Ji Ching lives.

For all those who think otherwise, I'm still alive. Just older, richer and a lot dumber.

They say wisdom comes with age, but in my case wisdom is long overdue. Poetry now only exists as an old friend, one of those you lose contact with as wealth, fame and other such social goodies get in your way. Not that poetry = wisdom of course, indeed the wise usually keep their words to themselves instead of blabbering them out in stanzas. But what i sorely miss is the presence of language as friend and companion, something to tide me through my most misanthropic moments. Perhaps wisdom did come after all, it came upon the wings of cynicism and crude rationality, wisdom in the context of our world of concrete and tarmac, not the labyrinth of passions and pathos that reside within art's chrysalis.

HAHA. There i go again. The self proclaimed cynic. NO MORE.

I'm so tired of waiting (and not wanting) A level results to come. I'm also so tired of sitting around in my office stool with either too many or practically nothing to do. I'm also tired of looking at pretty girls (Why the hell am I looking at pretty girls!) and trying to figure out which part of my genetic makeup went wrong. I'm so tired of turning my eye outwards towards the external world. All my life i've been jealous of something or someone. academically, emotionally, physically, it makes life very very difficult as everything morphs into distractions and I find myself floundering in waters only I can rescue myself from.

Which is most probably a good thing.

My uncle recently gave me a book written by this Australian monk who used to be a theoretical physicist. (Somehow people who take physics always end up believing in some higher power. Only something truly divine can create a world where the laws of nature (and physics) work so perfectly. ) The book contained stories that he collected when he was training as a forest monk (I know that sounds funny, but don't laugh, it's hardly polite.) There was one story that could probably apply to this situation.

I shall be concise. It told of how he once had to build a wall for this shelter they were constructing. He had to make it brick by brick, and every brick had to be aligned properly, in line and not tilting to one side for it to be a 'good wall.' And so he plodded on, meticulously labouring until at the last the final brick was laid. However, as he drew back to admire his work he noticed to his dismay that there were two bricks at the side that were grossly out of line with the rest of the wall. He knew that he had ruined the wall and even asked the abbot to let him destroy it and start all over again. However, there wasn't time, and so he had to let it be. From then on he tried his best to avoid the wall when taking visitors around the building, the two 'bad bricks' were so firmly embedded into his consciousness. However, something changed his feelings about the wall one day when a passing visitor saw it and commented, 'That's a nice wall you have here.' He looked at the visitor in surprise, pointing to the two misaligned bricks at the corner of the wall. The visitor smiled and said, 'But there are so many other good bricks here!' It was then that the monk realised that the two bad bricks were only minor factors that did not stop the wall from being a 'nice wall.' That was when he started noticing the 'good bricks' and the wall became an emblem of pride instead of a thing of shame.

When i first read it my first reaction was 'What a stupid monk. How silly it is to fret over a wall, much less two bad bricks!' But then i realised that i've been fretting over even sillier things all my life, from the number of people who talk to me over msn to grades to the measurements of that girl's hips/waist/thigh. Life has been a smogasbond of silly and time consuming jealousies. How much time I've spent on those two bad bricks!And to think that the monk actually wanted to destroy the wall of so many good bricks just because of those two bricks. I wonder how much of my happiness has been destroyed fretting about such irrelevant things!

Actually i'm quite happy about how my extended holiday has turned out. Not only do I now have a reasonable source of income, but I'm still able to do the stuff I like, such as getting involved in a production, shopping, reading cheap classics bought from the bookstore near my work place, going back to huang cheng, joking around with my family, spending time with that special someone, catching up with old friends, and even having the opportunity to pick up my pen once in a while. I stand in wonder of how i failed to realise it all earlier. Most of these are things that i always had, but never appreciated, and thus never enjoyed. They were there all along, patiently waiting for me to stop chasing after someone else's footsteps, waiting for me to be content.

What can I say? Thanks for waiting. (:



*ADVERTISMENT* (the box office is one of those things that are never content.)

For Huayi festival, the etceteras are putting up a play about this couple of ten years who decide to play a game (and hence its title) which allows each partner to get involved in an affair with a third party, though sexual activity is out of the bargain. Its on this friday and saturday at esplanade theatre studio. For more details check the link below!

http://www.huayifestival.com/game_play.html

Its pricey, but I think the way the actors interact with the set would be something to watch. And yes, I know its really really late notice, but procrastination's my bad brick! haha.

Anyway, having bored my pants off at work I decided to do something even less productive and came up with an unofficial synopsis for the play. It's my office computer's fault that it is not in chinese. It is even more potato than I am. Here goes.


Life is like a roll of the dice.

You have to take turns, and you need to come up with a stake.

You might win, you might lose, all in all, the minimum goal is to recoup your losses, but that would mean ending up at the same point, which is a hideous waste of time and everyone knows time is precious.

But whatever it is, giving always comes before taking, you always need to wager something of your own first before you can start to deprive other people.

It boils down to a question of either or. Either you trade sorrows with yourself or you trade sorrows with the person who sits right across.

Gameplay is a roll of the matrimonial dice. But they should be lucky. Ten years of dice rolling gives great probabilities.

Of course, this is purely an adult’s game. Children own nothing, thus take nothing, and then what’s the point?

Only adults have enough to lose.

Only adults have the power to possess.

Tragedy seeks them out.