alasse |tingilye| rage against the good night

Golden sunset

2011-03-07T22:52:00.006+08:00

When did dusk’s first rays start to falter?

I dream of the time when all your delusions

were also mine, how we played like children in a

Golden sunset that; us thus observing,

could hardly bear to touch horizon.

How we wasted time, languishing in an infinity

we were sure we held asymptote. If only we knew -

Those waves licking our feet were not caresses, but rather,

trenchant reminders of a now bygone shore.

Then, words did not need much imagination to stir,

nor did your glance require evening’s softening lights

to make tender. Silently we communicated, rapt as

sea made harmonious conversations with sky.

Now I know you but through the water’s reflection.

Though every feature’s constant, my right reaches out, only,

to meet your left – and while we move still in tandem,

We move still, in opposite direction.

Sometimes the sea breeze scatters your image

and I glide a lone gull, veering across

luminescent waters so strange that I oft in my curiosity

contemplate a migratory course.

Yet always I dream of a golden sunset – though now we expect

that night must surely fall; it is still this hand I know that will

catch mine, prepare, and make patient,

For tomorrow’s golden dawn.

Through the window

2011-02-04T16:25:00.002+08:00

Sometimes I in the window see
Muted shadows, grey yet bright to me
Sometimes I in the window hear
Conversations made, whispered yet clear
Sometimes at the window’s side
Sit those I’d past in life’s quick strides
Sometimes at the window’s end
A love gone stale; forgotten friends.

Now; caressing her wooden frame,
My gaze upon that cognizant square -
Here flesh and bone a rhythm let
The other side, a rhythm dare?
Connected thus, each limb to limb
And every quirk and foible mine,
Reflecting all I might have been
So binds. This window of my mind.

the wing-ed life.

2011-02-02T19:14:00.000+08:00

I will always remember how the snow fell.

Not straight down to earth; but lingering

Diaphanously ; riding the warm drafts of our

Breaths - visible automobiles of air

stonewalling the snowflake’s sojourn, though simultaneously

melting, so that each delight prolonged makes more tenuous

the existence of its host. A moth’s philosophy -

Wings beating closer to life,

Wings beating closer to death.

I thought this would be easy. After all we were

One breath. You understood my exhaling,

Iceberg psychology, undercurrents cold and

Warm. How well they mixed, these nascent upwellings of

youth made profitable. I imagined us

El Nino and La Nina; weather’s recreants and

Recreators – incommensurate with the world, though

constant with one another.

How many snowflakes, does one miss in memory?

Your words now, frozen, in the cold recesses of

Thought. Deconstructed and compartmentalized-

Intonations, Inflections, Insouciance.

It must be rational, this love. A veritable store

Of been-theres, done that’s; well-stocked with hopes

Wished and wished for

too much. Softer words screech stalactites and

static might-have-beens. If only one could tarry to

see temporal; it is not for winter as a season I pine

but the naked glimpse of serendipitous

emotion, incandescent in your eyes.

Maybe Time is no custodian but a jealous

Divinity, dangling contentment as its prize,

seducing us with the promise of tomorrows

not worth living for -

We turn sacrifice, you and I,

our moments made forfeit as we are raised

and razed, at eternity’s altar.

Pray - let us be as snowflakes

and in the struggle to stay afloat, and love

We will.

Jewish Memorial

2010-07-12T23:29:00.003+08:00

they must be grey

quiet blurs of humanity, tossed randomly

by Fortune’s dice

and there entombed

the whispers of many, cloistered echoing

to others, entice.

to be a Jew,

yes god forbid – and men forbid too

your right to Life

still yet You live,

In german shame, german stories,

german sighs.

How long the stretch

from block to block, each coffin

gently sloping rests?

How long the pain

from son to son, each man

upon other men impress?

I mourn for You,

my human brethren, as the living

must surely mourn.

I grieve for You,

and all the children, snuffed out

ere their candle shone.

yet make not Vengeance

newborn to history, must babes

this shroud of shame to don?

blight not their youth

with sin and gravity, for a deed

they could have forsworn!

So rest, so rest-

for now the living, all must Rest,

before the Dawn.

Those lights

2010-06-17T07:54:00.000+08:00

Those lights -

Ezekiel’s whirlwind, fire enfolding,
Born and bred of the sky.

Baby’s first cry, life exclaiming,
Fluorescent tears left an eternity to dry.

Dead souls, their painted faces,
Breaking at horizon’s shore.

Brush of a fox’s tail, playful paces,
Tilting nature’s palette more

Above us, the cosmos pivot
All these stories, every tale

Surge to pry all words asunder
cast as ships the darkness sail.

Was there a time not yet bespoken
where we as ions happily danced?

On our shoulders no world beholden
Passion and youth in tandem pranced?

Those lights, and us, how we surrender!
Caught like fish in magic’s ebb.

and nature, philosopher,
Opens wide her ponderous gap -

Soon earth’s matter, around us shatter
Atoms, quarks sucked in the flush.

We stand still, in time’s sepulcher
hear the clamour turn to hush.

From your hand, a warmth beginning
Touched by light a world renew.

No past present future yearning
may this moment sublime yield -

A greater ecstasy or glee
than you and I, these lights we see.

She, Mona Lisa.

2010-04-28T04:26:00.007+08:00

Do you smile
Or do they know?

Those very many years ago
These brushstrokes made with expert hand
Tell they your tale? Did they portend-

The hundred thousand flashing lights
Machine mutters, day and night
A life behind the polished glass
Prostitute’s cell, and sell you must.

Da Vinci’s, or so they say
A woman owned, your story clay
Shaped and molded to their taste
Da Vinci’s whore, he sold your face

A face the scientists now explore
Eighty percent, maybe more,
What joys and sorrows due to thee,
Joys and sorrows that they see?

All who come will surely trace,
The oft admired meeting place
of lips, sensuously undulate
skywards, or so we speculate:

O Mona that you lived too soon!
Were you a lover, dame or lun?
Patient of syphilis, blood and gore
Give us the dirt, and then some more.

Light the flame of our desire!
Stoke our heart’s coals, make raging fire!
Then like history let us combust
Turn from you and turn to dust.

And when the ashes gently fall,
And the crowd our lives recall,
And silence does reverberate,
Peace and rest facilitate.

In the night when drunk with sleep,
Do those corners softly creep
From their immortal fleshy throne,
Down to life, or death below?

And will you hang stiff in the dark,
The smile from your countenance plucked,
Will your eyes then smile to see
A woman, unsmiling but free?

Jönköping

2010-02-09T16:43:00.006+08:00

She sits at the curve of Vattern’s frozen belly, while a flock of swans beat at the dark blue waters, trying to simulate their summer frolicking. She smiles. They play in vain. There is no cure for this weariness, this dreary half-waking.

She sighs, a cold breath. The lithe swans scatter as wind cuts through their ranks, a punishing executioner’s knife, covetous of the youthful and lively. She thinks of her childhood, of King Magnus, and days nearer the beginning of things. Perhaps it was as cold then, she couldn’t remember. Too many pillages and burnings, their ravages do their damage. Tighter now, she pulls her clothes over her hoary body.

Harder the wind blows. Sometimes she leaves her icy seat, go down to that part of town where more people linger, more people move. Too fast, really, for her slow eyes. Quick, ground-devouring strides, their legs like motor, a technology she still can’t quite catch. Perhaps that’s just how it is nowadays. Everything everyone is moving on, and she’s just there, waiting for something to give. Some kind of technical fault, error message, virus. Of course in the end nothing gives, nothing except her.

Sometimes she feels like the poor china that people are too embarrassed to set on the table when important guests come. Or a poor relation that people want to forget. They zoom past her with their eyes down, hands in their pockets. She likes to pretend they still think of her sometimes, on the warmer days, when the wind is kind, or when the sun shines a wee bit brighter. Those times she dons more colours, hoping to catch a glance or two, or if heavens allow, someone to stop, take a breath, take a picture.

God, it is cold. She strikes a match, looks at the flame. Such a fragile holocaust of warmth; so quickly alive, so quickly dead. She strikes another match, lights up her smoke, and watches the fumes travel out over the frozen waters. It’s been her weakness since middle age, when the machines came. The fights wore her down, but their smoke gave her comfort. Maybe she’s still paying for that betrayal, but it’s been too long past for that to matter. It’s been too long past anything really.

Now she rises, white clothes gathering about her. Her hands and heart are ice, but her eyes lukewarm as she looks out towards the lake’s horizon. Vattern is melting, yes, there is always that. Perhaps an early spring and maybe, just maybe, another chance for green.

First blood.

2009-09-22T00:01:00.002+08:00

The very first fight we won.
We with fittest tails and Cunning
pre-programmed tricked nature to relinquish
Life. Meaning became us.
Pliant walls shut in, and for the fallen
Eschewed all purpose. We eye our first Death
(If death could be so privileged
To those who have not yet lived)
or Murder, cut through the throat
by Competition’s guillotine.
‘My neck or theirs’,
We’d let the blade fall
and then pleading, desperate heroics
They died so we might live.

How costly, to say I am.
How we race, only, to teeter closer to the precipice.

Tomokii

2009-09-02T23:44:00.001+08:00

‘I need you to be early’
The microphone whizzes
Oriental eyebrows spring-dancing
Time-sensitive like your data
Probably significant, probably…
Is that blush a tinge of sakura,
Bold Confucian brushstrokes splayed
Upon a too yellow face?

I turn, like sumo, layers of carpet dragging,
Turnstiled, to uncover common history
Drawn through the stomach, up, this
Liquid memory, straining into vapors
That featherstroke the moment
Slightly nudging, gentle
authoritarian. The patriach plays geisha,
Now mild now coquette, still binding.

Face, caned into a grimace.
Courtesy’s not normal, requiring
A few degrees of imbalance –yours? Or
Mine. Your back is bamboo and I
Willowy. Gomendasai sensei.
I think of winter, come too early,
And then the bend, and inevitable snap
Of a twig broken early morning.

To a boy, aged 16

2009-06-03T16:43:00.006+08:00

I was reading your old blog posts, all the way from your Secondary Four days. It was a strange feeling that, peering into the consciousness of a boy so foreign, with woes and joys that appear to be from a different sphere, and yet so familiar, like the smell of bread on your skin, that I could not help but be overcome by a wrenching desire to be there at those moments in time. This you, who had not yet come into my life, I too want to protect from life’s vagaries.

It is as if I got know you all over again, maybe not you, but the clay that would become you. I watched intently as you were slowly and painfully molded into shape by life’s skillful (and cruel) hands. And how she betrayed you sometimes! She who gave you the ability of love gave you too much, and soon these excesses morphed into duty, guilt and a punishing conscience who picked fights at every turn. Great love, unchecked and unrequited, becomes monstrosity, a death-hungry Cerberus, day after day, gnawing down your bones and dignity.

I suppose it should disgust me, watching you sweat out your cold turkey, the bloodshot eyes, the puke, the pornos, the loser behavior, the desperate need for attention, the blood-thirsty vengeance, the insensitivity, the selfishness, the immaturity, the boy crying for validation the only way he knows how. You were a bastard perhaps, but as I journeyed with your past I couldn’t help but notice how beautifully you thanked people for going out with you, how passionately you organized class outings, how desperately you wanted friendships to last. Of course, you were disappointed again and again, and my heart sank each time rejection brought you closer to hell’s door, where the devil’s fires blaze anew.

I know how hard you fought it. This constant oscillation between hope and despair would stop, if only you could time life’s pendulum swing. Yet she is a saboteur, each time she sends you up the pedestal, each time she brings the weight crashing down on the return trajectory. But you never did gave up, and your cheeriness pains me, as some god, who knowing what will pass, must see the celebration before the Trojan horse.

I saw a Vincent, struggling, to paint his first work of art. Every time he sets his brush on the canvas, someone comes along and begs him for help with their own. He always obliges, believing that these seeds of good he sows would someday bloom into prescient flowers he will water colour. Yet as the months go by and no flowers come, he sits like the Beast guarding the last petal. Resentment tempts him deeper into misanthropy. He cuts off his ear, stops listening. He becomes a gargoyle, and embraces the grotesque. But all those who shudder are deceived. He is a Prince, and he waits, for that moment before the last petal falls.

Knowing this, what can my response be, other than love? You think I mock you, by frolicking with a persona you want to forget. But this curiousity is love. Love that is strengthened by the intense desire to know all, see all and from that knowledge be remade again to take new forms, as new crystals metamorphosed from old rocks. Love hard enough to bolster and yet tender enough to cajole, sooth and whisper. I love you because you are poetry; you in your nature will always play slave to the dictates of love, victim to emotion’s raging tempests, and servant to the noblest ideals. You are humanity that I cannot be, humanity that I cannot write, humanity that repels yet when I’m at my least conscious, reels me in.

I feel like I’m caught in a time bubble that floated, unwittingly, into this kaleidoscope of colours you call your past. No words travel, but the transparent walls vibrate with each upheaval, and I feel shaken, though cloistered still by time’s impossible barrier. Helplessly I call your name, willing that those eyes would find mine and be comforted, willing that you could be happy now, for tomorrow. I want to hug, reassure, but fate demands you make the pit stops. Oh if only one could know! If we only knew then that we were not alone in this struggle with a relentless world. If we only knew that this relentless search should one day find harbor at the bays of the present. If only we knew, we could have comfortably lay down, made peace with life, and better savoured the days till July 2005.

Where have you been these 17 years? And where was I?

Daddy

2009-05-28T13:52:00.001+08:00

You came too soon, you came too soon.
On the back of a junk, too many of you.
Slavery in the folds of a dirt bag,
Masters of donkeys, opium and poo
Douche-bags, all of you.

And when the tide came in, you grew
Became a gavel, a Confucian tool
With your rear end playing peak-a-boo
Now I’m his disciple too
You were here before me,

Were you? I read you like a history book
Three whips to a page, that makes
Good flagellation a sport. Like those
Marathons and marathons and marathons.
Over kill, maybe it will too.

Will it too. Run me to the death
As longs it pleases you.
Gas-tank, slung over. Smoke me like
Pot, with a huff and a puff and achoo
I’ll do what you cannot do

Jump through these smoke rings, whoo
Trapeze on your words, somersault too,
A leg lift, fold over, and then the fall
A Cirque Du Soleil doll
I’m your darling, ring master

Ring me thrall. The scars are
your love, some trophy to polish,
Minutes of minutes of you,
It’s a scorecard, and guess what daddy?
I’ll place my bets on you

Always the financial mogul
With your stocks and your shares and
Everyday blues. I remember mummy
Sprawled like a starfish, teething a smile
Like some goody-two-shoes

Mummy’s a mule
Plodding on with a leaking vat of you
It gets lighter and lighter,
Her back straightens and straightens
While I lick the drips on her shoe.

But Daddy I grew and I grew,
My foot grew too big in your shoe
My age now starts with a two
With a zero behind, with a zero behind
I zeroed my memory of you.

Daddy you better love me too
Love my hand and my feet and my heel
Daddy daddy roll the wheel
The fleece on your head shows through
Daddy daddy daddy, I’ll make three bags full.

On learning your grades

2009-05-26T10:13:00.002+08:00

Thistle funnel breath
A cellular anorexia,
Squelched like Boa-meat
Air betrays its own nature
To boast rotund.
And then the smooth slide
Or gallop, into the gut.

Pelunk.
Stirred like hot mash
Witches cauldron gurgling
Day old leftovers, hot air
Propelling bumper-car romance
With intestinal fervency
Appendages clasp accidents
Rolling them into balls.
Salivate. Mothball smells from
Baby socks. These don’t come
Off easily.

Singles pining for a
Similar constriction.
Sudden rising of bile plume.
Expanding air to invade every
Fleshy Hiroshima. Then the
Release. Snake skin
Peeling back for freedom
All shapes evaporate
To muster

This gush, this suffocation
This edifying upward drift
Of my bell-jar asphyxiation.

Shut up and Sit Down

2009-05-08T01:01:00.003+08:00

How many times -
Did we crumble under the divinity
of a wagging finger crossed
twice, as if creation got found out and
now sheepishly sought,
the forgiving (and forgiven) innocence
of a schoolboy’s childish folly.

How many times –
Did we smile as he hid behind skirts
and issues, attributing this bashfulness
to a virginal pathos, one that we in
Reason’s gloomy subterfuge
should cradle as first bud in spring or
last dash of snow. So he is
nursed, o infant joy, blessed
by our cowardice to compound
Eternity in never-land.

