even if you'll never read this

thanks for coming over, even with your busted knee. sorry I cried all over your shirt. and I'm sorry I never told you why I was so upset. You wouldn't have understood, you see. and I don't want your pity. But thanks for trying your hardest not to ask. You busybody, you failed miserably you know. But you tried real hard.. which is kind of funny, looking back now. well. just. thanks for being here for me today.

And I would scream and scream just to jolt myself out of my lethargy the sevenhundredandfortyone songs on my itunes have lost their favour lost their flavour- and therefore I fall back on vienna teng, the vienna boys and les choristes which. probably doesn’t help my case at all.

Open the door and suddenly the outside world rushes in on you like an overpowerful wave on the shore of sand too surprised to protest. There’s a girl wailing about some mistake on the flight of stairs and her loud voice scales higher and higher but she does not sound as beautiful as my soaring choir boys back in my room’s world. She does discordant actually. Go to angela carter, she’d know what to do with you. The air is fresher outside though. With much light brighter colours and movement. In my room, things don’t move. Just my brain which thinks too much anyhow.

In the toilet I look at my reflection and carefulmindedly tug at my helix piercing. Funny that I haven’t played with it since getting a hoop back in. I used to, all the time. Must be the new piercing at the rook. It’s been behaving wonderfully though. I don’t understand how people get all these infections when they pierce this or that. In any case, I stare at the curved bbs and wish they were more prominent. Seems like I haven’t gotten the eyebrow piercing out of my mind, just yet. I don’t think I will though, ultimately.

Or maybe it’s because the hoop was bought at 77^th street. I don’t like 77^th street. The price to pay for convenience I suppose. Pity.

My door’s opened now, and perfume from someone barraged in just now. How obtrusive. Most unbecoming of perfume. Yet it serves as another stark reminder of the two worlds’ meeting surface area at the door, the place where the outside and my room re-act and inter-act upon each other’s presence.

memories

Of being a trainer, of being a trainer at innotrek, most importantly of being a trainer with these people, most of whom were present on friday.

"LIGHTS" -and fingers all go up in the air "CAMERA and..... ACTION" and everyone knows what to do. As they make andi and june pucker up, chants laspse into cheers hear them say "ONE Thousand TWO Thousand THREE Thousand HEY Thousand HEY HEY HEY Billy Panjang. HEY AH PANJANG BILLY PANJANG.". Sharil stands up to make a speech and then everyone feels like he's going to despatch. 'despatch despatch' and we all laugh. A spontaneous "give me ONE silent clap!" and everyone knows what he means and what to do. Because solomon shoes are highly coveted, even if we've all left innotrek. And. what brings so much laughter is. the saddest thing too, because we've all left, and there's no going back. that even if I returned, they wouldn't be there and these. these are the people I will give all I've got for. They say the new trainers are
shake your head and give a certain expression. and we all know what we mean already.


of sharil sending me back to eusoff from pasir ris, and turning a half an hour ride into a two hour journey.
your first time riding a vespa? come, we don't go to the highway. we take the roads. I show you many things.
I was skeptical at first, but thoroughly convinced in the end.
At first he told me stories about his new life as an air steward, pointing out this and that at the same time.
Now we are entering the red light district. lorong this this this. Don't ask me how I know; it's general knowledge. Also got kamikaze! you know why I call them kamikaze? because they cross the road like so! Like they not scared death like that.

There!
KAMIKAZE!

suddenly
I want to see!
okay.

and so we turn into lorong such-and-such
You see? These are fish tank houses. You know why? because inside there are women in glass. You choose. You say, oh I want the woman in glass tank 30. Sometimes I feel sad. Because I have a soft spot for women. I tell my friends, there are only two reasons for the downfall of men. Alcohol, and women.

I laugh, and then feel so happy because I know he doesn't drink. I feel safe. As though for that ride, he's my man and as simple as it sounds, his not drinking makes everything right with the world.
there. pimps!
ooooh
there there. those old women. and he doesn't say it, but these are my first confirmed prostitutes I'm looking at. he says something, and then either that, or they wear a lot of make up.
tonight's not a busy night. if it is, you'll see cars and cars lining up! there. boobies. looking like they're going to spill out any moment.

KAMIKAZI!

