until the sun comes up over santa monica boulevard

how i wish i had a gun:

U2 5-Pocket Classics dark gray pants: $34.50

2004/2005 Fall/Winter collection Springfield white-pinstripe maroon business shirt: $69

Giacoma Puccini matt-black metal-rimmed glasses: $195

Apple 15GB iPod: $198

Ericsson T68m: $288

Palm Tungsten T: $568

Apple 12" PowerBook G4: $2841

Knowing your day sucked and wanting to shoot yourself: Priceless

There are some things in life money can buy. For everything else, there's a fully-loaded Glock.

today just full-on, flat-out, fucking sucked.

death of a french whore

no, no, no, no, no.

i spent the last weekend chasing my ComDI group for work, even though i'm not their leader, because last week we did nothing for our presentation. this week there is another presentation.

last week one group blew everyone-but-i's socks off with their RELATIVELY well-designed and pulled-off presentation.

my socks should have been blown off, but i feel i could have easily done better, even if my group have NOTHING last week.

now, after chasing one person, another, and a malay girl [she's not in my group, class, or even course, and i do not know WHY THE HELL our group's only copy of the presentation is with her] who i didn't know until after i started chasing them, i have an eleven slide presentation meant to cover for last week's lack of a presentation, and this week's FINAL, VIDEO-TAPED presentation as well.

ELEVEN SLIDES. that one group's presentation last week was much longer than that. and needless to say, better and much more well-designed.

i have a whole fuck-ton to bitch about, but i have to get cracking on the makeover of the presentation now.

in order to quell my feverent desire to throw everything [PowerBook, iPod, Wireless Mouse, Tungsten T, T68m, bag, contents, possibly myself] out the window just to obtain that one second of absolut peace and calm and zen before the "oh shit" sets in, i am going to delude myself into worrying about superfical things, so that my mind is sutiably distracted whilst keeping its need for constant worry satisfied.

this Springfield shirt i bought on Saturday is one size too big, my hair is a Beatles-esque mess, i want to go to the Heeren Shops' Mambo store to look at shoes but have no one to go with, and i strangely don't dare to ask anyone at all, let alone anyone i actually want to go with, and shit shit shit my presentation and this semester's work is gone out the fucking window.

one more cup of coffee. won't hurt anyone.

you've got a great car

just a couple of days ago, i was lamenting about how i'm no longer in an educational institution that takes you to the airport for a class.

now, here i am at the airport's Starbucks, having finished my class here today, blogging on my PowerBook, which is connected to my Ericsson via Bluetooth, which is in turn connected to the Internet via GSM/GPRS. you would technically say that i wasn't taken here for the class, we were simply told to arrive at three at Terminal 2's The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, but i was late, waiting for an email, and the lecturer passed by my desk in the studio as i was packing.

five minutes later, i was in his Bertone X1/9, its engine growling behind me, seated about fifteen centimeters off the ground, headed for the airport.

so. damn. cool.

plus. he's a car guy. and five minutes into MX-5s and MR2s and Saab 900S Convertibles and getting parts of the Internet, i was sure that i didn't want to buy a new car as my first car. in fact, it's possible i don't ever want to buy a new car. nothing compares to something like an old Peugeot 306 Cabriolet or an Alfasud. or a Bertone X1/9.

new cars are, for the most bit, bland. few new models strike any chord with me at all.

maybe the next time Perpective & Freehand Drawing is being held off-campus i'll hang around my desk until it's too late to make it on time via public transport, but is the perfect time to leave and arrive on time by car.

that wouldn't be nice, though, would it.

the red and purple, blue and gray

so i'm sitting in color class, waiting for james [the lecturer] to tell me how much my test and previous assigment sucks, and iChat Rendezvous [Rendezvous is an Apple technology that allows you to chat with Macs on the same network as you are on, wireless or otherwise], and this guy called Macrus Lee signs onto Rendezvous.

his Mac is called "DeAtHG4".

for the love of god. this is clearly someone who uses a Mac only and only because it's cool. "DeAtHG4"? i feel ashamed to be using a Mac now, though logic dictates i shouldn't since only Mac uses will be able to see that his Mac is called "DeAtHG4". unless he's publicly sharing his files on the network. wait. let me check.

urgh. he is. but thankfully his share is listed as "MARCUS".

