That's prob when the unrealistic romantic notions began to whirl into life.

Not long after, the possessive streak emerged clogging up the phone display with rounds of missed calls and barrages of text messages, with the suggestive text function left turned on, apparently. Double entendre. Yikes! Cut-scene to walking the foul-smelling, grunt of a Beagle-X around her estate, the secret purpose of which was only to be so lucky as to chance upon a certain Mediacorp beauty queen, hopefully sitting out in her garden, appreciating her own beauty. But alas there she was, confounding me with her requests.

It's becoming vainglorious navel-gazing so I'll hit you with bullet-points now.. OK, I'm lazy:
- facetiming at every chance
- heiress apparent
- monied upper crust
- chauffeurs
- motorcade of premium rides
- hobnobbing with socialites
- by invitation only
- jetquay
- on company tab
- stated devotion & adoration
- 4am missed calls
- fling?
...

I think 'on company tab' really did it for me. Sexy and glamorous as it all appears, my only grouse is that I'm absolutely not attracted to her. To her secondary qualities like her wealth and devoted attentiveness, yes but to her, not a bit - fortunately or unfortunately.

Even got to talking to her dad in the office, which was nice. The good man was generous on advice which I had no trouble taking in, but as usual, the actual application should be daunting. Yawn, but first, let me recover my stomach for challenges.

Luckily I guess, we did not explore anything that would mar this three-way friendship. Although from what's been shared, the guy's returning to some rude shock. The schadenfreude in me is already lapping it up. Whatafucker!

In the aftermath of this stillborn love affair, riding on my moral high horse, I performed several Houdini feats and exercised to extreme, that meaningless tragedy of an excuse, 'I have to be cruel to be kind'. She is a fricking fast learner; responding to my silence with a vacuum and ergo, proving the truth in the opening passage. From Mdm Authoritarian to Ms Nonchalence overnight, that's lightning speed. Anyway, I've come to realize now that I'm missing her but I can't and won't do anything now to redeem that displaced love.

Prob too young to count as a Cashmere Mafia yet but the ambition in this sweetheart can only push her to ever greater heights. Let's wish her all the best and her guy, all the more.

rare blast from the past.. enjoy!

2008-11-09T15:57:00.005+08:00

Picture Picture Picture

Picture. The most perfect overlap of exposures leaves me in a sort of flush, half-excited and inspired. I see the nicest apartment block in a long time. And I remember the still of architecture basking in the afternoon sunshine, with just a few clouds drifting by in the background of bright blue sky. I recall the hours of idleness that I spent suicidal and idiotic beyond myself, or aslept. I can dream of many things, many people and many futures that I am to partake in but when the time comes, I can be weak-willed and unhappy. I also sometimes fantasize that I lived someplace I liked, I do sometimes think of it as Greece or Spain, or even Tokyo where the fashionable girls run free and eerie. Now I can tell you of one of my dreams from long ago. I was sprawled out on the living room of a small apartment, set in a huge block. Open window, the facing scenery is a similar huge apartment block. It was a rainy afternoon. I was sprawled out on the living room floor with one or two persons. One pointed outside, and we watched through our open window, a jumper plunge. I no longer know what remarks were said. The setting was just like that apartment block in the picture.

Picture. For I have seen you in my dreams. And I know your story as the lines on my palm. For I have thought it through a lot of times recently. And I know my mind is set. For I like the way you present yourself as something so intense. And I like to be with you last of all. For I have seen you taken as a picture in my friend’s photojournal. And I like to be remembered by her through you and you through me and us through that picture. For I like to know what it would be like to fly off with you as datum. And I think I would like to have you as my point of exit. For I like you. For I like you. And my name is Yushun. For I am dead like you.

Picture. A delight of sorts for my friend, the architectural student and avid amateur photographer, is an apartment block as seen on a day when the clouds were several and an hour into late afternoon. And I picture from what I know, a satisfying lunch on coffeeshop noodles at the foot of the block, a close friend for company, the Holga toy camera in the bag, the new self-modified bag, her clothes and sandals. And I can imagine can’t I? Pigeons feeding on nearby grassy parkland, elderly folk relaxing on the wooden benches airing their old bones (through open shirts and bedtime shorts) in the open sun, the screech of car tire, colours flying in the wind as laundry dangling perilously off ledges, schoolchildren having fun at the playground still clad in uniform, a smell of fresh paint, a touch of decrepitude in the old urine-stained ground and walls that your shoes shuffled by, the dark staircase old and urine-stained and smelly as well, your friend’s flat, the glass of cold pop soda, his stuff, your comments. Much later at leaving, to commemorate your day and also, to make love to the apartment block that made you wished you lived there by way of capturing its images in your camera film, you took shots of it from funny but poignant angles. One turned out as a double-exposure, another, was pure depression. I know that as you went through those prints at the Kodak shop counter, you were feverishly content with the turnout.

Thursday 8 August 2002

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My life as a movie

Lights, camera: There were all the lights in the world, enough lights to loot the day of sun, the night of moon and stars, your dreams of shape and colour. There were no shadows and dark corners. The few colours darker than grey only belonged to one or two pieces from my wardrobe and but rarely, on people’s faces. As many lights there were, were as many cameras. There might as well be one for each angle tilt. They talked about integral documentary, of how the summation of all these shots from different angles would eventually come together to consummate a picture-perfect understanding of the subject matter. Before I disappear into my trailer I would sometimes pick an argument with a random minder, because you see, even with all the lights in the world blazing down on us so that there was no more darkness, the darkness inside me was merely charging up to unfurl an abyss in the abysmal me.

Arms crossed, in the backseat of a car hurtling through rain, with the lips pursed shut so that the mouth took on that demanding, downward curl; just these aspect close-ups would seemingly pronounce that this business of trying to live is good as over.

I know time. I think I got it figured out and can start properly worrying for the next life, since you must understand that time does not unwind when you back into the past, living this life today as if it was yesterday. Time does not bend even as you do, bending forward to the clandestine blows from the bad side of life, so that you can no longer see the path ahead, in its stead, you are staring at your navel. Then trying to prove yourself right or wrong, you start to fall in love with your navel.

Start all over again. Sometimes I like the way I look. Sometimes I don’t. In between, some people like the way I look, others don’t. No amount of makeup could save a face if that face has no redeeming feature on its own, like a swollen pout for a mouth or a pair of large, sensitive eyes. The mirror me sometimes doesn’t bother to smile back at me, I’ve stopped letting that bother me.

Your life as its soundtrack

Your entrance can only be by cymbal clash. A big bang befitting a big boy, your lyrical presence would then take over, translating into flesh celebrated aesthetic ideals.

Even with you mum, your wonderland body speaks volumes. Your divine face is the look of love, the sight of your unclothed trunk is pornography. I want to live off you as a nomad, taking refuge in the day in a hair follicle, coming out at night to trespass the landscape of your body. My drifter heart commits itself to the only endless travels across you, to continue going homeless for you in order to fully love you, for that would be the only way. For when you are the world, staying in at home alone is merely insane. Better to lie back against the soft places of you, nestle my chin in the cradle of your neck, dine off the floorboard of your soles, sleep satisfied under the unyielding weight of your celestial mass, than to stay at home, all sullen, all dreamless. Instead, huge boulders of muscles perfect for tanning on, the merry-go-round of your trim waist, your firm stomach the perfect sleep for insomnia, your tremendous, humbling glutei, and your tree-trunk legs. I can only imagine what lies between those tree trunks. My trek is slow but someday I hope to arrive and for certain then, I will lock down the tent pins, unburden my camels of every belonging, to set up home deep in your heart.

+++++++

Your dawn smile

My brief dalliance with your dawn smile was a summation of the intense passion that life has to offer anyone if he only looks hard enough. After the last visage of dream had shadowed the retreating footsteps of sleep, you came to life with first that dimpled smile and then, the opening of your twinkling eyes that threatened to usurp the day of its brilliance at that early hour. Breathing slowly, otherwise my grin would lose its face-crossing latitude I reached out to wipe away silky strands from your face. You lay supine on the bed, blanketed beneath slightly crumpled bedclothes, your pretty head upon the ashen pillow that highlighted the pastel softness of your complexion. I knew you then to be of cherubic species and so, shuddered in awe and hesitation to touch you any further, in case this mortal soul should wear off its contamination on your pristine celestial self. Suddenly your tingling giggle broke my spell of idol-worship. The carefree peals of your giggle resounded through the delicate daybreak with the same effortless grace and inspiriting to the gongs of Buddhist temple morning bells. My life fell right back into place, noting with a transcendental mirth that you and I both were so close together; and febrile, knowing that you were not any less human than me. You looked into my eyes not saying a word, yet everything was in your smile. The morning was just beginning its chromatic warm-up with the blue undertone steadily fading to reveal the true colours of the world. The sun climbed up the sky once again to conquer all darkness. In that golden morning sunlight which affected your glistening eyes, so that you had to shade them with one hand while trying to keep gazing at me sitting just a bit away from you now, you were perfect.

