"life is hard
and so am i
you'd better give me something
so i don't die
novocaine for the soul
before i sputter out
before i sputter out
life is white
and i am black
jesus and his lawyer
are coming back
oh my darling
will you be here
before i sputter out
before i sputter out
before i sputter out
guess who's living here
with the great undead
this paint-by-numbers life
is fucking with my head
once again
life is good
and i feel great
'cause mother says i was
a great mistake
novocaine for the soul
you'd better give me something
to fill the hole
before i sputter out
before i sputter out
before i sputter out
before i sputter out"
- "Novocaine For The Soul", Eels
Saturday, February 28
chemicals rebalanced
i think it's happened for a few hours already, i just hadn't noticed until now, when i finally got around to listening to Novocaine For The Soul--the happy mood's gone.
would you still love me, if i wasn't a poet?
i woke up in the morning today. and the curtains were closed [i normally leave them open on weekdays so that i'll wake before noon]. had a small bowl of porridge for breakfast. then went and flipped the TV on to watch the Gilmore Girls rerun i taped yesterday. was a waste of time, cause i had already seen that episode.
a day of anomalies so far [even the insane idea the condo management had of shutting my water off, to discern if the pipes in my flat are causing grevious damage to the building, from 10 PM last night to 10 AM today didn't dampen my mood, even if i had to go to sleep unwashed]. and the biggest one yet is the telemovie Love Poetry. it's no Love Me If You Dare, but it's enough like it to be good, and it is the best locally produced film i have ever seen, whether for cinema or television. which makes it worthwhile trying to get my brother to tape it whilst i was outisde after the gig at The Third Place [i forgot to program the VCR], and anything worth putting up with him for is probably worth its weight in gold. i'm breaking off the protection tab on this one [that prevents the VHS from being taped over, whether by accident or on purpose].
let's see how long this mood'll last, shall we?
a day of anomalies so far [even the insane idea the condo management had of shutting my water off, to discern if the pipes in my flat are causing grevious damage to the building, from 10 PM last night to 10 AM today didn't dampen my mood, even if i had to go to sleep unwashed]. and the biggest one yet is the telemovie Love Poetry. it's no Love Me If You Dare, but it's enough like it to be good, and it is the best locally produced film i have ever seen, whether for cinema or television. which makes it worthwhile trying to get my brother to tape it whilst i was outisde after the gig at The Third Place [i forgot to program the VCR], and anything worth putting up with him for is probably worth its weight in gold. i'm breaking off the protection tab on this one [that prevents the VHS from being taped over, whether by accident or on purpose].
let's see how long this mood'll last, shall we?
"Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose
When you kiss me heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose
When you press me to your heart
I'm in a world apart
A world where roses bloom
And when you speak
Angels sing from above
Everyday words seem to turn into love songs
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
La vie en rose"
- "La Vie En Rose", Louis Armstrong
i've heard this life is overrated
i'd like to say that my perspective on life has been turned around 180° today.
it hasn't.
it has, however, done a 360° spin, and i think i'm all the better for it.
the morbid thoughts have returned to the back-burner--i've an A1 for English, which is all i wanted [except for entry into poly]. an L1R5 of twenty-seven is not impressive at all, but i'm looking at my L1R4 of seventeen. i am all set for poly. there appears to be a temporal future for me, after all.
i originally wanted to go only to NYP because it's fifteen minutes away from my place, by bus. now that i have options, i've changed my mind [no, i haven't just realized that it's stupid to limit your future to travelling distance, i've known it all along and couldn't give a toss].
when i got my results [in the Victoria Hall canteen? what a reception. why not the parade square next time?] i made my calls and sat down to take it all in. i thought about my options. mr tan chongkiat came over and talked to me about a media design course, which i had considered for some time. i was going to put a call to yitchun to find out more about the Diploma in Multimedia & Infocomms Technology he was pursuing--i was thinking about taking that course. and then there's the media courses i was thinking about.
we went to the Siglap Cafe Cartel for a late lunch. matt flipped through the JAE booklet and advised me to try for a Diploma in Law & Management at Temasek Polytechnic. it was absolutely brilliant. that will be my first choice. i don't know how to explain it, but i may have found my carrer path. i've going with my gut feeling on this one.
Law & Management it is. now all i need to do is decide what else i want as backups.
went to a gig at The Third Place today [after spending two hours in library@orchard killing time whilst matt went home to shower and xuan went jamming--potential attempters of this feat, take note: your back will be in pain after sitting bolt upright in one of their backless seats, leaning against the metal partition for said duration]. i didn't know what to expect, but i certainly wasn't expecting a J-Rock group. the first group [Parousia] was good, and so was the last one [they did a cover of Audioslave's Like A Stone as an encore]. my nose bled [it happens every few months--it's kind of like my nasal period] between the J-Rock group and the last group. i have yet to go find out what triggers these random haemorrages. i probably should though.
the gig ended around ten-thirty. we walked a bit to Great World City, had a bite at the McDonald's there, then xuan matt and i piled into a cab, dropping matt off at city hall.
it was a great night. not such a great day, but one of the better evenings i've spent in a long while.
i was worried for quite a bit though. pat disappeared right after he got his results in school, apparently upset over them. and xuan brooded a bit about his too, though his score is perfectly respectable it leaves him with little options, the best of which involves staying in ACJC--using the all-consuming debate team [the training hours are ridiculous. till 9:30 PM, three days a week] as his anchor.
sigh. i seem to be living through other people again. it's hard to be/stay happy when your friends aren't though. the only happy felt was for matt's six points [proving he didn't need to get hung up over his results before, anyway]. somehow it doesn't bother me at all that the people i surround myself with vastly outperform me acadamically. i'm happy with my lot, and i'm happy for them.
it's a great night, be it for listening to good bands, trekking through Orchard Road's bus-stops in search of a discontinued service, attempting to convey the ideas of "it's along Outram Road" and "it's near the Tiong Bahru pau place" to a mainly mandarin-speaking taxi-driver [hint: say OUTram, not OUtram, if you can manage it don't bother with English, and don't bother asserting that you are infact a singaporean and neither japanese nor korean--do matt and i look japanese/korean?], walking leisurely from Outram Road to Great World City, taking a long comtemplative cab ride, or spending two hours reading in the library.
i don't think i've felt so happy in a long, long time.
it hasn't.
it has, however, done a 360° spin, and i think i'm all the better for it.
the morbid thoughts have returned to the back-burner--i've an A1 for English, which is all i wanted [except for entry into poly]. an L1R5 of twenty-seven is not impressive at all, but i'm looking at my L1R4 of seventeen. i am all set for poly. there appears to be a temporal future for me, after all.
i originally wanted to go only to NYP because it's fifteen minutes away from my place, by bus. now that i have options, i've changed my mind [no, i haven't just realized that it's stupid to limit your future to travelling distance, i've known it all along and couldn't give a toss].
when i got my results [in the Victoria Hall canteen? what a reception. why not the parade square next time?] i made my calls and sat down to take it all in. i thought about my options. mr tan chongkiat came over and talked to me about a media design course, which i had considered for some time. i was going to put a call to yitchun to find out more about the Diploma in Multimedia & Infocomms Technology he was pursuing--i was thinking about taking that course. and then there's the media courses i was thinking about.
we went to the Siglap Cafe Cartel for a late lunch. matt flipped through the JAE booklet and advised me to try for a Diploma in Law & Management at Temasek Polytechnic. it was absolutely brilliant. that will be my first choice. i don't know how to explain it, but i may have found my carrer path. i've going with my gut feeling on this one.
