mamma mia

Agenda View: Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004

0900 meeting with CreTh group for Project Two - Salomé at Temasek Polytechnic DES Studio

1100 grandfather's physiotheraphy appointment at Tan Tock Seng Hospital

1500 FoDev lecture at Temasek Polytechnic DES Studio

1800 meeting with ComDI group for Project Two - The Language Of Color at Temasek Polytechnic DES Studio

2000 opening night of "Mamma Mia!" at the Esplanade - Theaters On The Bay

in an ideal world, i should be able to voice-command either my Palm or my PowerBook to "cancel my first, third, and fourth appointments" and be done with it. but no such yet, so i will have to come up with an excuse.

life is unfair. kill yourself or get over it

i just got my first PowerBook scratch. fuck. and all this because i was going from the studio to the library because two of my ComDI group members took up roost opposite me.

up town top ranking

school wasn't much good today.

the noobsie covention wasn't much good on Sunday.

i have nothing much to report, but that's because i don't want to report anything.

my time online seems much more pleasant than my life offline. sigh. what to do.

right back where we started from

tomorrow: noobsies convention at The Bayshore, just because one of my cousins' sons has turned three.

these people are the same that have insulted basically everyone living here [my aunt's] on Friday, when Priscilla [my third cousin] mentioned something about her son [Nicholas, takes Multimedia & Infocomms Technology at Nanyang Polytechnic] needs only a hundred dollars a month as expenses, and how come first aunt is giving him two-hundred fifty?

this led to my second aunt defending me on the phone, leading to Priscilla activating the family gossip/slander network, leading to an entirely ugly incident. my aunt-of-sorts revealed to me that they're after my first aunt's favor, which by the looks of how much i've getting and the very fact that i'm living here, is supposedly in the palm of my hand according to their imaginations. amongst the things that they're after range from petty things like thousand-dollar stock dividends to being in her will for her CPF assets.

in a heated discussion of my cousins my aunt-of-sorts spat out this hilarious retort:

Next time, just tell her:

"Priscilla, congratulations on having such a great son like Nicky! Our Aaron is so useless, we give him two-hundred-fifty a month and see no change from it!

Nicky is so good, he can manage on a hundred a month! One day Lee Kuan Yew will make him his Finance Minister!"

i laughed my way to the floor with that one. i feel strangely bemused and enthralled by my status within the family now. it's like i'm ryan atwood, and these noobsies feel threatened by my moving right into their breathing space.

i'm tired, so i won't elaborate any further [even though i would love to. it's like living in a television drama, except it's not as fun to watch, because you're not watching it. you're living it. and not in a good way, like if i were to be living an O.C. life], but just to record my thoughts:

i downloaded the O.C. special, Obsess Completely, and i am loving it, fully intend to buy Mix 2 and MUST buy Mix 3 [a Chrismukkah compilation], and am stoked about the second season of The O.C. due to premiere on November 4th [so much so that i wish my birthday was then instead. it's like a huge birthday present, exactly one month early], BUT what on earth is the O.C. Insider thing.

it's like one of those Barbie/Archie/Kathy Keene [okay, so i read a lot of Archie, but never Kathy Keene, they were under the same publisher and cross-advertized. as for Barbie my sisters had a lot of Barbie stuff--but thankfully not a membership] clubs or something where you pay a subscription and get a newsletter and access to special stuff and what not. it sounds so lame and really cheapens my whole thing for The O.C. it is so blatantly a money-making endeavor that makes josh schwartz's self-deprecating comment about how they were always ready to make a quick buck on The O.C. no longer funny or endearing, but instead off-putting.

color me put-off. i'm going to pretend i never saw that/never see that when i re-watch Obsess Completely. i have a sneaking suspicion that they are going [in fact, i dare say they won't possibly pass the chance up] to plug O.C. Insider on the next, and last, O.C. special before the next season.

i can just imagine summer roberts going, "O.C. Insider? Eww."

cantelopps

i took a cab to school again. it could be argued that it was in the interest of being on time, since i awoke from my coma only at seven-forty, but i can't pull that again because every week i bust my arse trying to get to school on time on Friday only to have the nonsensical bunches of the group turn up at least an hour late.

no, i wanted to convert the forty-five minute nuisance that would be a train ride to Bedok and a bus out from there into a sedating, calming, zen-like fifteen-minute float into Tampines with my iPod in a Toyota Crown.