Later on, we exchange answers.
how many girlfriends have you had?
how many boyfriends have you had?
none.
so boring la.

and we talk some more.

later on, at a traffic light

come rachel. you want to be my girlfriend until june? until june, i have a lot of time, all the time in the world. but when june comes i'll be working on my vespa.
i briefly contemplate.

He brought me to a river

don't have to get off. just a quick one. you see that blue lights over there?

yeah

we're going over

we're going over?

we're going over

and we do. go to the other side. He brought me to going-overed river of lights. so so movie like, as wenlin remarks later when I tell her about it. It is. The bugis river, a the nicole highway with familiar yellow-orange lamp lights and cars moving moving just he and I two of us in the world he in his vintage vespa helmet and possibly 70s sunglasses for the moonlight- I can't quite remember- and me in my fushia dress with a cloth belt . A very retro couple we make and everything because in the previous five minutes considerately skirt the couple. He observes things really quickly, I notice. Which makes him a really good driver too. What a random point. And then he turns into the parking gentry, and we make our goodnights. I have never felt safer that night.

and I am in love, with a certain four hands and two guitars

I cannot respect any guy who calls a woman bitch, however much in jest he may be.

The itch to write has been strong, but technology has been temperamental lately, so that I cannot sign into my own account for days on end [what happened to owner's rights] and it arbitarily ables and disables, as if teasing my need to spit out words again.

I found a good reading page today, rather, I found a friend again. The connection was one I would never have expected, and if I hadn't chased after my bit of ice cream I wouldn't have stayed to watch a project video and surprise suprise, you know her too? Six degrees of seperation indeed. I love how shah rukh khan and I are only what, three degrees apart. All I need to do is to get mayboo's housemate to introduce us. Okay so what if I need to actually get to know mayboo's housemate's father first. sama sama, as they say in malay.

She writes well, and for the first time I feel like the gap that's been left by a certain other capricious dreamer when she whisked her thoughts away one day oh-so-suddenly, has been filled at last. Banging rambles -they are rather violently formed, those sentences clauses phrases lexicons morphemes phomes- and they are lively. Lastly, and probabaly most importantly she bangs something out very few days and that is extremely important to a word whore like I. I feast on words, I scrutinise them, I strip them naked and stare hungrily at the potential pleasure. Very much lust, this one. I suppose desire and pleasure are quite symnomous with sex. Now I feel like a word pimp. Ugly picture. But so much passion...

Maybe it's just tonight. I'm depraved, having been denied entry into my dashboard. that my bastard children may be birthed.

of cats, and conversations.

To adapt sabrina's opening sentence in her now extinct post, I announce
"today, karma decided to slap me in the face".

Well technically today, but not conventionally. Meaning to say, some time after two in the morning a certain person entered surath's room and asked if he knew beatles' songs.


Look at him. Fringe dyed blonde, worn jeans hanging on a shirtless body. Speaks with hesitance. Restrained. Lips forming slow words, deliberate words. Unsure. of his words, of his footing, his standing in this arrangement of bodies. Eyes straying nervously steadfast [I mean my choice of words] at the room's owner. We other three are naught but aliens and strangers. A rounded insolence wafts now and then. Repressed. What's that; a heavy chain with the cross hangs from his neck. Comes into the room, complies with the process of introductions. I shake his hands, he looks straight in my eyes. I approve. I never could bear the other. Retreats, moves out of my space and establishes his own near the door. We might make a good cast, one day. It was brilliant use of space by all of us. Stage directions, a leader to mobilise us. Anyone?

ahbeng

Undignified sounding words surely, but that is the truth. I make my call, and then proceed to what my olinda chu lookalike tutor calls selective perception. That is, I notice only stuff that supports my stereotyped judgement. Never knew I'm such a textbook case. Either sociology's remarkably perceptive, or I'm. what's that word. -frowns for a bit-
ah. mediocre.
He goes off somewhere and we resume our music.

Enter he with his own guitar. surath calls him his third girlfriend. and The guitarist. I look up. He enters the music making, and fingers flow guitars play and there is the sound of song.



What faculty are you in?
What?
Which faculty are you in?
Guess.
Science.
becky jumps in. says,
Computing, engine.
How old do you think I am?
Year TWO.