"DeAtHG4". really. unless he's using one of the school's PowerMacs, he must be using a PowerBook. hopefully not of the same series as mine. just two days ago i wished more people would sign onto [or, in some cases, even know about] Rendezvous, and now i wish less did.

and how long more is james going to take. i have only my assigment and my test. other people have entire portfolios and color journals to go through! i want to get this over with so i can plug in my PowerBook! i have only one hour and thirty-six minutes on my PowerBook's battery left!

counting numbered days

teachers' day is a terror.

a total of eight people turned up for Model Making class [class size: twenty-five] on Tuesday. wasted time.

in unrelated news, i've just discovered that i've been telling my grandfather's age wrong. he was born in 1910. that makes him ninety-four.

on a related note: why do people say "ripe" in reference to old age? it implies a fruit on a tree branch, ready to be picked or going to drop off onto the ground. hardly what most people want implied in old age.

but then again most people use "ripe" in reference to the age of someone who's already died. i think.

so much to plunder that i think i'll sleep instead

you'd think the feisty little bitch could be a little more polite, considering we're being charged one hundred and fifty dollars a pop for each of her cheap little letters:

Dear Aaron,

I have already responded to Mdm Serene Lim's letter. Please note that I will not entertain any email(s) or corrrespondence from you as you are obviously not one of the borrowers.


Regards
Genevieve Sim

yeah, and would you have any "corrrespondence" at all if i wasn't bothered to send you anything? my mother won't write her own letters [probably because she knows as well as i do that her grasp of the english language is strictly informal/casual/conversational only] and you don't leave anything but a return email address and fax number. what do you want? besides, i'm not prepared to send back anything with a higher gsm [unit for paper weightage, grams per square meter] or dpi [unit for printout quality/density, dots per inch] than your photocopied literary masterpieces, and i don't print on cheap paper or send out personalized xeroxes.

let's hope genevieve is in the shamelessly vain habit of googling herself every now and then. i've no need for more legal trouble in the face of the very reason why i have to email this genevieve sim anyway, so this isn't being sent directly to genevievesim@khattarwong.com but if she hasn't responded to my mother and deciedes to be just as prissy when i ask her why, i might just let her have it. stress relief has to come from and go somewhere, after all. though if i can make it biting and yet not inappropriate i will be basking in a glow for hours.

i'm a seventeen-year-old, you're an adult working in a law firm. here's a little advice, direct from me to you: grow up. and learn how to spell. [maybe she's a paralegal, though i hear they only accept people with at least an A2 grade in the english language into Law & Management at Temasek Polytechnic]

maybe this christmas

i just came back up from getting some stuff out of my third uncle's Mercedes-Benz, and i really surprised myself when i realized, as i was walking back with rosemarie [my aunt's maid], that i did the whole smile-and-greet-him-he's-your-relative thing without so much as thinking about it.

it was scary. five seconds before i was telling rosemarie how Batman is not fat and Fatman is not a bat [our name for my third uncle behind his back is Fatman], then it was smile [for a different, non-unlikely-superhero-names reason], greet, listen, nod, comply, leave.

of course, five seconds later i was in the lift with rosemarie, talking about the people who were in his car [him, his chinese wife, his chinese wife's niece, and his maid. incidentally, this is his second wife], his car itself [this dark green third-generation Mercedes-Benz E200, the original "Mickey Mouse" model--speaking of which, why is it called the "Mickey Mouse"? there are four headlights on it and it looks nothing like Mickey Mouse], and did his wife get contact lenses?

when it becomes automatic like that it can either be invaluably convenient [later on it'll probably become emotionally scarring, but who cares? we all live for the now] or just plain scary. all i thought, though, was that i'll never be able to use the line "i'll go put on my face" [from The Best Chrismukkah Ever--episode thirteen of season one of The O.C.--which i am watching out the corner of my eye as i type this] for situations like this. and i so wanted to.

"Maybe this Christmas will mean something more
Maybe this year
Love will appear
Deeper than ever before

And maybe forgiveness will ask us to call
Someone we love
Someone we’ve lost
For reasons we can’t quite recall

Mmm, maybe this Christmas"

- "Maybe This Christmas", Ron Sexsmith

it's saturday morning

everything points to today being Monday: my remembering that yesterday was Sunday, my PowerBook showing the "Mon" label before the time at the top-right-hand corner of the screen, if i switched on my Palm to check it would tell me that it's Monday, and i have a class at twelve. [also: the datestamp above will show that it's Monday]

so how come i feel like it's Saturday morning?