lecturer's here. eta later.

number one crush

"I would die for you
I would die for you
I've been dying just to feel you by my side
To know that you're mine

I will cry for you
I will cry for you
I will wash away your pain with all my tears
And drown your fear

I will pray for you
I will pray for you
I will sell my soul for something pure and true
Someone like you

See your face every place that I walk in
Hear your voice every time that I am talking
You will believe in me
And I will never be ignored

I will burn for you
Feel pain for you
I will twist the knife and bleed my aching heart
And tear it apart

I will lie for you
Beg and steal for you
I will crawl on hands and knees until you see
You're just like me

Violate all the love that I'm missing
Throw away all the pain that I'm living
You will believe in me
And I can never be ignored

I would die for you
I would kill for you
I will steal for you
I'd do time for you
I will wait for you
I'd make room for you
I'd sail ships for you
To be close to you
To be part of you
'Cause I believe in you
I believe in you
I would die for you"

- "#1 Crush", Garbage

british racing green

my FoDev lecture lasted a grand total of five minutes, from three-fifteen to three-twenty.

wow.

eta: my lecture was supposed to be from three to six.

the art of driving

i think it's only getting worse when i contemplate going to school in yesterday's white t-shirt and boardshorts, because i really can't be bothered to get changed.

it gets worse when i realize that at least half of the students there dress like that everyday, anyway.

where's my shirt?

we are not amused anymore

it's late, but i still can't sleep and am waiting for my hair to dry, so i might as well stop putting off the exposition of what happened last weekend.

FRIDAY

after the shit-fest that was CreTh lecture [i rushed a PowerPoint presentation DURING lecture for my group's presentation, PowerBook and CanoScan in tow--yes, the CanoScan is a scanner. an actual scanner. i brought my scanner to school with me--and fingers on my Apple Wireless Mouse, clicking like a dervish, only to have Eugene Chen and Alex, group members who have contributed nothing thus far, insist on presenting it. they took over my PowerBook while i was in the toilet. idiot Eugene was fumbling stupidly with the plugs and remotes and mouse and adaptor, and i shook my head at the door as i stepped in a fixed it all up. they massacred the presentation, not the audience or the lecturer. they had no idea what was coming up when, or even what was already on the screen, and just shat all over it. the lecturer gave us full marks for the presentation anyway, because he could see the effort put into the presentation--specifically the PowerPoint slides--as no other group went to the same lengths. however he thought an Ernest--an actual group member, but NOT the one that slogged for the presentation--did all that work, and i was positively foaming at the mouth by then], my father returns.

woah. that was one long expository set of parenthesis.

yes. so he comes back from Papua New Guinea, notices that his twelve-thousand-dollar television set is missing, along with the rest of his liquor [most of it, especially the really good, expensive stuff, had been moved out long ago]. he gets pissed, kicks down the bathroom door and confronts my mother. note that my mother was showering whilst he was kicking the door down. so he shouted at her, [i assume] slapped her about, then kicked her out of the house.

how do i know all this, when i don't live at home?

my brother called, scared shitless. after he was done, my sister took over. evidently my father had too little blood in his alcohol/nicotine system. and you wonder why i don't like people who smoke or drink?

so i did what i could to assure him that it's okay, same for my sister, and then hung up to warn my maid not to go home if she could help it, and called my mom. no answer. when she called back later she related the whole thing back to me, without saying anything about whether she was slapped about [my mother may be, for the most part, shameless, but you don't bring up your own husband slapping you about just to get sympathy], and said that she was going to stay at her sister's.

SATURDAY

i woke up, heard my cousin's voice, thought it was okay to step out and clean myself up, opened the door and saw rosemarie wildly, urgently and desperately gesticulating to me that my father was here, mouthing rather dramatically the words "YOUR FATHER!" and pointing towards the kitchen.

i closed to door as quietly as i could, locked it shut, and went back to bed to listen to Eels, Garbage and Cake on my iPod until they were gone. too long a time. it was way past two in the afternoon, that's all i can remember. wasted time.