Monday May 24 2004

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So let time slide apart

So let time slide apart. Let Dali’s warped clocks become reality. So let time slide apart. Let each second crumble into thousands of frames of stop-motion. Let each intake of breathe demand perpetual reincarnation. There then would be many you and many me. Perhaps at one of those moments there will be one you whom are meant for me, under the everlasting spell of you.

To unwind you is like having an aurora borealis soften the concrete of the night sky. You and I match together like fitting jigsaws. I only stop breathing so that you would not become me and then some. Like comrades in war that just changed its objective so now our common enemy is distance; yet any closer, we would definitely lock together forever as a Siamese twin. The warmth escaping from your body comes down on mine as sweat. Sweat. The softness of your sweat drying on my body forms an atmosphere of complete surrender. This bed enfolds us like an oyster. Our pearlescent loving takes on a silver sheen in the moonlight. Of a sudden, you are crushing down on me. You are everywhere to me. I cannot, cannot find any exit from you. I take you in with tired arms hauling every gram of your weight in; I take you in with lungs wanting air, getting instead the boon of your smell. I take you in gladly, hungrily. Your flesh is meat; your sweat is drink; your grunt is my belch. My tears are your rapture.

Everlasting to everlasting, gosh, that would be what I promise to you if only.

Friday May 1, 2004 12:17AM

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Infernal Daydreams
Saturday, November 29, 2003

In Hell suffering souls live again to suffer and die only to live again, with the cycle repeating endlessly until some unknown equation is balanced and the suffering may end. Suffering souls are not given body or form, they exist as presences with their senses intact so they may feel. A fraction found themselves initially able of speech, and were desperately calling out to one another for help, but they were only to begin screaming out in pain forever, and all voice died down along the way. Suffering souls move by moving the ground. They fly by clawing through the air. In Hell one cannot forget.

In Hell there is only ice and suffering souls. It is a world that has an average climate that is colder than absolute zero temperature, it is darker and lonelier than before our Universe comes to exist, its geography is wide and limitless as infinity, and its existence dates before God. The cold defines Hell. Blizzards haunt this world perennially, frequently raining down large perfect spheres of hail with the heavy snowfall, that fall in a stealthy manner to crush down suffering souls on their lost wandering, and stay weighted atop of them forever. Winds prowl the face of this world, frequently slamming suffering souls into fragments of themselves to be lost soon under the heaping snow, their cries sinking into the depths never to be known again. Vertical rain slice the air like bullets or spikes, its waters collect forming shoreless turbulent oceans that amongst worst things, drown. Sometimes it gets too cold for the known symptoms of bad weather, these are the times when Hell freezes over. And sometimes it gets even colder, and the cold becomes a burning. The cold becomes a fire.

In Hell everything is made of fire. Fire is the only matter and anti-matter. The fires of Hell are blood red. They sometimes have forms and shapes too, and despite being fire, they do not give out much light than dim glows. So that even with this world of fire, the sky of Hell is an absolute and incomprehensible blackness. Without the luxury of being perforated by star constellations, moons and planets, or their equivalence, the sky of Hell is night. The sky of Hell is an abyss. The sky of Hell is vertigo. Hell's sky is an abyss dark of the darkest night, so that standing away from its perimeters while gazing down into it causes vertigo. Not the vertigo as we know it, but a sort of impossible craving that leads the chronically depressed to their not unhappy suicidal ends, no more causing nausea because of its inherent unpleasantness, but because of the semblance of bliss that it now represents. In Hell bliss and suicide, amongst other things, cannot be found and they are all unimaginable. In Hell the only characteristic of fire which remains true is the heat it generates. An intense heat like one could never know. A heat which just after a second's duration of first experience, if one be so lucky as to survive it, leaves him as though lifetimes had passed, that he had lived and died whole decades ago; and he but still alive, is as if a newborn, left knowing of nothing but the residual heat on his scorched skin darkly tanned, and the bland taste of death left on the tongue in a dry mouth. Heat is the secondary quality of Hell, the primary being Pain. The heat is gravity. It is the only aspect of Hell by which the suffering souls can validate their own continuing existence, and realise perhaps wistfully, that they are not merely pain itself.

+++++++

The City wants your tears
Wednesday, December 03, 2003

”This city belongs to me, sets me on fire, illuminates me and colours me rose and sows in me wheat, poetry and the letters of the alphabet.” – Nizar Kabbani

A draft:

The City wants my tears.
My tears are in the rain, in the dew. My tears simmer deep in my heart, affecting each new pump of blood with a permanent element of dolor. My tears seed in my body as water content, making me a roughly 60% unhappy person. They are swirling hot and incipient behind my eyes, ever ready. When shed, tears give my face a sophisticated look of misery which is at once pathetic as well as glorious. My tears flow as profuse rivulets, they leak the way water bursts free from cracks in broken dams. In eyes these are lacrimal glands and tear ducts. The snail-trails of tears left on my face after crying are sticky and salty but not unpleasant. Tears although sometimes beautiful and when shed skilfully, can resemble diamonds falling away from the eyes under the right lighting conditions, evaporate eventually after all.

The City wants your tears.
Like a tribute to be paid without demand, like service tax which comes nestled within the bill. From you, perhaps tears are everywhere. On the pillow, on big days, in bed, in the bathwater, in the soup, in the vertical rain, in the car, on the train, underground, overboard, in space. Tears for every specific occasion, only subtly dissimilar in intensity or poignancy of meaning. For boredom, for joy, for sorrow, for anger. The tearful face as the new smiley face.

The City and its tears.
The City has been crying. Its twin Mother Nature has been crying too. Both long to embrace. The City's tears are sometimes abstract. Its tears are the lonesome refrains in musical boxes. Its tears are rising smog. Its tears are the occasional flames that burn at the lips of smokestacks. It tears are lonely vacant rooms especially on Saturday nights. Its tears are a canal winding its way about the neighbourhood of a ghetto, by the canal are strays and womenfolk doing their laundry. Its tears are the pools of puddle that catch the reflections of nearby buildings after an actual rain. Its tears are jazz songs singing softly and intermittently from a broken transistor left behind where tall grass receive concrete pavement at a bus depot on the outskirts of town. Its tears are murder. Its tears are New Year's Eve fireworks.

+++++++

Portraits Series
Friday, December 19, 2003

SKY

1. SKY remixed as Paul Bowles' "The Sheltering Sky"

You asked me how the sky can be a shelter, when from it cold rains fall like blows to soak wet anything dry to its very soul. When from it, the hot sun glares down from its throne in the solar system to nourish anything plump of moisture with frying heat. How can a shelter be anything less than a roof over the head, solidly defined by a ceiling, beams and pillars? Or a cave even, at desperation, but not the sky. And you looked up at the masses of cloud, seeing only the faces in one of the clouds, not feeling the embrace of the whole sky wrapped around you from head to tip of toes, not caring for the way the mothering sky features you with love, with love, with itself as background; you looming high above me, cutting a sharp silhouette against the sky, your body distinct in every little detail, so that your eyes are stars, your dress becomes the wind, your hair is outer space, and your breasts, phenomenal clouds.

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Sister's Christmas in Japan
Wednesday, December 10, 2003

My sister thought going to Japan alone was important to her. "Going to Japan alone is important," said my sister in a strained confident tone, "to me." It was a play on her catch phrase. The original being "My art is important" which she frequently used to impress upon us, upward of 5 times a day, especially when she was hard at work painting her canvas. And when at the same time being hassled, for the umpteenth time, to come downstairs from her bedroom cum studio for meals, she would be wont to affix exclaimation marks to her catch phrase and lament her immense displeasure.

That Friday evening before the evening news ended and my sister's art programs began on TV, which would put the time between 9.30 and 10 o'clock, she let us in on her latest artistic intent. Previous plans had included embalming the family poodle a la Damien Hirst, manipulating the mango tree in the front lawn into a living installation art, painting murals on all the walls and ceilings in the house themed according to her whim, her destroying of every machine in the house in a sarcastic Luddite effort while being filmed, organizing a sit-in outside the National Arts Council, and such. She even knew about Eddie Saunders' shark too.

When my sister's latest plan bubbled out of her lips, my mother immediately took fright and sunk back into her chaise lounge with an exaggerated sigh of despair. "Darling daughter, you are only fourteen. We as responsible, loving parents can't possibly risk allowing you to travel alone to a big foreign country like Japan, at all. The dangers are beyond what we can worry for, love," replied my father as he gradually lowered the annual report he was reading. It had the effect of theatre curtains flying aside to reveal the stage where an intellectual scene was at place. My father's platinum spectacle frame suddenly glinted in the soft glow from the ceiling light fixtures above, momentarily enhancing his already physically obvious erudition. At that moment, we all looked favorably at that sharp head of our family. Then my mother, "Yes dear, we cannot consent you on this request at this time. In a few years' time perhaps, just not now. How about we go there for our annual overseas holiday instead?"