Law & Management it is. now all i need to do is decide what else i want as backups.
went to a gig at The Third Place today [after spending two hours in library@orchard killing time whilst matt went home to shower and xuan went jamming--potential attempters of this feat, take note: your back will be in pain after sitting bolt upright in one of their backless seats, leaning against the metal partition for said duration]. i didn't know what to expect, but i certainly wasn't expecting a J-Rock group. the first group [Parousia] was good, and so was the last one [they did a cover of Audioslave's Like A Stone as an encore]. my nose bled [it happens every few months--it's kind of like my nasal period] between the J-Rock group and the last group. i have yet to go find out what triggers these random haemorrages. i probably should though.
the gig ended around ten-thirty. we walked a bit to Great World City, had a bite at the McDonald's there, then xuan matt and i piled into a cab, dropping matt off at city hall.
it was a great night. not such a great day, but one of the better evenings i've spent in a long while.
i was worried for quite a bit though. pat disappeared right after he got his results in school, apparently upset over them. and xuan brooded a bit about his too, though his score is perfectly respectable it leaves him with little options, the best of which involves staying in ACJC--using the all-consuming debate team [the training hours are ridiculous. till 9:30 PM, three days a week] as his anchor.
sigh. i seem to be living through other people again. it's hard to be/stay happy when your friends aren't though. the only happy felt was for matt's six points [proving he didn't need to get hung up over his results before, anyway]. somehow it doesn't bother me at all that the people i surround myself with vastly outperform me acadamically. i'm happy with my lot, and i'm happy for them.
it's a great night, be it for listening to good bands, trekking through Orchard Road's bus-stops in search of a discontinued service, attempting to convey the ideas of "it's along Outram Road" and "it's near the Tiong Bahru pau place" to a mainly mandarin-speaking taxi-driver [hint: say OUTram, not OUtram, if you can manage it don't bother with English, and don't bother asserting that you are infact a singaporean and neither japanese nor korean--do matt and i look japanese/korean?], walking leisurely from Outram Road to Great World City, taking a long comtemplative cab ride, or spending two hours reading in the library.
i don't think i've felt so happy in a long, long time.
"The miles just keep rolling
As the people either way to say hello
I've heard this life is overrated
But I hope it gets better as we go"
- "Here Without You", 3 Doors Down
Friday, February 27
the collective last day[s?] on earth
i've been home for a while, but it only just came to me that the reason why i really wanted to stop at home before embarking on the hour-plus journey to
Victoria School was to put an entry into this blog.
sounds morbid, but in case this is the last chance i get, my subconscious decided i must by hook or crook come back and mark out one last notch on the World Wide Web. it took my conscious over an hour, though, to put two and two together and make five. i think checking other peoples' blogs was the trigger.
suicidal thoughts are only of any use [or of any danger, depending on your point of view] when the person having them is strong enough or has the guts to actually go through with it. i do not possess that strength or those guts, which explains why i am having such thoughts, but it also almost definitely ensures i will not go through with it.
morbid, morbid thoughts. on a lighter note, iTunes' Shuffle mode has reminded me that while Milk is a great song and suits me now, there are a number of other songs that fit right in now. as follows:
The Apples In Stereo: Please, Benefits Of Lying, Signal In The Sky, Go
Macy Gray: Relating To A Psychopath
The Used: The Taste Of Ink
Radiohead: Pop Is Dead, Talk Show Host, You Never Wash Up After Yourself
Everclear: Wonderful
The Cardigans: You're The Storm, For What It's Worth, 03.45: No Sleep, My Favorite Game, Been It, Lovefool
Aerosmith: Jaded
plus almost all of Garbage's and Coldplay's songs. there are specifics, but there are too many to list. there're probably some i left out. no matter.
oh fuck it. this is no suicide note. too many things remain unsaid. probably because i am insecure about whether i mind a miniscule bit of the world reading the deepest bits of me, whether i'm around for it or not.
besides i haven't a clue what format such a note should be in, and the content that one should include [they should teach this in school]. the only [non-fictional, ie not seen in movie or read in a book] suicide not i've seen in my entire life is matt's. and it was folded up--i only saw the outside, and subsequently flushed down one of the toilets at 3 Geylang Bahru Lane. so excuse my inexperience.
oh well.
Victoria School was to put an entry into this blog.
sounds morbid, but in case this is the last chance i get, my subconscious decided i must by hook or crook come back and mark out one last notch on the World Wide Web. it took my conscious over an hour, though, to put two and two together and make five. i think checking other peoples' blogs was the trigger.
suicidal thoughts are only of any use [or of any danger, depending on your point of view] when the person having them is strong enough or has the guts to actually go through with it. i do not possess that strength or those guts, which explains why i am having such thoughts, but it also almost definitely ensures i will not go through with it.
morbid, morbid thoughts. on a lighter note, iTunes' Shuffle mode has reminded me that while Milk is a great song and suits me now, there are a number of other songs that fit right in now. as follows:
The Apples In Stereo: Please, Benefits Of Lying, Signal In The Sky, Go
Macy Gray: Relating To A Psychopath
The Used: The Taste Of Ink
Radiohead: Pop Is Dead, Talk Show Host, You Never Wash Up After Yourself
Everclear: Wonderful
The Cardigans: You're The Storm, For What It's Worth, 03.45: No Sleep, My Favorite Game, Been It, Lovefool
Aerosmith: Jaded
plus almost all of Garbage's and Coldplay's songs. there are specifics, but there are too many to list. there're probably some i left out. no matter.
oh fuck it. this is no suicide note. too many things remain unsaid. probably because i am insecure about whether i mind a miniscule bit of the world reading the deepest bits of me, whether i'm around for it or not.
besides i haven't a clue what format such a note should be in, and the content that one should include [they should teach this in school]. the only [non-fictional, ie not seen in movie or read in a book] suicide not i've seen in my entire life is matt's. and it was folded up--i only saw the outside, and subsequently flushed down one of the toilets at 3 Geylang Bahru Lane. so excuse my inexperience.
oh well.
"I am milk
I am red hot kitchen
And I am cool
Cool as the deep blue ocean
I am lost
So I am cruel
But I'd be love and sweetness
If I had you
I'm waiting
I'm waiting for you
I'm waiting
I'm waiting for you
I am weak
But I am strong
I can use my tears to
Bring you home
I'm waiting
I'm waiting for you
I'm waiting
I'm waiting for you
I'm waiting
I'm waiting for you"
- "Milk", Garbage
Tuesday, February 24
paved paradise
it came to me whilst i was playing SimCity 4: the motion for the second debate was TH Prefers Regional Solutions To Regional Problems. i like SimCity 4. it lags a lot though.
"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"
- "Big Yellow Taxi", Joni Mitchell
Thursday, February 19
billy's lack of effectiv-ness
Tuesday i went with matt to IKEA to get pat's birthday present. it was one of at most three times i actually enjoyed going to IKEA, even though i love IKEA. this trip had a bit of a damper to it, though, as i realized that my Chuan Park flat came nowhere near to the IKEA flat ideal. the only room with any IKEA furniture at all is the study [except for the swivel chair everything's BILLY and EFFECTIV and LACK and one glass cabinet that i can no longer remember the name of]. and the study doesn't look all that good [at least it's not mismatched] because it's full of clutter.
i got irritated with AppleCorner@IKEA's pride in being the world's first [and only?] AppleCorner. what's so bloody difficult about setting up an AppleCorner? it's just a long shelf/case with PCs on top of it. again: i'm losing faith in Apple.
IKEA has some pretty interesting stuff. not exactly where one would go to buy a birthday gift; i think the fact that we managed to find stuff that was non-worthless/useless says something about how resourceful we are/were [though one of my ideas about a set of kitchen knives probably was a bit daft].
Tuesday was also the first time i walked into a Burger King and didn't feel like eating anything. in fact, i even felt [very] slightly repulsed at the food available there, like as if i didn't survive on food that tasted good and normally ate whatever was good for me. maybe the whole eat- less thing is starting to work out for me.
looking at furniture and wall colors, wardrobes, etc etc was fun. i used to spend hours in The Sims just building houses and furnishing them; maybe i really should take up a design course in poly. matt was also there to keep an eye out for ideas for his new place at Aljunied, i advised him to choose door handles instead of door knobs if he had a choice--try twisting a doorknob to enter a room when one hand has a drink and the other has a book/newspaper/sandwiches.