SUNDAY

first uncle's weekly visit, with my first aunt-in-law, this time also with my adulteress first cousin [she's not married, her boyfriend is. no one but a small handful of people in my family know, though]. similarly wasted time. though he did give me twenty dollars in more guilt money, though, so i guess it wasn't entirely wasted.

taking stock:

we owe half a million dollars to United Overseas Bank, who is giving us three months, with monthly payments of ten thousand dollars, before they kick our sorry arses out our door;
we also owe enough in maintenance fees to our condominium's MCST for them to be threatening us with a ten-thousand-dollar penalty if we do not pay up soon;
the Singapore Power people just dropped by today to, in my sister's words, demand payment, but my dad wasn't at home, he was here, sucking up/stalking me.

life is unfair. kill yourself, or get over it.

when i wonder what could make the needle jump the groove

i've just gotten home.

staying til late in the studio is a nice alternative to mooching about in the city, for the purpose of avoiding my father.

i think i might do it again.

music stations always play the same song

what kind of airhead thing is that to say? to follow a traffic report of a stranded car on one of the many expressways here, Jamie Yeo says that it reminds her that it's time to service her car, and as a shout out to everyone who needs to have their cars serviced but haven't, she reminds them to get them serviced.

and this follows a reminder earlier to keep your traffic-light primping to three seconds or so, because the lights always catch her by suprise.

so explain to me why anyone listens to radio?

no one ever died from wanting too much

take your pick, Ally McBeal. would you rather:

A) be pleased that you were asked to help keep an eye on his stuff?

or

B) be upset that you weren't asked to join them for dinner?

tick-tock. your happiness is at stake.

child psychologists

i walked out of ModMa lecture. not in a dramatic, gather-my-things-pissily-and-stalk-off-whilst-lecturer-looks-at-me-quizzically way, more of a gather-things-in-advance-and-leave-whilst-lecturer-is-demonstrating-the-sanding-machine-and-not-looking-at-me-and-stalk-off-under-quizzical-looks-from-coursemates way.

i don't know what's wrong anymore. i am failing this semseter. there are at least seven jobs due in two weeks. and, failing to make it in two weeks or the re-sub twelve days after that, i will have to repeat the semester. which, right now, i would rather drop out than do.

life is unfair. kill yourself, or get over it

so, i'm really steeping in the guilt now.

and Sigur Rós has lots of stuff up for download. i've always known of them, but never bothered to really go check them out until i came across them in trevor's iPod [which, incidentally, is a first-generation model]. he listens to Muse and Black Box Recorder, amongst other acts i can no longer remember but can remember that were cool, and i thought, might as well, since Amazon had two tracks up for download. which is, in retrospect, laughable because the Sigur Rós site has loads more to get. but it's past midnight, i tire, and i have lectures tomorrow.

oh, and i also wanted to buy this great Canterbury shirt today whilst at The Heeren Shops. strange how i can stop myself from buying an eighty-dollar shirt but will spend a hundred and twelve on compact discs.

they even tried bribery. i could have anything i wanted, as long as i said it out loud

wowzee wowza.

i am at the Starbucks right next to California, where i spent five-sixty-five on a Lemon Passion Ice-Shaken Tea.

i came from HMV at The Heeren Shops, where i spent a hundred and twelve dollars on CDs.

i should stop going out alone.

i didn't want anything more to do with the outside world

i am calm. i am confident. i am serene [but not in the sense that i am Serene, my mother]. above all, i am Zen [and, again, not in the sense that i am a shoddily-done iPod imitation]. i am more Zen than Julien Janvier's father, who imagines that his wife was killed by his son, because his son was bewitched by Sophie Kowalski and her games.

i have just spoken to my ComDI lecturer about what happenes when i fail this module [notice i said "when", not "if"], and i have a second shot at passing in the re-sub, after the results come out. i didn't know i have results, considering that i don't have examintions. well now my aunt is going to know how i crashed and burned. in any case. i have the re-sub. i will kill myself trying to pass in the resub, even if i have to re-sub all seven modules.

i have given up on the group i have for ComDI. i have told them as much, and i don't really care if they get pissed off because i will no longer have to see them after this module ends. i am still in it because, actually, i don't why i'm still in it. i cannot pass, no longer how brilliant i make this presentation by dragging the other members onboard by their fingernails. so what am i in it for? to prove that i can do it? because the group will bomb without me and my PowerPoint/Word/language/presentation skills?

why? for gold, god, or glory?

am i on the wrong track?

and, yet again, i'm avoiding the details of the weekend. i do not know why. i want to record the many levels of disgust i had to go through reach today, but i'm either too tired or i feel i can live with the linen being as dirty as it is for now. next weekedn ought to be a hoot on around the same level as last week, though, so must prod me to update for the weekend before the weekend.

right now i'm seated in the PID studio. nothing new, except that i'm one half hour early for lecture, and have opted to come here instead of waiting for lecture outside the room, or at the library. and i'm exactly across the room from where i normally seat, because i am sick of pretending that i am a normal, unbalanced human being.