"Parents! But my art is important!" my sister emphasized, dragging out from her carry-around black leather portfolio, a series of fancy, vibrantly-coloured A3-sized posters screaming of sushi, geishas, Tamagotchi, Hiroshima, Yukio Mishima and other icons of Japanese culture. We passed those posters around in a sustained air of solemnity and profound silence, awed by our youngest family member's skilled flair for the arts. Much later when the first of her Friday evening art programs started to come on the TV, and we were still quietly scruntising each piece of her poster work for additional unconsidered artistic meaning, my sister got impatient. "I'm sorry, my beloved family. I really HAVE to go to Japan. I promise not to lengthen the duration of my time there, keeping it at 5 weeks. I promise to send you picture postcards. I promise not to bust my credit card whether on shopping at Harajuku or on the hotel service. I promise not to attend any rock concerts." The television was showing a strange French animation of a man dressed in a Pigeon suit, dancing with a woman dressed in a Cat suit whom was actually going to eat him up. It had my sister's eyes glued to the television screen, so that despite her sincerity, during the whole of her address her head was facing the television. My parents witnessing once again the potential of their daughter's art, was again on the verge of relenting.

And this time they relented indeed and unanimously too. "Baby love we would allow you to go to Japan, only if you'd stay with our family friends in Japan. We'd allow you to go only if while there you'd travel around with Uncle Seiko... ..."

That Christmas my sister called us from an apartment in Tokyo, chiefly expressing her happiness and also how everything was passing through her, leaving behind endless bouts of fanatic inspiration. Through the speakerphone my sister's voice of a joyous crystalline tone,"...but yes! It is almost spiritual. This is just great!" And us by the phone, breaking into understanding laughter. The well-adorned live Christmas tree at the end of the sitting room seemed to respond to our laugher, the baubles seemed to shiver and share in our jolly excitement.

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Mother's varicose veins
Sunday, October 19, 2003

When I was ten my mother made me understand the meaning of her varicose veins. I remember those numerous green and blue nodules that were lying just beneath the smooth surface of her pale legs, crawling up on them like little lumpy snakes. She made me feel her varicose veins. They were soft and springy to the touch. When I pressed down on them they flattened and merged into the flesh of her calf, but as soon as my fingers left them they bounced back up. To my childish self their novelty immediately made them my latest playthings.

My mother slapped my hands away when she saw that I was treating her legs so playfully.

"These are the legs that raised you," she said, lying back onto the musty chaise lounge.

I inhaled the funky smell of her seat, while I looked at her legs with renewed fascination. My eyes travelled to find my mother's tired wan face, a stunning whitened contrast set against the maroon of the chaise lounge, like a full moon hanging on a summer night sky. I looked at her legs again, mesmerized by them, and I cried out "Mama! Mama!" as I hugged those legs with the green and blue snakes sound asleep under the skin.

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Portraits: Descriptions of people newly acquainted

Andy
1
An old person, possibly woman. Her back turned to us, the Tokyo sunset forms the backdrop to her darkened figure. Hunched slightly, both hands by her side clutch bags of grocery. She makes her way slowly down the lane on wooden clogs, careful not to trip herself up. The alleywalls seem to close in on her skinny small self, yet she maintains her presence, gains strength with each footstep, emerges from the alley and is gone.

2
A landscape barren except for desert sand and a narrow stream of slow-moving water that has come from the high mountains, is cold, and cuts through the flat sand plains by its middle. In the water are minnows and tiny frogs. An aeroplane flies its grey skies.

30 July 2002 Tuesday
Ronnie
The quiet of a year, the lonely weeks with no celebration to plan for, settles into form. Its wintry climate crystallizing its solitude and northern lights carelessly haunt its black nights. A lot of sadness and difficulty, picture now desolated wilderness as far and wide as you can see, recently deforested leaving stumps of tree still rooted to the ground, and everything wiped out by the white of snow that is falling yet with hail. You walk into the blinding whiteness, not one song in your heart. The cold eats into your bones as your mind runs crazy with weakening bad thoughts. For the very first time in your life you find the real meaning of fear. You are comforted but you will die still.

Toh
You are the fearsome I think. A foulest legend that poisons the derams, a cruel memory that disturbs mere existence. Kill me but not sap me of my vitality, of my humble happiness that puts little smiles on my face. Do you not see that your one scale can hold so much light and rainbow? How your tenderness can foil whole storms? Dragon breath, have Buddha. I want to be sick all over you and laugh at you while you shapeshift through ten shades of purple and red.

Donny
There are a lot on my mind tonight before I go out my window I got to thinking of you. You illustrate a point I had debated over sometimes with my buddy, that now I know he is correct as always. You are one with your store of sweets and air fresheners. Rock in appearance, who would suspect what assails you inside? That night we spoke at the corridor, this helplessness.

02 August 2002 Friday
Yilong
The new political is your happy state. You lord over us like summer sun. Your laws are replete of humour and sweet justice. “You love us like the baker puts raisins and fork marks onto dough and have them come out as grinning ginger bread people with happening brown skin.” Each night before he sleeps, he cries profusely and earnestly with profound unexplainable sorrow so that his tears mar and wash away his makeup. In the mirror he watches the clown colours run revealing his pink skin.

10 September 2002 Tuesday
Desmond Quek H H
The air has repainted itself. The sky is no longer ceiling to the world. The lawn remains green but green is no more a colour, but is instead an atmosphere, that now and then leans into the new air with its blades shivering and dewy again from this morning’s shower. It has turned hot, the climbing temperature extinguishes all other life forms except that green patch, which is happily waving its trees to the oven breeze. As the tree shadows keeps it lush so the green atmosphere begins to trace out its levels of ozone. Of a sudden, violent explosions quake the faultless living jade, pristine until right now as the warm lava of blood gush red from a boy’s mouth. The boy squats and pours his life out into a good big puddle of blood on the grass. His familiars rush to tend to him, panic takes charge of that hour. And as in an emergency, the head sometimes losing control muddles so logic and action muddle. Eventually a car is assigned and takes off accelerating the boy to help. The remaining party stays for awhile before departing themselves, that day’s itinerary lost. The air above the lawn smokes and smoulders unnoticed.

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The woman swam
19 August 2001 Sunday 10:16pm

In the water she was a slide of frog flesh. The cool river entered her. Leaking into and surrounding her naked body as a lover would, then bring her up to a half-float, setting her limbs off to swim. And the woman swam so well, with the fluid movements of a large fish. The ripples on the water surface reflected the moonlight, a marvel to watch as they trembled and broke into smaller diamonds of light.

The woman swam up her river, which led to the open sea. Evening had turned to night, but the woman would not yield to tire, would not rest yet. Water spirits were now tugging at her hair, grabbing her thrashing legs, leaving dark handprints. She heard the dead souls drowned long, long ago in the river depths; calling to her promises of love, calling out her name so tenderly, were many different voices. But the river also loved her, did not allow her death tonight. It was thus that the woman safely swam out to sea.

Her memory shed without difficulty, fading into the black formless waters. Many years of hardship and sadness now found release, were all lost in the black waves that rose against her at first, but at crashing down onto her, only took away the memories, not her life. Her life was her own. Each gasp of air, each brisk swim stroke, was free and of her volition. It was as if, the reason why she did not feel tired or drown was simply due to her own will not to. So she kissed each wave that engulfed her, and instead of fearing, enjoyed each one as an embrace. The current brought her farther and faster out where she could be the fresh new character which she desired to be, the stranger without a background. The woman whom holds her days; free to cry and dance in the rain; be with only the one she likes; have friends, a circle of them; or maybe nothing at all, just simple living. Anyhow she would have it her own way. She swam ahead swiftly, as she wanted to rest soon.

The woman found shore. A new dawn was just breaking in the distant sea she had crossed, birthing a sun which lit up half the dark sky with warm glowing swirls of pink and orange. The woman watched the sunrise chase the shadows away, and she forgave God.

Stop & GO

2008-07-12T21:17:00.002+08:00

Bright and early roused from sleep by Da Pump's If, I answered the call only to hear this lady on the line coyly asking me to guess her identity. I gruffly replied I got no clue and demanded to know who she was, thinking that it's one of those pesky lady cx with pittance to spare but ask for the world from you. She passed the phone over then and I immediately recognized who and where they're calling from.

It's my second family calling and high time too, considering how I've been thinking about them recently. My so-called second family is actually Nanny and her family. Having grown up from infancy till a good 6yo under their love with rare visits from my family, with only my parents visiting at that, my young brain had firmly associated Nanny and family as my own. Ever since, that familial feeling had never abated.

Summoned to meet them at one of their medicinal halls, I was shown in by EJ. Along the way, we made small talk and I tried to ask if she had a family of her own. She told me that ever since they babysat me, she had always considered me as her son if not, at least, her brother. Flattered, I told her I've always regarded them as family too and sure, I can be her 'son' if she wants to. Sorry, godparents! Reaching the medicinal hall, I saw dear ol' Nanny and DJ. Sitting behind the counter, Nanny was very much still the stately matriarch she had always been albeit, looking rather aged and frail now.