How many times –
Did the rod of invention strike foul to spare
this Happy child? No love runs
Thick as his tears, no music sings
Sweet as his tantrums. To his moods
we cling, bouldering the precipice
though blisters fester
And primordial veins, traitors to their inheritance,
scream sermons pleading
That we let go.

How many more times -
Will we turn the other cheek, so old wounds
don’t bruise? Like ostriches we place
our heads in holes, not, to escape
Death, but to silence out
the screeching decibel of fear.
What have we nursed in this rock-a-bye
but a dormant wind, now gentle in its caress,
but when next it blows,
upturns the cradle?

Intellectual Conversations

2009-03-07T01:43:00.005+08:00

We began in autarky,
Two outliers deviating from the crowded mean,
too far flung to enjoy Pareto, fettered
within the boundaries, of our own sub-optimal
Consumption.

The invisible hand gestured,
Beneath the veil of ignorance
Worn diaphanous by desperation, two egos rode the
Utility function. Epicurean delight moralised,
Into a grand equilibrium.

So said Pandora: ‘Ceteris paribus, we are better off.’

The hand made visible feels warm,
Rubbery, like leather from the backs of some endangered species,
An ignoramous? But then, you always were
Unashamedly bipolar, while my likert scale
purports a proclivity to moderate.

I am your muse, you say, as if Paris
Ever bled poetry in his death. Much more a siren,
Greasing your odyssey with ambrosia wails
Till your ears grow lesions, and henceforth no music from my mouth
Harmonises yours.

It is a competition, and we run each other down.

Yet the enemy doesn’t always sits across the table,
Xenophobia is shared, like a couple lunch.
Outsiders taunt laughs, and sub-lunary microcosms clear
The throat, though always with a bitter aftertaste,
Maybe we never really left Nash.

Maybe we are our own Darwin, predicating our own humanity
On some stupid Galapagos birds squawking – why
I am not waiting for Godot. Why we, yak about
Paradise lost with Miltonic heroism, why we persistently ignore
The irony behind a theist and atheist.

Why why? Exactly how we undermine ourselves.

How we talk, and sip on gasified water,
Pauses interspersed by words, or is it the other way?
Semantics stifling silence. I like this democracy,
rhetoric riots better than any Lynch mob, even
in a rambunctious bull run.

Still, we are doubly exposed, through this
small aperture we print as bold italics, underscored
Struck through. Since when,
did we start to auto-focus, zooming in as fast as we zoom out,
Quid Pro Quo?

You tell me transition matters, I can’t figure out the beginning from the end.

A smile lingers in the places our minds wander,
We shriek like children in a game of tag,
I catch you mid-sentence;
You catch me when I fall,
Down the slippery slope of love.

The last Cordelia

2008-10-14T01:04:00.005+08:00

'O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

-La Belle Dame Sans Merci
John Keats

__________________________________

What can ail thee,
But a smattering of self, broken
reflections in age-worn mirrors
Too old to back-date.

On which you weep elegy,
Scrawling lines of woe etched,
Of who where when,
sometime or
Other, life trampled hard enough,
though not nearly.

Is it man who breathes, yet
With each gasp, manacles one’s throat
To stifle breath? Is it man who drinks,
Yet with each gurgle, envision death?

Is it man who lives, yet
With each moment spoil,
the steady beats to which life pulsates?

Is it man who loves, yet
With each moment deny,
This gentle loving gently wake?

Lave, lave the suffixes
of full Abandon! The man drowning in sand,
will at his last soliloquy take
some living weed, to make lavish
His sepulcher.

This is your Dionysian joy.

For which you live,
For which you, will I destroy.

No man's land.

2008-10-10T02:35:00.005+08:00

Amazing how in the grand scheme of things,
between the mad-rush and voting boxes,
You stand dictator,
as ailing Democracy is vetoed,
and majority loses its last war.

This is no time for mavericks,
Bombs tick your ambition
while all other dreams
Detonate.

Seemingly self-defeating
Seemingly triumphant
Stoically non-partisan

You slash the jugular –
Knife curved like a smile.

Soon there will be three bags full.

The Memory Refrain

2008-09-12T01:46:00.003+08:00

The place hasn’t changed;
The dusty tiles bear the colour
Of paint, splattered, across days months years-
Layer upon layer, tile upon tile
Of memory coagulated onto a knowing canvas.

The change is mine.

I smell sawdust, long settled into cracks.
I hear the grating drill, plunge into
Pliable wood; incessantly, persistently,
Stubbornly. For at the very last note
It all ends. Or will end.

Or ended.

I go to our haunts, now haunting,
Like ghosts ill-revenged, wailing
For a second turn.
I trail the corners, shy of light,
Like children demurred, crying
For a toy returned.

I don’t remember why we sang
Like crazed lunatics; seesawing
Ungainly shoulders to a tune.
I still remember why we fanged,
Like taskmasters, gainsaying
Innocent laughter far too soon.

I must look stupid, remembering so much
And yet too little. The mind records
What the heart scoffs,
And now, the tiles rebuff
And mock
this Delightful Loss.

Lotus Song (inspiration from 12 lotus, royston tan)

2008-08-31T02:00:00.005+08:00

Prologue
How pitiful you are dear lotus,
Cast into the murky soil.
The wind murmurs your name now-
Dear girl, will you sing?

(i)
Dust falls low in Sana’a
Lightly brushing the smells of porridge
That wend its way through every household.
We sit by the well, all *baltho - waifs
chewing hallucination under a veil.
Ah, the pleasure of being unseen!
-from fingers, hand, and the occasional foot.
In this shrouding sarcophagus
the world unravels its whole brilliance.
Identities fade, our bodies strain, come loose,
deconstructing into the most basic algorithm
Allah used when he lovingly moulded humankind.
Unspeakable joy-
Soon our man will return
And we will bloom like prescient flowers,
My sisters and I, as we scurry
To gather buds that wither down below.

(ii)
We had not met-
As custom went, but fortune, face, and family
Had gone ahead of us to make their loves;
Ours they sealed in dowry.
Hand henna-bound, forehead etched red.
The mark burned, though less,
Than the husband’s searing glance
As he pledged to worship the ground
That I walked on – his part is easy,
For that pledge I walk these steps-
How quickly does sari turn to ash?
Flesh to dust, bone to fine sand?
Till death do we part? Never.
Not even so. I breathe,
A short breath-
Before I take my place beside him, in his pyre.

(iii)
To him whom I have loved before-
Write me no letters;
I wish you death, quick and easy
Let a bullet stop your gentle heart
and make no mark upon your face.
So many men have kissed the dirt, mouths agape
In this roughly hewn piece of hell;
But let no penance singe your beloved face,
Or tear the laughter from your brow.
May youth dance its graceful Art,
Upon your lips, and go you to some greater sphere,
Heights my flights of sorrow cannot scale.
I only pray – that some strains of music
Ease down below, not to pleasure me
But to know you are now in joy,
And not the dank trench where good men sweat
tears, fester, and bring on
This bitter wasting of a woman’s years.

Epilogue
Out of the muddy water,
She stands like a queen above the murk,
And nature gifts its purest perfume,
And light bequeaths its finest livery,

And love sings its most piteous song.

*black robes that women in the Yemen wear

Cinematic Magic - Thoughts from NTU Cinema studies

2008-08-14T00:01:00.004+08:00

It is quiet here,
like all other human senses,
our curiosity stretches
Out, like a cat
trying, too hard, to claw
at the fringes of existence.

Nary a mew-

For what is reality but what we can
tease cajole and coax, belly up
into purring obeisance?

Life is what i record-
with my eyes, ears, mouth, heart,
Places you have touched, lingered
and forgotten,
in a time too long past for antiquity.

Life is what you interpret-
At once high fantasy touches your shores,
At once I am archaic in its backwash.

The Clown.

2008-07-14T01:20:00.003+08:00

And then there were none.

The first to go was the recalcitrant youth. Adventure was his element and even the infinite waters of the sea could not contain his thirst for rarer shores. In no harbour did he find anchor, his gaze perpetually cast upon the next wave. He lived on the edge of oblivion and more often then not, taunted existence to throw him out. But just like the way moths take to flame and death, I punished myself in his inferno, and the pilgrim sang Prometheus’s song.

Second in line was the insignificant man-of-the-street, with his bowler hat of insecurities and pockets full of justified paranoia. His life was an oxymoron, his past, present and future showed the same reflection in the mirror. Between being and un-being he trod on a precipice. He was the man in the office, the man in the flat, the man at the voting box, the man hiding behind Big Brother. His end was exactly like his entrance, no one saw him go, no one saw him coming. No one saw him except me, and I quickly ushered him into death before life blacked him out.

Then there was the politician. He swept me off my feet with argument, and made all of life’s grievances sensible. I joined his campaign, and held his banner high. Together we marched down the long steps of our ivory tower and into the legions of Diaspora. We marched as comrades until the riot police came and vanquished our souls with tear gas and legislation.

Fourth was the prisoner, who held me thrall with his predicament. With him I felt the first stirrings of motherhood, and so I learnt that to be female was to be vulnerable to the weaknesses of men. Many were the nights where I cleaned the grime from his fingernails and soothed him to sleep in the godforsaken cell. Moonlight was only our company, and each other’s breathing our sole distraction. When he grew stronger, he broke the bars of his entrapment and walked free, and grief took me as his form joined the darkness and slipped away.

The fifth and dearest was the lover, the man who came to me in the night and made me belong. His words stoked fires, and all of life was ablaze in his presence. I bathed in his light and power, and felt eternity within grasp. But arrogance took him, and he was finally consumed by his own radiance, leaving me to weep Daedalus’ tears.

I knew them, if only like how each blind man knew the elephant. If only like how we all know and believe in the mysterious Mr Quinn.

The man who stands before me now is familiar, but stranger this familiarity makes him than strangeness. I trace the tousled criss-cross edges of his hair, inching my finger between the rough curls before lowering slowly to the face. Down my finger skims, leaving a faint line across the thickened brows and painted nose, to the obscenity of the plum red lips that instinctively tease themselves into a pout. I rub the soft flesh of my palm against those lips, feeling the colour rub off onto my skin, soaking in, initiating recognition. The contact singes my nerves, but I push on as the lips start to surface an earthly brown.

The face cracks, and peels, into a warm grin.

Dear god, I know you.

Look down, look down.

2008-06-25T02:30:00.004+08:00

I read my old posts and hmm. Ji Ching is sick of being pretentiously intellectual. No more theasaurus.com. My old posts make me feel like an aspiring Adrian Mole.

This is my new resolution. To be uncut, uncensored, but not RA.

Bottled

2008-06-25T02:27:00.002+08:00

Asphyxiate this emptiness
And it will be a tight squeeze
As the ball of gall gets rolling
Clinking,
Clank

Clunk.

Into the brains that were,
Taste the ambrosia of full-bodied
Amnesia. It is difficult,
To ponder, or stow-away

This endless rolling
On sharp ends.
Thud. On. Thud.

I remember the times when life was water,
Weaving in between set strands
Melodic like a fine tuned guitar,
Energy stored,
and then flow.

But the present make heartless
Grind. A drawn out sulk
Gives more comfort
Than this merciless banging
On sharpened nerves.

I need a break from rest.

Ji Ching lives.

2007-02-22T14:42:00.000+08:00

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.

2006-07-21T23:40:00.000+08:00

The uncomplaining bound,
The dust fine-ground,
Stone-for-a-statue waveworn pebble-round.

blockage cleared

2006-07-04T18:16:00.000+08:00

Liberation liberation liberation!

haha. not that my elation's really justified, since I've hardly been what (considering hwa chong standards, ok no, considering ANY standard) one might consider 'hardworking'. So erm yeah! So happy to be erh....EVEN MORE SLACK THAN USUAL. :)

(mailto:%&@#*$*(#&$(#$^&$. Forgive me while i try to get the fact that prelims are like around 6 weeks away outta my head. )

Anyway, back to the point of feeling happy. Now i can watch the world cup in peace! yay. Though actually i think my new found interest in the game is more because i don't want to mug rather than because of actual interest in the game itself. But in a way i am happy i got distracted, since that means that i can blame whatever shitty grades I get on the world cup. (A world event! FAR FAR more important than blocks!)

Funnily though, every team I support immediately gets kicked out of the game. First it was Argentina, then Ukraine (shevchenko!), EVEN BRAZIL (kaka!). -_- Maybe some sort of sadistic girly instinct is trying to put me off the sport. (What are you doing staying up late for soccer! You could be midnight shopping at suntec!) But yeah, blocks are over so soccer may prove to be boring again. Not that my interest is really authentic anyway, its a fickle on-off sort of thing, heavily dependent on mood, other leisure alternatives, and whether the team has enough players worth watching for factors other than their fancy footwork. HMM.

Lep was horrendous. I was so embarrassed during the paper because the teacher startled me THREE TIMES, making me jump in my seat and resulting in offensively loud banging noises caused by my knee hitting the table. All that spasming left me in cold sweat more than the fact that the paper was the most anal piece of examination i had ever taken. Reservist and a sunshine overdose make people cruel.

Huang cheng meeting tommorow. (: They seem so much less ominous now that huang cheng is over. haha. Good luck juniors. You have many seemingly insurmountable obstacles in front of you, and some are, but eventually even skinning your knees become a sort of pleasure. Approach us with caution! We might either be bandaid or salt. But not to worry! You'll recover, your skin will thicken, and you'll bear your wounds with pride! (to the extent of overindulging in them sometimes. haha.)

- I apologise for putting it in such an icky biological way. Pardon my lack of more aesthetic analogies. -

But yeah, all problems resolve themselves! It might seem like crap at the start, crap in the middle and crap at the end, just that at the end the crap is in the very fact that it has to end! Beneath this seemingly masochistic human behaviour there is a value in the huang cheng experience that only you and your batch will slowly define and understand. (since every batch takes something unique out of huang cheng) So just believe in yourselves and your batchmates!

haha.

Actually I also don't know why i am suddenly saying all this. Maybe it's because I remembered the fear and apprehension when I just got appointed. Its not so much the real difficulty of the work itself as is the sense of bewilderedness at the sheer perceived impossibility of the task. But I guess once you get past the fear and get to the work everything seems to become much more manageable. Sure, there will be hiccups along the way, but really, as long as everyone's moving in the right direction why worry about veering off course? I must say I enjoyed the journey. Its almost like a bullock cart ride, every bump just made us cling together tighter, every bump just made the whole experience more worthy of recollection.

2006-06-22T01:16:00.000+08:00

(S)upreme (A)dministration (F)ailure.

2006-06-19T02:38:00.000+08:00

Early in the morning, i put breakfast at your table 一夜都没睡但我　不曾如此清醒我早餐准备了你　爱吃的东西这次换我等你被咖啡　的香味叫醒想要找回每天早晨　对我微笑著的你还能够　做些什麼代替我的歉意总是望著我　小心翼翼顺著我呼吸而我竟然理所当然　让你精疲力尽 You were my superwoman 安静的在身边　无条件给我　梦寐以求的温柔 but i am only human 我怎麼不懂你多寂寞残忍的犯了错不能失去你 ooh—babe--- You fought your way through the rush hour try to make it home just for me 月光下静静靠著彼此　只求夜长一点有多久没有好好看你　只是认定了我无论在什麼时候回头　都有你的笑容是我忽略了你也会有　想要哭的感觉没有一种付出应该永远心甘情愿再给被宠坏的男人最後一次机会换我忍耐换我等待　不要真的弃权 (---baby)是我把爱想得太简单以为只要我存在就能让你取暖心裏唯一的superwoman没有人能代替不能想像更不能原谅这样让爱化成　灰烬

I want to be a superwoman, 让你无论在什麼时候回头，都有会我的笑容。
But I am only human, and I can’t help letting the tears fall, just as I try to stop yours.

Alone.

2006-06-19T01:09:00.000+08:00

I wish brazil would score. (Shit. Just as I was typing this, they did. Talk about lousy timing.)

You would probably have watched this with me, if you hadn’t had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 6am tomorrow. I don’t know why I’m staying up late alone to watch men kicking a stupid ball. I don’t even LIKE watching football as an alternative to advertisements most of the time. But I guess watching it reminds me of the times you were there at the other end of the line, giving your expert commentary using terms I only pretend to understand. The exhilaration we get at every goal - your exhilaration as a fan, and my exhilaration as your mood gets progressively better, indicating a nice goodbye at the end of the day.