"Happy people scare me. They are chemically unbalanced."
- Shirley Manson

i am sick of being next to the staircase, next to the lecture area behind the lockers, next to way most people walk into the studio, forcing myself to greet everyone that comes though in a non-sardonic, positive manner, smiling and laughing occasionally, etcetera.

I AM SICK OF IT.

so i've moved to the table where people go to only to eat, or sit by themselves. occasionally the two other PowerBook users take up roost here, but as long as they don't bother me or force me to act like i'm on twenty levels of Prozac, i can not mind their presence.

somebody get me out of here, i'm tearing up myself

what i'm eating right now:

one piece of Quality Street Orange Crunch chocolate

one piece of Dove Milk Chocolate With Hazelnuts & Fruits [the fruit in this instance being orange]

one huge bowl of Post Honey Bunches Of Oats With Strawberries

[five minutes later]

what i'm eating right now:

one more piece of Quality Street Orange Crunch chocolate

one piece of Quality Street Orange Cream chocolate

two more pieces of Dove Milk Chocolate With Hazelnuts & Fruits [also orange]

two more bowls of Post Honey Bunches Of Oats With Strawberries [technically only one more, but this bowl is twice the size of the first]

it figured that the instant i wrap up my digital coversations [my brother, my sister, my maid, my mother, matt], close my PowerBook, set my iPod for charging whilst lulling me to sleep and switch off the lights, i get the most compelling hunger pangs in recent memory.

so right now Post, Dove, Quality Street and Apple are rocking my world. i am bingeing. i am upset. i am hungry. i am angry. i am angsty. i am brooding. i am pissed off. i am disheartened. i am tired. i am sick. i am sleepy. i am cranky.

but somewhere in this shaking/shivering [either from the hunger or from the sugar] mess is a very, very lonely seventeen-year-old.

i ain't happy, i'm feeling glad, i got sunshine, in a bag, i'm useless, but not for long, the future, is coming on

so, as i was getting my mobile out of my bag after lecture ended just now, i wondered to myself: "what the hell are you checking for text messages for? there aren't any, and you know it."

yeah, why do i?

bow down to me

so here i am, in the PID studio. the malays are in seated at a clump of six desks, the chinese are all over the place, the two PowerBook users are across the room from each other [there's me, slumped on a desk against the staircase--do not mistake this for Harry Potter-esque, i am NOT under the staircase--and there's He Whose Name I Think Is Joel. i do not like HWNITIJ. not in that explict if-you-talk-to-me-i-will-not-respond way, but in that i do not actively seek him out for conversation [in any case i don't actively seek anyone out for conversation]. he smokes. half the time when he's just entered a room i get this whiff of cigarettes off his backdraft. most people say they cannot detect it--to which i ask if they've lost all ability to smell--but i guess my nose is just hyper-sensitive. plus the way my father smokes i am surely fine-tuned to that smell if anything. he recently asked me for a copy of Microsoft Office Mac 2004 and Adobe Photoshop 7 for Mac. i hesitated to help him out, but my brain had already sent the command to say "sure". i used the excuse that i ran out of CD-Rs over the weekend, and today i forgot my FireWire cable for transferring the program off my iPod. to be honest i really forgot, the guy brought his PowerBook to school today [something he apparently doesn't do everyday, and why should i feel anything since i bring mine to school everyday] but i guess it was on purpose subconciously.

accidentally on purpose, i guess.

back to the first topic i brought up. yes. it's a block party here [and you know how i am at parties], and the racial divide is clearer than ever. i don't know why this matters at all [in fact, i don't know why this matters to me] but i thought i'd post it anyway, if only as a cover for my need to bitch about the PowerBooks, FireWire cable, iPod, HWNITIJ, Office & Photoshop, smoke and cigarettes.

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