Nanny is 75 this year, her mind isn't as sharp as before and her failing health sees her being warded a few times. Whilst she used to be able to travel around the world on her own, nowadays if the cab should drop her at a different side of the street from her home, she would be lost. Shortness of breath has replaced her wondrous stamina so that even walking about makes her pant sometimes. It pains me to see her this way and it's starting to worry me.

Visiting at the shop was a good thing. In their company, there's no shortage of that genuine warm fuzzy feeling and I can marvel at the sights and smells of herbs, tonics, dried seahorses and etc. I'm not that young anymore to be calling out to cx to have a glass of cooling tea like I used to do so in my childhood at their very first shop, so I didn't do anything other than make small talk with the cx. I can still remember where that first shop was and with it being so close to both this gigantic old-fashioned playground with real sand and the sea itself, those memories are forever coated with sand too. Whoa, nostalgia!

I brought Nanny to lunch. Being fiercely independent and strong-willed as ever, she wouldn't let me stand her lunch. So I had to outwit her and no thanks to her mental state, I succeeded at paying it. I got fucking pissed when I heard about what DS' doing, probably because I see a bit of myself in him. So what if you've opened a chain of shops and is raking it in when you don't even treat your folks decently? What price is money? Hmmm but I shall reserve judgment until I get the full pic. In any case, I suppose it won't be up to me to voice anything even then.

EJ came over and began harping on the old times. She told me that shortly after I was brought home, Uncle missed me enough to make his way to my neighbourhood to spy on me. Going home, he reported to everyone what he saw with occasional turns of the back to wipe at tears. We laughed over this. Incidentally altho I wasn't the only kid Nanny babysat, I'm their favourite. EJ told me they have albums after albums of my childhood pics, clothed and otherwise. Pedo!! I probably should borrow them since I've only got 1 full album with me.

Altho they most probably don't need it, I found it in me to leave an angpow. 3 figures! This is the biggest money gift I've made YTD and yeah, how crass it is to give money. Before leaving home, I was rummaging for something to bring. They definitely won't need tonics, most probably don't take my kinda wine and fruits are very 'hospital ward'. So I concluded that a symbolic red packet is the best. Knowing how Nanny is, I had to sneak the angpow to DJ.

After taking leave, I decided to hit the gym. I've resolved to end my on/off dalliance with cigarettes once and for all. Since starting in JC/poly/army days, I had managed to break the habit for years and stave off even during the worst stress periods in U. This time round I will kick it for good.

After forking out $500 odd to get my teeth done right just after one quarter's chainsmoking, I realized that like owning a car, smoking will soon be a thing for only the rich. The analogy's simple. With Every Road Pay gantries springing up like mushrooms after the rain all over the goddamned place, it won't just be the rocketing fuel prices that ultimately burn the car-owner but gantry fees on top of COE, parking charges, etc.

Smoking's exactly like that. For the immense economic, physiological and psychological outlay, you get a return which is so little it drops to zero. In time to come, you'll even have to plug in more money to get that health fixed. It no longer makes any sense, I see no incentive to continue and don't even get me started on its so-called glamour.

Day 3 into my Healthy Lifestyle, I popped by the gym. It's with some hesitation that I visit that outlet. Altho making sense of it, it's Sat and The Socialist shouldn't be coming over from work. And so what if I see him there? It's work-life balance, exactly like he said. Still, that didn't stop me from casting a quick glance over the grounds, just to be sure. What's worse than bumping into The Soc in the gym is probably to bump into him in the steam bath, which sucked.

The Soc certainly has presence. HBP-inducing presence. First impressions aside, I curse hearing the stupid tape beforehand. Fucking unpro but very helpful, I must admit. The way The Soc handles my case and yet appears caring and open to me, speaks emetic volumes of the way he operates. In corporate profiling, he strictly belongs to the Dangerous & Deadly category. Specifically, think Black Mamba. And the guys are wrong to call him The Soc since he plays it more like The Fascist.

I ran 3.92km @ 8km/hr for 30.01 mins on a treadmill overlooking Novena Rd, counting out the Beemers to a soundtrack of Dennis Ruyer podcasts. Tiësto and Armin van Buuren don't hold a candle next to Ruyer. The guy's got taste! Without panting or feeling knocked out afterwards but that's too much cardio at a go, so whatever weights I did later was a sum deflated attempt.

Altho I didn't have the great luck of bumping into The Soc, I saw someone familiar coming up the stairs while waiting at the towel counter. Who's that familiar gentleman in that quaint combo of office wear and flipflops? Could it be a client? Doesn't look like.. I've just seen that face recently tho..

Then it struck me. It's my derm! We exchanged pleasantries then. Next time we can even work out together, coolness. And of course I'm not blind to the fact that he's pushing/above 40, single, owns his own successful practice and works out at Cali. This also makes him the 3rd doc I consult and happen to bump into at Cali. Hmmm.. I probably should just stop consulting with male docs.

For several reasons, I got home damn early today, considering that it's a Sat. One is that I thought maybe I should lavish some quality time with my folks. Except, everybody's out including Dad. Nice try!

Well then, I'm coming right up to speed on stuff. The bottomline is life is brimful of options and I'm in full control here. It's time I gave a damn.. Make that a few.

Addiction

2008-07-07T23:09:00.003+08:00

I wish the same, bro.

Thankfully, X has turned out to be just another ONS. I thought we're very similar, right down to the deceitfully decent-youthful appearance and idealistic optimism, but she's actually even more of a player than I ever will be. Therefore.. Goodbye X, next please.

Then again, I think I'd take a breather for now. I seriously wish I could go back to trading body warmth w/o the emotions but it's not easy. I've only been getting sentimental and soft-hearted of late. That must be why I'm still hanging around at my job as I'd miss all this shit when I'm gone. Not good.. but better intensify my job hunt and get back to doing charity work.

Probably seeing it coming, I popped by Taka to see Mr Black on Sat. He looked a million dollars in a formal suit, exactly like he said. It's only at seeing him that I realized I've missed him. His beefy bod, butch demeanour, calming gentleness and that soul patch which makes for such sexy accessory all signal to the way he's shaping up to be somebody's love at first sight. The crowds kept surging in to the store so there's no way to enjoy good conversation. After making purchase, I shook hands with Mr Black in our special way and he stroked me. I think my colleague raised an eyebrow then but he's too polite to say anything other than he thinks Mr Black is a nice person. Well, Mr Black is nice but I've cleanly forgotten what that nice beer can feels like for our schedules clash like crazy. Still, sweet reunion is incipient.

It's guys like Mr Black and some others including K, that make it so hard to quit. And I'm not talking about smoking, altho that's also hard to quit. I mean, like fucking hard. Ok that's a lousy pun and it's not addiction until I say so. At spending more private sompar moments with C, we concluded that while K isn't exactly drop-dead gorgeous, his charisma is catching. Sompar moments with C are always true Mastercard moments, albeit sordid ones. This time round, her face flushed red and I think her hair was steaming from the bloodrush. It was hilarious. Sigh, we are such a scandalous generation.

Not sure if it's really his charisma that leads me to finding K totally hot but what's for sure is that he's very much my type and definitely my biggest crush to date. There's something about K that turns me on and I still can't lay a finger on what that is. Suffice it to say, I'd do anything for him at the drop of a hat.

Into our sompar session, I made it known to C then that I've got a big crush on her (and her jugs) and she graciously bowed and thanked me. I always pledge my everlasting love to my crushes at the first opportunity. Try it sometime, it's a great ice-breaker!

At the end of it all, I realize I'm not having enough. This stupid job and too much socializing have taken up all time. When you get to hosting company into the wee hours on a working weekday, you know you're trying too hard. Now, let me slack back to By Invitation Only.

The doc has pronounced that I've got a clean bill of health. Ironically, it has only made me come back to the stick. I swear I'd stop when I leave. It's not addiction until I say so. The derm planted more TCA drops on my nose, which have now formed disgusting scabs that resemble blackheads. Blackheads that cost $15 a pop. CK told us to worship his '$20k rhinoplasty'. I guess I can now tell them to worship my $75 blackheads but I'm going back for more. It's not addiction until I say so.

Now that I can't rely on my good looks to sell anymore, I've resorted to intense coldcalling. Lessons gleaned from friends in sales have certainly helped up my numbers. For the first time, it got enjoyable enough that I called right into 2145. Realistically tho, I don't know how long this burst of passion's going to last.

purple foxtails

2008-07-06T21:56:00.003+08:00

mid-week pit stop

2008-06-24T23:55:00.003+08:00

Mid-week pit stop recommended essentials for the similarly housebound:
Day-old PJs, Rachel Ray, Merlot 750ml, Feeling Good: The Very Best of Nina Simone, emails, podcasts, phone conversations made in exile, Diazepam (use in moderation), bittorrent porn, finance pages, JobsDB, David Sedaris, HBO reruns, Discovery Travel & Living, cherries, homecooked meals, bed, bed, bed, bed, bed.