--right now the Chuan Park management has invaded my flat to discern if my flat's concealed pipes are in danger of bursting and flooding the unit. it's fucking ridiculous the kind of shit i have to put up with because my idiot father decided an HBD flat was beneath him, but can't afford a unit from a proper, quality, housing development--
Wednesday was patrick's birthday dinner celebration. wayne brought up a point that you're not supposed to celebrate your birthday in advance, according to cheena tradition. which amazed me, because i thought it went that you're not supposed to celebrate it after your birthday. moot point anyway. celebrating it on Wednesday made no sense to me, if his actual birthday's Thursday and Friday would mean staying out longer [and likely another xuan's house thing].
have you seen those really bad ads for a japanese restaurant called Ichiban before films at cinemas? we were going to eat there yesterday. matt seems to have this adversion to japanese food, probably not unexplainable but i decided not to prod; anyway we ended up eating at Swensen's. the Plaza Singapura one is known to my family for having bad, slow service [my family eats there every other birthday]. warned them, but there wasn't much choice there. the prices are abysmal, even without service charge and GST [hah! service charge. another one of those hilarious ironies that you have to pay through the nose as a result of].
we burned an American flag [they came on my 49ers] and matt tore up two, much to joel keh's chargin [according to dax he's a poseur- yank, anyway i can't see anyone but americans standing up for america. they seem to have a skewed perception of everyone/eveything else, sometimes even of themselves]. everyone was taken by leowjun's ridiculous [ridiculous because it manages to fit a huge LCD, five-megapixel CCD and 3x optical zoom into a Casio Exilim-esque body] and ridiculously expensive camera. even i, i must add, though though at that price i would've bought a better camera [yitchun's Olympus C-750 UZ, currently on loan to me, comes to mind]. matt did his work at the table between dinner and dessert, said we were talkign rubbish. true, but look at what they were all talking about at xuan's house: clothes, girls, the MTV Asia Awards, Jackass! and the going-ons in school. it makes matt's bluff [in case xuan's parents came out and wondered about why they were sitting in a circle] about talking girl talk no longer a bluff. i wanted to read Prozac Nation there, but i don't think it would've helped to read that there and then.
madness ensued when the bill came [we were somehow over a hundred dollars short for a while, and apparently people still owe xuan money for the pies at his place], and later when almost everyone tried to jack [jack?] pat. half of them ended up on the floor, leowjun especially painfully due to an operation he's had recently.
then pool at Le Meridien. i'm not much of a pool shark. my mom's brought us to pool before, i got a bit sick of it when my sister shot a cue ball at me by accident; more or less gave it up since then. just stood and watched, incredulous that they were screening a Harry Potter film in a pool hall.
strangely though the instant i parted ways with untung and alvin at Serangoon station i lost the buzz of company and went home down again.
i got irritated with AppleCorner@IKEA's pride in being the world's first [and only?] AppleCorner. what's so bloody difficult about setting up an AppleCorner? it's just a long shelf/case with PCs on top of it. again: i'm losing faith in Apple.
IKEA has some pretty interesting stuff. not exactly where one would go to buy a birthday gift; i think the fact that we managed to find stuff that was non-worthless/useless says something about how resourceful we are/were [though one of my ideas about a set of kitchen knives probably was a bit daft].
Tuesday was also the first time i walked into a Burger King and didn't feel like eating anything. in fact, i even felt [very] slightly repulsed at the food available there, like as if i didn't survive on food that tasted good and normally ate whatever was good for me. maybe the whole eat- less thing is starting to work out for me.
looking at furniture and wall colors, wardrobes, etc etc was fun. i used to spend hours in The Sims just building houses and furnishing them; maybe i really should take up a design course in poly. matt was also there to keep an eye out for ideas for his new place at Aljunied, i advised him to choose door handles instead of door knobs if he had a choice--try twisting a doorknob to enter a room when one hand has a drink and the other has a book/newspaper/sandwiches.
--right now the Chuan Park management has invaded my flat to discern if my flat's concealed pipes are in danger of bursting and flooding the unit. it's fucking ridiculous the kind of shit i have to put up with because my idiot father decided an HBD flat was beneath him, but can't afford a unit from a proper, quality, housing development--
Wednesday was patrick's birthday dinner celebration. wayne brought up a point that you're not supposed to celebrate your birthday in advance, according to cheena tradition. which amazed me, because i thought it went that you're not supposed to celebrate it after your birthday. moot point anyway. celebrating it on Wednesday made no sense to me, if his actual birthday's Thursday and Friday would mean staying out longer [and likely another xuan's house thing].
have you seen those really bad ads for a japanese restaurant called Ichiban before films at cinemas? we were going to eat there yesterday. matt seems to have this adversion to japanese food, probably not unexplainable but i decided not to prod; anyway we ended up eating at Swensen's. the Plaza Singapura one is known to my family for having bad, slow service [my family eats there every other birthday]. warned them, but there wasn't much choice there. the prices are abysmal, even without service charge and GST [hah! service charge. another one of those hilarious ironies that you have to pay through the nose as a result of].
we burned an American flag [they came on my 49ers] and matt tore up two, much to joel keh's chargin [according to dax he's a poseur- yank, anyway i can't see anyone but americans standing up for america. they seem to have a skewed perception of everyone/eveything else, sometimes even of themselves]. everyone was taken by leowjun's ridiculous [ridiculous because it manages to fit a huge LCD, five-megapixel CCD and 3x optical zoom into a Casio Exilim-esque body] and ridiculously expensive camera. even i, i must add, though though at that price i would've bought a better camera [yitchun's Olympus C-750 UZ, currently on loan to me, comes to mind]. matt did his work at the table between dinner and dessert, said we were talkign rubbish. true, but look at what they were all talking about at xuan's house: clothes, girls, the MTV Asia Awards, Jackass! and the going-ons in school. it makes matt's bluff [in case xuan's parents came out and wondered about why they were sitting in a circle] about talking girl talk no longer a bluff. i wanted to read Prozac Nation there, but i don't think it would've helped to read that there and then.
madness ensued when the bill came [we were somehow over a hundred dollars short for a while, and apparently people still owe xuan money for the pies at his place], and later when almost everyone tried to jack [jack?] pat. half of them ended up on the floor, leowjun especially painfully due to an operation he's had recently.
then pool at Le Meridien. i'm not much of a pool shark. my mom's brought us to pool before, i got a bit sick of it when my sister shot a cue ball at me by accident; more or less gave it up since then. just stood and watched, incredulous that they were screening a Harry Potter film in a pool hall.
strangely though the instant i parted ways with untung and alvin at Serangoon station i lost the buzz of company and went home down again.
"i must get out once in a while
everything is starting to die
the dust settles the worms dig
the spiders crawl over the bed
i must get out once in a while
i eat all day and i now i am fat
yesterday's meal is hugging the plate
you never wash up after yourself"
- "You Never Wash Up After Yourself", Radiohead
Wednesday, February 18
designated driver
Thursday my father returned to Port Moresby, fighting with my mom on the phone whilst getting ready to go, and with her in person whilst he was leaving the flat.
Friday i attended the Nanyang Polytechnic Open House. suffice it to say that i wasted my time, and that it's full of unsavoury characters.
Saturday i went to the NUS Challenge Shield debates. it wasn't bad, actually. both matt and xuan were representing their own JCs there, but xuan said he wouldn't be speaking at all. and ACJC had this huge, intimidating posse, so i tagged along with matt's team and found myself to be the only one on NJC's side. matt didn't speak the first two rounds. at the first round there were two men and three judges plus the timekeeper, so i felt less out of place. however on the second round i discovered that SRJC's uniform is almost identical to what i was wearing, save for a bit of colour and texture [my pants were corduroy, their shirts were of the shiny polyester material that all uniforms seem to be made of].
you can probably imagine what the final, NJC-vs-ACJC match felt like. the motion was that This House [it took me until we were three speakers into the first debate to realize that THBT stands for This House Believes That] Would Set The Internet Free.
i did not expect them to choose that motion [NJC was prop]. i expected them to choose the one about religon and politics not mixing. or even the first of three motions [which i can no longer remember] offered. anything that mixes with the Internet will be messy. that rings even more true when it involes privacy/human rights/censorship issues.
i can't really tell, but my money would have been on the fact that no-one on either side was a techie. it would have helped, greatly.
i read Prozac Nation outside the rooms in between debates. it felt odd reading it whilst the people inside the classroom wrestled with issues like overpolluting MNCs and ... i suddenly cannot remember what the motion for the second round was.
alex from the NJC debating team is nasty. he does the god-cop-bad-cop thing that was so reminiscent of my father i wanted to strangle him. i would print his surname but i can't remember it. he lacks leadership qualities. matt and the other girl who also spoke for the first time in the last round seemed really down afterwards. if i were her i wouldn't've offered alex that ride to the train station. chances are he spent the trip to the station giving her more 'pointers'. alex isn't even a/his real name [in my book a name you give yourself is not one].
i thought they did well considering the circumstances. i was going to say so, but i first decided to hold until i found out the results, and then after the results were announced i thought it would sound bad, if matt thought i was saying it because i had to. and after we met up with xuan the moment passed.
i overanalyse and overthink too much [the 'too much' is not redundant, it's reinforcing].
plus i worry quite a bit too. at xuan's i told everyone that i decided not to drink because i hadn't slept quite a bit--drinking would smash everything. their drinking-goggles game was impossible to follow even with me sitting at the side watching, i don't think i would have lasted much acutally playing it. that was true, but additionally there was the issue of becoming drunk. i have yet to explore the limits of my liver and hence do not know how much i can take on before i become pissed and shitfaced. so i let the others do the drinking.