I wish you were here to explain why Australia makes more shots on goal than Brazil, what kind of game tactic each side was using. Never mind that I wouldn’t have understood half of it, or that your explanation would probably have been interrupted by times when the game picks up speed. I don’t understand soccer, not without you. But it’s become almost a habit, I can’t sleep before two, and I still wait, almost as if you’ll call this time as usual to bet on the score line, and to laugh at this pseudo-soccer fan.

I am grateful for the world cup. Watching this match has been a comfort, somewhat. Perhaps it’s just because I’m too good at deluding myself. Perhaps it’s because the football field is a vat containing too many good memories of quiet and not too quiet nights of soccer indulgence. Even pretend indulgence. However far away, your presence lingers on in the noise and excitement that is football, noise that fills the unbearable silence which comes after my half-hearted cheers give no echo.

Final score: Brazil –Australia 2-0.

You missed a good game.
So did I.

Playground

2006-06-10T00:18:00.000+08:00

Love is so fatalistic, the familiar ‘I would DIE without you’ proves that.

How everything goes into the hyperbole just because. The logic of love is like the way the narcotics bureau nabs ‘offenders’. ‘Want a drug? No? You sure? YOU SURE? I know you want it!’ *stuffs packet of ecstasy into person’s hands**flashes CNB id* ‘We’ve caught you red handed! Hee hee hee.’ It sounds just like, ‘Look at that girl! She’s pretty right? Hot right? You think she’s pretty right? You were ogling at her right!’ *burst into tears* ‘You ALWAYS look at other girls!’

It’s almost like going fishing using but yourself as a bait. The logic is so horribly warped it would look ridiculous anywhere but in the context of love. I guess a relationship is a safety bubble where seemingly normal people can do crazy things just because. Its like a playground for a society too long immersed in decorum and etiquette. No wonder hwa chong is called a love nest; too many Monday morning assemblies have resulted in a repressed student body begging for release.

I guess there won’t ever be a happy medium. But why are mediums happy anyway? Why does simplicity have to be bliss? Simplicity would only reduce life’s range of experiences. A whitewashing of life’s canvas to cover up flaws in artistry. But I find that I am as partial to sorrow as to joy, as reverent to folly as to virtue. Perhaps it is only in extremities do we find the vein that life throbs in, strong rhythmic pulses unyielding in their anguish and pathos.

Oh well. Just because!

And i'm feeling good.

2006-05-25T22:57:00.000+08:00

Dance night was fun. Opinions are diverse, but whatever it is, I haven’t felt that kind of exhilaration in a long time. Okay, make that two years. Haha. I miss the rg dance culture. It’s just so much easier to go full out basking in that sort of atmosphere. But whatever it is, I think I have finally learnt self-indulgence on stage, it’s the ability to isolate all other factors – sucky lighting, disintegrating (and indecent) costumes, demoralizing audience (matinee!) , urge to pull up tube/shorts, physical insecurities, and what-the-hell-why-do-I-not-see-him syndrome.

Maybe I am a closet exhibitionist (what an irony!), but yeah, it felt really good. I guess there’s something in dance that releases feelings in us we don’t usually set free. Now thinking about it all still makes me euphoric. I feel a compulsion to dance! ARGH! I feel like taking up latin during the holidays, but I think blocks demand my fullest attention so OH WELL. After As then, I guess, provided I find someone strong enough (bingeing during As is almost a certainty), someone who doesn’t have two left feet. xP.

Anyway, back to the subject. Dance night not only helped me recapture some of that old delight in bodily expression but also changed my mind about quite a lot of people. I have developed a greater tolerance level for mindless whining and bimbotic speculations, just for the fun of it. Its an acquired taste, I guess. It just depends on how much pressure you want to put your ears through before you get to the core of the person, a really nice core I must admit, so I don’t regret it at all. (:

A big thank you to all those who came, yes, even those who made really weird comments. (CHER. -_-) haha. Thanks for flattering my ego so much Ame, you are the anti-thesis of aaron. (‘I have good news for you jiching. You look slightly less ugly with make-up.’ ---he shall have a taste of my condescension on Saturday! wahaha ) Oh yes, and thanks for the peasant girl analogy. Sorry I disappointed you guys by not doing anything incriminating. xP It feels good to be on stage again , after huang cheng at vt. Admittedly hwa chong audi is a poor substitute for dear vt, but I guess this time my relationship with the audience is more direct. (Sitting at the sm table calling cues construes another sort of excitement!) Now I know what the actors feel like when they need to ru xi, though I think my ‘acting’ cmi. But hey! Acting sexy is difficult, you either are it or you are trying too hard to be it (which means you are not it.)

I don’t dare to wash my costumes because all the sequins will come off and 3 hours of work will literally go down the drain. Oh well. But at the least the modern costume is somewhat wearable, if a bit too flamboyant. The nazi costume is just weird and the corset and shorts getup is just incongruous with my wardrobe and my moral sensibilities. I think I would chuck it down the bin if I didn’t spend so much time sewing the gold ribbons and beads on.

Aiya, shit. Don’t feel like blogging anymore. The song is stuck in my head again. It’s a really nice song though. I like the first verse.

'I can fly

But I want his wings

I can shine even in the darkness

But I crave the light that he brings

Revel in the songs that he sings

My angel gabriel'

Crap. I miss dance.

2006-05-15T18:40:00.000+08:00

Random Network CheckInstructions:Name 20 ppl u can think of at the top of your head. Dun read the below questions before you write and tag 5 ppl to do this survey.
1(: {enough pple know. Don’t want to advertise le.}
2.amelia
3.linette
4.wing
5.angela
6. mon
7. pheywa
8.rachel (she kicked me! How can I forget!!!!)
9.cher
10. geri
11.wk
12. mommy
13. evelyn
14.esther
15. Justin (sry ame. I think of you I think of him. Heh)
16. ailene (dance overload)
17. jamie
18. boonie
19.guifeng
20.aaron

How did you meet 14?
hwa chong humanities. In the midst of decadence and sin.

What would you do if you never met 1?
I would probably have more time to tease ame and Justin haha. but yeah, I guess I would be happy still, just that life might be so much more mediocre.

What would you do if 20 and 9 dated?
I would get a job as their translator.

Did you ever like 19?
NO. that would be INCEST.

Would 6 and 17 make a good couple?
perhaps. If they discover their lesbian tendencies soon enough.

Describe 3.
prettier than ever (:

Do you think 8 is attractive?
DUH. Another pretty one.

Tell me something about
7.She sweeps guys off their feet. Haha. judoka!

Do you know any of 12's family?
yep. Every single on of them, myself included.

What's 8's favourite?
dance? Kicking people’s eye? xP

What would you do if 11 confesses that he/she likes you?
tell him to get leg extensions. XP

What language does 15 speak?
don’t know. Weird acronymic stuff that only ame understands.

Who is 9 going out with?
lan guang feng. Lao fu lao qi.

How old is 16 now?
17/18

When was the last time you talked to 13?
rj gym night.

Who's 2 favourite band/singer?
ji mo de ji jie/ zhi zu. – Justin?

Would you date 4?
NO. she would be late for all our dates.

Would you date 7?
NO. she would throw me if I was late.

Is 15 single?
NOPE. But they do single themselves out. xP

What's 10's last name?
xu?

Would you ever be in a serious relationship with 11?
we would be heading for serious trouble.

What school does 3 go to?
rj. In the wondrous land called bishan. SIGH.

Where does 6 live?
FORGOT. Oops. Fairyland I guess. Goddess what.

Whats your favourite thing about 5?
non-threatening eyes. Because they are so small. (:

Have you seen no.1 naked?
nightmares should only begin after marriage.

tagged
1. (:
2. zhixuan
3. darren
4. zhu zhang
5. wk

The stars debate...

2006-05-11T22:16:00.000+08:00

The moon shines by coincidence,
How the sun chanced upon her with his light;
dowered her, that she too might dance in shadow
And how –
When another shields his beams from her-
Her eclipse waxes pity.

thieving on time

2006-04-21T20:49:00.000+08:00

What do you do after your 4As, two S paper distinctions and A1 for GP? Apply for a scholarship perhaps, President, SAF, PSC, firefly, DBS. Go overseas. 4 years degree. 2 years masters. Come back to serve your bond at some ministry with the job scope that involves prolonged stays out of Singapore. Like some sort of high class refugee with a 200000 – 300000 annual income. Work your way up the hierarchy – 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. One should live life without regrets.

But what I regret about my life so far isn't the 2 A1s I didn't get at o levels, nor is it the 1st place we didn't clinch for cheerleading. Instead, I regret the photos that I didn't take during huang cheng, the primary school friends I’ve forgotten, memories too far back to remember, and incomplete farewells.

No, the PSC scholarship talk didn't inspire me to work towards the top. It instead reminded me of the people I would be leaving behind. Those people who might become one of my many regrets ten years from now, when I cease to be able differentiate between one from another, when the subtle intonations of their voices merge and chorus into one barrage of loss.

12 years of study, 18 years of people, 2 years of you. I guess this is the theory of opportunity cost. But which is the greater? Throw away 12 years of study for the people I love, or the other way round? I am so tired of having to make decisions. How can we measure human beings with economic models?

Why must there be a trade-off? Yet at least where you are concerned there must. To do otherwise would be selfish. Man is innately selfish. Egotistical hedonism. But there is no greater guilt than to deprive someone else of life's chances. Life is abundant, and no man should have the right to make another stand still in the journey of time. Time waits for no man. Man shouldn't need to wait for time, or another man.

I hate wishy-washiness. Either a clean cut or no cut at all. The agony of execution is greatest mid-stroke. Spare us that. I sacrifice or we sacrifice. If only time and space can be crucified.

Pardon my hypothetical nihilism. Rationalisation is a great anaesthetic for pain.

Still, thank you for your offer.

Rain

2006-04-14T22:49:00.000+08:00

the rain eats away at skyscrapers, memory’s wisps
Linger; the wet smell of grass, drip dripping into
Ephemerals unspoken. Silence hums the low bass of time
as we bury seconds in each other’s warmth.
Elegy is the rain; life’s breath retreating, but we dutifully sing its tune.
(is it you crying me crying or just sky misting around our eyelashes?)
Raindrops chafe at the immortality of water puddles,
while two pairs of feet splash
Laughing evanescence.

how many more times do i have to endure this?

Sunday

2006-04-10T00:08:00.000+08:00

How life goes on as usual.

Can there be contentment in missing someone? I guess so. If the greatest fortune is to love and be loved in return, then I guess life would be unending in satisfaction, because it is so very human to love.

Life would never be mundane perhaps, with so many abstractions to pursue. Hope, freedom, ambition, love. Somehow all these ideals seem much more significant now that you are not around. Maybe you have always so distracted me with the little realities that I never really did have time to stop and look at the big picture. Or maybe I am just indulging myself with these vague concepts to pass the hours when you are not there to keep life simple.

Of course, life might already be simple, structurally, in the way that it construes seconds, minutes, hours till you come to put time on hold. A simplistic constant waiting it is then, an ironic juxtaposition of turbulent emotions that seize me without warning. Life is really a bag full of ironies.

The irony of separation and togetherness, how two hands hitting the keyboard simultaneously can never be one, and how though we might think of each other at different times, the same pool of memories lies still, quiet, untouched, except by us.

Photo

2006-04-08T08:42:00.000+08:00

Do you know how to decipher a smile?
The lighting up of the eyes, turn of the nose, momentous show of teeth.
There is a delight in retracing the lines of joy. My eyes and hands furtively caress the furled edges of memories in a previous space and time.
There she is. Love and life preserved in a smile.
I see her, and I remember, why and how she came to be there, what was whispered into her ears, who did but give her reason to.
Fringe over face, unnoticed, as the shutter closed on a world lost behind the complicated codes of the sub-lunary – and opened simple you and me.
This is a moment when split second light captures refract into something more lasting.

A smile is a face cracking up-
sorrow and joy, till you come back.

SM politics

2006-03-27T22:53:00.000+08:00

Spare the whip, spoil the competition.
psudo-opposition for a pseudo-democracy huh.
I wonder how many pseudonyms Singaporeans can take before they start to take themselves seriously.

Oh well. Seems like PAP's set to make a clean sweep this year.

Good or bad? I don't know. Its not like we have much better alternatives anyway. Besides, it would be quite interesting to see a pure contingent of whites. That would need a hell lot of bleach.

(I realise my entry for huang cheng is long overdue. Can't bring myself to write it somehow. Maybe I will write after I have forgotten what it feels like to xie mu with 25 years of huang cheng ren on and offstage. Maybe I will write after j2s forget their huang cheng lingo. Maybe i won't write it at all, but let this memory pass unwritten, for what after all, can truly chronicle our journey these 7 months? SL SM off cans- that is, if they really do come off. )

2006-03-08T23:37:00.000+08:00

I have always wished for a wizard to come knocking on my door and maybe whisk me away on a grand adventure in the far away lands of lothlorien and gondor.
But there you were, mundane as life, the smile in your eyes promising mine as you handed 2 and a half hour's journey into my hands, seemingly immune to my ungrateful exclamations of 'siao!' and 'crazy la you.'
And then the indulgent silence that followed as we both breathed contentment....

Gandalf's fireworks would pale in comparison to this sort of magic.

2006-02-23T00:17:00.000+08:00

Amazing how i chased myself into my own misery. Wish you were here.

2006-02-20T23:14:00.000+08:00

25　年的辉煌，难道。。。
这是我们的最后三个星期，也是你的吗？
维多利亚剧院的舞台是否已经收容不下你的酸甜苦辣？
最后的演出最后的谢幕？谢了谢了。
好容易地谢绝了。

多少年的掌声，多少年的泪水，
也许就在那一晚有了了结。
心痛，除了心痛我无话可说。
让我们来唱一首华初的歌。黄城的歌？黄城的精神？黄城的人？
难道只是一场闭幕时终结的梦？

看透了。你们都说是看透了。
我却无法效仿你们的潇洒。
三月十二号，我要好好的哭一场。
哭出所有的遗憾，还有那一句无奈的谎言
－－我们明年黄城夜韵再见...

再见啦。

不渝是精神。

2006-02-19T01:04:00.000+08:00

为什么总是要在即将失去的时候才懂得珍惜？直到现在才发现自己真的爱黄城。直到现在才知道你们的存在有那么的重要。也许我们都失望过，自责过，但是，我很庆幸我们仍然能在跌倒之后互相扶持，等泪水流干，化成笑语。大家加油，今年做一个对得起自己又快乐的黄城！一定要让黄城继续下去！做过黄城的道具，喊过黄城的cues, 我真的很想做一次黄城的观众。　（：

3 more weeks. I am so gonna miss you guys.　　

2006-02-13T23:34:00.000+08:00

yucks. Now i cringe at my entry. Shan't blog immediately at the aftermath next time. just wanna say sorry sorry sorry. Wo shuo guo bu hui chong yan de. Shi bai le, dui bu qi. Ming tian zai jia you ba.

2006-02-12T23:48:00.000+08:00

three things to say - thank you. sorry. wtf.

i want to die

2006-02-12T00:02:00.000+08:00

I need things to make me happy too. Never have I felt so alone.
I am so sorry. about what? My intellectual incapacity. I DON”T KNOW. Maybe I just can’t.
Maybe I am just a useless piece of shit.

I don’t know what to say don’t know what to feel. Do I apologise? I can’t apologise when I have stuck out nights for this. I know its important. But god dammit I tried I tried I TRIED. It wasn’t enough for you. I wasn’t enough for you. What do you want from me? I don’t know how to give you what you want to see. I am lacking I know. Maybe I didn’t work hard enough, maybe I wasn’t alert enough, maybe I was just never cut out for it in the first place. Don’t know what went wrong. Maybe we were never right in the first place. Maybe I was never in the right place. Well then. Comfort me reassure me step on me. Leave me. You won’t have to see so much shit anymore then. I am sorry I am sorry I am sorry? I don’t know how to say this. (do I have to say this?)

I feel cold. No one to tell me to put my blankets on. Maybe I shan’t sleep tonight. I feel like looking out my window. Letting the wind in. Its time I felt some wind. It might dry the tears. The tears of my own naiveté. To believe in my own importance.

Mom says she’s gonna give me a birthday treat tmr. Another year, passed the same way.

Project VALENTINE

2006-02-06T23:57:00.000+08:00

Gone are the J1 days when I was able to write ‘sweet’ little notes to everybody in my class and daoju (yes! What a feat!) for V-day. How I cringe when I think of all the disgustingly sappy things I penned down for people I knew only superficially. Haha. OH well. I have neither the time nor naivete this year to repeat the act. Haha. Which explains this…

People whom I know are gonna have a happy valentine!