"it's saturday morning
and who's gonna play with me
six in the morning baby
i got a long long day ahead of me"

- "Saturday Morning", Eels

i woke up to my aunt telling me to hurry up and wake up, my first aunt was coming over for lunch, besides i'd already slept over ten hours, i should have repaid most of not all of my sleep debt by now [these aren't exact words, even/especially if you translate then back into mandarin, i took the liberty of making the speech appear more expository. though there wasn't a chance in hell that i'd repaid any of my sleep debt]

notice that nothing in the above paragraph gave the impression that i was roused because of school.

so in my contrived mind i immediately thought: no school today?

and whilst she was telling me it was ten-thirty already, and i should have slept enough by then [again: not true], i was thinking: yeah, i would have been forced out of bed earlier if i had school. [i need to leave the house an hour in advance, as in physically leave, and my Monday class is at twelve]

so i thought maybe there wasn't class today. maybe i'd been listened to and my feverent, desperate wishes for an endless weekend had been heard. so i ventured off my bed, cleaned up, sipped a mug of tea, and opened my PowerBook. yep. Monday. i'm going to be late for class.

i'm still waiting for that one day where i actually look forward to going to school, the one day where i know i'll be alright.

however, now i have officially eaten into five minutes and fifty-seven seconds of my getting-to-school time, and i have to drag myself away from my PowerBook and get ready to leave, even though i should have been ready and leaving by now. it never works out.

i'll go put on my face now.

popular mechanics for broken hearts could help me now

i do not feel great.

it's six-ten in the morning.

i have to be back at my aunt's by ten am, to be in time for my first uncle and family visiting at eleven.

after that i need to stop over at licheng's around three to get my second aunt's data and hard-disk drive back.

right now, i am sitting on hongxuan's patio, composing this entry and myself on my PowerBook.

and i'm thinking, after one night of waiting, indesicion, more waiting, following people into Pastamania and then forming a mutiny into Whatafish [cheaper food, on par in taste, less crowded, less waiting, more sense], not having value in my ez-link card and attempting to top it up at the machine next to the Parkway Parade bus-stop, being cajoled out of it because our bus had arrived, getting off the bus and putting my jacket on because i was sick of carrying it around, walking to hongxuan's, waiting, watching, trying to talk, failing [in talking about anything important, anyway], watching over, sitting next to vomit on the roadside with the producer of the vomit lying on his back on the same road, watching over people, bringing them up to hongxuan's bedroom, clearing what must be at least two dozen bottles and cans, shifting lawn furniture back, picking up garbage, watching more technicolor burping, smelling an air-conditioned room with the scent of puke wafting around endlessly, moving all my stuff downstairs even though i am hot, sticky and sweaty and uncomfortable:

i have to decide on living without friends.

i'd say i've to make new friends, but i'm not inclined to. in fact i downright am against the idea of repeated social akwardness, unfamiliarity and the whole getting-to-know-you-getting-to-know-all-about-you crap. i'm too fucking old for this shit.

i'm also too fucking old to be hounding other people down, to sleep, lie down, vomit in the right places, etc. or clean up after people.

it's not even my house--because my own house is being repossessed by the bank, to whom my mother and father owe half a million singapore dollars.

and i have to sit around listening to how someone else doesn't deserve his lot, about what he did to deserve whatever happened to him, when i'm being forced into being seventy at seventeen?

no thanks.

i can hear the buses on the main road. i forgot how early the bus services start, in part because i no longer have to wake at unearthly hours to get to school. i'm thinking i should just take off, go home, sleep for two hours, wake up, put my face on, face my relations for three hours, go crash licheng's for the hard disk and data, then go back to my aunt's and possibly sleep the weekend away.

i think i will. should i leave a message?

and to think i came because hongxuan said it would be good for me, and matt told me i should go.

i'll text-message matt, then pack up and leave. though if hongxuan's parents find me gone it wouldn't be nice. i wouldn't go so far as to say they'd be worried, but it wouldn't be nice.

who'd notice? i'm leaving. and the next time i need a break from the real world and need to pretend, i'll watch The O.C. like i've been doing for the past fortnight or so.