you know that Robbie Williams video [Come Undone, i think--odd name] where he wakes up in the morning and walks through the house, looking at all the passed-out people lying in heaps on the floor in the house and remembering the night before?
that was more or less what i felt whilst sitting in the dark in the room where all the passed-out people were [and also while the actual drunken-running-around was going on]. i went up there after alvin chow and matt were put to bed. then came leowjun. then cedric [a bit of a surprise there. ced doth not seem like the sort to get pissed] and just sat there, got alvin tissues, reset matt's arm twice before giving up, did't remember that i had already tried to do that when xuan came in and tried resetting it as well, brought the bottle of bacardi and pat's flask up from the middle of the living room floor where it lay, talked to pat for quite a bit, wacthed leowjun in his half-drunken-stupor amazingly managing to answer incessant incoming messages on his Nokia, saw ken get alvin a towel, etc.
it wasn't much at all, but it satisfied the worry bit in me, probably enough for me to sleep [dax said he saw me asleep in the chair, but i don't remember sleeping]. see, this is the kind of kid that parents like mine bring up. my father used to come home drunk and just sit at the doorstep, and no one would know he's back until we heard him or happened to open the door. he would be asking ask endless questions related to his current location, his identity, our identities, and what he was doing here. we just put him to bed and the next morning--no recollection for our troubles. it's sick. my parents are still teenagers, and i'm ready to settle down into a Saab, a flat, a 9-to-5 job, and live the rest of my life out quietly [am i the oldest seventeen-year-old in the world?].
the rest of the night i spectated, helped a bit with clearing cups, took too few pictures, sung along quietly to 99 Red Balloons, etc etc.
it was fun, though from the second-person view it probably shouldn't have been. i'm always living through other people anyway. creeps me out sometimes, when i think about it.
Friday i attended the Nanyang Polytechnic Open House. suffice it to say that i wasted my time, and that it's full of unsavoury characters.
Saturday i went to the NUS Challenge Shield debates. it wasn't bad, actually. both matt and xuan were representing their own JCs there, but xuan said he wouldn't be speaking at all. and ACJC had this huge, intimidating posse, so i tagged along with matt's team and found myself to be the only one on NJC's side. matt didn't speak the first two rounds. at the first round there were two men and three judges plus the timekeeper, so i felt less out of place. however on the second round i discovered that SRJC's uniform is almost identical to what i was wearing, save for a bit of colour and texture [my pants were corduroy, their shirts were of the shiny polyester material that all uniforms seem to be made of].
you can probably imagine what the final, NJC-vs-ACJC match felt like. the motion was that This House [it took me until we were three speakers into the first debate to realize that THBT stands for This House Believes That] Would Set The Internet Free.
i did not expect them to choose that motion [NJC was prop]. i expected them to choose the one about religon and politics not mixing. or even the first of three motions [which i can no longer remember] offered. anything that mixes with the Internet will be messy. that rings even more true when it involes privacy/human rights/censorship issues.
i can't really tell, but my money would have been on the fact that no-one on either side was a techie. it would have helped, greatly.
i read Prozac Nation outside the rooms in between debates. it felt odd reading it whilst the people inside the classroom wrestled with issues like overpolluting MNCs and ... i suddenly cannot remember what the motion for the second round was.
alex from the NJC debating team is nasty. he does the god-cop-bad-cop thing that was so reminiscent of my father i wanted to strangle him. i would print his surname but i can't remember it. he lacks leadership qualities. matt and the other girl who also spoke for the first time in the last round seemed really down afterwards. if i were her i wouldn't've offered alex that ride to the train station. chances are he spent the trip to the station giving her more 'pointers'. alex isn't even a/his real name [in my book a name you give yourself is not one].
i thought they did well considering the circumstances. i was going to say so, but i first decided to hold until i found out the results, and then after the results were announced i thought it would sound bad, if matt thought i was saying it because i had to. and after we met up with xuan the moment passed.
i overanalyse and overthink too much [the 'too much' is not redundant, it's reinforcing].
plus i worry quite a bit too. at xuan's i told everyone that i decided not to drink because i hadn't slept quite a bit--drinking would smash everything. their drinking-goggles game was impossible to follow even with me sitting at the side watching, i don't think i would have lasted much acutally playing it. that was true, but additionally there was the issue of becoming drunk. i have yet to explore the limits of my liver and hence do not know how much i can take on before i become pissed and shitfaced. so i let the others do the drinking.
you know that Robbie Williams video [Come Undone, i think--odd name] where he wakes up in the morning and walks through the house, looking at all the passed-out people lying in heaps on the floor in the house and remembering the night before?
that was more or less what i felt whilst sitting in the dark in the room where all the passed-out people were [and also while the actual drunken-running-around was going on]. i went up there after alvin chow and matt were put to bed. then came leowjun. then cedric [a bit of a surprise there. ced doth not seem like the sort to get pissed] and just sat there, got alvin tissues, reset matt's arm twice before giving up, did't remember that i had already tried to do that when xuan came in and tried resetting it as well, brought the bottle of bacardi and pat's flask up from the middle of the living room floor where it lay, talked to pat for quite a bit, wacthed leowjun in his half-drunken-stupor amazingly managing to answer incessant incoming messages on his Nokia, saw ken get alvin a towel, etc.
it wasn't much at all, but it satisfied the worry bit in me, probably enough for me to sleep [dax said he saw me asleep in the chair, but i don't remember sleeping]. see, this is the kind of kid that parents like mine bring up. my father used to come home drunk and just sit at the doorstep, and no one would know he's back until we heard him or happened to open the door. he would be asking ask endless questions related to his current location, his identity, our identities, and what he was doing here. we just put him to bed and the next morning--no recollection for our troubles. it's sick. my parents are still teenagers, and i'm ready to settle down into a Saab, a flat, a 9-to-5 job, and live the rest of my life out quietly [am i the oldest seventeen-year-old in the world?].
the rest of the night i spectated, helped a bit with clearing cups, took too few pictures, sung along quietly to 99 Red Balloons, etc etc.
it was fun, though from the second-person view it probably shouldn't have been. i'm always living through other people anyway. creeps me out sometimes, when i think about it.
"I'm living without you
I know all about you
I have run you down into the ground
Spread disease about you over town
I used to adore you
I couldn't control you
There was nothing that I wouldn't do
To keep myself around and close to you
Do you have an opinion?
A mind of your own?
I thought you were special
I thought you should know
But I've run out of patience
I couldn't care less"
- "Special", Garbage
Wednesday, February 11
the bleached stuff
i feel like i'm incapable of taking care of myself.
i woke up at ten forty this morning. two hours past my alarm. which is a four-hour improvement.
i hadn't eaten anything in close to twenty hours.
the only thing i feel like eating now is the only slice of non-white bread available in the entire house [Gardenia Wheatgerm and Bran]. it's miles away from the preferred wholemeal bread, but at least it's not the bleached stuff [which wouldn't be so bad if, say, i bothered to do something like get butter on it, but ...].
i don't feel like drinking anything else except cans and cans of "soft" drinks.
and before anyone complains, this isn't about "me, me, me".
it's about "i, i, i".
so there.
i woke up at ten forty this morning. two hours past my alarm. which is a four-hour improvement.
i hadn't eaten anything in close to twenty hours.
the only thing i feel like eating now is the only slice of non-white bread available in the entire house [Gardenia Wheatgerm and Bran]. it's miles away from the preferred wholemeal bread, but at least it's not the bleached stuff [which wouldn't be so bad if, say, i bothered to do something like get butter on it, but ...].
i don't feel like drinking anything else except cans and cans of "soft" drinks.
and before anyone complains, this isn't about "me, me, me".
it's about "i, i, i".
so there.
"Confusion that never stops
The closing walls and the ticking clocks
Gonna come back and take you home
I could not stop, that you now know"
- "Clocks", Coldplay
Tuesday, February 10
dysFUNctional
NB: the capitalization is inherent in Microsoft Word, and I cannot be arsed to switch AutoCorrect off. Hence the incontinuity with the capitalization, because a bit of it was composed on my Tungsten T.