MOMMY – Because daddy is so unromantic he probably won’t distract her from her lian xu ju.
DADDY - Because mommy is so distracted by her lian xu ju she probably won’t complain about his lack of romance.
GUIFENG – Because msn is one of the greatest inventions to guys who can only face the world behind a screen. (oops!)

CLIQUE
AMELIA – Because she’s going to get a new pet.
LINETTE- Because her brother’s a constant reminder of someone very dear.
WINGYEE- Because she’s so super nice she will be swamped with presents.
GERY – Billa billa… BONG! (:
ANGELA – Because she has such nice friends! (Don’t you dare deny!)
MONICA – Because Molly’s great company! xP
PHEYWA – Because she’s gonna sweep lotsa people off their feet, oh judo master.

HUANG CHENG
CHER – lan guang feng
GUANG FENG – cher
MICH – Because some daoju snrs wrote ‘cheong hengq love mich’ on zong’s round table. (I heard! xP)
JUSTIN - Because he’s going to get a new pet.
PEIHAN – Because there’s tech run the next day! (QUICK CHANGE! Haha)
XIAO XIAO – Because there’s peihan.
JIARONG – Because he is so huggable. HEH.
ZHAO RUI – Because she has a portable cushion.
ZHAO LIN – Because wang wan is back.
WANG WAN – Because zhao lin was waiting for her to be back.
SI TING – Because the fu zhuang shis will block peihan’s view.
XU SHENG – Because there’s an ahma in huang cheng.
KANG LIN – Because someone might just play the guitar to her on the ferris wheel! (TY!)
AH HONG – Jackie? Jacky? Haha. Nvm.
ZI YUN – Because qiao yan is in her ju. ): (unfair!)
CHAO HSIANG – Because got nice person offer to give him a lift home (:
YUN LIN – (darn. How come you no scandal one. No nice to niao. Lan ren! Not doing your job leh!) Because she’s nice. xP
BOONIE – piao wu. (:
REBECCA – Because ningfei is a funny person.
NINGFEI – Because Rebecca is an even funnier person.
AH MU – Because he will have his mu (and Jamie) for company.
YI YUN- Because ame will be too busy to disturb her.
WEI LONG – Because Georgia will be there to bicker with him.
GEORGIA – Because Wei Long will be there to bicker with her / Because ningfei will come to ding fan.
WEI YING – Because she’s not doing my ju.
CHAI LING – Because she’s not doing my ju.
WEI QI – Because we finally found the nurse’s uniform! Yay!
JUNYI – Because pinyun will light up his day.
PIN YUN – Because jun yi won’t fade (out) from her sight.
XIAO YE – Because he will be really bright. (dian deng pao! xP )
JAMIE – Because the sound of ah mu sawing mu is music to her ears. (heh!)
YING JIE – Because Jamie will be too engrossed to disturb her.
HUPAN – Because *sings* ‘love is a river I wanna keep flowing…’
BAO RU- dayung sampan… dayung dayung sampan….
XIAO YUAN – Because mei nv always got lots of luck on this day! (:
ZHI XUAN – Because her dah dah is on leave today. (you are free! At last!)
ZI XIAN – Because she gets to take minutes on that day! xP
HUAN WEI – Because if she stays long enough I can also give her a lift. Heh.
CHU JIE – Because even though she’s small, someone’s not going to give her a miss. (:

OLD FOLKS (xP) and others.
ZHUZHANG - Because she has nice zhu yuans like us. (there! i finally admitted it!)
JIAYI - Because she gave me her bubble tea drink and hao xin you hao bao. xP
WEEKUAN– Because he will be with his boyfriend in the army. xP
LITING – Because she has seniority. (haha xP)
KAIJIE- Because there are people in this world who are blind.
SANDRA – Because her pending sounds nice. haha
SHAWN – Because he has a nice Casanova pic. HEH.
AMANDA – Because she is nice and OLD. xP Bells ringing soon?
DARYL – Because he are going to hit the ceiling soon.
RENNY- Because I am not going to intro him anyone from hwa chong. (that’s gd k!)
KENNY – Because he will prob be singing to that special someone.
CHIN YEE – Because he’s in a nice school with lotsa pretty people.
CHIN LENG – EH. Because his serg might get lucky and not tekan him.
BING KAI – MEOW.

ARGH! Late le!! Shall continue tmr! HEH.

2006-02-05T17:35:00.001+08:00

oh go away you slimey shadowers. life is not always an eye for an eye.

梦红楼

2006-02-05T17:17:00.000+08:00

花谢花落飞满天，红消香断有谁怜？
或许，人生就是一场空。
我俩，到底是木石金玉，还是一个根本不应该发生的间歇？
孽海情天？只怨古今情不尽。
归于净土？却叹风月债难还。
我们欠了彼此多少泪，来生，再来生，
上演自己的红楼梦。

(:

2006-01-31T22:52:00.000+08:00

Life can be a great big irony sometimes.
Here I am – lying immobile on the couch, fever and fatigue alternating between coughs, and I have just experienced the happiest day out of the four days of the CNY hols.

There must be some sort of magic in simplicity. Some sort of festivity you can’t find in noisy red firecrackers and hearty well wishes. The kind of festivity that dwells in the heart. Contentment? Maybe. But if everything else were to be denied to me, I wouldn’t mind just living with this little bubble of happiness. HEH. It makes me want to smile right now. haha. Unconditioned, unreasoned, ‘un-rationalised’ happiness. (:

Suddenly everything else doesn’t seem to matter. Even tech runs. Chuck feminism aside too. Its time I stopped going against half the world. HEH. I don’t know where this is going, but I only have one thing to say really.

Thanks for such an ordinary day. (:

SIAN - Y (CNY)

2006-01-29T01:10:00.000+08:00

Its one hour and thirteen minutes into the new year.

tommorrow we would all be scurrying to each others houses, giving and receiving oranges, giving and receiving ang baos, giving and receiving smiles, giving in the hope of receiving.

my emotion reiterates red.

red like the colour of your clothes, red like your shou sui eyes (giving hours in the hope of getting more from your children next time), red like your pineapple tart heaty lips, red like the colour of your cheeks - flushed from the effort of a half hearted guffaw.

Perhaps it is too late to go back to the time when a reunion dinner doesn't give one a stomach ache.

I am angry.
angry at myself for not getting into the atmosphere of things.
Where did all that childish delight go?
the crowded streets, the festive iridescence, the smell of celebratory red, all to vaporise with the slightest waning of your concern.

RUBBISH. i can't think of a witty one-liner to end this, i feel almost mentally impaired.

(i tried)

Happy chinese new year.

All over again.

2006-01-16T00:23:00.000+08:00

Kai gong le.
Late nights and rushed dinners all over again, just that this time work doesn't end at home.
oh well. At least it won't be a lonely walk. I don't miss the desolation- or the retarded irony of standing face to face and having hearts turned against each other. so.. jia you ba! We might be different, we might be the same, but hopefully, three months later, i will not look upon this entry with shame! (: (hey it rhymes! haha)

2006-01-03T00:03:00.000+08:00

It hurts when you leave, even though I know you will come back.
Its still farewell, to who you are at that very instant, at that very moment your lips whisper goodbye. 为什么每一次都是一个生离死别？
Don’t ask me to remember, there’s nothing I want to remember, without you to make the memories real. Don’t ask me not to cry, it’s the only time my tears can fall freely without your hand to wipe them away. They have gotten too used to that. I have gotten too used to that. I don’t want to dream if we have to wake up. Stop it. Not all over again. I don’t want to see you, if it means having to say another goodbye.

我的拥抱　
你的依靠
连片刻的幸福　都想要

故事变了
谁能明瞭
人世间的荒唐　都浓了　难忘掉

哦怕只怕　你睁开眼　看我
知道我　会不知所措
哦也许你　梦醒后　我已走
错过梦　(就)不再重游
睡了吧

时间分秒
谁来主导
你和我的圆场　不做了　不想要

哦真不想　你睁开眼看我
知道我也畏惧寂寞
哦让我们在梦里快度过
Tonight 爱不再挽留
睡过头

爱了痛了伤了别了分手别再重（温）
温度冷了去了感受不真冻结过（来）
来的去的在的难道都奔世界尽头

New year gluttony.

2006-01-01T22:38:00.000+08:00

salmon sashimi, maguro, fish roe, swordfish sashimi, cuttlefish, black chicken herbal soup, young papaya soup, shark's fin soup, crocodile soup, abalone steamed egg, fresh oyster, fresh prawn, crayfish, fresh snapper crab, seafood spaghetti, fried salted prawn, black pepper crab, scallop with garlic cream, tom yam red snapper, potato wedges, fresh abalone, pregnant fish, grilled fish, claypot abalone and mushroom, ribeye steak, chocolate chip and mint icecream, chocolate fondue (marshmallows, guava slices, cherry tomatoes with a chocolate fountain!), fresh strawberry juice, fruit punch, orange juice, peppermint tea, jasmine tea. +frozen chocolate from gelare.

This is gonna be one decadent year. (:

2005-12-27T20:34:00.000+08:00

My sun is eclipsed. Too easily, too often.

Bye bye hols.

2005-12-27T17:04:00.000+08:00

I have been slacking my bum off for these two months. Academically, that is. OH DEAR. But its not like its unexpected anyway, so I am actually not bothered with it at all. To those who heard me complaining about my total lack of productivity, that’s because you started grousing in the first place, you poor stressed up things! I was only joining in the fun, after all, sorrow is easiest borne when shared, and its always good to blame other people and institutions once in a while. Curse NKF for sapping up my intellectual energies so completely that I didn’t even have the strength to do my lear essay! Damn MOH and mozzies for their worrisome dengue that took my mind off my zhuan ti zhuo ye!

Doesn’t make sense I know, but I guess that’s just how some people’s minds work. According to my cousin who picks up calls at NEA, some anti-dengue fanatics called to complain about water collecting at the barbecue pit in east coast. Since it was late and the officers had already gone home, my cousin suggested getting people down to clear it the next day. 3 hours later, the guy called again, asking why the people haven’t yet come. My problem isn’t about his over-the-top caution; it’s occasionally an admirable trait. Rather, my problem is about his skewed way of thinking. If you can wait for government officers for 3 hours, you can clear the water at the barbecue pit yourself in less than one eighth the time. Or if you are lazy, you can leave it to the forces of nature – evaporation. What’s the point of wasting time and human resources (not to forget the few cents for the call) to do something so meagre and simplistic? I can accept any point of view, optimistic, pessimistic, hedonistic, egoistic, voyeuristic (!!), whatever you can think of, as long as you give me a valid reason for whatever sort of personality pervasion you think you might have. I might not agree with you, but at least I would respect you as a person who makes connections across his synapses once in a while.

Of course, the person might just have been all too willing to spend his time waiting for proof of the gahmen’s inefficiency in this matter. He might just have been preparing a earful for the officers and then taking the chance to flaunt wide knowledge of all matters ranging from the gold tap bloodsuckers to a dissertation on the real value of peanuts. (it was 600 000 the last time I heard). Following that, he would then embark on a evaluation of his financial, social, and emotional states, all of whose inadequacies would come from one supreme source he believes exerts total control on his life. Encouraged by the officers’ silence, he spews more and more, until finally he loses control and lets out the magic words; ‘--- Sucks!’ This episode concludes with the lucky guy getting free food and lodging for as long as he can’t keep his trap shut.

Okay, enough of trying to get myself incriminated. I seem to like going against what I preach. *ahem* This has been quite a fruitful holiday in all ways but academic.

What I have been do-ING over the holidays.

Huang cheng!
Dao du ke –STONING
Work up to first proposal – BlOOD SUCKING
FDLM production – SIDE SPLITTING
Budget day- LIKE LIGHTNING
Drama camp – ZI HAI-ING
Lights lesson – EN-LIGHT-ening (hahaha)

Dance! One word. PONNING. xP

Outings!
Harry potter - DISAPPOINTING
Perhaps love – TWO SHOWS HAPPENING (:
Pride and prejudice- SLEEP INDUCING
Narnia – EVANGELIFYING
Chrismas dinner- INTOXICATING (literally!)
Stay over- STUFFING
K box with huang cheng – DEAFENING. (in some cases.)
Daoju chalet – not yet. But I predict. NIAOING.
Kbox with hc clique – PENDING.(you lousy pple!)

I can’t remember the rest. Oh well. That should teach me not to blog so little.

2005-12-09T16:54:00.000+08:00

I wonder how I can lapse into this state of total immobility for so long and yet not feel compelled to do anything about it. I know I have many things to do, many appointments to make, many people to reconnect with. Yet all of these draw a blank as soon as free time comes in. All my energies are channeled into idle waiting. Sitting in front of my lap top, staring blankly as people come and go on msn, saying the occasional polite hi and lapsing into the usual enthused teasing that is so much a part of me my subconscious mind takes over. I try to smile as hahas and smileys fill the screen, hating myself more and more with each enter key. ‘Hi hello how are you.’ ‘yep, bye, see you later’ There is no joy in this. You have not come.

What am I waiting for? A beep or flash from a battered phone? Your msn nick to flash on a screen plastered with old fingerprints? No hint of glamour, no champagne and stars, no blue moon over glimmering waters on a starry night – just me waiting. And you.

Is there anything more pathetic than this?

sigh sigh sigh sigh sigh sigh sigh.
maybe if i keep doing this i'll feel a little happier,
and forget how childish i have become.

there's always another day.
with or without you.

with or without me.

Mardi Gras

2005-12-07T13:40:00.000+08:00

I stumbled upon you –
Feathered, fleeced, fluffed like fashion’s
Coronation of follies, Checklisted
As our eyes, purposed to
Peel the smooth layered exterior
Of that costume subterfuge.

Music chorused. Feathers and arms perfunctorily
Linked themselves, a temporary cell
Incongruous in its gaiety, at once twin and anti-thesis
To life’s dank and dark gallows.

Perhaps, beneath those smiling eyes
There would be- teary sheen of a mother’s hopes;
Closed lip – lash of a father’s wrath,
Dark brow – furrows of a sisterly love,
And stubborn nose – vengeful kisses of a lover’s tantrums.

Perhaps, underneath all that, there would be

you?

Advance Goodbye

2005-11-19T21:07:00.000+08:00

It's as if I don't deserve it.

Well, maybe I don't after all.
Happiness grows and sprouts wings.
The sky's all yours - you are free to go anytime.

当一阵风吹来，吹散了当年的回忆，我会学会知足。

Blogging therapy

2005-11-17T22:27:00.000+08:00

Dearest blog,

Go and die.

I would like to strangle your flimsy little neck, twist it from its root and dump it into a bottle of vinegar for future reference.

You have made me into the cynic that I am today. Whinny-ninnies who turn up their noses at all signs of weakness and dependence. The worst kind of hypocrite there is. And it’s all your fault. You, you, you.

(this is not turning out as well as expected)

I am aghast at how much I have trusted you, all the times I have published my soul, put my emotional universe into your hands, all this, all of the most personal, tainted nuances of my mind, all this at the risk of getting my eardrums shattered by ghoulish laughter.

You’ve played with me. Admit it. Or I will stuff admission into your mouth.

I abhor your delusion. I hate your truths. Give me a rose tinted world if you want, I am all game. But for goodness sake, don’t rip it into pieces just before the moment of revelation. They don’t kill their warriors before Ragnarok, the world doesn’t, shouldn’t work that way. Give me hell, rather than a frayed heaven – for you to shred before my very eyes.

I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care. I don’t care if I sound unsound right now. A silent world has no frequencies to penetrate this vacuum of self pity.

Now wasn’t that just brilliant! I love this shadow play of words. Flitting images that disappear as soon as they take on some sort of tangibility. Now you see it, now you don’t. How nice it would be to catch the whole world in a butterfly net, put it in a pretty little glass bottle, and take it out for admiration any time you wish. What an impressive display it would be, to have the world in your very own glass bottle. How your friends will gape at your power, how they will die to be in your place. I wonder if the world needs breathing holes?

But wait, that wasn’t my point. You have put me at the edge of a cliff and I don’t like it. No, I don’t like it at all. The wind is blowing from behind, strongly, like an angry force. I don’t like getting pushed around, especially when I am standing at the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop of history right before me. History should be behind, not right in front. Falling into history is dangerous, and there’s no fence. Stop it, stop pushing me. I am going to fall.