we got more bounce in california than all y'all combined

there is, according to the flight information plasma screen at the platform of CG2, a flight out to LAX at four this afternoon. can't remember which airline though. but just imagine...

the magic of air travel and the reality of not being able to afford it.

these are the words of the popstars

several [actually quite a number of] teen-aged girls have invaded the viewing mall. i had no idea what was going on, until the tapping on the glass and mild shrieking and the cameras and the mandarin. must be some teen idol or another.

just at the same time as my iPod got to the end of the playlist and stopped.

hello sunshine

some kids from a kindergarten just flooded the Terminal One Viewing Mall. and believe it or not for once i don't mind the sudden infusion of under-eighteens-outnumbering-over-eighteens. it makes me long for the carefree days of kindergarten, where i didn't know anything about what my father did for a living, where he spent his money and what we had or didn't have. when school involved nothing more than drawing, coloring, playing, field trips [though as far as my memory works i can't really tell if Newton Kindergarten ever brought me to the airport] and naps and snacks and my mother picking me up in the BMW.

where are all the defining moments in my life which are supposed to change me profoundly? i feel like i grew all the way up long before i even began secondary school [i suspect it was primary two, but that seems far too early to mature so quickly] and haven't changed a single bit since.

california, here we come

orange county/obviously crack

1010 AM: your attention please. there will be a fire drill for airport staff in three minutes' time. passengers and members of the public are advised not to be alarmed.

1300 Singapore FLC 97

may i have your attention please.

i need to stop this going-to-the-airport-for-no-good-reason thing.

and who would've thunk that it'd take less time to get to the airport than it does to get to school?

let's take stock.

my home's being repossessed, my mother's sold her car, we owe half a million to UOB in a home loan and unpaid credit card charges, i suck at school and whatever it is that is expected of me there, my grandfather's keeping me awake all times of the day, i'm living off my aunt, my mother wants to abandon my siblings--leave them with my aunt and take off.

nice. and let's not forget i am in a crazy obsession with The O.C. i've downloaded season one because the DVD set won't be out until October, and that's the US, Region One release. imagine how long more for the Singapore, Region Three release. sadly three episodes have so bad audio sync that it is practically impossible for me to watch them. hopefully that can be painlessly fixed, in a way that doesn't involve re-downloading them. but the rest of the season i have downloaded and watched over and over and over again. i am addicted to TV, in spite of [or, rather, probably because of] the fact that it isn't on TV itself.

see, the torrents fetched me The O.C. in Pure Digital Television format. glorious high-definition widescreen.

speaking of widescreen. my 37" Sharp Aquos LCD TV is no more. well, at least no more with us, moved to my aunt's for safekeeping, but if i can't watch it whenever i please it's as good as no more in my opinion.

back to The O.C. what's not to like? and the music. oh, my, the music. all i've been listening to for the past few days has mostly been from the playlist i dedicated to music from The O.C. in fact i went to HMV and bought The O.C. Mix 1 [i also bought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, and it took me ages to actually start listening to it. though i must say it's been a great cure for my insomnia.] even though i'd already downloaded an unofficial copy, with more songs than the original.

i've decided that California is now somewhere i want to move to. seems odd when my other two choices are London and Sweden. i want to move to Hermosa Beach [if you know your O.C. you'll know why it's Hermosa Beach and not Newport Beach] or Los Angeles.

but as much as i would like to move to Cupertino, California and work for Apple i doubt very much that will actually happen. i suck at my course. i am not a craftsman. i simply cannot perform the required for two of my diploma core subjects. i've been seriously considering changing courses, possibly to Visual Communication. but i decided i should find out as much as i can about what the course is like before i jump into it and discover that the water's still too deep.

i went out with my sister Samaria, my maid Lelanie, my aunt Jacqueline and her boyfriend Samuel on saturday night to see a midnight screening of The Stepford Wives, and as i sat the the table eating dinner with them and flooding them with inane conversation i realized i was suffering from verbal diarrhea. i thought back and came to the conclusion that i hadn't been speaking to anyone outside of my three aunts, the maid that lives with them and my grandfather for over a week. i don't include my "colleagues", simply because i don't see them that much, and often have nothing to say to them.

but i am sick and tired. of what exactly, i do not know. i don't feel like going out, going to school, going home [or what is still but soon may not be my home], writing the letter to UOB's lawyers, pretending to be fine for my aunts, ignoring phone calls and text messages, waking up, living, breathing.

all i want is my O.C. i think it's sad that my best friends' names are Ryan Atwood and Sethula Cohen. but i also think that it's better than not having best friends at all. of course the next best thing is to find an alternative. but i don't want the next best thing. i want the best thing. Joshua Schwartz, will you please please hire me?

madness. if i post this i will never live it down.