Perhaps her volume was unintended, but the confidence was clear.

and well well. Looks like my slurred speech sloppy swathed somewhat disdainful youth is a law student in his honours' year. The egg's on me, I allow. Me and my tendency to stereotype everyone into scholars into atheletes into artists into bimbos. Didn't the gothic teach me that archetypal characters are the failures of the romantic period. and don't I have ahbeng friends who are true, and know the meaning of friendship. Honestly, woman. Don't shift the blame, bear it honourably. I am at fault, and will offer my back to the whip. But I would like to talk about the players now.

The night passes merrily, and surath's confidence in him is not in vain. He is good.

And then something strange happens. The guitars and their masters, they undergo change. Human hands are now the instruments, used by the genteel wooden forms to shape sound, and command song.

Beck and I, we take on what A. Bell calls auditors; the fully expected attenders in the continuum of audience segmented between the addressees and the eavesdropper. I feel like an eavesdropper sometimes. What right have I to be part of such glorious conversation. It's unhuman, it's mellow, it's the easy-going intimacy borne out of four friendly hands. Strings are so exquisitely plucked, so furiously picked and notes so delicately brought forth that the guitars take on life and start talking. They do. The exchange of brilliance between the two goes on, and shifts with the wind, sways with the breeze; they harmonize, they gossip, they thrill.Sometimes their tune has a distinctly international flavour; we travel from jazz to rock and back to mere talk, sometimes one of them makes an observation, and they chat on that for awhile. It metamaphorsizes into an elvish conference, they take turns, they parley. It's an indian pow wow, it's a curious questioning, it's cozy pillowtalk, it's a talkfest a tete-a-tete a repartee. Sometimes they fence, sometimes they snuggle up in each other's treble and base clefs so that two strains are intertwined, melded and beauty abounds. It's melody's dance, it is. Here I pause to give credit to dolmetsch for the clefs.

ah. 'twas a pleasant night, 'twas a sweet night of song.

i am [a skeptic] @ youth.sg

so wayne prodded me onto entering some blog publicity contest. While flattered, I think not.

For one, the word blog has always bothered me. It is short, and frivolous. The presence of the letter "o" in the word signifies a hollowness [hollowness expresses my sentiments beautifully. The essence of emptiness has two "o"s in it] that I do not much care for. The initial plosive consonant is blunt, and unsophisticated. I am a word snob. These things irk me. and then the fact that blog sounds suspiciously close to the words bog and booger should say something. Bogs are the summation of all things rejected, of countless permutations and combinations of mud, slime and every shade of the worst brown. Musty, decomposing, menstrual rusty-brown. A booger is the greenyellowblackstickyslightlysalty uhu glue blob your nasal cavity manufactures. We have a factory in two dark holes, ladies and gentlemen. What might your rate of productivity be hmmm. In any case, denial or confession, the uncomfortable revelation that blogs hobnob with bogs and boogers is entirely distasteful. Or perhaps, exciting. One must always allow for perspective, I suppose.

well but if mirco-practical criticism persuades you not, let me resign myself to logic and present more palatable offerings. First, the nature of this contest is such that it panders to the masses. Mine are whimscial fantasies, dream-thoughts that colour green-blue and eyes become a pool of black holes. Because like the paravan in roy's novel, whose name I still cannot remember, I have learnt to confidently assure the world that there are no such things in the world as black cats; they are black holes in the shapes of cats. No black cat-shaped hole in the world however, will be able to connect my word wanderings with the rest of the viewers in the internet world. Black holes are the antithesis of normalcy. How many will appreciate my conversations with the walrus and the carpenter? A competition that calls for supporting votes will not be won by reflections such as mine. Cloudy, self-willed and somewhat petulant.
And then there's the issue of publicity and vulnerability. My words are created for a certain audience, and for all manner of men [and women] to intrude and trespass, I think that would create chaos in the delicate feather wings I have effortfullly balanced. The comos, you know. Let's see, what else.