I’d never thought I would see the day where Coldplay was being advertised on TV. Justin Timberlake in performing on my Thomson Life TV now. I taped the Grammys. I wanted to see Coldplay accept Record Of The Year. I regret it now, because I have ploughed through many inches of shit, and I’m nowhere near. And if it wasn’t for the Grammy [the gramophone icon] itself, the entire thing would have easily been mistaken for some version of MTV’s myriad awards shows.
pat's told me to try the SPCA--they might have Midget. i don't know--how many people in Chuan Park would expend their precious petrol to take a handsome, purebred, Papillion to the SPCA, when the can quietly keep him, and no-one will know? how many singaporeans, for that matter?
i don't know. can't hurt, can it? though disappointment does, and it looms/threatens.
and i get the feeling that if i ever should meet Midget being walked by whoever found him, i would be met with shameless accusations of dishonesty and 'anyhow saying' that person. that's just the sad truth of the people we live amongst.
let's hope whoever next finds him is an ang moh expat. so far the two families that have found him are Caucasian ones, the reason he escaped was once because of Midget being flight of foot, another being the Asian security guards [see below].
my father flew back last Monday. he went from Gate 16 direct to supper with his friends, coming back drunk.
drunk. this is how he chooses to meet his family after leaving last year and arriving twelve days late for lunar new year's, and going out to get pissed with friends before seeing his kids.
needless to say the replacement reunion dinner on the fifteenth/last day of lunar new year's did not go well.
remarks about what if i wasn't lucky in the Os, what about papua, my curt response that the singaporean government would take me first, his inquiry about my plans, back-and-forth, like as if our Cellini dining table was Wimbledon.
pre-dinner wasn't good, either. i was dispatched to go return our rented copy of the Homerun DVD to Video EZY Thomson, an experience not to be repeated. Firstly: Homerun?! Really?! Secondly: SBS Transit 130 travels in convoy. I spent three dollars and the same amount of hours getting on the wrong bus, going in the wrong direction, before getting there and spending all of three minutes returning the DVD.
So I schlep to the bus stop. And I wait. And I wait. I have been waiting for almost forty-five minutes. I am the only one at the bus stop. My paranoia has long since kicked in, and I wonder if the bus service has long since ended, if everyone there is looking at me, wondering what the hell I am doing there waiting. Am I a suicide bomber, going to tear Sin Ming Drive apart?
So I sit there, unsure of myself as usual, when a silver Aston Martin DB7 pulls right up at my feet. My imagination is ready to lurch me right into the Aston and speed off to Chuan Park. Then this teenage boy steps out of it [from the passenger seat, thank god] and promptly hails a cab to get him wherever he’s going. I can only assume he lives somewhere here and his presumed father in the Aston was simply giving him a lift to the main road [however, Sin Ming Drive is hardly a main road] to hail a cab.
By now, my jaw has been dropped for about fifteen minutes [I can tell the make and model of [almost?] every car I see on the road. I noticed the Aston before it even finished rounding the corner] and I averted my eyes the instant the door popped open so I didn’t look like my mother drove a Suzuki Swift GL and it was the first Aston I’ve ever seen on Singaporean roads [the capitalization on ‘singaporean’ is Microsoft’s fault. It was not intentional. It would probably make much more sense and save a lot more effort just to go back and change it instead of opening yet another set of parenthesis to explain, but I think this makes my point clearer].
The world is unfair. But I can take pleasure in the fact that that DB7 is actually American. It sits on a—very old--Jaguar XJ-S platform, and both Jag and Aston are owned by that Ford Motor Company. Ha!
So after the whole Aston thing, I went upstream and found an entire clump of Thomson-ers waiting for the same bus, one bus stop back. So I wait with them. I almost want to approach one of them to check if I am at the correct stop, where the bus heads on to Ang Mo Kio from here. But I don’t, even after spying a sign, that says 130A goes from Ang Mo Kio to somewhere along Sin Ming Drive and stops, that worries me.
So why am I not surprised that when 130 finally turns up, the sign on it proudly states that this bus is going to Shenton Way?
It takes me another two hours to get home, by which time half my fare card has been emptied. I can probably forget my usual long bus rides to nowhere and back from now onwards.
When I get home, my father harangues me for my [maternal] aunt Esther’s telephone number. I have it, but I won’t give it to him [he owes her money and wants to loan some more]. Of course, I do not tell him that, instead telling him pissed-offly that I do not even have my [maternal] grandfather’s telephone number [another unabashed lie], why would I have my her number?
So he asks me then, if I know his number? [“sarcastically”, of course—I believe there is no such thing as sarcastic mandarin]
I tell him, even more pissed off, that his number is MY number [and that he has no business running up a thousand dollars’ worth of calls on my line, either, but of course I don’t tell him that, mainly because my command of mandarin is OK, but not OK enough to mentally translate that in time].
NB: if you still have not realized, the above conversation was conducted in mandarin. God, I am so cheena.
My mom’s in bed, post-cry. I want to ask her what’s wrong, but she doesn’t look like she wants to talk right now, and wanting to be left well alone myself in situations like this, I go sit in the study room and wait for her to feel better, instead of going to the dining table the instant my father decrees it time to eat like my siblings.
ARGH! The Coldplay ad is playing a second time!
My father went to Taipei and took my SIM card with it over the weekend. Enough said.
When my landed on Monday, he passed me his broken Braun electric toothbrush and told me to get it repaired. Excuse me? He buys a three-hundred-dollar toothbrush for use over there while I poke along with manual ones and my ever-present halitosis? And he wants me to schlep to wherever the rurally-located service center to repair it? I told him that the company said it would take two weeks to repair it—without so much as calling the company first. he said he’d bring it back next trip, then. Which means I now have at least half a year to get it done, and if I get it done early, I can even use I for a bit.
Ha! 50 Cent just went up onstage to accept a prize he did not win.
We also counted our hongbao money recently [only after the fifteenth day—this tradition thing that my mom insists on. I strangely got $302, more than my siblings. But I got shanghaied into putting most of my money into the bank—I was originally only going to deposit $100. That should be fine, I hear you say, just take it out late at an ATM. My mom took away my ATM card sometime ago—long story. And I owe pat money. No way in hell I’m telling my mom I borrowed money to cover my bills, so I’m out of luck. At least I can pay pat back.
“We put the FUN back in dysFUNctional!”
I’d never thought I would see the day where Coldplay was being advertised on TV. Justin Timberlake in performing on my Thomson Life TV now. I taped the Grammys. I wanted to see Coldplay accept Record Of The Year. I regret it now, because I have ploughed through many inches of shit, and I’m nowhere near. And if it wasn’t for the Grammy [the gramophone icon] itself, the entire thing would have easily been mistaken for some version of MTV’s myriad awards shows.
pat's told me to try the SPCA--they might have Midget. i don't know--how many people in Chuan Park would expend their precious petrol to take a handsome, purebred, Papillion to the SPCA, when the can quietly keep him, and no-one will know? how many singaporeans, for that matter?
i don't know. can't hurt, can it? though disappointment does, and it looms/threatens.
and i get the feeling that if i ever should meet Midget being walked by whoever found him, i would be met with shameless accusations of dishonesty and 'anyhow saying' that person. that's just the sad truth of the people we live amongst.
let's hope whoever next finds him is an ang moh expat. so far the two families that have found him are Caucasian ones, the reason he escaped was once because of Midget being flight of foot, another being the Asian security guards [see below].
my father flew back last Monday. he went from Gate 16 direct to supper with his friends, coming back drunk.
drunk. this is how he chooses to meet his family after leaving last year and arriving twelve days late for lunar new year's, and going out to get pissed with friends before seeing his kids.
needless to say the replacement reunion dinner on the fifteenth/last day of lunar new year's did not go well.
remarks about what if i wasn't lucky in the Os, what about papua, my curt response that the singaporean government would take me first, his inquiry about my plans, back-and-forth, like as if our Cellini dining table was Wimbledon.
pre-dinner wasn't good, either. i was dispatched to go return our rented copy of the Homerun DVD to Video EZY Thomson, an experience not to be repeated. Firstly: Homerun?! Really?! Secondly: SBS Transit 130 travels in convoy. I spent three dollars and the same amount of hours getting on the wrong bus, going in the wrong direction, before getting there and spending all of three minutes returning the DVD.
So I schlep to the bus stop. And I wait. And I wait. I have been waiting for almost forty-five minutes. I am the only one at the bus stop. My paranoia has long since kicked in, and I wonder if the bus service has long since ended, if everyone there is looking at me, wondering what the hell I am doing there waiting. Am I a suicide bomber, going to tear Sin Ming Drive apart?
So I sit there, unsure of myself as usual, when a silver Aston Martin DB7 pulls right up at my feet. My imagination is ready to lurch me right into the Aston and speed off to Chuan Park. Then this teenage boy steps out of it [from the passenger seat, thank god] and promptly hails a cab to get him wherever he’s going. I can only assume he lives somewhere here and his presumed father in the Aston was simply giving him a lift to the main road [however, Sin Ming Drive is hardly a main road] to hail a cab.