After watching The Secret for the umpteenth time again, I realize I don't know what I want exactly other than making loads of money. A very superficial and conventional aspiration but pragmatic. While I wanna settle down eventually, now I'm just trying to rake in more playtime altho I'm also aware of the opportunity costs involved. Then again, there's nobody I'm definitely sure enough of to commit with. I think Commitment should be added to the 5Cs of the typical Singaporean Dream. Wrt marriage, I'm a fretter like all the rest. And I haven't even sorted out this other issue that has to do with, to put it subtly, experimentation.

My boss added me on Facebook. It's definitely novel. He even plays the vampire game. His userpic shows just his cute kids. Someone opined once that she's sure his son would grow up to be a heartbreaker, seeing that he's already so dashing at that age. Which is probably below six years old and that qualifies my acquaintance as prime suspect for a case of paedophilia. Though after flipping through his kids' pics lovingly displayed in an IKEA photo curtain on my boss' desk, I've come to admit that the kid's indeed a cherub.

Work is not slow, it's dead. The day-to-day fluctuations in the markets are not something that engrosses me very much. For in the mid to long term, I'm quite sure they would pick up. In any case one should probably enter an investment with at minimal, a 5-year time horizon. This understanding will stand unless he/she has been to some oversubscribed options/futures trading course conducted by some hotshot private investor and thus thinks that he/she knows how to make strategic gains on market movement.

And word has come around of further, drastic staff movement. I'm becoming increasingly disinterested in it. Short of losing entire interest in my own schedule, I don't even check who do shift with me anymore and I've missed at least a quarter's worth of useless group meetings. Some good points to group meetings are to catch up on the very latest on the grapevine, pay deference to the seniors, bitch and whine and scratch each other's back with all the rest. Another's to see K.

Returning to topic, if nothing moves by Sunday, I'll forever remember this month in which the impossible happened. I'm a fan of commercial slogans: 'Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline.' 'Just Do It.' 'Face Your Fears, Live Your Dreams.' 'Because you're worth it.' From now on, my motto is no longer inspired by Nike but struck by my own life events: Fuck The Impossible.

Almost sleepwalking through both work and life, I'm this close to just throwing the letter (it's been patiently waiting for glory in my thumbdrive since forever.. sorry letter), abandoning all ongoing projects and just take off for a prolonged backpacking vacay alone that very same evening. It's paramount that I go it alone too, without mentioning a word to anyone at all and my mobile's turned off in a drawer at home so don't even try.

Preferably, I'd get a one-way to Spain to soak up some culture. You know, roam the quaint towns, dance the flamenco with gypsy girls, watch real-life bullfights, enjoy the post-siesta diet of booze and tapas and hopefully, derust my amateur Español. My bro's leaving for yet another work trip and so is almost everybody else in my network, periodically too. It's got me dead jealous but of course, he works for an i-bank. He could've just told me to go earn my right to party.

OK I'll leave you now with a David Sedaris passage on quitting smoking. Get his latest book. Like Jeffrey Eugenides, his writing is worth starting a collection over.

In the months preceding our trip to Tokyo, I spoke to quite a few people who had either quit smoking or tried to. A number of them had stopped for years. Then their step-grandmother died or their dog grew a crooked tooth, and they picked up where they'd left off.

"Do you think you were maybe looking for a reason to start again?" I asked.

All of them said no.

That won't be me, confirmed.

The story of Mr Purple & Mr Red

2008-06-22T13:46:00.003+08:00

Late Friday afternoon, Mr Red texted Mr Purple to apologize for having to cancel on him as he was jetting off that evening to HKG for dinner and won’t be back till Monday morning. Thankfully, Mr Purple was sitting down when he read the message. It’s not the first time they stood each other up but Mr Red had really broken the record this time. As he chewed on the drinking straw emerging from his glass of China Apple, very late for his appointment and still lost on the location, Mr Purple contemplated the logic of the whole affair.

The hot afternoon sun was an offending glare glinting off reflective surfaces in the distance although out there in the open under shady trees, it wasn’t bad. Mr Purple was low on luck that day. Not only was he unbecomingly late, he had lost his bearings and would need to navigate through the unfamiliar neighbourhood at his own expense. If and when he successfully reaches the appointment venue, he is to present the value proposition and then, only if the prospects aren’t too pissed by his unprofessional turnout to strike down every word he says. Even so, guess what? He had neglected to bring along a single application form. Now to add fuel to fire, this had to happen.

Mr Red is an attention junkie. It’s obvious from the way he drives his hot, sweet ride. Mr Red doesn’t so much drive as blaze down the roads. Mr Purple always felt incredible tension being driven by Mr Red and it’s not in a good way. Mr Purple should already have known when they got serious but blinded by lust not love, he played along. Actually, he even played it up. Therefore, Mr Purple is definitely partly to blame for Mr Red’s increasing eccentricity.

Like that time he made Mr Purple sport a love bite high on his neck, which attracted curious stares from the mature, conservative types in Mr Purple’s network and wicked remarks from everyone his gen. and after. Or the time he locked Mr Purple up in the room way into Mr Purple’s business time, just because Mr Purple had not declared what he needed to hear. And let’s not forget the times Mr Red bombarded Mr Purple’s inboxes, both email and SMS, with the same, repeated messages. Just so there’d be no excuses coming from Mr Purple.

Mr Purple used to think that is the way Mr Red loves. One to remain sitting on the fence and open about it to a select few, Mr Purple thought the fact would also be plain and simple to Mr Red. That when that swing sails again across that vast blue sky, Mr Purple could very well have become smitten yet again by some chick. Then he realized that Mr Red knew all along and is doing all he can to keep him his.

Mr Purple felt imprisoned so he devised methods to test Mr Red’s patience. Thus began a juvenile game of flying aeroplanes. Somewhere along the line, Mr Red became pissed himself and stopped letting Mr Purple near. They still met up but they no longer did the things like they used to and this infuriated Mr Purple big time. Although this might not be the way Mr Red wanted it, he finally had a hold on Mr Purple and he was not just a bit gleeful.

Every time since, whenever Mr Red had Mr Purple engulfed in a bear hug in those powerful arms of his, he would cheekily taunt Mr Purple. Mr Purple wasn’t enjoying this very much but powerless without a solid alternative, he let Mr Red have his way with him to a controlled extent.

Deep in his heart Mr Purple knew that he can always up and leave this shit behind but Mr Red had managed to get him worked up enough time and again so that Mr Purple was by then, somewhat caught in this conceited game of vengeance. It’s not like Mr Purple to get even. He doesn’t even get mad much and even then, it’s largely reactive. Mr Purple likes to have all his cards on the table, calls a spade a spade and cuts loose when the situation turns unfavourable to his continued efforts. He is full of the modern talk on win/win outcomes and the like. This time though, Mr Red’s mind games had effectively screwed Mr Purple to a profound level.

Maybe that’s why Mr Purple decided there and then to try and end this thing with Mr Red. Gazing at the Friday afternoon traffic up ahead, Mr Purple didn’t even bother to reply Mr Red but instead buzzed his prospects for directions. About thirty minutes and a meal of chicken rice had elapsed since he sat down but correctly banking on it being TGIF, Mr Purple’s prospects still sounded helpful and apologetic on the line.

Wetting his fingers on the condensation around the cold glass, Mr Purple thought about Mr Red in HKG and a bit about a certain Mr Green, who lives there. In the unimaginable scenario where Mr Red and Mr Green should hook up, Mr Red would’ve up the ante so high Mr Purple will never again be able to beat it but will have to subserviently fall in step beside Mr Red and be completely domesticated.

Addendum:
Mr Purple woke to find seven missed calls on his mobile. In a bid to hedge against the grief Mr Red’s incoming disclosure of his HKG hedonism can cause, Mr Purple might indulge in retail therapy, go for Body Combat or if not, at least load the BC36 soundtrack for his workout later, book himself solid with appointments for the whole of next week and fling Mr Red scant attention.

What Mr Purple needs to refrain from, if he knows what’s good for him, are cigarettes and revenge.

Fri the 13th

2008-06-14T16:21:00.003+08:00

Hardly superstitious, I've nevertheless noted that Friday the 13th came and left without a trace. The only discernible change might be that weird dream I had last night featuring a pumped, chain-smoking YX, a friend's apartment with aquariums of marine life in the sitting room (in Taiwan), several random characters and a dead body in the dry bath tub. A classic whodunit but too bad, I didn't get to discovering the culprit.

My first external appointment was a cinch but the travel there was a bitch. Let's just put it that there's now one less remote outpost in Singapore I haven't set foot on. Amidst all that greenery sit cloned blocks of public housing, densely packed together. Rather new to the concept myself, the way those flats there were cramped was a different matter in itself. Can you even call that acceptable-quality living? Thankfully, there's little trouble in locating my prospect's flat amidst the maze.