Why can’t I accept candy bars from strangers anymore? Heck, why can’t I accept candy bars from you without first looking at the expiry date on the wrapper? When is OUR expiry date?

I detest it when you put words into my mouth. The night, the atmosphere, everything is so right it’s wrong. I can’t help but let imagination run its marathon towards the finish line. Yes, we have reached the finish line, the crowds are cheering and clapping, the trophy’s in our hands. Now what?

Don’t stare. I am immune now. And don’t give me that look. I have seen it many times. I see it every time you make me dance and sing to your command like some puppet in a third rate theatre. Go away go away. Leave me to make your mistakes. You can have your way with me when it’s all over.

Why is it so difficult to accept acceptance? I am ludicrous. This whole thing is ludicrous. Is it my turn to laugh? Cue me.

The whole problem stems from the fact that there are choices. Eradicate choice and there would be no second guessing. No heaven or hell. Without OTHER, ALL would be truth. It’s like 1984, without knowledge of freedom, freedom would cease to exist.

Where would you and I be then? What would you choose without choice?

I am sorry. Its such a clear yes that I begin to suspect if it’s a no. But it’s alright, I have my nos now. Thanks for being there for me to insult and mutilate. This whole thing has been an education. Moderation is definitely overrated. Extremities bring out the best of hate and love. Yep, that is all. I don’t hate you, really. I just love you too much to tell you so.

Bye.

Apologetically,
Jiching.

this is not a noose.

2005-11-11T22:42:00.000+08:00

stage anarchy. NEVER.
i refuse to succumb to such weakness.
too vulgar too coarse too inclined to infirmity.
victims are only victims by choice.
your steps are quicksand, history to be quarantined.

remind me when i forget.

bored, the sequel.

2005-11-06T21:51:00.000+08:00

Another survey ripped off from ame. (just to prove the extent of my depravation.)

1. Name someone with the same birthday as you. Some lucky kid.
2.Where was your first kiss? On the mouth. (kidding!!)
3.Have you ever seriously vandalized someone else's property? No, unless getting into my dad’s way when he’s pruning himself in the mirror counts. (vandalism of reflection?)
4.Have you ever hit someone of the opposite sex? Only out of necessity of course.
5.Have you ever sung in front of a large number of people? *As part of our glorious land, sharing her spreading fame….*
6.What's the first thing you notice about the preferred sex? PREFERRED sex?!! ER eyes. Cos it includes both sexes. I believe in equality.
7.What really turns you on? Electricity.
8.What do you order at Starbucks? Coffee.
9.What is your biggest mistake? Not knowing mine.
10.Have you ever hurt yourself on purpose? Gym motto: ‘Pain is temporary, pride is forever.’
11.Say something totally random about yourself. I prefer white mice to black.
12. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity? You insult me.
13.Do you still watch kiddie movies or tv shows? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, KIDDIE!!!!!??
14.Did you have braces? No. I support myself very well thank you.
15.Are you comfortable with your height? When I am around ame, yes definitely.
16.What is the sweetest thing someone of the opposite sex has done for you? Hah! As if I am gonna tell you! Be original… kid!
17.When do you know it's love? When your world goes Picasso.
18.Do you speak any other languages? Chinese, marginally.
19.Have you ever been to a tanning salon? Ugly tanlines explain all.
20.What magazines do you read? The economist! (cover page)
21.Have you ever been rushed by an ambulance into the emergency room? Yep. Knocked my head into the metal clothes dryer. Not one of my most glorious moments I admit.
22.Do you actually read these when other people fill them out? Of course. Fodder for niaoing.

bored.

2005-11-06T21:02:00.000+08:00

Surveys are for deprived people who have nothing to do with their lives. They are also done for the purposes of revenge. Nothing less than pure vindictiveness and egotism spurns people to do surveys. In order to live up to all that, here's one. (ps: some numbers are skipped. but ah well, don't take math, so cannot count.)

1. whose picture is it that you keep on your wallet? Aragorn!
2. what time do you go to bed? no bed. Sleep on mattress.
3. what was the last thing you did before filling this survey? gave ame a crushing setdown for her unsatisfactory answers in this survey.
4. who's the one you always meet the most? willingly: clique
Unwillingly: my insufferable brother.
5. who's the person you're gonna call if you need help? the psychiatrist
6. what's on your mind right now? (:
8.with whom do you wanna be to have fun? ’long lost’ rj friends. *raise eyebrows* CLIQUE OUTING?!!!
9. what movie do u wanna watch now? harry potter and the goblet of fire.
Narnia.
10. when was the last time you went out? yesterday.
11. what do you hate the most for now? the lassitude of time.
12. when was the first time you slept alone? when my mom tired of me.
13. what do you wanna do for now? outlive answer 11.
14. what do you do everyday besides eat and sleep? pause for breaths.
15. fave pet? shadowfax.
17. colors that make you happy? Colours I see when I am. We see only what we want to see.
19. what was the last thing you bought for your room? dust and cockroaches.
21. do you cook? instant noodles, mash potatoes, egg, burnt rice.
22. miss someone? inevitably.
23. plan to buy something? we live in a mercenary world.
24. are you satisfied with your life now? How could I not? But it will get better. (:
25.do you like seafood? See? Food! *grin* Yes.
26. breakfast or dinner? don’t eat breakfast. Binge on dinner.
27. what do you usually eat for breakfast? don’t eat breakfast!!!
28. did you eat breakfast today? (#$#*&$^#&$
29. do you recycle? when I feel an inexplicable pity for mother earth.
30. do you have a laptop? yeah. Its on my table though.
31. what's your favorite fast food? subway, mos. Used to be macs, but pheywa scared me.
32. cats or dogs? dogs. Cats yawn too much.
33. salty or sweet? sour.
34. city or country? when you live in Singapore, its no difference. City – Singapore, Country - Singapore
35. what's your favorite kind of jeans? those that fit.
36. Is kissing normal for your age? How would I know? I am far too young.
37. are you athletic? that was a thing of the past.
38. do you swear? WTH! Of course not!
39. would you ditch your friends for a date? no. I’ll bring them along. xP
42. ever had a crush on a teacher? textbooks and romance just don't seem to go together.
43. coke or pepsi? and the point of this question is….?
44. sugar or spice? all things nice.
45. can you use chopsticks? can't you see! I am yellow!
46. do you like to read for pleasure? No of course not. I read to decipher the meaning of life.
47. do you care about getting good grades? at the point of revelation- and then I forget all about it.
48. have you ever fallen asleep in class? Zzzzzzz
49. get a job or ask your parents for money? both. Double source of income.
50. is your dad strict? hardly.
51. do your parents give you enough privacy? so much so that I invade theirs.
52. do your parents trust you? mostly.
53. would you trade places (in life) with your best friends..? *thinks of my best friends* NO! NEVER!
54. does your best friend get on your nerves? ame does. Linette doesn’t. xP (revenge!!!)
55. do you make friends quickly? nope. Generally reserved.
56. do you get jealous of your friends? at the start of every month when they get their pocket money.
57. do you tell your mom everything? well, yeah.
58. what do you & your parents fight about the most? who’s turn it is to psycho my brother.

旅途

2005-11-02T00:47:00.000+08:00

‘我将眼泪流成天山上面的湖
让你疲倦时能够扎营停驻
羌笛声胡旋舞为你笑为你哭
爱上你的全部放弃我的全部
爱上了你之后我开始领悟
陪你走了一段最唯美的国度
爱上了你之后我从来不哭
谁是谁的幸福
我从来不在乎
谁是谁的旅途
我只要你记住' 　-梁静如，丝路

I hear the leaves rustling
Like endless sighs that reverberate
Round and round- the congregation of the night.

The trees, with bowed heads they luxuriate
Yesterdays that scream, fall like pellets they fall
Chasing injury.

One volley, two, Again, the sighs.
Repetition, always repetition.

Ripping through my war torn hair
Frame and framed, inner and outer
Flout flouter, incision incising
Winds it way, wends its path
Through no man’s land
Down down to oblivion.

Waiting.

2005-10-26T23:19:00.000+08:00

Waiting is neither a relaxing or passive affair, in fact, it is far from it. A multitude of scenarios pop into your head, your mind is bombarded by 'what-ifs' and 'what-nots' and all your attention is trained on that single ideal, that single situation in which all your waiting comes to an end. Meanwhile, the fear of its continuity gnaws at you relentlessly, eroding away the boundaries of logic and reason and delving into the chaos that is the emotional universe. The floodgates opened, you lapse into waves of hysteria urged on by boredom's winds. They break near shore, eventually smoothing into a gentle lapping at earth's ankles, a sign of subservience to the stony silence that constitutes this useless but draining activity.

I am going mad waiting, as you can see.

I not stupid.

2005-10-09T12:24:00.000+08:00

Singapore lies on a verge of a revolution. Recent �stirrings� that shake the very pillars of society have been felt, tremors mostly experienced by the here-to-fore obscure �blogging community of Singapore.�

What with all the recent laws and regulation that narrow the stage for these enthusiastic performers, henceforth all �stirrings� must be confined to one�s own personal space, however dismally boring that might be.

Since when has the blood of Singaporeans �stirred� so readily anyway? We see the youths of China parading in the streets with placards and stout hearts, and with deafening cries shout down the hypocrisies of the Japanese. We see them, marveling at their passion, and energy, and then reach for the remote.

One must realise that the social fabric of Singapore is vastly different from that of the 1960s, we are no longer the mishmash of immigrants living in deplorable conditions, with many mouths to feed and no money to feed them. Nor are we led by fervent trade unions that convince us that the only way to a better standard of living is by bashing the mar-tha (police) next door. Neither are we frogs in wells, restrained within the walls of our illiteracy, sunken in our own pool of naivet�.

Today�s Singapore is a maturing population increasingly able to think for themselves. The famous Maria Hertogh riots would never have occurred in today�s context, not because people are any less susceptible to sympathy, but because they know the social and economical cost of such an undertaking. Such is the consequence that accompanies an increasingly capitalistic view of life, where everything is seen in terms of dollars and sense (cents). The worship of the dollar supersedes all potentially rousing ideological beliefs.

That is perhaps the greater challenge of the government, which is not in the extermination of any �political miscreants� but instead to rekindle the interest in the fulfilling of human needs, the pedestal on which the entire human politics is built on. Why clamp down on a few deviants and in so doing risk a politically apathetic community? Indeed, why bother?

From the article on the woman who reported the racist bloggers, we read that the racist entry on Koh�s blog had spurned many replies from the online community. Being loathe to join in the �hatred�, she instead did what other �childish� people didn�t do. She reported the blog to the police.

Well-intentioned though she might be, I cast doubts on the �hatred� described by her. True enough, there might be a few equally inflammatory replies to Koh�s comments that would only cause emotions to spiral beyond control. However, based on my own personal knowledge of the blogging community, I have observed that there are always mediating voices amidst the exchange of hostilities. Usually, these voices make up the majority, not minority, and it is only the few who succumb to extreme emotions who fuel the �hatred� further.

What we are looking at is the self-regulating mechanism that is Singapore society. These are the educated, responsible voices whose thoughts and actions extend beyond their own causes. They have a clear knowledge of the implications of extremist views within the social framework, and do their best to display a moderating influence on such emotional fluctuations. Their existence is a gauge of a nation�s maturity and social solidarity. It is through the growth of the number of such mediating voices, not draconian laws, that a society can truly progress socially.

Instead of �stirring the different communities� as was mentioned in the article, these voices would unite them in a common cause, which is the recognition that Singapore NEEDS racial harmony. Now isn�t that the purpose of racial harmony day and secondary school social studies? It is imperative, therefore that we understand that true harmony does not reside in the veneer of lawful politeness between races; it dwells in the deep-rooted beliefs of the people, the kind of conviction that would spurn one to speak out against any challenge of that faith.

I concede that the majority of Singaporeans have not yet reached that level of acceptance. Any show of harmony is perhaps more due to the indoctrinated tolerance of racial diversity rather than true appreciation of cultural differences. Singaporeans know that harmony is important and take care not to overstep its border, but that�s rather because we know that any transgression would encroach on the comfort of our self-serving little worlds. Our motives are selfish, and though they keep us within the law, they cannot allow for the enjoyment of any extra benefits outside it, such as a potentially enriching relationship with a person of another race. Only when racial diversity has become a NECESSARY state can racial harmony day truly be celebrated, not held as a habitual deference to higher orders.

Is legislation the answer then? I think not. This is another case in which society must be given the free rein. One cannot reach heaven without an education in hell. Likewise, freedom is nothing without the struggle. To truly mature and gain intellectual freedom, Singapore society must be trusted to stand (and fall) on her own two feet. The government would do well to trust in the intelligent voice of the people.

7 things.

2005-09-29T01:19:00.000+08:00

Thanks ah zhixuan! Don't need to vex myself over how to redeem this ailing blog anymore! Heh. But the previous entry was deliberately misleading, so nobody's supposed to understand it. Including me! haha (I should meet that decorum, whoever he/she is. That fella knows me better than I do myself. Or so he/she claims. Must be my soulmate! *jumps around in glee* DAH. Mugging is screwing up my wits. ) Anyway, *clears throat* don’t pray pray hor! My England very powderful one. So don't you dare think I can't write intelligible stuff! I CAN I CAN!

my split personality says: this entry gets on my nerves. i think it excessively vain! stop falling into the pit of extreme bimbosity and inaneness! and quit those asterisks, they are positively satanic. Ho! patience, patience i need.

Seven things you plan to do before you die:
1. restore the colour of the old rg pinafore! (save juniors from the indignity of purple – gay!)
2. teach ang English (I rather die! But oh well, that will be doing everyone a favour.)
3. see my brother get married to *ahem* (see! Don't say I never support you!)
4. love cheese
5. stop being called a kantang. (I'm in lep dammit! Wo ai zhong guo! Wo ai mao zhu xi!) (i dig hitler)
6. make a clause in my will to disinherit all those who do not cry at my passing (salinity will make a bare grave)
7. do I have to say it? Oh fine. *flips wrist* LOVE. Silly love.

Seven things I could do:
1. i could stop being so misanthropic
2. i could stop hating khaki shorts (be considerate. bukit timah floods.)
3. i could save the world
4. i could quit being such an annoying prig
5. i could cease this self indulgence
6. i could love Monday morning assemblies
7. i could. So? (oh go away.)

Seven celebrity crushes:
1. JJ
2. Viggo Mortensen (no real love for cleanliness, i see)
3. THAT hareton!
4. qi ye
5. any cute guy
6. any cute guy
7. any cute guy
8. anyone of twz's capability

Seven often-repeated words:
1. wth
2. ass
3. shut up (about time.)
4. go and die
5. qu si (I have an obsession with death!)
6. damn lame
7. shucks

Seven physical traits I look for in the opposite sex:
1. Bills/credit cards sticking out of pocket (ripe for thievery)
2. eyes (REAL ones. Not cheaty slits of a thing! xP)
3. the right number of fingers (that's ten btw)
4 the right number of toes (not as impt as the fingers)
5. limbs that support his weight
6. neck that supports his head (assuming he has one)
7. nothing incriminating - nothing that that smells of gay.

Seven tags go to:
1. my mom
2. my dad
3. my brother
4. my goldfish 1
5. my goldfish 2
6. anyone who loves me (...)
7. anyone who hates me (!!! - you encourage spam.)

oh yeah, btw, good luck for promos, you need it.
wth. shut up la.

Lyra

2005-09-10T13:17:00.000+08:00

hush, darling.

let silence speak its many tongues
to bridle our love.

who has staged our play?
to cavort your affectations
and spurn my reluctant device.

yonder on the dais,
lyrical Orpheus who in hasty passion
saw Eurydice last, until Death's
conflagration burnt follies
in Hades' heaven.

But cool the flames!
and watch the dust settle, slowly,
into our breaths, the ebbing heat
washing us, into the faded frippery
of an old artist's canvas.

blind the eyes that whisper
nothings, say nothing, naught
but thunder raucous laughter into
ears that knew.

eschew the senses
we have taken leave of, and cry
softly, the mise en scene
of babe and cradle,
innocent joy.

Not till deux ex machinas
Coos smilets from tears
and our story quavers its swan song
on life’s quixotic theatre.

when the time comes,
Give me my bouquet
and I will skirt the encore.

