Thursday, March 30, 2006

Lily Tomlin on stress

Took this from Seth Godin's blog - author of The Big Moo


Forbes.com just published ten ways for CEO's to cut back on stress. See if you can detect the obvious problem with this list:

1. Find An Outlet - A hobby, like fishing
2. Get A Massage - And light a candle
3. Get Your Zs - Sleep helps
4. Have A Sense Of Humor - Lighten up, dude
5. Lead A Healthy Lifestyle - Exercise and eat well
6. Have An Understanding Spouse Or Partner - Manage the situation
7. Learn How To Delegate - Let it go
8. Make Money - Money calms many worries
9. Meditate - It's not just for Buddhist monks
10. Schedule Vacations - And then take them

Do you see the problem? Exactly! It doesn't deal with what's causing the stress. Here's my list (and Forbes? Perhaps you folks should switch from business to alternative medicine.):

1. Be passionate - About how your work improves people's lives
2. Be clear - About precisely how you provide that value
3. Stay focused - On what customers truly care about
4. Communicate unceasingly - Your passion, vision and strategy
5. Stay tuned in - To the rapid and endless changes in today's marketplace
6. Be kind - If you want your people to be kind
7. Stop lying - To your people, shareholders, customers and, especially, yourself
8. Trust others - Which is not the same as telling them what to do (see #7 above)
9. Give back - To customers, employees, the needy, and the environment
10. Take risks - Brand is a verb, not a noun

the status of elaine again

You must think I am very boring.


But I am not. I am just


1. Busy with work hence no time nor energy to write.
2. Feeling like talking rubbish in lousy English with more dry Singlish humour than literary wit.
3. Very itchy, having rashes for days, to the point of waking up many times to scratch. Let's just say betamethazone valerate and I are good friends. Itching as I type this.
4. Pre-occupied with other things during my leisure hours. Bloglines feeds are now accumulated at a total of 71 feeds. Reading 3 books at a time also. Plus plus other things work related, e.g. art history, business and such.
5. Also busy with Mom's birthday on Wed and C's Dad's birthday on Tuesday. So many birthdays.


I will return to my melancholic poetic-ish writer self soon I hope. Not feeling very Romantic despite reading about Romanticism. Sorry.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

status of elaine

Current activities:
1. Doing research for a course on mixed media art that starts tomorrow afternoon. Stressed for excellence, anxious for anticipated lack of sleep, self-deprecating because there is little time left till tomorrow.
2. Blasting my iTunes worship and ccm collection to feel inspired and awakened - literally

Current status:
1. Of self: Post-comatose because of Citirizine taken earlier this afternoon for runny nose slash allergies.
2. Of house: Messy and dirty as hell, although Calvin doesn't seem to mind, meaning one of two things - it isn't as bad as I think, or he is highly tolerant/unobservant when it comes to less than ideal perfect state of a pristine dwelling.
3. Of work done and to be done: as above, and





Weekend status:
1. Friday night cell group, movie with C and loads of happying squashed into a very short night, to celebrate the end of his ICT.
2. Saturday morning breakfast with C at coffeeshop near my house, ate Jie bread and eggs and coffee. Gave tuition to Alyssa at woodlands till noon.
3. Saturday afternoon went to Bras Basah to buy art materials. Bought texture gel (usually buy ceramic stucco, bought blended fibres instead to complement the remaining bottles of stucco that we still have. Also bought highly-exploitatively-priced PVA glue). On the way there, ran into ex-Citi colleagues. Declined lunch with them because busy and poor. Ate lunch at Mac's next to BBC, took bus 61 home, did laundry.
4. Saturday night I went for Mabel's wedding. She looked lovely! Husband is cute too. It was at Bliss at very-far Expo. But the food was good, as was the stage, although there were very contrasting elements in the deco. Think Neoclassicism plus Pop Art. After the wedding, C came from his dad's birthday dinner to fetch me - so far! what love! - and we went to watch another movie in town. Came home feeling extremely ill with a bad headache, remnants of it remained when I awoke Sunday afternoon.
5. Sunday afternoon we had lunch at Pastamania Parkway, once again their Bacon Aglio Olio is the best in all the Pastamanias we have ever been to. The cineleisure one is horrors compared to the Parkway one. C bought me a cordless phone for my house. As he said after coming back to fix it up - 'the old one can keep, put pocket already' meaning, 'can throw away already, please'.
6. The rest of Sunday: As mentioned, completely knocked out by the Citrizine ingested, unaware of this but I fell asleep till 7pm and woke feeling sheepish because I realised I slept, because I should have done my work. I had to cancel my tuition lessons today to make time for work, and I slept instead, albeit unknowingly.
7. Wish I had more time during the weekend to do things, work and leisure both.


Current reading:
1. Olivia Joules by Helen Fielding - chick lit by author of Bridget Jones.
2. Romanticism by David Blayley Brown a superb art history book of the Art and Ideas collection by uber impressive publisher Phaidon once again.
Update
3. Just started also on Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
4. Just finished The Big Moo last week.