Upon reaching, I realized that my prospect's a PRC. Misconceptions would've set in from the get-go if this had happened in the past but not anymore. So, we came to her dining table with the flickering overhead light casting a golden tone over everything and attempted to talk shop. She turned out to be another HNW person with a scandalous amount of passive income pouring in on a monthly basis. Her current investments put my sales kit to shame.

After an appropriate amount of time had elapsed with her sharing, she graciously passed on to let me begin my sales pitch. And in a big way, I did. My sales presentation has evolved to encompass the bloody whole range. Could I have been desperate? Hope not, it's more like casting wide nets.

In the end I managed to secure some deal here but since there's no access, would have to do a follow-up. Also automatically, she actually provided me with a quality lead on the spot, adding that there might be more biz coming my way. Angel.

Dog-tired, choosing home over Balcony was an easy choice. Beside sleep, the value of everything else becomes next to zero. It was over a supper of cherries and hot chocolate with the Miami Ink boys that I saw meaning in coming home early on a Friday night, albeit in that totally domestic and married-with-kids fashion. GEEZ.

yuppies networking

2008-06-13T12:01:00.005+08:00

Midway through networking week and I feel good. What's special with these groups of peeps is that each one is progressively more entrepreneurial than the other. It makes me wonder what's up when peeps my seniors/juniors in life start shooting the breeze with me about this or that grand biz masterplan. And I can already envision merging and housing these ventures under one entity. It'd potentially be very big, offering full-fledged services with everything from hairdressing to plumbing.

One group has seriously got me sitting up. At a tender age of 25, the young team leader is already semi-retired thanks to the passive-income component of the biz. I think it also helps that he's helping out with his dad on managing one of the donut chains out there. As if hearing Brian Tracy talk about it on my nano is not enough, successful friends in sales have also told me to wake up an hour early to read some success literature. Peeps from this team consider doing that only a small part of their daily self-educating regime. Wonderful!

Thanks to socialising needs, I've come back to the stick. Cig, I've missed you like crazy!! OK I can just feel the tar paving up my oesophagus but it's beautiful to puff away while a bit inebriated and in conversation with the right peeps. So it is that I must've smoked half a pack just by bumping off the generosity of my company. I hope I won't run out and buy my own pack again later but just stay in the ambiguous status of being a social.

Buried under the throw cushions @ acid last night after endless buckets of beer while the live act gamely rocked out our song dedications, I was stoning when W ribbed me about a pair of girls seated across the room. While their occasional glances my way is by no means detectable flirting, it's still cool. But it's too hetero a thing for me to do, going over and picking them up. I normally just skip right down to dirty dancing, hurhur. Too bad acid is all about chilling out with no dancefloor to party on. Funny thing is we had to seat right beside the Orchard bankers who ostentatiously plugged the company with a song dedication. Vomit.

Concerned friends have started buzzing me on my sales and everyone's asking if I'm going to quit already, fuck. Well, not so soon and while I'm still here, I remain driven and goal-oriented. Having moved nothing after two weeks have transpired is exactly unbearable for myself. I hate to say I'm down on the luck since that won't be in line with my positive self-concept but I think it just might be it.

Being strategic, I've also groomed sales to flow over from last month. Quality sales which are only to materialize sometime in the future (read: later this month) mean fuck to me. However, my coldcalling skills have thankfully leveled up with my successful securing of a few out-of-office appointments. Maybe it's time to mis-sell like a certain Somebody...

on watching satc

2008-06-08T14:30:00.008+08:00

Rather late into the game, I had to get acquainted with the ladies only when they've hit the cinemas and are bigger than big. And that's only last night, many days past the gala premiere. While I'm practically spell-bound by anything Americana my interest in its soap operas/sitcoms only extends to the psuedo-intellectual category. Of which, immediately springing to mind are The X-Files, The Practice, Ally McBeal, NYPD, Seventh Heaven, Touched by an angel, Felicity, The Nanny (ok, this one's purely for the hilarity), 3rd rock from the sun (same), Mad About You, Seinfeld, Just Shoot Me! and more recently, Nip/Tuck, Prisonbreak and Bones.

It never crossed my mind that a show on ladies bitching about their sex lives and fashion could be so.. satisfying. And altho I've only watched the movie and not one episode of the cult drama yet, I can foresee splurging some quality time at home on the couch with some reds and the ladies on dvd. Some choc fondue won't hurt too, mmm. Except, stopoo! I better rope in i, T and/or etc. or the next thing you know, I'd be waxing.

While waiting at the box office for i to cab over, I saw that Pru was holding a roadshow at the exact same spot we held ours a few months ago. Not sure if business was booming but it looked fairly appealing with promotional standees, a couple too few, and many go-getter agents of my age group working the crowd. I was waiting to be tagged but in that few short minutes of waiting, no luck. They're all tied up with other passersby. And probably also, because of the way I was dressed. My original downfall must be my brash honesty but the next worse thing about me is probably my boyishness.

This instructor at training actually pulled me aside after class to subtly advise me to update my style, because it's altogether too youthful. Now, how can that ever be a bad thing? When you work in a line that requires ample job experience, that's when. To our collective chagrin/appreciation, she went on to grab at and advise everyone from my class worth her style commentary, as they came over to observe our little exchange. Well of course, she's immaculate and carries with her an air of absolute elegance and grace -- the type whom is able to look effortlessly gorgeous with a simplistic set of pearls, minimal makeup and a classic power suit. I loved her poise and valued her kind advice. It's probably time to consult with her again except, I can't even recall her name. So much for being 'young'.

After we hooked up, i said she wanted to shop for that half hour to showtime. That mall has nothing much to buy but being very much one with the hoi polloi, we went into BHG. R said it means 'Be Here for Good things', when it's really an abbreviated Jap name. It's a definitive trait of R, to mention some unverified matter and hold it up as the absolute truth, until proven otherwise. i was shopping for her better half and I was tagging along. The GSS proved to be very successful as throngs of people queued up at the cashiers to conclude their shopping experience. Patriots at heart, we had to contribute to the GDP. So, we ended up shopping into the showtime.

The ladies began without us as we crashed into the wrong seats with hotdogs and shopping. While I'm a sensation junkie open to every new experience I was ready to sniff at SATC for being another personal Star Wars (aka some cult phenomenon almost everybody develops intensely strong positive feelings for, but which reason for worship just escapes me) or grudgingly label it a better chick flick, at best. Unfortunately, I began to enjoy the show. A lot.

That reckless joie de vivre so demonstrated by the lives of those four close friends, uninhibitedly sharing each weal and woe, was liberating. The wit was pitch perfect and generous. The fashion, glamour and the (censored) sex were simply mindblowing. The characterisation, pacing, subplots and the somewhat-messy peaks and dips of the storyline afforded an interesting technical study into storytelling. The soundtrack was faultless. At the heart of the matter, the movie, whilst not exactly brainfood, was quite some chicken soup for the soul. It's even gender-neutral if you know how to focus properly.

I think I like Samantha the most. Not just for being the tigress she is but for her outlandish wit and seeming valour, but they're all great in their own way.

Most importantly, SATC has made me wonder how my friendships will develop over time. What quality of friendships am I really looking at? Glad to say that currently, there's a growing handful of friends on whom I can bask in their ever-welcoming company and look for in times of need, but with time when everybody gets settled down, what happens? Group family excursions, probably.

Ergo, the underlying moral of the story is that although an oject might not bear immediate relevance to what one desires, its secondary extensions in relevance/meaning might just be (more than) it and hence, making the original object the critical bridge.

Right then, let's Amazon.com the SATC box set.

do i know you?

2008-05-15T13:28:00.000+08:00

dear blog,
ltns, it's only been forever since the last time. funny how a sea change has happened to my life in the short time of a year and a few months. for better or worse, it's anybody's guess. one thing's for sure tho and that is, whatever can't kill you will only make you stronger. i don't know whether to laugh or cry at that piece of truth.

i've been pretty despondent lately, thinking of this and that, yet to find solid answers to my questions. paramount on my mind is my career or the lack of it. and until i can get my biz (plural!) up and running and actually profiting, i'm kinda stuck at this job. not that i dislike it. in fact, i actually do quite well but it's not exactly like i'm raking it in.. yet. i think i definitely make a better entrepreneur.

strangely, altho my job demands that i speak to complete strangers a lot, i find myself becoming less and less eloquent. the main reasons are probably 1) i'm always saying the same shit and 2) i've less and less time to keep updated on what's happening in the scene. but then, at least i know abt gilles peterson's the worldwide fest happening this weekend! and i'm going w b on 2-day passes, cos kruder and dorfmeister's on the lineup!

and i gotta stop smoking. fuck fags (i mean cigs. i'm gay-friendly!). they do little shit right but being more accessible than drugs/booze and being actually a type of social bonding activity, i find it hard to quit. i always tell others i'm a social and then i go and buy my own pack. it's ridiculous. but i've decided last night after that chain-smoking walk home only to read in 'mind your body' several cancer-related articles, that i'm gone be clean for good. the pattern this week has been quite relevant as well - meeting swami, the oncology researcher on mon; followed by meeting cath, ees sales manager from j&j on tue. both are involved in cancer-fighting efforts! how guerilla. incidentally, the life of a medical product spec is NOT EASY. you gotta be in the ot beside the op team, instructing the nurses how to load the med stapler, zoom around hospitals pitching to docs and med specs (j&j has only 1 competitor in this market), work potentially odd hours since ops are scheduled all the time, etc. i hardly think i'd actually pick up the offer, if they decide to let me in. but i'm definitely going to witness the action in the ot, just to see what happens. coming back from digression, yes, i'm quitting for good. bring on the drugs!!

enjoy life, babes:)

whiplash, falsified

2007-02-16T00:12:00.002+08:00

Now the whiplash cracks and licks the air like it has life. Now and then, it draws itself into form and drops into our midst, a bombshell of a woman. So she walks the world like the sharp plane of a knife. She is like a blade. And everywhere she wanders, she polarize people into two camps - the ones to absolutely love her to death, their own, and without a doubt; and those who hate her to the core, oh to the marrow of their being. That gulf which exists between these camps is a sometimes pleasurable love spot, another blind spot of the universe.