By now, my jaw has been dropped for about fifteen minutes [I can tell the make and model of [almost?] every car I see on the road. I noticed the Aston before it even finished rounding the corner] and I averted my eyes the instant the door popped open so I didn’t look like my mother drove a Suzuki Swift GL and it was the first Aston I’ve ever seen on Singaporean roads [the capitalization on ‘singaporean’ is Microsoft’s fault. It was not intentional. It would probably make much more sense and save a lot more effort just to go back and change it instead of opening yet another set of parenthesis to explain, but I think this makes my point clearer].
The world is unfair. But I can take pleasure in the fact that that DB7 is actually American. It sits on a—very old--Jaguar XJ-S platform, and both Jag and Aston are owned by that Ford Motor Company. Ha!
So after the whole Aston thing, I went upstream and found an entire clump of Thomson-ers waiting for the same bus, one bus stop back. So I wait with them. I almost want to approach one of them to check if I am at the correct stop, where the bus heads on to Ang Mo Kio from here. But I don’t, even after spying a sign, that says 130A goes from Ang Mo Kio to somewhere along Sin Ming Drive and stops, that worries me.
So why am I not surprised that when 130 finally turns up, the sign on it proudly states that this bus is going to Shenton Way?
It takes me another two hours to get home, by which time half my fare card has been emptied. I can probably forget my usual long bus rides to nowhere and back from now onwards.
When I get home, my father harangues me for my [maternal] aunt Esther’s telephone number. I have it, but I won’t give it to him [he owes her money and wants to loan some more]. Of course, I do not tell him that, instead telling him pissed-offly that I do not even have my [maternal] grandfather’s telephone number [another unabashed lie], why would I have my her number?
So he asks me then, if I know his number? [“sarcastically”, of course—I believe there is no such thing as sarcastic mandarin]
I tell him, even more pissed off, that his number is MY number [and that he has no business running up a thousand dollars’ worth of calls on my line, either, but of course I don’t tell him that, mainly because my command of mandarin is OK, but not OK enough to mentally translate that in time].
NB: if you still have not realized, the above conversation was conducted in mandarin. God, I am so cheena.
My mom’s in bed, post-cry. I want to ask her what’s wrong, but she doesn’t look like she wants to talk right now, and wanting to be left well alone myself in situations like this, I go sit in the study room and wait for her to feel better, instead of going to the dining table the instant my father decrees it time to eat like my siblings.
ARGH! The Coldplay ad is playing a second time!
My father went to Taipei and took my SIM card with it over the weekend. Enough said.
When my landed on Monday, he passed me his broken Braun electric toothbrush and told me to get it repaired. Excuse me? He buys a three-hundred-dollar toothbrush for use over there while I poke along with manual ones and my ever-present halitosis? And he wants me to schlep to wherever the rurally-located service center to repair it? I told him that the company said it would take two weeks to repair it—without so much as calling the company first. he said he’d bring it back next trip, then. Which means I now have at least half a year to get it done, and if I get it done early, I can even use I for a bit.
Ha! 50 Cent just went up onstage to accept a prize he did not win.
We also counted our hongbao money recently [only after the fifteenth day—this tradition thing that my mom insists on. I strangely got $302, more than my siblings. But I got shanghaied into putting most of my money into the bank—I was originally only going to deposit $100. That should be fine, I hear you say, just take it out late at an ATM. My mom took away my ATM card sometime ago—long story. And I owe pat money. No way in hell I’m telling my mom I borrowed money to cover my bills, so I’m out of luck. At least I can pay pat back.
“We put the FUN back in dysFUNctional!”
"The lights go out and I can't be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought me down upon my knees
Oh I beg, I beg and I plead
Singing
Come out of the things unsaid
Shoot an apple off my head
And a trouble that can't be named
A tiger's waiting to be tamed
Singing
You are
You are
Confusion that never stops
The closing walls and the ticking clocks
Gonna come back and take you home
I could not stop, that you now know
Singing
Come out upon my seas
Cursed missed opportunities
Am I a part of the cure
Or am I part of the disease
Singing
You are, you are
You are, you are
You are, you are
You are, you are
And nothing else compares
And nothing else compares
And nothing else compares
And nothing else compares
You are, you are
Home, home where I wanted to go
Home, home where I wanted to go
Home, home where I wanted to go (You are)
Home, home where I wanted to go (You are)"
- "Clocks", Coldplay
Wednesday, February 4
low battery
the following is transcripted right out of my sketchbook
Tuesday, 3rd February 2004 02:41 AM
Low Battery
Your battery is low. Some services will be disabled. Place the handheld in a HotSync cradle to recharge.
[OK]
Tuesday, 3rd February 2004 02:45 AM
Low Battery
Your battery is EXTREMELY low. Your handheld will power off soon. Place the handheld in a HotSync cradle to recharge.
[OK]
damn. i listened and went to leave my Palm in the HotSync cradle to recharge. hopefully i get arsed enough to transcript this into text when i wake up [if i sleep].
i still miss the dog. not that i shouldn't, but unlike me and my petulance/pensiveness, the rest of the house seems to be taking it too well. my maid's asked after it, but apart from that i seem to be the only one affected enough to alter my choice of activities - zoning out in front of the XBox, reading all day [and believe me that's hard when my last trip to the library reaped nothing in terms of literary material - the library@esplanade doesn't have a Fiction section, believe it or not], not eating, thinking about the dog, jumping off the comp with hurried, impolite salutations to the one person i was talking to/wanted to talk to, because someone thought she heard the dog barking and i practically stormed off downstairs in search.
obviously reaped nothing, that excursion. my mom dragged me off to the friendly neighbourhood temple to atone for my sin of being born in the year of the tiger, how ridiculous is that?!?
my hand's getting ache-y. Note To Self: Transcript & Finish This Entry Later.
I Mean It.
nineteen eighty-six
seriously. i've offended the God In-Charge Of The Earth simply by being born at a certain time, within a certain year?
how would that work if we had no calendars or clocks?
my mom went against the flow of traffic to get an illegal parking space. if there's one aspect of my mother that i'd like to emulate, it's her i-don't-care-if-i'm-in-your-way-there-are-five-Mercs-blocking-my-way-into-the-parking-lot driving style. why do you think my dream car is an old, likely decrepit-by-then, utterly prang-able, matt black 1986 Saab 900S [preferably turbo] cabriolet?
as i walked into the temple at toa payoh i immediately registered the fog inside, the smoke rising up into the rafters [assuming those cheena wooden beams are called rafters], the sudden rasp in my throat, the pain in my eyes. if i had worn my contacts they would have hardened up right away and popped clean out of my eyes.
i dryly commented to my siblings that i had discovered the cause of SARS. no reaction. one of my sisters, the secondary three one, wasn't there because she was a Christian/Catholic and hence had an argument/excuse against going.
because my siblings are unaffected by the arbitrary decision the almanac or whatever that decides these things made, my mom just brought them in front of Confucius and did the general please-help-my-son-not-fail thing.
because my mother and i are special cases [those born in a year of the Cow, Pig, Snake or Tiger are affected--thank goodness i'm a Tiger and neither Cow nor Pig, and it doesn’t hurt that my mother's a Snake] she needs to ask someone which of the many sculptures she's to pray to.
i can just imagine the situation if i were the one who had to ask the temple concierge the same question: 'Excuse me, my good man, which of these vulgarly-hued effigies am I to offer sticks of joss and pieces of scrappy paper to atone for my sin of being born when i was?'
it's just sad that "my good man's" inability to understand more than half that sentence would take the edge off that insult.
as we were leaving the temple my brother wondered aloud don't places like these cause holes in the ozone layer?
atta boy.
oh, and as we were leaving my mother and i [i was in the front seat, as usual] stared down the nose of a black Mercedes-Benz E240 as she lurched our Suzuki Swift out off the double yellow lines and past the front bumper of said Merc. absolute Fun.
sex bomb
"sometimes a bit of rubber can alter the course of mankind. too bad singaporeans are so kiam they're unwilling to part with small change."
all too true. though how easy would it have been to locate, let alone buy a condom in the kind of sleazy nightclub [where i was very likely conceived] that my father used to own?
though it is possible my mom may have had one on her--after all, what does a girl expect when she goes to work at a nightclub?
:)
the poseur train
an excerpt from the Reuters article "Spammers dial up mobile phones"
02/03/04 | 06:34 AM PST
"People like to receive messages," he said. "They think it's cool. When you get an SMS message you deal with it immediately, but for e-mails it just feeds into your e-mail box."
haha. i can just remember the times, while on an MRT train hurtling towards Orchard, that i was dying for someone to send me a text message or give me a ring so that i would feel less uncomfortable amongst the Nokians, Samsung-huays and Nintendo couples plugged into each other's Game Boy Advance.