Hiatus No. 2

2005-08-03T21:04:00.000+08:00

Its been a long long time since i last blogged. Being online somehow lost its appeal. And I haven't been writing either. Its not because life has been uneventful, no, TOO eventful perhaps, but somehow, I don't feel like worrying people with angsty condemnations or puzzling them with random strings of unconsolidated gibberish anymore. Thanks for everything, really. I enjoyed it while it lasted, all those undeserved compliments and understated criticisms. HEH. It was kinda fun, narcissistic you would say, hitting on the 'publish' button and watching those comments stream in. (Alright, i am EXAGGERATING. My comments don't 'stream', they drip. Pathetic eh? haha. ) But really, I have got a life to lead, and I think its time I remove myself from the virtual to concentrate on the real. Blogging is TIRING. Sharing your life with other people is TIRING. Trying to make your hum-drum life interesting for other people's amusement is SOUL SAPPING. But don't get me wrong! I am not giving up writing! This is just a way to divest myself of blame! I am still determined to live my life in words, but in my own time.

PS: Well, i did get lep back, but sadly, it didn't put me into hysterics. So that means no inspiration which means no self-righteous, nauseating, deliberately-befuddling, desultory, condescending, infantile, sleep-inducing, pretentious, fatalistic, plagiarising, defamatory and subversive blog entries. Thank your stars. (:

See? I blogged!

2005-07-06T21:47:00.000+08:00

"I am come, from fire and water."

Gandalf's words ring true. Blocks was an edifying experience. Never have I been blessed with so many reminders of the queenly beauty of mother nature; the silkened night sky's quiet comfort after hours of unnatural brain activity, and the warmth of another, drawn across expanses, by the subdued murmurings of dust and gloom.

Well well well, maybe its due to overemployment that is leading to a diseconomy of scale in the linguistic department, but I am at a loss of words for what to say. Have pity on one just delivered from death! My mind will probably take a week to resurrect itself, which means homework will have to wait.

Blocks thought me all about being a happy medium. Burge's declaration that he would give us the median score of the group on the occasion that we didn't feel like doing our GP paper was the examinal equivalent of communism. But being strong advocates of democracy and MERITocracy, all of us forsook the chance to share weal and woe, and instead, opted for egotisical hedonism. Admirable spirit though it is, it also means that i would have to bear the full liability of a bad GP mark. DARN.

Ah. Can anyone tell that i am blogging for the sake of blogging? Happiness breeds langour, so yes, i will be back when i am crying my eyes out in hysterics, or when i get lep back.

Back-up! haha

2005-06-26T21:34:00.000+08:00

Considering the vast amount of work i haven't done. I thought this would be in order.

Ji Ching's Will.

1. All my material posessions, except those of an academic nature, will go to my mom, who will complain that I always give her extra work to do.
2. My textbooks, notes, mindmaps, undone tys will go to my brother, may you have better luck with them than I did.
3. My blog will go to ame, on the condition that she doesn't change the font colour to pink and scatter cutesy objects all over the place.
4. My undone blake essay will go to 'one sick kid' (aka gery), whose wonderful talents will make sure Perry remembers me in a favourable light.
5. The scholarship money, of which I have yet to receive, will go to the great hwa chong institution, who hopefully will give me a posthumous plaque complimenting me on my magnanimity, seeing that I think of them even while dying by their hand.

In the case that I do survive, all of the above is rendered void except number four. (: *hides from gery*

The circle's payback

2005-06-25T22:46:00.000+08:00

I have been through a rough patch lately, and I can’t say I am totally grateful for it, but at least it helped me realize what is dearest to me, and what, when everything else is stripped of its rosy tint and superficial ethereality, really remains.

Too busy chasing after inconstancies and abstract ideals; I have neglected the one thing that had sustained me all this while, something that I have been trying stubbornly to shut it out from my world. Friends come and go. Some walk alongside you for a little while before embarking on a different path, some stick around a little longer, taking the same turns, making the same imprints, but eventually, some other part of life will beckon, and paths will be diverged.

So it is that friends are not constants, and they should not be taken for granted to be so. Life becomes much easier really, when you see the people around you as temporary faces, faces with potential to change your life, support you when you fall, share laughter and tears with you, and leave their own distinct set of imprints on memory’s lane. Thank them, gently, for the times they made life wonderful and move on. Life should not be a desperate clinging on to things that no longer are, but an enjoyment of things that at this point, at this very moment, gives tangible joy.

Yet there is one constancy – family.

Family is the one thing I don’t have to worry about losing. There’s no such thing as drifting apart, or losing contact, or even having to find words to fill the silences that would be awkward in friendship. Somehow, I know I would always be able to pick up where I left off; somehow, I know you guys will always be there, eager to hear me tell the same stories over and over and over again.

No matter how I have turned my back against you.

Thank you dad, for the countless times you had to turn down the volume during ‘Superstar’, I know television is your only form of entertainment in the evening, and I am sorry you had to sacrifice a bit of that for your audio-sensitive daughter. Thanks also, for choosing to ignore my snide remarks throughout this whole troublesome period, and I am really grateful to you for being understanding enough to not start an argument about my less-than-polite attitude. I will remember to greet you next time when you come home I promise! You don’t have to tap on my shoulder, and say ‘Ei, I am home’ anymore. Thank you also, for the long discussions over the latest news and events, though we might not agree all the time, but at least you respect me enough to value my opinions, and I really appreciate that. (It would help my GP loads too!) And really, I do notice when you take the effort to be extra nice and funny, just that my stubborn pride would not permit anything beyond the usual ‘lame.’ I am sorry for being such a wet blanket and all, though right now I still can’t figure how you can run from Bishan to Woodlands and still complain about a short walk from our house to junction 8! But besides that little glitch, you are cool, really. I will always remember the time you tried to do a handstand on the mattress, ok, so you didn’t really go beyond 90degrees, but hey, it’s a good try for someone who already hit 50. In fact, I can’t think of anybody else’s dad who would dare attempt this age-defying feat!

And mom, I know I have been a really good example of ‘that troublesome adolescent period’ all mothers have nightmares about. Its not that I don’t treat you like a friend anymore, it’s just that there are times when I don’t really feel like talking about it. I am sorry about the times I hurt you by brushing you aside when you showed concern, and honestly, your concern did make a very big difference, just that I was wont to show it, being a prisoner of my own world. Thank you for the ready way you took me back into your embrace despite everything. I know how I had scoffed when you kissed my forehead and called me your girl, and the times I had looked daggers at you when you ventured into the touchy topic of ‘mugging’. I was behaving like a totally deranged idiot I know, whose only seeming purpose in life was to devour the next set of notes, the next textbook. Thank you for the quiet pride you had in me, undeserved though it may be, and the way you justified my behaviour to others by calmly saying ‘girl is studying’. It gave my life purpose, and carried me through many late nights, when the music from your favourite Korean show soothed many bouts of panic and insecurities. Thank you for being always ready to reward me with good food and putting up with my curt ‘anything’ when asked to state what I wanted to eat, and the devastation that is the dining table after an entire day of mugging. Many times I have raised eyebrows at your ‘childish’ attempts to cheer me up, and I know now that it was I who was being immature, and that my cynicism was a mere cover-up, a farce I think you saw through.

And Gui Feng you nosey parker, (I refuse to call you Jeff Denver!), irregardless of how I have been complaining about you to practically everybody since you were born, and how in many irritated moments, fervently wished for an older brother instead of a grinning, pesky little (or not so little) twerp like you, hell, you have been a total angel these few days. (mark the irony!) Thanks for the incessant stream of ‘zeh, you want to drink ice milo?’ at half an hour intervals, the ‘zeh, you want to drink mushroom soup?’ at two hour intervals and the ‘zeh, look! Spider on the wall!’ at four hour intervals. I am really glad that you (in your more sensible moments) and I can still talk about a lot of stuff, and you might not believe this, but you have grown up, and I do value your advice. (Now, don’t start getting big-headed or I will clobber you!) I am sorry for the times I have ousted you from your room because I needed to study in a nice and neat environment (which leaves my room out of the equation), and I will make up for it by helping you tune your guitar and not letting Dad know what you have been up to. (Don’t worry, he reads slowly, so by the time he gets this far, you would have already closed the window.)
I have forgotten how many times you made me laugh with your insanity, your john Denver ‘imitations’, your shameless exhibitionism, your smart aleck explanations (NO, water does not travel up a plant because the water ‘pull each other’, its called transpiration pull.), and basically by just being who you are. How many times have the tears I tried to choke back turn into laughter just by your utterance of a single word. Don’t ever change, (don’t grow taller!), you are just fine the way you are, though I will die before I tell that to your face.

Phew. It feels good letting all that out.

But really, I don’t know why I took so long to appreciate all that! To think that it took so much mugging and inner turmoil to get this simple fact into my head is really quite insulting to my intelligence. But to heck with intelligence, I have been too clever for my own good. The mind is a nuisance sometimes.

Thank you for letting me feel that I don’t have to be strong for anybody, and that it is, somehow, possible to turn back time, and go back to being that little girl I was always afraid to be.

I have come home, from the precipice.

Msn convos

2005-06-22T02:07:00.000+08:00

equipment is important.
be sure to load up
with colons and brackets
(for the containment of)
Overflowing emoti(C)ons

Blossoming
Into the corn-fed constancy
Of fingers on keys

almost-imperceptible
butterfly taps
on newly shuttered windows.

-------------------------------------
Not really what i intended. But well, mugging saps inspiration and any residual brain matter is rendered dysfunctional at 2am in the morning.

isolate all other factors...

2005-06-19T23:55:00.000+08:00

One more week.
I can do this. Irregardless.

A brief interlude

2005-06-18T00:31:00.000+08:00

What is left really, after you plow through stacks and stacks of flawless logic, substantiated povs, and bombastical pseudo-realities?

A certain distaste for sunrise, and a waxing delight in moonshine.

----------------------
If life is but a dream, someone quick, wake me up!

I am getting seriously sick of mugging. Or at least the feeling of trying to mug. I mean, the feeling a of a guilty conscience breathing down your neck at every turn totally, (if i may use the epithetical expression of teenage angst) SUCKS. Now my daily schedule simply reads, 'wakeup, mug, go online, sleep', out of which only going online is a utility maximising affair. (Yes, econs! A good example of how mugging has assimilated itself into my life.) But even then, lots of precious time is wasted by me stoning in front of the screen before realising that my computer, who, posessed of gentle constitution, is waiting patiently for my password, the key to opening the gates of paradise. And after that, everything is just one big farce. I just sit around, pretending I am making the best use of my leisure time, typing the occasional hahas that make everything sound (quoting aaron) 'nice and amiable'. Indeed, this self delusion continues until one by one, people leave, and I am left with the quietness of an utopia I try so hard to resurrect. This superficiality is slowly getting to me as I get more adept with 'msn lingo', when my hands think faster than my mind, and wham! before I know it, a smiley is produced, a mocking monstroity of a cheeriness I didn't feel. Ah well, I feel like a druggie! I break out into cold sweat if I don't go online, and its not like haven't tried, but all cold turkey attempts have proved futile so far. So there's nothing stopping me from sinking deeper into the quicksand of superficiality. And all this while I am advocating being one's true self!

this calls to mind an old sec 2 poem. (I have been flipping through old writing and feeling kind of sad about the loss of what perhaps one would call "a childishly optimistic view of the world", which is why i wrote revisitng innocence in the first place, but yes, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to go back. Not that maturity is bad, in blake's terms its just a contrary state, yet one can't help but feel nostalgic about those days when life was so easily embraced and celebrated.) As part of some e-learning project we were all supposed to write poems and post it up on the net. This one I wrote is from the point of view of a sleeping pill, who advises its sleep-deprived master not to look too deeply into things, sounds like a sanctioning of superficiality, but no, not really.

Sleeping PIll

You think too much, my lord, my lord
What everything might seem to be
'Behind the stars there poetry lives
beneath a smile a motive grim.'
My Lord, you go to such extremes!
Trust only but what eyes can see
A better place the world would be
Our life runs deep in mediocrity.

'Trust only but what eyes can see/A better place the world would be.' That's only if what you see is what really is.... oh well. endearing naivete. But well, what can truly withstand the ravages of time? I am tempted to say hope, but that sounds like an answer intended to illict 'oohs and aahs' from a less discerning audience. I shall not attempt to play sage and pass judgement on things and concepts beyond my comprehension. 'Trust only but what eyes can see.... '

i guess it's back to me and my notes.

Revisiting innocence.

2005-06-14T22:22:00.000+08:00

‘Maybe somewhere along life's journey
Everything would fade, and we would part ways
Yet we live in the now
not in tomorrow,
And childish affections serve well in memory.’

.................................................. -Me, 14

I wish I could go back to the time when
Imagination could take flight from
careless words, tossed
...........................into the wind
And tears,
coalesce like morning's dew,
effortlessly,
from the deep wells of
a soul-protecting
Chrysalis.

When the world was not a perilous
Shadow-play of
............black, white and grey,
but a starburst of colour,
.....Made simple
by the warmth of
.............your hand in mine.

Then, the mingling of breaths was good
enough reason for laughter,
and the stagnation of seasons
Mere extensions,
of frolics
under a sky too high
.............................to fall.

...I remember,
The log where we balanced
Adolescence, the first
tentative stirrings of wind
and leaves.

...................My haiku,
of roots like dragon claws,
which in its tenderness,
always remembered to leave us
...........................unscathed

.........leaving me to ponder,
what childish optimism
brought me to embrace all that wonder,
and somehow, knowing its transience,
still manage to
.......................let go?

don't read anything into this

2005-06-14T08:46:00.000+08:00

(take it that it's for your entertainment, and my " "--->any english word that is along the lines of "fa xie" )

It's almost funny how things can go hideously wrong. Right now, my life must be testing heaven tectonics with all the divine beings (angels/deities/air/whatever you believe) rolling on the floor laughing at me. *looks up* Tell me, am I entitled to free entry after this? *dodges wings* THANKS!

But before I start mimicking foolish Icarus and his holy ascend (and descend – proof of global warming in Grecian times!), I should ask myself why the ‘heaven’ should I care? Life should have told me by now that human power is really nothing but the ability to eat, sleep, breathe, and ensure the continuation of species, a function that is under threat even now, what with all the unhealthy exposure to (men) radiation and (women) education.

URGH. What the heaven am I saying?

I hate my current writing style, it does nothing but lapse into sarcasm from time to time. Where is the writer's sensitivity and attunement to the finely woven threads of existence? Where is the ability to FEEL? I FEEL NOTHING BUT CONTEMPT, fellow masqueraders!

Dear heaven, where is my humanity?

Maybe I should lay off blogging for a while; I end up saying nothing I want to say.

I need to believe again.

2005-06-13T09:43:00.000+08:00

Seclusion might not be such a bad idea after all. I am desperately in need of time to mug, and think –I have a hell lot to think about. I have put myself on a hiatus since January, and now all the layers are starting to crumble. Urgh. Think of all the cleaning up I have got to do after that. But anyway, I guess its time to take a step back and observe the fray from a different point of view,(since I can’t even get my own right in the first place) and figure out my own place from there? It’s difficult to chart a course through unmapped terrain, but OH WELL, I need to stop feeling that I am pushing another person off the boat just as I attempt to save the one in the water. Yes, and really, the whole point of putting this up is because I want to apologize for things I don't know whether I have done (in my more complacent moments I suspect I have), but it's still my fault nonetheless. The reason why I haven’t gone up to you and said sorry is not because of lack of courage, but because I don't know whether you are even hurt. (Okay, so that means I am too cowardly to ask if you are.) But anyway, you MUST know that it was all un-intentioned, and I don't want you to feel that I have been capitalizing on you or anything, and that this whole situation is all because I am teeter tottering on a border that doesn't even provide stable footholds. But then again, the whole chunk is based on a lot of assumptions, so tell me if I go off track, or let me embarrass myself further, whatever it is. Urgh. This whole thing feels like a feeble excuse to explain myself, if only I can get myself clear enough to explain! But yes, for better or worse, I need to get myself figured out first. I don't know HOW, but at least I am going to try. Where is the deux ex machinas when you need one? I can't script my own life properly, not when i am compelled to yell "exeunt!" at audiences half the time.

The poetry of love

2005-06-08T20:54:00.000+08:00

If only love was like poetry,
though words fail me sometimes,
they fail not this relentless waiting
a meiosis, for dawn to dusk.

If only love was like poetry,
Though my thoughts may run
On- at least there's eternity in paper,
Not your momentous haiku-ed love.

If only love was like poetry,
though cacophony and dissonance reign,
they spare the euphemism of your-words-
and-mind, an oxymoron.