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.

"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

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?

"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.

"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

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.

"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

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

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 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

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.

"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

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.

"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

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!”

"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

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

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?

"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

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

stupid fucking newspapers

that Tolkien fella must be turning in his grave. if he's dead. is he dead? whatever. i can't really be arsed if the bugger responsible for over ten hours' worth of yawn is dead or not. [!!! anti-LOTR-er!!! shock! horror!]

ANYWAY. did you know that Enya is on the soundtrack for Return Of The King? i was watching VH1 Video Collection, and the entire screen lit up with Frodo And His Motley Crew, mixed in with generous shots of Enya really singing, but looking and sounding like she's humming really loudly.

the promo for Superman by Five For Fighting is disturbing. because it's mostly [too much] of the lead singer and [not so much of] his piano. whoever the lead singer is, he looks creepy.

now that we've nicely sidestepping me having to go into the details of my [still! not! over!] Lunar New Year festivities because a good two-thirds of you are appalled at my opinion of LOTR [!!! anti-LOTR-er!!! again!], here're the real headlines.

FATHER ALLEGDELY WILL RETURN FOR LUNAR NEW YEAR, FIVE DAYS LATE
that's right, Air Niugini flies twice weekly to and from Port Moresby! just because he says he will doesn't mean he will. "you will know if he's really coming back when you see him at the airport" - eyewitness to previous Singapore sighting of Albert Khoo.

SONY ERICSSON Z1010 3G PHONE TOO HUGE
requisite functions all there, but Sony Ericsson's first third-generation phone is just too bulky. about the size of a P800, but shorter. hopefully it just looks big in the photo, but it seems unlikely.

NOKIA 7600 3G PHONE LACKS 3G FUNCTION
a coaster/slice of bread that has the features of a Nokia 7250/3330 but costs twice as much.
-lacks a memory-card slot for expansion [only 29 MB of memory is user-accessible]
-lacks a second camera pointed at the user for video-calls - incapable of video calls anyway
-large, odd shape - roughly the size of a closed Palm Tungsten T
-dialling with one hand will probably prove impossible
-it costs $800 with a $250 trade-in and a two-year contractual period, with no obvious functional advantage over older, cheaper, models. what kind of fool will fall for that? Singaporean fools, that's who

PALMONE SERVICE EFFICIENT, DHL'S RUDE
i received my Palm Tungsten T back from palmOne in half the time they estimated it would take. that's good. the DHL man who delivered it was rude and barely grunted twice to indicate where i should sign. that's bad.

NOKIA 8250 STOLEN WITH ENZER CD PLAYER IN YJC, N-GAGE LEFT UNTOUCHED
fringe story of the week. a Nokia 8250 and sub-$50 Enzer portable CD player were stolen whilst left unattended in a YJC classroom recently. the weird bit is that a Nokia N-Gage, undoubtedly the hippest and trendiest mobile phone available now, was left untouched. is the thief just REALLY STUPID or does he know that the Nokia N-Gage is really a silly excuse for a marketing gimmick and, in his hidden heart of gold, decided not to contribute further to the plague of N-Gages by NOT stealing it and selling it to some two-bit 'handphone' shop in the heartlands?

CHEAP PORSCHE BURNS ALONG ROADSIDE - FEW CARE
a cheap, old, YELLOW, Porsche 911 burns along Braddell Road. tailback cause by thousands who wanted to get the license plate number of the rarity. driver/owner seen in tears by roadside - WAKE UP. it's an UGLY, YELLOW [ YELLOW?! YOU REALLY THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD COLOR FOR A PORSCHE?!], fuck-me sports car. it's barely worth more than my mother's Suzuki Swift GL.

"The rear of the 911-model, estimated to be worth less than $40,000 by experts, was still on fire even after 20 minutes of fire-fighting."
- Driver walks away from burning car, Page 3, The Straits Times, January 28, 2004.