She comes, riding the breeze like a witch. Her familiar turns out to be her best friend, whom bearing an idolator's adoration, mirrored her mistress right down to choice of fabric for her attire. On a good day the pair appears entwined in an endless embrace, confounding anyone who tries to dispute where the serpent ends and the tree begins. While on any given fine morning, she herself would scale the high cliffs alone and survey the yard.

And then while she is alone, you confront her. She smiles and it feels like she has just turned around every single day of the rest of your life. You understand that you will never win her but you can slowly turn to stone. In deepening the analogies and collaging the metaphors, you have just encountered Medusa and the incipient Pegasus, albeit as locked potential. You stutter, she wins. Your words are like swallowed marbles and you guiltily notes the time and wonder what it should conjure. She smiles again, this time permanently. You beat a hasty retreat, childhood days flashing in the mind, not daring to look her in the face anymore.

The girl, the blade and the whiplash now converge into a kaleidoscope of beatific images so savage and raw, they are beautiful. Crying, I run to hug it all in and store it in my tummy; only to find it all turns out to be a mirage. I crumble to the floor and refuse to budge, living off the floorboards like Gregory Samsa in his morphed state but much more, like those human cockroaches in Tsai Ming Liang's The Hole, for that film has a happy ending.

This morning, the sun glazed over the sheltering sky so it looked like orange gelatin. Then it rained, all orange drops and fantastic. In the absence of her from my life and in the space left behind by her presence, I am just...

homemade tarot

2007-01-12T14:54:00.000+08:00

Full Intention

2007-01-09T11:51:00.000+08:00

And so it seems, we've arrived at an abrupt end and alighted into a whole new year. The cumulative failures of 2006 and all your past lifetimes sum up now to reach the grandeur of a psuedo-climax. I apologize for the overbearingly scientific and verbose part of me; it is Scully, cool as a cucumber, pre-empting and explaining away every single conspiracy theory Mulder brings to the table, with tangible facts. Just like a deeper desire to understand (you, you, you) and that keeps me from pulling wool over my own eyes. Or let me hurry up and conjure up some double standards so I may better convince myself and conform to you. How tragic, false and not me. I'm sorry but I can hardly buy into this shenanigan although the glossy packaging has indeed been very alluring. Very emetic. A little toasty perhaps, more likely to be found needy, one runs to where hands push near and fold together with strangers' pairs, all in the name of community. Still, when I lean back I also yearn for support even as it is obvious that there is nothing there, but maybe a parental embrace. Clear-eyed and knowing full well that there is not the safety gauze of illusion to insulate the sometimes-abrasive interactions with the rest of the world anymore, one cannot help but feel liberated, totally alive and made aware. The seminal Preacher comics read years ago on trembling hands can finally settle down in memory as another fine, original mortal invention, one might add, alongside so many other wondrous things. Ergo, sound the deserter's song one last time, let it echo. If there can only be one vision of love then we've sorely missed the point. Sipping port, and thinking.

spit the bile

2006-10-11T20:07:00.000+08:00

I was quite pissed that this morning's presentation bombed. So as not to be all-controlling and again despotically dominate the group's viewpoint, today's presentation had been pieced together by pure subgroup effort. It's not enough that I was the only one who seemed prepared for it, or that at least my part didn't fail. It's infuriating to note how one of us was so gleeful her speech got cut short and she got sent back to her seat. She turned to tell me it's every group doing this topic also bombed. So? The class next door invited some prof to back their presentation. The saving grace came when I received an email apology from a usually nonchalant member.

Interestingly however, in my personal project where I work it alone and hence can't get to shitpick/scapegoat the team effort, the work is at a total standstill. Unless I consider the prof and the PhD student as my team mates, but then I won't be in any position to lead then.

In other news, I'm trying very hard to hock off the family heirlooms so we can move out of this house in style. I've come to liaising with complete strangers and to allow them into my home. While typing this, a cute couple just dropped by to stare at the mattresses-- replete with rather interesting stain patterns that go 3D if you stare long enough. It's making me feel very entrepreneurial in fact. I think I can finally take over my parent's moribund biz and generate a turnover of $XXK in the first year yes. The only downside is there's not much profit to talk about since I'm selling really cheap because I really can't stand the notion that there're peeps out there who need to come buy other people's decade-old used furniture. The lady stranger who's coming for a viewing on Saturday would very likely walk out with freebies, for she'd just arrived to live in Singapore. If not, there's always the Salvation Army. I also think that perhaps I'd donate the 'earnings' to charity, to ahem stay true to my altruistic nature. Barf.

I'm officially hooked onto MCR. Who cares if they're not exactly subversive? Gerard Way is the new Billy Corgan, mock-gala-tragedy MTVs thrown in. There's a whole new way to music sharing which is dishonest as hell but ohsoconvenient. Nobody's telling.

Zooming out, ttyl!

keep hope alive

2006-09-01T17:59:00.000+08:00

Week 4

With regards to the FYP, I may have bitten off more than I can chew. My project remains at a standstill. I'm sick of trying to make head or tail of the esoteric papers and textbooks. My foundation in this field has suffered a major seismic attack (at least 7.0 on the Richter Scale) and I'm still procrastinating at doing something about it. The only saving grace might be that the FYP's related to both a design lab and an elective I'm taking this sem, but it doesn't help that my prof teaches that elective for I think he can tell quite clearly that my memory has purged itself of much of the control theory. Speaking of which, I really should rebuild that knowledge; if only I can stop procrastinating.

Everyone's mad about HRM at the moment. Well it is quite fun. Thank God we didn't get Michael. Richard's quite civil and very helpful, and he didn't stop me from interrupting him time and again to air my opinions. The need to present my points has even started spreading into other tutorials. Yesterday, Melisa and I were the only ones to take turns answering the comedic Software Engin prof in his tutorial. We're still hunting for an organisation to interview. The only downside to this that I can see is the hectic deadlines; and I haven't even cracked open the cover of the Blue Ocean Strategy.

Of course there had been some bad news over the course of the past few weeks. Not gone enumerate or describe them in case I lose my appetite. But the most painful one should be losing one stream of income. I guess it's high time to look for something more meaningful anyway. On the lighter side, this afternoon while browsing with my parents in the Novena furniture centre and Courts in the neighbourhood, I found my new bed. It's a Castilla Premium so it looks hedonistic and decadent. Two of my favourite adjectives. Strangely if we're to top it up by less than $200, I could get my parent's queen-sized order. Now that's worth some thought, isn't it.

On a tangent: Someone tells me she's going trekking next week but maintains she's very much a homebody when in Singapore. What the hey, another walking contradiction? Very cute huh.

analogies

2006-08-08T21:27:00.000+08:00

The brief conversation with newfound acquaintance Z on Sunday, which by an odd stroke of fate saw me attending F.O.P., has remained jammed in my mind till now. He opined that he regarded a certain patriarchal national figure highly. Me too except not as zealously as him. In fact I've found out lately that I'm hardly zealous about anything at all. We got to using as an analogy, two key figures whom have shaped world history by their ways, Hitler and Gandhi. Friend Z said he would gladly be the notorious and demented Hitler than to be the peerless Gandhi, for he thinks the legacy of hatred for Hitler would perpetuate far longer into time, than the wonder that was Gandhi. Egoistical and superficial, through and through. Anyone who has read Gandhi's autobiography would know that he was Great. Amongst many other personal attributes such as a Christ-like demeanour, high intelligence (both EQ and IQ), and a sophisticated life philosophy (Gandhi treated his whole life as an experiment, which end aim was a type of holistic success), Gandhi was above all a fellow human being whom was able to conquer himself and lead many others into a peaceful and dignified state of self-ownership whilst India was suffering political oppression. While I have not read Mein Kampf and have no plans to do so anyway, historical records of Hitler's doings are more than enough proof of his character, of which I reject entirely.