I've heard of many celebrity b[lo]oggers and seen them side by side, against a wall, in loud solid colours in various heights in various states of undress [cloth] and coveredupness [makeup]. Of brick walls they loll against, as if they and their opinions were equally solid. grin confidently at the glass lens you call a camera, smirk charmingly as if you know how. And you do. The art of speaking isn't confined to the audio, oh no. The print has found its voice, it tells you things not from sound waves. Your re-presented self tells readers that you, the celebrity b[lo]ogger, are worth listening to. because. you won a singing competition. because you got married and then didn't. because your smile beats the hearts of boyish folly. because you're an editor at the straits times and write about supposed metrosexual [read: cool beans] issues. Sorry nicholas fang. I've never read the rest of the stomp blogger's blogs. But I used to read your columns, you mused about life and girls and I could never quite connect. I've heard it said that stomp is merely straits times' frantic effort to be on par with mrbrown and his contemporaries. and you see. it was mrbrown and friends that posted photos of the multitudes at the opposition parties rallies, not you. You showed unglamourous close-ups of their leaders looking tired and shabby. Rather too unfair, don't you think. How lean you on the tightrope of news productions hmmm. Your pole of news values with which you balance, how is it fashioned. In any case, it was on mrbrown's website that I first saw behind the brick wall. Aye, that brick wall you lean against. Does it show your strength, or have you hidden issues from us, ala the cask of amontillado. In any case in any case. Oh, by the way. Thank you for your two tickets to the singapore-leg of the tiger cup finals; I had a whole lot of fun.

Got you this far, virgin reader? Then I am impressed. and drained. Rarely have I introspected so long, and so much into my bias and assumptions. I am prejudiced, indeed. Yet I hope to have convinced you [and my dear friend wayne who believes in me] as to why I am a skeptic @ youth.sg.

when to pierce, that is the question

I honestly think I'll go break out into conventional teen angst if I don't pierce something, anything, soon.

Of course, I do know what I want pierced, but it just sounds nice and dramatic. hah. Secondly, listening to chinese love songs have a bad effect on me because they're so impossibly romantic. Guys in real life aren't half that earnest, nor as sincere.

Therefore, having conjoured up two statements ala roscentranz, I shall like him take that flying leap over logic and with all confidence conclude that

one,
piercings are as necessary as a prozac for conventional teen angst.

two,
piercings are not, but are temporary fixes, like escapism for the [temporal] problem at hand. Which well, are in the end, if one thinks about it.

three,
guys are the temporal problem at hand.


discuss!
[suitably startled]: what?


and I, I think it makes absurdly perfect sense.

This, is how I'm looking after yesterday's handball match at ntu.
Elated, because we won team chevron. :) We were one down, and they still put a full team. Which seemed to me pretty unsporting because well firstly we were one down, and secondly half of team eusoff [which grace dubbed team chopsticks] were freshies. and like every single one of our opponents had more experience than our most senior player. Amazing, wasn't it. The odds anyway. heh I still can't get over it. Every single one of them had more experience than dawn, and we still won. They had a full team, we were playing one down. And we still won. They were so so much bigger, like honestly bigger, and we still won. =D
Well it's something nice to remember anyway. Doubt it's going to happen for the next few matches. We'll be up against team nus, temasek alumni [whom I have a healthy respect for] and goodness knows which other monster teams. oh, and dawn's leavning for china. -grimace.

okay yes, and in the photo, you so need to excuse the hair. It's the face that matters okay. :)

I here announce that I love handball, netball and ultimate frisbee. In no respective order. :)
This is a happy post. :)

incomprehension's comprehension

There was a time when a girl met a guy, twice. He returned to London two weeks after that. Details have been splashed out long before. I just still couldn't understand why.

I decided to check out certain lyrics recently, and suprise suprise. Green Day knew exactly what to say.

'Time of your life'

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time
It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it's worth it was worth all the while
It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

as we caught up over much chocolate and fudge, and the strawberry jam

I have come to the conclusion that guys kiss initially as a matter of curiousity, but girls always because they believe in- I don't know, weak foolish creatures who believe that kissing is an act of such romantic love.
of course, there're exceptions. there always are.

retail therapy

so a certain friend of mine needed a companion while he embarked on a mission to cheer himself up after a bad bad day.

maybe it was because of our conversation in the cab on our way to town that got me sombre. Remembering is a heavy load to bear, sometimes. As we stepped into the walls of a certain marble- the contrast between the time when my life was normal, before the change came, and my life now, is/was so stark, so plain so suddenly it was a shock of sorts. I was taken aback, suprised. Memories just forced themselves, ripped one after another into my consciousness. In a single breath I'd re-constructed my entire shopping life, from infancy to present death. Amazing how the mind can cover so many years in a split second. Not just a second, but one that is split. Remembering the years when town was known like the back of my hand. Tonight, as I played tour guide, I yanked the dusty, rusted memories from where they had been buried under the current events of my life with all my strength