HYUNDAI MATRIX WILDLY POPULAR - BUT STILL NASTY
top-selling mini-MPV sold over four thousand units last year - three seen in Chuan Park. success attributed to low cost, in turn the result of the Korean [lack of] quality.

CAR UK's GBU Review

For Is it an MPV?
Against Or a mutated hatchback?
Sum up Priced within special-offer Picasso Territory

rating: 2/5 stars

COUNTLESS SINGAPOREANS CONNED BY LURE OF TOYOTA COROLLA ALTIS
wake up, people. this Thai-built middle-cheapo-class sedan was introduced in Malaysia and Thailand at exactly the same time as the previous Corolla. Borneo Motors/Toyota just assumed that Singaporeans would assume that something must be new, if they haven't seen it before. and it looks like they were right.

GOOD BYE, SEDAN?
from The Straits Times, an article reporting on the absolutely fascinating trend of sedans moving out of the norm, and monospace-design cars moving in.

Newlyweds Calvin Chua, 26 and Jolene, 24, have just booked a Mazda2 hatchback. Mr Chia, an RSAF specialist, said: "I like the way it looks, and its versatility. If you need more space, you just fold the rear seats flat or forward.

"And it has a lot of space. I'm 1.84m and I have no problem with the headroom."

He did not pick a sedan because it was "conventional".

smart idea, you bright spark. but in five years, won't MPV and hatchbacks become the convention? then sedans will become unconventional. then... oh, no. poor Mr Chia has lost his point.

CREATIVE IN MICROSOFT'S GOOD BOOKS - MUCH AKIN TO BEING FRIENDS WITH DEVIL
i have nothing to say about this one. except that the Creative Zen actually looks pretty good, but the whole flaunt-the-Microsoft-nod thing puts me off.

piss off, world. i'm in a mood.

"take, take all you need
and i`ll compensate your greed
with broken hearts
sell, i`ll sell your memories, for 15 pounds per year
but just the good days

say, it'll make you insane
and it's bending the truth
you're to blame
for all the life that you'll lose and
you watch this space
and i'm going all the way
and be my slave to the grave
i'm a priest god never paid

hope, i hope you've seen the light
coz no one really cares
they're just pretending
sell, i`ll sell your memories, for 15 pounds per year
but you can keep the bad days

say, it'll make you insane
and im bending the truth
you're to blame
for all the life that you'll lose and
you watch this space
and i'm going all the way
and be my slave to the grave
i'm the priest god never paid"

- "The Small Print", Muse

fuck off, mr lunar new year.

i'm sick again. i'm allergic to lunar new year, i'm sure of it. it's not some bug that goes around 'that time of year'. LNY is in january this year for fuck's sake. my nose is running, my head's throbbing, my ear's aching, my eyes're itching.

i put Coldplay on at our "reunion" dinner [my father's in PNG. at least the third one he's missed]. i don't think it went down very well, because it got switched to that Kelly Clarkson broad's music halfway through. i don't see how anyone can possibly be Thankful for that record.

visitations later in the morning. ergh.

my Palm's in for service. my Sony Ericsson's on the blink [my Ericsson gave out some time ago, it was my fault though], my CD Walkman's broken.

i feel like crap now. and i missed going back to school because i found out that Victoria School ended at 10 AM, at 11 AM. un-fucking-believable. five years straight they end past noon, now i'm not attending and they end at 10?!

but of course it was too late by the time i found out. i had another half-hour before i would get to school [i guessed that everyone would be long gone by then] and i still had three more stops to make before five PM [errands ]. so i gave up and gave in.

in any case, the only teachers i would have looked up were Mr Hazrin, Mr Khoo, Ms Ernie, Mr Anuar and Mrs Raj. so if you're reading this [tres unlikely], hello.

and i've just realized that it is most likely none of the five people mentioned above hold lunar new year very close to their heart [except for Mr Khoo maybe, but if he does i will be sorely disappointed].

when's the fourth season of Gilmore Girls going to get here? i hate you, MediaCorp.