Roxio Toast™ for Mac
i spend too much time reading other people's blogs. archives are particularly thorny to get through. but i'm glad i did, because i'd never thought i'd find someone else who thinks that toast and margarine is one of the great foods of the world.
ignorance is bliss
i can't take comfort in the fact that i never was a good student to begin with, because i topped my level in Primary One [simultaneously topping Victoria School's Top Student of 2002--ergh, too many "tops" in one sentence] and got into Nanyang Primary School by sailing through the Primary Three GEP screening exams.
i'm too clever by half.
03.45: No Sleep
not that it doesn't look at all beautiful, but the four AM sky would probably look heaps better if there were clouds in the sky, if my dog was sleeping under the same ceiling, and if i wasn't so depressed.
chase the hongkong-shanghai citibank of china
my aunt works as a manager at HSBC. i envy her yuppie lifestyle; her Jalan Bahagia HDB terraced house, her weekend golfing trips, her Warren Country Club membership, her soon-to-be-Lexus-RX300 Toyota RAV4, her disposable contact lenses and subsequent Lasik surgery, her old Sony Ericsson T610, her ability to change mobiles every three months, her old-but-stylish IBM NetVista PC, even her old secretarial position at Chase Manhattan Bank.
and, of course, i feel reassured by her previous choice of a Toyota RAV4 instead of a Toyota Corolla or Honda Jazz.
she [and her boyfriend] brought my sisters and i to Lau Pa Sat one night to have satay. it's simply amazing just to be able to do that, looking up at the glass and steel of the skyscrapers above, emptied of its daytime population, Shenton Way around you--not exactly at a standstill, but going by slowly enough for you to appreciate that the Rat Race is officially taking a fifteen-minute break, before it resumes the rush flowing through its arteries tomorrow morning.
a bit like what i expect Raffles Place to be like on Sundays. i should really go find out one of these days.
past/present/future
when i was younger, all i wanted was for the future to come. for me to be finally out of the education system, to be working 9-to-5 [or, as TalkingCock put it a long time ago, if i remember correctly, 8.30-to-5.30] at a white-collar office, driving a Saab 9-5 Wagon, talking on my Ericsson T28s, living in an IKEA flat, listening to music by The Cardigans [coincidentally, the last four all originate from Sweden].
that was the past. sometime in the present, 2003/2004, i realized that it all will probably not come out this perfect. i also realized that the future is absolute crap. let us look superficially at the future that has come to my past [i.e. the present].
Saab Automobile AB has been bought over by General Motors, and the General has fucked it up and killed it--the upcoming Saab 9-2 is a Subaru Impreza WRX with a new nose and badges [shudder, shudder, shudder].
Ericsson Mobile Phones AB has merged with Sony Mobile Phones Co, resulting in the worst squirrelly, j-poppy abomination to ever bear the Ericsson name, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB.
at least IKEA and The Cardigans remain. but i'll probably've to add Absolut Vodka to my list, just to even things out a bit.
so now, in 2004, my conclusion of 2003 is that though i hated it, it was absolutely necessary, and there were even some bits i really liked.
because 2003 taught me that history [in every sense of the word] may not be so bad, and the future may not be such a great thing after all.
Tuesday, 3rd February 2004 02:41 AM
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Tuesday, 3rd February 2004 02:45 AM
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damn. i listened and went to leave my Palm in the HotSync cradle to recharge. hopefully i get arsed enough to transcript this into text when i wake up [if i sleep].
i still miss the dog. not that i shouldn't, but unlike me and my petulance/pensiveness, the rest of the house seems to be taking it too well. my maid's asked after it, but apart from that i seem to be the only one affected enough to alter my choice of activities - zoning out in front of the XBox, reading all day [and believe me that's hard when my last trip to the library reaped nothing in terms of literary material - the library@esplanade doesn't have a Fiction section, believe it or not], not eating, thinking about the dog, jumping off the comp with hurried, impolite salutations to the one person i was talking to/wanted to talk to, because someone thought she heard the dog barking and i practically stormed off downstairs in search.
obviously reaped nothing, that excursion. my mom dragged me off to the friendly neighbourhood temple to atone for my sin of being born in the year of the tiger, how ridiculous is that?!?
my hand's getting ache-y. Note To Self: Transcript & Finish This Entry Later.
I Mean It.
nineteen eighty-six
seriously. i've offended the God In-Charge Of The Earth simply by being born at a certain time, within a certain year?
how would that work if we had no calendars or clocks?
my mom went against the flow of traffic to get an illegal parking space. if there's one aspect of my mother that i'd like to emulate, it's her i-don't-care-if-i'm-in-your-way-there-are-five-Mercs-blocking-my-way-into-the-parking-lot driving style. why do you think my dream car is an old, likely decrepit-by-then, utterly prang-able, matt black 1986 Saab 900S [preferably turbo] cabriolet?
as i walked into the temple at toa payoh i immediately registered the fog inside, the smoke rising up into the rafters [assuming those cheena wooden beams are called rafters], the sudden rasp in my throat, the pain in my eyes. if i had worn my contacts they would have hardened up right away and popped clean out of my eyes.
i dryly commented to my siblings that i had discovered the cause of SARS. no reaction. one of my sisters, the secondary three one, wasn't there because she was a Christian/Catholic and hence had an argument/excuse against going.
because my siblings are unaffected by the arbitrary decision the almanac or whatever that decides these things made, my mom just brought them in front of Confucius and did the general please-help-my-son-not-fail thing.
because my mother and i are special cases [those born in a year of the Cow, Pig, Snake or Tiger are affected--thank goodness i'm a Tiger and neither Cow nor Pig, and it doesn’t hurt that my mother's a Snake] she needs to ask someone which of the many sculptures she's to pray to.
i can just imagine the situation if i were the one who had to ask the temple concierge the same question: 'Excuse me, my good man, which of these vulgarly-hued effigies am I to offer sticks of joss and pieces of scrappy paper to atone for my sin of being born when i was?'
it's just sad that "my good man's" inability to understand more than half that sentence would take the edge off that insult.
as we were leaving the temple my brother wondered aloud don't places like these cause holes in the ozone layer?
atta boy.
oh, and as we were leaving my mother and i [i was in the front seat, as usual] stared down the nose of a black Mercedes-Benz E240 as she lurched our Suzuki Swift out off the double yellow lines and past the front bumper of said Merc. absolute Fun.
sex bomb
"sometimes a bit of rubber can alter the course of mankind. too bad singaporeans are so kiam they're unwilling to part with small change."
all too true. though how easy would it have been to locate, let alone buy a condom in the kind of sleazy nightclub [where i was very likely conceived] that my father used to own?
though it is possible my mom may have had one on her--after all, what does a girl expect when she goes to work at a nightclub?
:)
the poseur train
an excerpt from the Reuters article "Spammers dial up mobile phones"
02/03/04 | 06:34 AM PST
"People like to receive messages," he said. "They think it's cool. When you get an SMS message you deal with it immediately, but for e-mails it just feeds into your e-mail box."
haha. i can just remember the times, while on an MRT train hurtling towards Orchard, that i was dying for someone to send me a text message or give me a ring so that i would feel less uncomfortable amongst the Nokians, Samsung-huays and Nintendo couples plugged into each other's Game Boy Advance.
Roxio Toast™ for Mac
i spend too much time reading other people's blogs. archives are particularly thorny to get through. but i'm glad i did, because i'd never thought i'd find someone else who thinks that toast and margarine is one of the great foods of the world.
ignorance is bliss
i can't take comfort in the fact that i never was a good student to begin with, because i topped my level in Primary One [simultaneously topping Victoria School's Top Student of 2002--ergh, too many "tops" in one sentence] and got into Nanyang Primary School by sailing through the Primary Three GEP screening exams.
i'm too clever by half.
