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.

"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

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