"Come on, oh my star is fading
And I see no chance of release
I know I'm dead on the surface
But I am screaming underneath

And time is on your side
It's on your side now
Not pushing you down
And all around, no
It's no cause for concern

Stuck on the end of this ball and chain
And I'm on my way back down again
Stood on a bridge, tied to a noose
Sick to the stomach
You can say what you mean
But it won't change a thing
I'm sick of our secrets
Stood on the edge, tied to a noose
You came along and you cut me loose
You came along and you cut me loose
You came along and you cut me"

- "Amsterdam", Coldplay

money is a good thing, only those without it complain' - Adam First, Wave 103 FM

i've just finished indexing my tapes of the second season of Gilmore Girls [snide remarks to me direct, please, they won't do much good being heard by your monitor]. it took way longer than expected. now the mammoth task of re-recording them onto tapes that go "gilmore girls 0201-0203", rather than "ally mcbeal 0521[?], gilmore girls 0222, dharma & greg [unknown]. etc, etc". you get the drift, i hope. but i will not be cutting out the ads. not just because i'm an lazy arse, but also because three-year-old ads can be interesting and even thought-provoking. [plus, if i ever enter the ad industry like i half-intend to, they'll come in handy].

for example: i spied a Deuter ad on one of the Gilmore tapes. what's happened to Deuter? it's been tossed aside in favour of Crumpler. so pooh-pooh and poppycock to those who claimed that their Deuter was the last bag they will ever buy. ten-to-one they've a Crumpler in place of it now. and pooh-pooh/poppycock, too, to those who claim that their Crumpler will be the last bag they'll ever buy. we'll see in three years, buster.

i'll stick with my very, very old Nike messenger bag [recently returned to me after my sister obtained a Topshop graffiti-print bag], thank you.

i am wanting an iBook SE [the old clamshell ones, except the SE comes in graphite].

Cons:
-costs $500 second-hand [without a new battery to replace the worn-out one that comes with it]
-its LCD goes up to a maximum of 800x600 pixels
-mono speaker [note that that's a singular noun]
-only one USB port
-only 366MHz [supposedly OK for an Apple. anw it's only $500]
-128MB RAM [enough, but not quite enough]
-i do not have $500

Pros:
-i checked, finally, and MSN Messenger for Mac DOES have most of the features of the Windows version
-finally MY own PC for MY own use
-it comes with OS X Panther, and a carrying case
-i will FINALLY have a Mac
-i will have something to take notes on if i go to JC/Poly

i NEED to find work. i'm broke. and i owe pat money [although that itself is a result of my family members owning me money].

"Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly, they slip away
Across the universe

Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me

Jai guru de va om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world"

- "Across The Universe", Fiona Apple

fucking hell

my brother is a complete, fucking, no-holds-barred fucktard of a retard. the bloody fool dangled my School Of Rock ticket stubs out the window, and when i tried to grab them back, dropped them. the instant my face contorted into that i-am-now-considering-a-jail-sentence-for-manslaughter look, he immediately went all 'you scratched my thumb, that's why i let go ...' fucking PSLE-171-T-Score-idiot. and, God, i hate those immediate justifications my father's genes gave us.

yes, i keep shit like ticket stubs. do not ask me why. i feel not even my mother has the right to question me on that, so sod-the-bloody-fuck off. that means you too, samantha.

and! i missed the Wong Li-lin gotcha gag. argh! argh-argh-argh!

"99 Kriegsminister
Streichholz und Benzinkanister
Hielten sich fuer schlaue Leute
Witterten schon fette Beute
Riefen: Krieg und wollten Macht
Mann, wer haette das gedacht
Dass es einmal soweit kommt
Wegen 99 Luftballons"

- "99 Red Balloons", Goldfinger

the singapore short story project

sitting on the covered toilet bowl, crying my heart out, i realized that if i stayed here and cried for another week, it was unlikely that anyone outside of those who live with me would notice.

it was equally unlikely that the Ericsson lying just a few paces away would ring while i was sitting there, with me having to answer the phone in sobs, the person on the other end asking me if everything's ok. because no one ever calls.

the calendar outside read that it was the fourth day of the twelfth month. one wonders why arguments like this don't happen more often, considering the situation. but it's hell nowadays, and anniversaries, whatever they commemorate, must not mean anything anymore if this kind of shit could happen, with frank disregard for the anniversary that just preceded it. and all over a stolen bicycle.

wake up, starfuck. no-one's going to care. clean up and get the fuck out of the bloody bathroom.

i wrote the above last year. tell me what you think of it. if i become a writer one day, i will fit these paragraphs into one of my books.