03.45: No Sleep
not that it doesn't look at all beautiful, but the four AM sky would probably look heaps better if there were clouds in the sky, if my dog was sleeping under the same ceiling, and if i wasn't so depressed.
chase the hongkong-shanghai citibank of china
my aunt works as a manager at HSBC. i envy her yuppie lifestyle; her Jalan Bahagia HDB terraced house, her weekend golfing trips, her Warren Country Club membership, her soon-to-be-Lexus-RX300 Toyota RAV4, her disposable contact lenses and subsequent Lasik surgery, her old Sony Ericsson T610, her ability to change mobiles every three months, her old-but-stylish IBM NetVista PC, even her old secretarial position at Chase Manhattan Bank.
and, of course, i feel reassured by her previous choice of a Toyota RAV4 instead of a Toyota Corolla or Honda Jazz.
she [and her boyfriend] brought my sisters and i to Lau Pa Sat one night to have satay. it's simply amazing just to be able to do that, looking up at the glass and steel of the skyscrapers above, emptied of its daytime population, Shenton Way around you--not exactly at a standstill, but going by slowly enough for you to appreciate that the Rat Race is officially taking a fifteen-minute break, before it resumes the rush flowing through its arteries tomorrow morning.
a bit like what i expect Raffles Place to be like on Sundays. i should really go find out one of these days.
past/present/future
when i was younger, all i wanted was for the future to come. for me to be finally out of the education system, to be working 9-to-5 [or, as TalkingCock put it a long time ago, if i remember correctly, 8.30-to-5.30] at a white-collar office, driving a Saab 9-5 Wagon, talking on my Ericsson T28s, living in an IKEA flat, listening to music by The Cardigans [coincidentally, the last four all originate from Sweden].
that was the past. sometime in the present, 2003/2004, i realized that it all will probably not come out this perfect. i also realized that the future is absolute crap. let us look superficially at the future that has come to my past [i.e. the present].
Saab Automobile AB has been bought over by General Motors, and the General has fucked it up and killed it--the upcoming Saab 9-2 is a Subaru Impreza WRX with a new nose and badges [shudder, shudder, shudder].
Ericsson Mobile Phones AB has merged with Sony Mobile Phones Co, resulting in the worst squirrelly, j-poppy abomination to ever bear the Ericsson name, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB.
at least IKEA and The Cardigans remain. but i'll probably've to add Absolut Vodka to my list, just to even things out a bit.
so now, in 2004, my conclusion of 2003 is that though i hated it, it was absolutely necessary, and there were even some bits i really liked.
because 2003 taught me that history [in every sense of the word] may not be so bad, and the future may not be such a great thing after all.
"There are too many questions
There is not one solution
There is no resurrection
There is so much confusion
And the love profusion
You make me feel
You make me know
And the love vibration
You make me feel
You make it shine
There are too many options
There is no consolation
I have lost my illusions
What I want is an explanation
And the love profusion
You make me feel
You make me know
And the love direction
You make me feel
You make me shine
You make me feel
You make me shine
You make me feel
I got you under my skin
I got you under my skin
I got you under my skin
I got you under my skin
There is no comprehension
There is real isolation
There is so much destruction
What I want is a celebration
And I know I can feel bad
When I get in a bad mood
And the world can look so sad
Only you make me feel good"
- "Love Profusion", Madonna
Monday, February 2
don't panic
i've flown off the bloody wall.
it's past four AM in the morning, and i'm wide awake. i can't tell if it's because i can't sleep, or i won't let myself sleep.
Midget [my dog, named after the MG Midget, an iconic British sportscar] is still missing. i sat up in bed for quite a bit just now, crying, feeling abso-sodding-lutely guilty even though it wasn't my fault. where's he sleeping tonight? i don't even know if anyone's taken him in for the night. i don't deserve to be lying on my stomach in bed, tapping this out on my Palm, when he could be lying in a ditch, cold, shivering, trying to find his way home.
i don't think i'll be getting any sleep tonight. if i do fall asleep, i'll wake up crushed with guilt.
in completely unrelated news: i had a weird dream the night before. the dream would be weird even if it were a normal one - i don't dream often, maybe once every few months, occasionally a few times in one week, that's it.
the thing that bothers me is that i can't remember the first half of the dream. all i can recall of it is that it was significant, meaning it meant something important.
in any case, the bit i remember, the second half, involved my Chuan Park apartment being flooded. my family [i cannot remember if my father was there, anyway it's very unlikely that he was] just sat around the house, nonchalant, myself included. then the doorbell rings, and for some reason Mr Khoo is at the door. i let him in and go about my business. he asks to look under my pillow [my bedroom is completely dry, for some reason], and comments on the mess underneath it: hongbaos [those with truly cheena-traditionist families will understand what my hongbaos were doing under my pillow], some of my sketches, my journal/sketchbook, an issue of Car UK, and this chinese watercolor painting of a tiger. on closer inspection [meaning as my view zooms in to show only the painting] the painting appears to have been sent to me by Mr Khoo himself [though nothing on the painting itself betrays that fact, it was something i just suddenly knew].
below the painting of the tiger are several lines of text in the following format: one line of chinese text followed by another line of english text, the english text being the translation of the chinese text.
i look at the translation of the first line of text, and it was something to the effect of: "too bad you were too scared to come back for lunar new year."
and then i wake up. [i was woken by my sister, trying to tell me that the dog's missing]
in the same way i know that the dream painting was sent by Mr Khoo, i know that the text refers to going back to good ol' Victoria School for LNY, but it still doesn't make any sense.
dream interpretation, anyone?
it's past four AM in the morning, and i'm wide awake. i can't tell if it's because i can't sleep, or i won't let myself sleep.
Midget [my dog, named after the MG Midget, an iconic British sportscar] is still missing. i sat up in bed for quite a bit just now, crying, feeling abso-sodding-lutely guilty even though it wasn't my fault. where's he sleeping tonight? i don't even know if anyone's taken him in for the night. i don't deserve to be lying on my stomach in bed, tapping this out on my Palm, when he could be lying in a ditch, cold, shivering, trying to find his way home.
i don't think i'll be getting any sleep tonight. if i do fall asleep, i'll wake up crushed with guilt.
in completely unrelated news: i had a weird dream the night before. the dream would be weird even if it were a normal one - i don't dream often, maybe once every few months, occasionally a few times in one week, that's it.
the thing that bothers me is that i can't remember the first half of the dream. all i can recall of it is that it was significant, meaning it meant something important.
in any case, the bit i remember, the second half, involved my Chuan Park apartment being flooded. my family [i cannot remember if my father was there, anyway it's very unlikely that he was] just sat around the house, nonchalant, myself included. then the doorbell rings, and for some reason Mr Khoo is at the door. i let him in and go about my business. he asks to look under my pillow [my bedroom is completely dry, for some reason], and comments on the mess underneath it: hongbaos [those with truly cheena-traditionist families will understand what my hongbaos were doing under my pillow], some of my sketches, my journal/sketchbook, an issue of Car UK, and this chinese watercolor painting of a tiger. on closer inspection [meaning as my view zooms in to show only the painting] the painting appears to have been sent to me by Mr Khoo himself [though nothing on the painting itself betrays that fact, it was something i just suddenly knew].
below the painting of the tiger are several lines of text in the following format: one line of chinese text followed by another line of english text, the english text being the translation of the chinese text.
i look at the translation of the first line of text, and it was something to the effect of: "too bad you were too scared to come back for lunar new year."
and then i wake up. [i was woken by my sister, trying to tell me that the dog's missing]
in the same way i know that the dream painting was sent by Mr Khoo, i know that the text refers to going back to good ol' Victoria School for LNY, but it still doesn't make any sense.
dream interpretation, anyone?
"Bones, sinking like stones
All that we fought for
Homes, places we've grown
All of us are done for
And we live in a beautiful world
Yeah we do, yeah we do
We live in a beautiful world
Bones, sinking like stones
All that we fought for
And homes, places we've grown
All of us are done for
And we live in a beautiful world
Yeah we do, yeah we do
We live in a beautiful world
Here we go
Here we go
And we live in a beautiful world
Yeah we do, yeah we do
We live in a beautiful world
Oh, all that I know
There's nothing here to run from
'Cause yeah, everybody here's got somebody to lean on"
- "Don't Panic", Coldplay
Sunday, February 1
kicked in the gut
my dog disappeared today. i feel like i've been kicked in the gut, because he was found twice, and the second time he was found the security gaurd wouldn't let the dog stay inside the guardhouse itself, and he ran away.
"Baby thinks he's dying
Lost inside his bedroom
Mommy won't stop crying
And daddy's always working
There's no qoing back
There's no going back
There's no qoing back on this one
Baby wakes up with the sun
While everyone is sleeping
He thinks he's going crazy
This could be the big one
There's no going back
There's no going back
There's no going back
Sleeping with ghosts
It's such a lonely experince
The stars are out tonight
Only they can hear you breathing
You're so like a rose
You're so like a rose
You're so like a rose
I wish you could stay here"
- "So Like A Rose", Garbage
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