The point is, I always thought any intelligent, mentally sound and morally upright person would quickly reject Hitler and embrace Gandhi as the model to aspire to. Hmmmmm...to put this into analogy, perhaps some people prefer to be hated and cursed at than to be loved and celebrated. Definitely masochistic and fatuous. This talk makes me feel like vomitting.

On another note, Eleanor Wong has written a new play with a very long title (The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ) to open tomorrow at the Singapore Theatre Festival. Is this her latest ploy to push the envelope after her mighty lesbian trilogy? Earlier on tv, I caught Ivan Heng commenting about the play with something along the lines of politics having to require "...an opposition in order to validate democracy.." Now, how else does one observe a state and assert his judgment on it, if there be no alternative states with which to compare against? Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions but I was being philosophical anyway. OK I think I'd just go watch the play.

While walking home, I made two new friends. Yeah of cos they sniffed and licked my hands et al, like all new friends should.

HA!! Will I never learn?

There you go, a post without mention of a certain topic. Happy National Day in advance, Singaporeans.

ZLSCC

2006-07-23T23:01:00.000+08:00

This morning was great. I spent it at Zion Living Streams Community Church. My friend, A.S., is an Elder at this church and was scheduled to preach today, so had invited me to go listen to his sermon. Of the bunch I asked to tag along, only L could make it. After some trouble finding the church premise, we arrived at the church, uniquely located on the 2nd floor of an industrial block. We're greeted at the door and ushered to be sitted within the congregation of say, less than 100 people. We joined in with the worship and I was surprised to see K on stage wielding an electric guitar.

After an appropriate length of time in worship, A.S. took to the pulpit and began to expound on The Fear of God, and defined its meaning for us anew. He based his sermon on Genesis 22, the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac. While I used to cling on to the comfort of equating this fear to reverence and still do not believe in being driven by fear, I appreciate that there has to be an additional level of apprehension concerning our relationship with Him. Indeed, other than being our Father and Friend, he is also our Judge. A.S. is a gifted speaker and it's obvious he'd poured some effort into writing the sermon. The Verse of the Month 1 John 4:18 was referenced and explained. As a backslider or even a new believer should know, there's bound to be a degree of uncertainty as to whether we would be ultimately delivered. It is this uncertainty which is our own, that needs to be casted out. When Abraham did as He told him, he did so in Obeisance, Submission and Worship.

A.S. told us how while his wife was delivering their first child and encountered some difficulty in the 2+ hours labour, he had to sign papers that serve to indemnify the gynae and was even made to wait outside. Amidst his monumental worries, what he did while sitting outside was to worship the Lord, without a care as to what others might think of him. That's tough, isn't it? To not just remember the Lord while facing some terrible hardship, but to actually worship and exalt Him then. Talk about a full surrender of spirit.

Psalm 23:4 "...your rod and your staff, they comfort me." God punishes even as He guides. Fear Him! This has been a timely warning to self to heed and obey the Lord. If only it's as easy to do so as writing it down. Read.

After the service, A.S. brought L and I around the church premise, got introduced to almost everybody and partaked in refreshments. The whole atmosphere was cosy and relaxed. Seeing A.S. with his family was a joy. They make for such a wonderful picture of familial bliss. To a person like me who shuns any committment that should even veer close to resembling an engagement, the fatherhood instinct has, as a result, suddenly taken on a life of its own. But nay, I'm not in a hurry..yet.

OK before this blog 'runs the risk of degenerating into a sanctimonious Christian logbook', I'll stop here. Cheers!

Spiritualized

2006-07-16T23:58:00.000+08:00

Hi,
I just came back from dinner with two beautiful minds, Sh and Ho. People who think deeply through all layers of possible meaning and analyse life to death interest me completely. We met for murtabak dinner at Casuarina Curry, which was surprisingly tasty. And the conversation drifted into spirituality. Aren't we all feeling sorta spiritualized lately, what with all our questions about God et al? Anyway while sharing with them the understanding of my faith, I started hearing them voicing the same questions (and more) I used to hold dear, about this whole God matter. Their questions were based on theories that hold water, possibilities that could not be ruled out from a mathematical point of view. I was not able to field all their curious questions, but I suppose they were satisfied with the personal viewpoint I presented to them.

True to what Sh said, Ho was somebody unique. When I asked him about what he was going to do with his life, he gave this mini-speech about how U.S.A. rose into superpower status with the end of WWII and had since dominated the world with Europe as a type of international oligarchy. OK that was not the term he used, but I cannot remember the word.. something-nopoly. Oh wait it is Oligopoly: A market condition in which sellers are so few that the actions of any one of them will materially affect price and have a measurable impact on competitors. However with the rest of the world entering the global economics as players, the oligopoly could not sustain its hold anymore since the introduction of new players would also bring along factors of instability. The global trend is moving away from being a fear-based model (dependency on the superpower economies) to one which is a cooperative. Since young, Ho has wished to play his part in helping to precipitate fruition to this end. I cannot remember how he would do so, but it would not be from politics. I was quite disappointed for I thought he was quite a colourful character.

After dinner, we went for a stroll in the park. IN THE DARK! We entered Lower Pierce Reservoir Park, which was a stone's throw away from the restaurant, and it was pitch black in there. I think it was inevitable that we went in there, especially when you're talking about dining with Sh and Ho. I should be thankful there was no blood sacrifice made. Anyway I had to turn on the torch in my phone. Thank God for Sony Ericsson's thoughtfulness..The torch can even do SOS signals. We walked on the boardwalk toward the reservoir, and at the first sight of the reservoir, we decided to stop for a while. There they decided to intensify our discourse on God, which incidentally they never let up from the moment we took on the topic, that was at the start of dinner. Interesting theories bounced around. The main themes were along the vein of 1) mortal fear and its need for comfort which leads to looking for divine intervention; 2) the insecurity to the knowing of God by oneself, not through the pressure of religious proponents and the media; 3) the quality of truth in the Bible after Constantine's reign...and I would add, the recent deciphering of the Gospel of Judas; 4) the question of whether belief can be in part; 5) how if God=life, then to only believe in a Judeo-Christian God would be to be small-minded and some more. I could not even really understand their intellectual questions to begin to answer them properly. In the dark especially with bats flying about and strange sounds emnating from the body of water ahead of us, it was some effort but I did to my best. Being the nice people they are, they rounded off the topic telling me that they were not God-bashing really (Yeah I know, it was all explorative, in the Preacher comics sort of way, right?), and Ho even apologised, to which I 'sniffed at', saying you don't have to apologize to me what...it's all beyond me anyway. Guffaws ensued.

Then we continued our walk. At one part, the boardwalk went over the water, without any railings! Imagine the fear that ought to clutch at the heart..then Sh had to stop to take her landscape pictures there. I do not know about them but I myself am not too hot about falling into the dark, seemingly-deep water myself so I urged them on by telling them I need to use the toilet. We eventually got out alive and after answering nature's call, we got drinks from a petrol station and continued chatting while seated at the park bench. Teenaged delinquents or wannabes hung out in the distance, not rioting or anything so it was boring. Here, we talked about our own bygone rebellious phase: wrongdoings, experimentations, substance abuse, and what not. Then I had to go, and I can't be sure I'd be going to Sh's party but I told her I guess I'd try to come. To see ducky star radio in action is certainly enticing. I asked her to play all my favourite songs and she said ok. I said I want Class95. And Ho laughed his head off. We parted and they went to get more $2 beers.

Dear Beer Marketer, please mark up the price of your canned beer for the kids are spending all their lunch money on it.

Springtime

2006-07-06T16:02:00.000+08:00

In a moment of epiphany, there has been a change of heart and a corollary sea change in my whole life. Gone is the feeling of being utterly lost that had pervaded my days in the most recent couple of years, gone is the monumental doubt that had misdirected my journey and swayed my focus, gone are the previous hang-ups over not being good enough and the harbouring of indignation at injust witnessed or suffered; and almost gone are the unmentionable habits that had almost became a way of life.

All this lightness is like the springtime of the soul where the frost melts and all flowers blossom into their chromatic selves, and hope comes wafting on the gentle breezes that awaken the verdant fields. To rediscover what is important after all these years of exploration and experimentation, is like coming full circle in order to verify what should originally be understood as facts, so as to save on all that time and effort, which had indeed proven to be futile.

On hindsight and conversely, those years had not been a sum waste if only because they allowed me to better discern what this world is all about. I am glad to know that that juvenile stage of my life has arrived at its end.

I find it fitting to quote from one of my favourite songs of the moment. I originally heard it on FM92.4 and the rousing fully-instrumental piece was some kind of grand and it is such happy music my heart was singing along to it. The title of the piece is La Mer. In the lyrics to its vocalized version, as attempted by the likes of Billie Holiday (!!!!), Frank Sinatra and George Benson, it goes,
"Then straight to his arms I'd go sailing
It's far beyond a star, it's near beyond the moon
I know beyond a doubt
My heart will lead me there soon...
And never again I'll go sailing"
How apt.

Hmmm..Can you surmise what on earth I've actually been going on about?