If only love was like poetry,
Though mayhap the persona eludes me,
At least it hides in places I can find-
Damn your soliloquy.

If only love was like poetry,
Though pathos swarm the woebegone,
Truer than your epigrams,
Cajolery, your epithet.

If only love was like poetry,
Though there be chaotic vers libre,
Odes and sonnets harmonise,
And euphony is the lovers' song.

If only love was like poetry,
Though hushed maybe, unspoken words,
Drown the onomatopoeia of your lies,
And truths- Bombast! Absurd!

And yet our love is poetry,
In nights when burlesques cloak my mind,
And hyperbole star-moonshine
Chant your litotes, mock benign-

.....................Of a not-very-love love.

(have been indulging in this kind of crappy word games lately, mugging must be screwing up the wiring in my brain. haha. And my portfolio is still thread-bare.)

The Centre's lament

2005-06-07T11:39:00.000+08:00

'And though it in the centre sit
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.'

-John Donne. ' A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.'

Funny how-
I am the one you fall back on when your world goes awry,
and you rely on me, and my devices,
to regain Perfection,

the wonderment of an existence without rough edges,
Shaven clean of all nicks and notches,
that mar your countenance-

You orbit around me,
As I dole you
The confidence to set foot again,

from beginning to end,
filling out and blossoming
until your life is complete.

and how, despite all that
I was never really a part of you

only there in crisis- and
hastily erased,

when you find your circumference.

Childhood games

2005-06-05T22:56:00.001+08:00

I still have your autograph, hidden beneath the peels
Of memory too dusty to see, smell
touch. The childish scrawl that writ on
old basketball courts, toddler numerals
nursed in square cradles we struggled
to jump out of. A wallet, stone, or beanbag
chronicling our paths, where we had been and
Who. Sometimes overstepping the mark, others
Losing balance and treading, into
each other’s personal space,
the security of having two feet on the ground.
Till the end, when rules forbid
us to look back, granting only the occasional
Brush, the disconsolation of material on skin,
Cursory smiles overarched into a frown.
we rummage for future’s promise.

A grid of memories, peppered by time.
................Your house.
....and Mine..............adjoining
................But never
................called
................upon.

cap scribblings.

2005-06-04T10:37:00.000+08:00

Words strung together voluntarily and involuntarily.

Beside Eusoff hall

Do we need to speak?
The wind whispers my poetry-
Sighs your boughs echoed.

Dance journal 1.1

And then they were quiet –
Silence swathing
Arms. Legs. Shoulders
Muffling, the clacking of joints
Long caged under skin.
The tick tock of clockwork
Transcribed, (by hand)
Into a mere cock of the head.
Seeping like mercury
Turning bone into fluid.
hush-
See the void turn molten silver.
Hush!
Listen to the silence,
As shapes become music.

Dance journal 1.2

(Of dance conventions)

A sudden rap on the door
Ruptures oblivion’s bubble

We stand, trembling like flies
Caught in time’s web, ensnared
In a standstill. Right over
Left. Our patchwork eyes
Watching, as horizons
Unfurl like delicate thread
Extending in a criss-cross, criss-cross
Criss-Cross. Infinity tangles-

Barring the spider that would not come.

Question

How deep do the roots go?
You ask me

The equatorial wind whispers
My answer, into your ear-
Beneath populated skies

And Under
......The...... fragmented ......shadows
...Of a canopy
...........................we cannot Name.

{ekphrasis} Three Women Washing
based on a painting entitled ‘Three women washing’ by Yong Mun Seng

you double your steps
as the familiar dampness
wends between your toes.

The gurgle of river-water
Laps at your ears. You
Slip into your favourite spot
Downstream-

Between two women
From the next village
Whose babble runs
In tandem to river-song.

Rattan basket river-washed.
The current kisses your feet.
Singing its pleasure.

(Your husband will be expecting the same later)

Dip in, dip out-
You watch as the clothes shed
Diamond tears.
Day after day, one after
Another. Only
To be soothed by the sun.

Dusk falls on waters
Washed blue, by the colours
In your eyes.

Far off.
The cackling of geese calls home.

2005-05-30T00:58:00.000+08:00

Yep, my last parting shot before i go to nus to get seriously demoralised. Hopefully i will be able to get the lang and structure up to std when i come back. (ugh, the writing itself already had me coughing out blood) Too mentally drained to do any revisions now. Oh yeah, and happy 'holidays', if you actually believe in that.

This island. (to be revised)

2005-05-30T00:38:00.000+08:00

‘Singapura, oh Singapura,
Sunny Island set in the sea.
Singapura, oh Singapura,
Pretty flowers, bloom for you and me.’

1.

I was washed up to golden land
On the waves of pauperism,
Backed by dank wind five-millennia strong
Back to the old deity in the old well
(Ling had better not forget the incense)
Whose ambrosia had gone moldy in the aftertaste.

Not like here, where the waters flow,
Like new born amniotic fluid, into the veins of
Newly wetted rivers, pumping life-blood
Into the montage of colours –
The gold tooth (and all his possessions)
Peeking out from opium-tainted teeth,
Courting the routine splashes of Dhoby men who bleach
Clothes, and skin into a fashionable white.
Women trot by, livelihoods on their heads,
In the colour of clandestine vows and brotherhood
Hundreds of francs away.

There is the letter writer.
‘Dear ling, I will be going home as soon as the ship fare is paid for.
Wait for me – and don’t forget the incense.’

2.

My dad told me a love story about my great grandfather
and his beloved. I watched as a tear (salty as
seawater), trickled down rills in his cheek,
weathered by age and the fingernails
of the Japanese man down the road.
I have seen many happy endings –

Men trooping off to a place so fine they loathed to return,
Deserting younger kin, who mourn
their absence with gomendasai and sumimasen.
Basking their frolics in syonan-to, a light so bright
Their faces never did turn from the ground.
But the older generation, they were veterans
Putting to shame apprentices, as shadows once more
Contorted with the fluidity of one long versed in the craft–
A simple adjustment from white to khaki.
We are the salt of the earth,
and to the earth we return-
Like what mother said to the bayonet.

Too bad the cherry-blossoms couldn’t survive the heat.
‘Tell me father, in your story,
Did the lovers’ ashes meet in the south china sea?’

3.

Singapore changed hands amidst my infant shrieks
Elicited by the doctor’s sharp smack on-
Bottom, raised high. ‘Ready, get set, go!’
We spurted forth, chubby legs a whirl. Me
And the nation, whose skeptic eye skewered
The promises of ‘greater heights’
In all but silhouette.

Both bibbed, marked with food and number.
Mouths open in a whine (gurgling milky froth)
A piteous purr for one’s own immobility
In this rojak of sand and sea.
It takes getting used to – like durian,
And its billion dollar image – how we always wean
Too soon; from cradle to cradle forgetting,
The Rock-a-bye fall. I think of –
Freddy the frog (green as the king of fruits )
With an overactive thyroid gland. Metamorphosis
Splatters the uniform of the SIA girl, smiling for
Countries so much a part of us.

Dad never did have a penchant for change.
“Oh no. not the same old story again.
I reckon he never did love her enough to go back.”

----

And the sun told the flower,
‘Stop stalking me, for I will burn your petals-
And you will be left bare.’

Of softball's defeat

2005-05-24T21:21:00.000+08:00

Whats with hci and sporting defeats? The team acts as if they have done the school a great wrong. Oh come on, i thought sports was all about passion and surpassing oneself? You haven't let us down, heck, people probably don't even care if you keep your championship title anot, as long as you stay in the competition long enough for lessons to be cancelled so we can go to your finals.

Suffering from LDMI. Law of diminishing marginal inspiration. So forgive the bad writing. (and right at the time when i need a second portfolio! great.)

______________

You stand, elevated, miles lower than everyone else
On a second rostrum, the silver of the trophy
Glinting like the sword. This is the warrior's mark
When you blow the dust off the steel and Eye,
lacklustre.

Death before dishonour – how many times
Words and lashings beat that into tender flesh,
Till you perspire, salt seeping into wounds
Like mercury under skin. You exfoliate-

Cursing passion like a prayer. The bushido
Reads: Thou shalt not feel. Unless it be,
For daimyo or emperor.
In which then your passion is absolute.

But you have failed.
We see life on edge.

You grit your teeth. This is shame, beyond words.
Apology a cloke weighing on the jugular,
You gasp! for release and the end to it all.

A quick twist. Blood on your brother's cheek.
You had worked your guts out for this.

back to square one, kid

2005-05-22T23:31:00.000+08:00

I thought I would be miserable over this loss.
But having lost, I realised that I never gained.
making my misery unjustified,
my pain self-inflicted,
my words empty mouthings.
and myself.
a great presumptious fool.

Why don't you laugh?

Before we lay down to rest

2005-05-22T20:26:00.000+08:00

Dearest Yesterday,

‘Do you not hear me?‘

When the tide brings home foreign rain,
To wash away the stones all worn and plain,
That want of bygone iridescence.

When all those songs of yore we sung,
Linger no more on recalcitrant tongues,
To sooth solitude now forgotten.

When mother earth's familiar sigh,
Falls like whispers on estrangement's nigh
Leaving footsteps on separate earth.

When you and I, and I and you
Look back on shadows that cast us anew
See you not the frou-frou of joy?

So hid behind the tussled mirth
I knew you, as I know this accursed dearth,
Seed of my own nefarious making.

How the sparrow was never blest
To perch upon the mighty eagle's nest
Nor lay its wings on the royal mane.

So I bid you a fond farewell,
Ere memories taint in the pell-mell
Unspoken utterance perpetuates.

‘Oh, we kill each other with sticks
Sharpened at the other end

To thy smiling corpse-‘
This I send.

adieu.

Yours, through eternity and back,
Today.

ATTENTION: RG SEC FOURS!

2005-05-18T22:53:00.000+08:00

Barnard called us in and told us he didn't want to lose links with RGS just because of throughtrain. Being desperate for rg juniors myself, I have decided to promote the HWA CHONG HUMANITIES PROGRAMME here on my blog. No doubt they will be charmed and persuaded by my stupendous writing, if any of them ever come across this blog, that is.
_______________________

Ten reasons why RGS girls in the Raffles Integrated Programme (R.I.P) should join the HWA CHONG INSTITUTION (College Section) HuMANities Scheme.

1. College uniform - You get to wear your skirt the proper way, with at least four fingers of urm- waterproof/fireproof/camouflaged sack cloth showing above the pleat. Unlike in the other college, where four fingers refer to the length, the way we wear our uniform is definitely what is more befitting of a premier junior college, or college section, for that matter. PS: inconspicuous folks, and therefore less in need of mimicry, are free to reduce the number of fingers from 4 to anything between 0 and negative infinity, on the condition that they either have astounding psychic abilities (to anticipate spot-checks) or they have Perry as CT.

2. Sense of superiority - Derived from having a principal who is, lets say, inspiring and humourous in an unintentional way. Of course, he is hardly the benchmark for the linguistic ability of the institution, so don't be surprised if the rest of the college speaks English to you.

3. An exceedingly good record in PSC/firefly/SAF scholarships with the occasional President's scholar. Barnard claims that we have links to the Oxbridge admissions panel. (RJ has Harvard, but yeah, what’s the ivy league compared to the alma mater of our most venerated MM, pronounced 'hmm' for short.) So yes, there's nothing much stopping you from becoming an overseas scholar except your grades which, to one being labelled as the crème de la crème in the college, is of course, inconsequential. No one expects you to let them down.

4. Teaching styles are different here. Instead of stressing you out with multiple tests and piles upon piles of homework, the tutors adopt a far more subtle but still effective approach to motivate academic activity. A brief tour of the Humanities staffroom will bring you to the notorious whiteboard of fame, on which is inscribed the names of all your seniors and the scholarships and university places offered to them. I suspect the names are deliberately written in non-permanent ink to facilitate substitution with ours next year.

5. Out-of-this-world tutors- Unlike in RJ humanities where the tutors are heads of department of their own subjects, Hwa Chong humans tutors enjoy a highly relaxed (read: decadent) lifestyle behind the closed doors of the Humanities staffroom where they guzzle beer, eat polo mints and poke fun at unsuspecting authority popping by the door.

6. Lessons, or lack thereof – School on average ends at 1:20pm for the humanities student. On those days prior to productions however, school ends at 8:00am, or whatever time you wish to arrive (if you actually bother, that is.) The later part of the day would then be spent pigging out in the canteen or killing each other with one’s own definition of humour at the ‘cosy corner’ – the stretch of balcony outside the classroom which is a regular playhouse for ants, mosquitoes and humans alike.

7. Own LT, own classroom, own staffroom. A college within a college, which makes us HWA CHONG INSTITUTION (college (college section) section). But we are still all one big happy family of course, heck, some of us even go to the extent of attending sports day to maintain that relationship.

8. Enough growling. Take a break from cheering low and loud. Abandon the tongue-twisting compound names such as Hadley-hullet for the more edifying Greek pronunciations. Scoff upon flesh parades (…) and embrace the holiness of khaki shorts and white umbrella skirts.

9. RI guys in RJ

10. TCHS guys. (Save us from them!)

______________________________________________
anyone still interested, come down to hci with a stout heart and/or a carton of tiger juice for a nice chat with barnard regarding your application for direct admission into HCI next year. Or you could sms me first and we could sit down and have a discussion on how to get round Barnard; a long journey, no doubt.

personal plea: pleeeaaase come. i want juniors who can sing 'dedication', not 'hai tian liao kuo...'

2005-05-15T16:09:00.000+08:00

argh. wait for me linette!! i need to get out of here.

失约？

2005-05-15T15:20:00.000+08:00

basic law of writing lyrics: Tune change, lyrics must change. This version 2. somehow i think its worse than the first one, so its all up to the melody (revised and nicer!) now to make THE difference. I feel useless.

我还在这里
等着你
等着你除去烈风吹醒的回忆
回忆里
的结局
是我们两没道出的言语

我在学珍惜
这孤寂
孤寂中你能否感应我的努力
努力去
去爱你
爱过以后我就
随着足迹
离去

Artistic mutilation! haha. Sorry fengyi. Zu zhang you salvage la.

我还在这里
这里等着你
等着你除去那烈风吹醒的回忆
回忆里
回忆起
忆起了那段未曾付出的勇气

我在学珍惜
珍惜这孤寂
孤寂中你是否感应到我的努力
努力去　去爱你
爱了以后我就　在这角落
等回音

2005-05-14T23:15:00.000+08:00

Yes, so i do sound like a broken record, but this is the last time, i promise!

RJ dance. If only.

Compared to them, we are a bunch of baby turtles floundering in the sand, the condescending glare of the predators reducing us to a mere necessity devoid of soul and purpose. Oh the agony! Of knowing you could have been up there, had not hare-brained impulse and fate consigned you to this lesser existence!

I sound like a child being deprived of candy. I think I am losing my ability to remain impassive. Even towards the most trifling of trifles. Emotion is now anathema to me.

Oh my.

2005-05-13T22:13:00.000+08:00

so i fooled two panels! Which means that i am confucian but barnardian, cheena but english, traditionalistic but revolutionary, and pro-pap but pro-spore.

What a ghastly irony. This either means that i am a brilliant billinguist or a treacherous two-faced twit.
(eeks. I am a cultural two-timer!)

Or are they synonyms?

Whatever it is, I am rejecting the lep one, since i am more likely to flunk lep promos and thus lose what i have 'worked' so hard to gain. Anyway, its not as if my resume isn't already cheena enough for them to send me packing to china the next-time-we-meet. (purely hypothetical!) Imagine PPE in chinese! 'Marx and Mao' - A brief course on why we SHOULD and WILL share. Now give ME that.

Europe would do fine, thank you.

Sails are up!

2005-05-12T23:56:00.000+08:00

No more suicidal entries. I am back to my normal asinine self.

Its amazing what lame friends and a pot of tea can do to your mood, remind me to stock up on both.

oh yeah. and someone get mr ang back from vietnam quick. i need to be reimbursed for all the trauma i went through.

On a more intellectual note, this is what i learnt the past few days moping ard school.

hci is the prime example of a diseconomy of scale. think monday morning assemblies. (khaki shorts!)
peter's principle is true. think of our one big happy Farm-ily. (over my dead birdie)
parkinson's law is also true. think spotchecks and cs.
the humanities motto is not an empty promise. think lessons, or lack thereof.
barnard's tummy rocks. literally. (humour him to see)

Education has never been better.

now's the time for you to cringe and walk away.