i feel absolutely sucky. the number of friends i have [loosely defined as those i see on the MSN Messenger Service regularly and can engage in witty banter with without it feeling weird, as the normal definition if used here will leave me more-or-less friendless. thanks a fat lot, Friendster.] can be counted on the number of fingers i have, possibly with enough fingers left over to fit in my immediate family members.

the last time i saw/went out with human beings outside of my family was mosh.04. the last time before that was my birthday. and the last time before that was the PAE briefing.

and now that almost everyone else has some sort of tertiary institution to head off to on weekdays, i'm left alone at home on said weekdays. the only people i know who aren't going anywhere are Pat and Dax. those who are are Matt [NJC], Xuan [ACJC], Kenneth [Unknown - haven't asked yet, really should soon], etc, even Nick Tan [YJC].

you can only talk about so much with the JC-goers, after all. after asking them how their first day was, you quickly run out of conversation pieces. it's not like you're in the same room and can go 'is that a Nokia Fun Camera?' or 'he's trying to speak French, but je suis means "i am", actually' [goodness knows i already struggle whilst such conversation pieces are right in my face]. you start to wonder if it's all becoming slightly strained, if you should give up.

i've fallen out of the rat race, and it's moving on like i wasn't even there.

i miss school. it gave me somewhere to go every Monday morning. it made me see other human beings and decide if i wanted to attempt a hook-up. it would ironically appear that regimentation is what i crave now, going to school at 6, spending the day raving about other human beings, coming back at 3.

what really, really sucks is that even if i somehow, magically/miraculously woke up tomorrow and discovered that it was really Thursday, 2nd January 2003 and i could go back to Geylang Bahru Lane and take 2003 all over again, i likely would have done the same thing. shunning the person/people that tried to make friends with me, acting the arsehole/bitch, and flunking out term after term. then would come the year end, my seventeenth anniversary of life on Earth, and i would be back here, missing my life in school and the potential friends, and trying desperately to cling/clutch on to half-friends who are leaving my world, with only Two Weeks' Notice.

wake up, starfuck. no JC's going to accept someone with 35.2 points, and you'd better pray hard that you even score within 10 points of polytechnic entry. you've lost it. clean up and move on.

"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

I got you under my skin
I got you under my skin
I got you under my skin
I got you under my skin

I got you under my skin
I got you under my skin
I got you under my skin
I got you under my skin

And the love profusion
You make me feel
You make me know
And the love intention
You make me feel
You make me shine
You make me feel
You make me shine
You make me feel"

- "Love Profusion", Madonna

a good way to go deaf

mosh.04 rocked.

it may not all have been my kind of thing, but it sure as hell started on an excellent note.

but i'm now feeling very guilty for abandoning the mosh crew after arriving at Newton Circle Food Center for supper. i think i snapped when some BBQ stingray tout mistook the three microphone stands i was lugging for a video tripod and mouthed off about us being some sort of project trying to capture the last few hours of 2003 [ordinarily i would have been slightly flattered, but it sounded too much like something my father would have said].

i just suddenly felt very, very tired, and the combination of no sleep, alcohol, no food and Starbucks coffee just kicked in. i decided it was best to flee the scene before i made one.

besides, if xuan's place turned out to be more Yio Chu Kang than Serangoon, i wouldn't have the cab fare left after supper.

i guess it's no use brooding about not sticking it out now, but it appears xuan's place really is walking distance away from my place. shame on me. i mean, eventually i will need to overcome this allergy to the human race of mine. maybe new year's wasn't the best time to try it out.

and i must have come home really looking down dump-wise. everyone knew not to wish me a happy new year.

apologies all round. happy new year.

"Oh no, pop is dead, long live pop
It died an ugly death by back-catalogue
And now you know it gets you nowhere
And now you know, you realize

Oh no, pop is dead, it just gave up
We raised the dead but they won't stand up
And radio has salmonella
And now you know you're gonna die

He left this message for us

So what pop is dead, it's no great loss
So many facelifts, his face flew off
The emperor really has no clothes on
And his skin is peeling off

Oh no, pop is dead, long live pop,
One final line of coke to jack him off
Jack him off

He left this message for us
He left this message for us

He's dead, He's dead, Pop is dead
He's dead, He's dead, Pop is dead
He's dead, He's dead, Pop is dead"

- "Pop Is Dead", Radiohead