"U2?-"
"- this way"
" nike's downstairs-"
"-we need to go to the other wing"

Remembering a past life that strode the walkways of wisma, takashimaya, paragon, heeren and the rest with the easy confidence of a shopper. I type that word with some bitter amusement. I can't call myself even a shopper now. well. I now know that retail therapy's a lovely phrase for those who have. I'd hoped, even during these months, that I might have been still one of them.. perhaps not. I'm acutely conscious of certain facts. Society and culture has drilled me well; I know the social stratification, I can apply.

It's somewhat painful to dwell on the differences. It was a soft heartache tonight as I alternated between the two selves, the present one who was solely intent on being the best company I could be, and the sudden slips back to my old self who knew exactly what to order from bakerzinn, and knew when a new shop had opened on which floor and. more. You see. It's as though a part of my Self has been frozen since the change came. Inevitable then, that as this part came back to life tonight, it saw with naked eyes what I have lost, and the loneliness of it all.

it's like a ghost that haunts. me

frequently, I don't choose what to write about, the events choose me. I don't know it is sounds weird but they refuse to be ignored. So I have no control, I sit down and clatter away at the keyboard. In times like these, the results are stilted, awkward. But they still demand the right of existence. I'm sorry.

I'm in the library

I heard a phone ring just now. The tune. a shock of recognition. faint recognition, suprised recognition, and the heart contract. follow a sudden depression.

While me, I'm left much confused.
Did my heart and mind recollect something I cannot consciously remember. The tune- I know it. It used to play for. me or. for someone else for me, I don't know. It
was a slow, almost mournful tune. That tune played for me, once upon a time. Why., I cannot remember. I was a child when it would play.
I have a faint memory of a door in our second, or, third, home. Or is my consciousness trying to piece images together. Is it the voice of an ancient clock, a door's song, a tune from? from? From whence would it sound. Did it play in my grandmother's neglected gray-memory house. That melody was a werkglocken. I think.
So slow, so pensive. Like
a dead woman's last winding-down babble, coming through in a dream, recounting long forgotten memories. of a white washed window seat above a green garden companioned by companionably companionable books.

Is it associated with sad memories? Why was my reaction so. perturbed? The struggle to remember is fading.
Why can't I remember?

so let's all move on, please. The urge to bury everything under an avalanche of words, like a previous tide that swept a stackful of photos off the desk, and dumped an encyclopedic amount of books on top of the useless pictures. if a picture paints a thousand words, crooned bread. well I happen to like words infinitely more. For this moment, anyway, and have had a long while before.

I've been folding paper cranes a whole lot recently. and eating dried [with copious amounts of sugar] logan, and now the shirt I'm wearing- I lower my head and take a generous whiff. good. It smells nice. glad I changed my laundry detergent. The air around me is heavy with anticipation. Not just the onset of evening and the noisy chorous the above birds make. It's going to rain, I believe. Every southeastasian can sense rainy weather, I think. It hangs in the air, and it could be one of perhaps two things. One: it's a conscious action to scoop and taste [figuratively] the nearest moisture tapestry hanging somewhere close to your ledge. Two: an unconscious recognition so that if your fellow southeastasian neighbour goes 'looks like rain', you don't think, you nod your head. Either way: it's an innate mystery much akin to the wonder an urban man would give to the mythical abilities of the red indian.
Eskimo girls blow on each other's vocal chords, producing an unearthly sound. Southeastasians foretell rain.
and while this paragraph was forming, the rains did come.

dear readers. I do most sincerely apologise for the barrage of emotions from the last few posts.
I unfortunately have a tendency to think too much, and then my second mistake was to write about them.
The only consolation is that I might have learnt something from all this. Perhaps.

Temporal bladderdash. That's all it is. Never give your heart to anyone, everyone. Especially to the guys.
All men are scum, proclaims my friend and I heartily agree.
All men are scum. [and to prevent a barrage of protests from men and women alike, I insert the disclaimer that there are always exceptions and there are honourable men in the world who are worthy of praise. My daddy's one, and I hope my brother will one day join the ranks too. Other than that,] all men are scum.
scum,scum,scum.