2005-05-11T17:47:00.000+08:00

fate has made reparations. I have decided to concentrate on the finer (happier?) things in life, like cap. yep, so i am harping on past glories, so what? this is my mirror, so if you don't like the sight of your own reflection- step out. it would free up a little bit more space and maybe even delay my asphyxiation.

Never did I expect to be able to tell my own fortune, if this be fortune indeed. My pessimism is turning out to be a crystal ball. Fool of a took! A palantir is for everybody. Despair is sweeter when shared. ah, altruistic me.

cap portfolio (written march 05. relevant may 05)

(the intro)
Diagnosis

N. P. D. / Narcissist Personality Disorder -
‘A pattern of traits and behaviors which signify infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of all others and the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one's gratification, dominance and ambition.’

Introspection is the order of the day. Its me me and me! But who would bother, I wonder?

A pity my last name's not Plath. Treatment is de rigueur.

This report tracks my road to recovery.

(medical records. aka the poems)

(the conclusion)
The Final test

I don't look into the mirror anymore,
Neither do I turn when people call my name,
I pray for world peace every hour of the day-
I have bleached all my pictures,
My life is a normal black and white.

I am as sane as you pretend to be.

(last page)
DISCHARGED.

shut up dickens.

2005-05-10T21:28:00.000+08:00

CAP!
Dammit dammit dammit.

Why must words betray me now,
when it is to them that this must be accredited to?

My contemptuous mind tells me this is a lie.
That Pinocchio will wake up to tomorrow.

I rather a lie!
Than this blasted expectation, this dratted reputation
To live down.

How they will all be kind,
And slash my throat at nightfall.

Pity is a word for god,
Not this soul-battering intention.

But I have learnt my lesson.

Henceforth,
All pictures I paint shall be inked.

Cows and Curtains

2005-05-08T19:14:00.000+08:00

(this is highly desultory. one paragraph has hardly anything to do with the next. just take it that i am copying the style of xiao pin...yeah right. haha. )

VT would be smirking if it were here.

The curtains were ineffectual, too few to shield our ungainly movements from the knowing audience, and too red to sculpt the protective atmosphere exclusive to enveloping black. The familiar "Be careful! Cyclorama coming down!" that would usually send the whole crew into a scurrying act of self-preservation is replaced by a boring 'thud', a small, unobtrusive attestation that someone has been less than careful with the props or whatever part of the anatomy newly humbled from its scuffle with solid brick. Flybars, the undisclosed and unrivaled agents behind miraculously quick scene changes, are substituted with a single projector screen too lonesome and banal to stir the blood of self-proclaimed vt veterans. Walking in front of the 'flood lights' during a performance is no longer up there with gluttony, pride, lust, sloth, envy, wrath and avarice as one of the deadly sins.

The props division is a dismal population of three people, one of which is a renegade marooned from publicity. There is none of the spurts of adrenaline induced by frolics in the dark, nor of the childish fascination with luminescent tape. Here, it is a mere passive waiting, a lassitude that comes from the lack of greater stimulation, (passing the actors' placards and glasses can hardly be constituted as work) and long hours at the computer the night before. The irony is just too interesting to miss, and I marvel at how the amount of work done is directly proportionate to the energy one posesses. The more you scream and run and jump, the more energetic you will feel. The more you mope around like a corpse in search of favourable haunts, the more life (or after-life for that matter) will be sucked out of you. This theory explains my behaviour before and after our performance.

I have never really liked cows, my impression of them being dull, pock-marked despoilers of fields and pastures, tolerated only because of their contributions to humans in terms of providing milk and meat, one of which I am unable to enjoy. Whats more, their tendency to be bull-headed, and their cow-ardy acceptance of their eventual fate most definitely does not endear them to me. However, the recent performance has made me change my mind. I no longer averse to cows, indeed, i would gladly welcome two or three into my abode should they show some talent for dancing the tango, or chairing a profit making company, or governing a country or teaching or simpy mooing in that bimbotic way. (Mind that my tolerance for bimbos is not extended to humans) Mad cows with an artistic flair are also welcome.

But enough of cows, this is after all a story meant for humans, and by gawd, there were many of them! There was a very distinct set of people delineated from the rest by their practice of cow-worship. I know this because they laughed and cheered at every alternate line that spouted from the cows' holy lips, regardless of its comic value. Also, most of them donned black shirts with orange lettering on it. It wasn't clear from where i was standing, but from what i saw, they are from some place called yellow city, which i presume is low in dairy stocks and thus accounts for their enthusiasm in seeing its producers.

(ok, i give up. This persona is driving me mad. Shall stop trying to be funny, though i think you all probably didn't even notice. )

(footnote)--------

Yeah, so xiao ping was great. We won 1st prize and we didn't let huang cheng and its 24 year old legacy down. Huang cheng is like this crystal that increases in bulk over the years. Every year adds a new layer to it that helps it to maintain its shiny sheen, but it also makes it increasingly fragile. Everybody regards it with a sense of awe and fear, awe, for the the numerous times it had dazzled with its irisdescence, fear, fear for its corrosion that is inevitable with time, should new technology not be introduced to rejuvenate it. Everybody knows this. We dare not fiddle with this gem, for fear of it shattering, yet we fight tooth and nail should anyone proclaim it less then perfect. It is a treasure we love but cannot touch. An ivory tower we guard but cannot enter. Or dare not, because one wrong move, one moment of folly, and 24 years of pride could be reduced to broken shards of humiliation in one's hand. Our legacy is both boon and bane, it is 24 years of experience that placed us so high in the hierachy of school productions, but it is also this 24 years that prevents us from going further.

Laurels are only comfortable when you are assured of your place. Xiao pin helped (i hope!). But i think it will still be a long way before we reach the immortal green pastures.

Huang cheng jia you!

Eulogy

2005-05-03T23:36:00.000+08:00

The strains of the song urge us onward,
We stand at physical attention,
Mouthing syllables like in phonetic class,
Majulah is a self-forged manacle-
The cacophony of a nonchalance too painful to bear.
This is my institution. But we are- what? I had forgot.
History is not my forte, nay, that is six feet under,
Where all the sam suis and coolies have gone
And the spit of the merlion washes away.

You want a story?
I give you half a flag pole and one minute of silence.

The flag hangs limp, as if ashamed.

Tell me who i am now.

2005-04-29T00:34:00.000+08:00

Advanced Global Personality Test Results

Extraversion		43%
Stability		73%
Orderliness		30%
Empathy		36%
Interdependence		76%
Intellectual		70%
Mystical		43%
Artistic		90%
Religious		30%
Hedonism		43%
Materialism		56%
Narcissism		63%
Adventurousness		70%
Work ethic		43%
Self absorbed		43%
Conflict seeking		36%
Need to dominate		23%

Romantic		70%
Avoidant		30%
Anti-authority		63%
Wealth		63%
Dependency		63%
Change averse		56%
Cautiousness		30%
Individuality		70%
Sexuality		56%
Peter pan complex		76%
Physical security		83%
Food indulgent		36%
Histrionic		23%
Paranoia		36%
Vanity		63%
Hypersensitivity		30%
Female cliche		36%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Stability results were high which suggests you are very relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic..
Orderliness results were low which suggests you are overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense too often of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.
Extraversion results were moderately low which suggests you are reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive. trait snapshot:
messy, tough, disorganized, fearless, not rule conscious, likes the unknown, rarely worries, rash, attracted to the counter culture, rarely irritated, positive, resilient, abstract, not a perfectionist, risk taker, strange, weird, self reliant, leisurely, dangerous (!!!) , anti-authority, trusting, optimistic, positive, thrill seeker, likes bizarre things, sarcastic

It would seem that i would spend the rest of my days as a low profile opposition member, impoverished, but happy none-the-less. Whee. *oozing positivity* But wait! There's a logical fallacy here! If i am counter-culture, or so the test says, then I probably wouldn't have jumped on the bandwagon and done this test! And so the test is faulty, or i am a temperamental iconoclast. Ah, well, how bizarre. Pardon my incoherence. This is thrilling, what an adventure! *note the sarcasm*

oh, and i think overly flexible only applies to me in the physical sense. haha.

Going back

2005-04-27T23:32:00.000+08:00

For almost two decades he had done this-

A lonesome figure etched in the jagged and rough-hewn landscape. Bold brushstrokes dominate this rural canvas, reflective of the triumph of pure primal instinct over blase human civilities. O, but it is a godforsaken place.

The wind tore at his black tresses with a vengeance equaled only by the dark of his eyes, enwrapped in the torture of his own accursed memories. He could smell it as it ripped past him, fetid with the smell of death and whatever evil conjured from being in the neighbourhood of the devil – himself.

Light jostled to enter windows long accustomed to shadow, and gradually, like a fever slow to subside, the sole residence of all his childhood joys became clear. He could see the moors, clouded, as usual, in their comforting greyness, the mere expanse of which grieved him further to think about what could have been a worthy embellishment.

Cathy.

______________________________________________________________________
Two lessons learnt from this exercise. One, emily bronte is brilliant. Two, I would do better to just stop romanticizing heathcliffe and to divert my energies towards finishing the book instead. I have a feeling Burge is going to scream 'blasphemy!' any moment from now. But Wuthering Heights is getting more and more diabolical and depressing by the minute, which probably explains my sudden interest in the text. Oh well. Somehow Heathcliffe moves me more than Edgar, the reason to which is probably similar to the reason behind my sympathising more with Hareton than Linton. I hope this is not indicative of an innate villainy.

substitution effect.

2005-04-20T22:55:00.000+08:00

Still suffering from excessive languor, which explains this sad entry. And so i have offered a substitute.(inferior or superior you decide *grin* ) Attached is something i wrote in sec4 while my chinese was still fit to be seen (unlike now). It is hopelessly innocent and idealistic and thus not at all like my present jaded self. ahha! But that is just the transition into experience, showing the two contrary states of the human soul, or so blake says. Sigh. Why do i keep quoting that man, i wonder.

____

他和她的故事

冬，空荡的树枝承着白皑皑的寒雪
大地沉睡在一片冷冽寂寞中
风幽幽掠过，撩起如同蚕丝的卷卷银发――
熟悉的小路虽已深埋雪底，却仍可以看到她的串串足迹
一串串戳在心中…串起曾经。

＊＊＊

亦冬。
天色阴暗，他漫步在都市的大街，小巷。
喧嚣中，不急不徐，垂头数着自己的脚步。
多次的擦肩而过，在他的凝思中变成幻觉
对他来说，都市的生活就像一场无休的梦，
昼昼夜夜，来了又去，去了又来――
觉得无味，但也不曾容许自己梦醒…

冬天。
雪花轻飘，她兴奋地欣赏着它们优美的舞蹈。
白雪中，高举双手，欢跃接纳天堂的厚礼。
透明的水晶珠子，在她阳光般的微笑中闪闪发亮，
对她来说，雪花就像小小天使的翅膀，
载着上帝给人的祝福，永恒的希望――
在最黑暗的时候，为生命开拓另一道路…

＊＊＊

她，总是满腹期待地憧憬每一天的到来。
而他，却为每一日的流逝松一口气。

＊＊＊

也许是偶然，就在那冰冷的冬天，
缘分安排了最荒谬的结合，她与他，在浓雾中识到了对方的存在。
他看到了她，一瞬间，觉得世界的色彩都汇集在那清澈的双眸中。
她看到了他，一刹那，感觉天使的翅膀都围绕着他那飘散的银发。

分叉的十字路口，两人骤然停下了脚步。
路上的车来来往往，他透过车窗寻觅她的身影。
白白雪花从天而降，她透过片片追随他的轮廓。
车一辆辆，雪一片片，视线却不间断，化为永恒。

从此，
冬天不再是一个人的季节，
一个人的梦。

他常提起两人相会的那天，当他发觉世界并不只有黑暗，因为她的光。
她最爱抚摸他的秀发，笑说他是天使下凡，因为他的“双翅”。
月白风清，在那叶已凋落的树影下，她乐呵呵地为他跳舞，苗条的身子随着树枝摇摆。
而他，凑合地打着拍子，沉浸在她散发的光芒。

他说她就如夜间的火把，点燃了他冰冷的心房。
她说她才不是什么火把，因为火会将天使的翅膀溶化。

她恋上了他的冷，
他离不开她的热。

但冷和热终究不能永远保持平衡，
热可以继续燃烧着，
但冷却会被热温暖。
她依然是那般的热血奔腾，
他却已失去了以往的冷若冰霜。

他的改变，使她无法再看见那双忧郁却又绝美的雪翅。

＊＊＊

冬末。
天气逐渐暖和，到处的冰块开始溶化。
昔日的分叉路口，如今已剩下寥寥无几的行人。

她，决定离开冬季的回忆，另寻一个属于她的天堂。
他，无奈的望着她的背影，脸上的泪迅速结冰。

她说他的银发会永远飘在她的心里，
他说她的心里只剩下熄灭的梦。

她希望他会幸福。
她就是他的希望。

春天为她到来。
冬天为他驻留。

春，夏，秋，冬；
她的离开，却只给他的生命留下了一季。

＊＊＊

大地仍然沉睡，风还在吹。
他依旧在都市中徘徊，寻找着那一束光芒。
雪上的足迹如冬天般不散……
银发飞扬。

Scholar eh?

2005-04-14T21:07:00.000+08:00

Scholarship interviews are really amusing things. Sitting in front of three interviewers fibbing more than you ever did in your entire life does not exactly lead to an accurate summation of your character, as the interviewers very well know but still continue doing, all to keep up MOE's ruse that one's character matters more than the single (or double) digit in your scholarship application form. Or so Barnard's theory says.

Yet, even with this single powerful piece of information, one cannot but help but be plagued with the nagging feeling that the MOE might one day wake up and start initiating TRUE meritocracy. And so there we were, killing ourselves over Iraq and Darfur and Sino-Japan relations, things we never even knew existed before the dratted interview.

It also explains the disheveled appearance of the newspapers in my house.

But whatever it is, the scholarship interviews were a very enlightening experience, having let me in on various snippets of 'classified' information which i would never have known otherwise.

Number one, discounting the hair (or grey-whitish fluff) , the head of the head of the college with the baggy green skirts sets me humming to the tune of 'Humpty Dumpty".

Number two, chinese interviewers like to prove their billingualism by reading up on Wordsworth the day before and popping questions about his works at the unsuspecting interviewee on the day of the interview. Upon discovering (not surprisingly) that the interviewee is less versed than he is on the writing style of the master, he gives a 'holier-than-thou' smile and proceeds with the next question.

Number three, when asked whether you would sell your soul to a paedophilic institution obsessed with torturing people younger than yourself, always answer in the affirmative. It is after all, polite, as doing otherwise would be to question the moralities of the three people before you; something which rational people don't do to their walking ATMs.

Number Four, unless in the most complimentary terms, avoid the word 'Government' or 'PAP'. Even more taboo is the discussion of these terms, implying that you know exactly whats going on (which in most cases, hardly casts you in a positive light). THAT is most antagonising for the MOE, since it renders their "i-know-more-than-you-do" stance ludicrous. To put it simple, it makes them look like thickos.

Number five, humans interviewers like people who think like Westerners and act like Asians. (aka. Western ideas, Asian values) but Lep interviewers like people who think like Asians and act like Asians (aka. little confucians). Therefore it is of utmost importance that you know your audience before you start thinking up your politically correct answers (read: fibs).

So this ends my discourse on scholarship interviews. Come to think of it, thats a lot of work to do for a meagre 2000 bucks. The government (oops!) is decidedly parsimonious. But then again, I don't think I am the kind of talent they are looking for. I just hope that i don't meet hodge anytime soon at the voiddeck, or my own words might just come back to haunt me.

(having fun being sarcastic here. not to be held accountable for any offensive or subversive comments in the process of self-ridicule. and most importantly: don't put my url within reach of any moe personnel! haha )

My Perdition.

2005-04-11T22:32:00.000+08:00

You are birthed every Sunday, to a book and two sticks-
Hewn from the same stump from which our idols are born.

White-winged sentinels linger at your bedpost in silent vigil, Oblivious
To the shrieks of raven-haired maids- our waxen vigilante.

Here, incense incenses you- A whiff means a trip to Purgatory and Back;
Too reminiscent of the ashes of crones still smoldering from ancient days.

The faithful is blest with unconditional love and forgiveness which nullifies all crime.
Unlike us, who live off faith like leeches, (trapped) in the race to do good.

Your father goes to heaven,
while we mourn, for a Man.

Truce?