Monday, March 20, 2006

your hands give everything away

Yes they do. I look like I am twenty-four, but I am obviously not - just need you to look at my hands. My skin is rough and scaly, tan, my knuckles are covered with folds of knuckle-skin, and when I close my fingers my knuckles cause those gaps in between my fingers. If I am ever afraid of not being able to enter a club for over-eighteens (yes I have been stopped before, dagnabit!) I just need to flash my fingers, hopefully with some red nail polish and a ring on my right middle finger - I should probably have very little problems thereafter.


I used to protect my hands more, when the age discrepancy was wider, as in, my hands looked thirty while I was only twenty-four. Now, I hardly do, for if my hands look thirty while I am now twenty-seven, it should be okay by this time. When I do need to take care of my hands, I have hand creams which work well on feet too, by the way, cracked heels and all that. The latest hand cream I just completed usage of, is a weird branded green tub of white non-scented cream which I bought from Guardian at $25. It is very good! almost comparable to your Jurliques and Crabtree's La Source and what have you. Meanwhile, I have given up the use of gloves during housework, and I have given up noticing the damage, if any, to my hands. My hands, cuticles and left fingertips are rough, yes I snag all those fancy satin material types, so keep them away from me. Cal's hands are smoother than mine. A friendly back rub leaves territorial scars. As I type, there are still acrylic paint stains on my both my hands.


So, those are my hands. Don't we notice also, the hands of those we work with and are surrounded by? I like Miss Cassandra's hands, because though she looks like a cute boy, she has very nice feminine, nurturing, and capable hands. I am sure they will go far. I notice H's hands - his nails and cuticles are, and have been worse than mine. The only time they were ever better was after the first and only manicure he ever had, administered my me in my own home spa. But his hands tell it all too - they are hands that can make him both a successful farmer and an avid venture capitalist. Shuyi has whitish hands, sometimes very well manicured with a pedigree ring, her nails more pointed than squarish like mine. Miss Enid also has similar hands, whitish, small for sure, and with a silver minimalist ring. There are some hands I will always remember- to name a few, I remember Nelson's hands, they are big even though to me he is always my small brother. Some people have very cold hands, like Shanna, the girl from my secondary three class - she touched my hand with hers and that immediately broke the ice and meant that she forgave me (she was a Christian who I gave a dressing-down to because I hated kids who proselytised openly on the streets back then). And I hate sweaty hands, and I am sorry to shake them if I have to.


But I am glad that my hands tell of my age or more, because I rather be a xiao jie than a xiao mei (which anyway I haven't been for years). Having older hands indicates and affirms that I have the spending power (though not very much currently, boo hoo, but I pretend very well), I can walk up to Clarins and the like, and they know I am not kidding when I need to buy Multi-Active Day/Night Cream (which protects against premature ageing by the way, I have been using it for years).


Anyway there are so many hand jokes. "Anything more than a handful is a waste" and all that. I remember my primary school friend Tienwei opened out his hand to gesture while saying, "So how... big is that?" when we were talking about the bra size of a particular lass who I now have no recollection of exactly anymore. So we see some things in alphanumeric, and those more involved think in terms of their handfuls.


I know sculpting is harder for me than painting is, because my knuckles hurt when I strain them bending too much. Just as they do when I play carrom, or when I had finished writing four essays for each of my exams during school days, or when I simply bend them to wield and flex them. Hence I rather type, and paint. I even play the guitar and the piano with my hands largely wrongly sprawled.


Whichever. For I am not a very hands-on person ultimately. Tonight, perhaps I will slather on hand cream.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

the weekend in shreds of happenings:

The highlight of the weekend included drinks at Phuture - only three albeit a good recovery from my alcohol-dryness. It was a sign, the ability to drink again with a body void of NSAIDS and other related medicines - it meant I was getting better. I had a Chivas on the rocks, a Heineken long-neck and a gin and tonic. The last drink is a deviant from my usual but I really needed a slightly-stiff bitter alcoholic drink with a wedge of lime - that was NOT vodka because I am definitely not in a sissy mood. Gin is so hard to drink sometimes that is really makes you suffer for the pleasure, and elongates the longevity of the drink taken in at the bar, with a lovely someone by your side as an accompaniment - and the company lasts. Somehow the weariness of the weeks past fades away for the rest of the night, when you relax with a good drink - alcohol or otherwise really. (Coffee or tea or juice will suffice, unfortunately there are too many associations these drink-genres have with working hours. Seldom do people drink at work. I almost never drink before 6pm, or at least I try. But coffees and the like imply a need for sustenance to return to work, instead of getting away from it.)



We went home rather early and despite my Saturday after-work evening nap till late-dinner time, I slept really easily after the short-ish night had ended. It was a good sleep: in a position and orientation unusual to the way I normally sleep, which would be vertical and near the edge so I can hear/switch off the alarm when it goes off, instead I slept with things still on my bed, perhaps the light still on (I don't remember) and with my feet pointing at the door which was ajar throughout the night. The waste of the night was that I awoke early the next day twice (not including the alarm, which was meant to call me up for church) because of two prank calls on my house phone. Wtf? But then the second one jolted me up for good and I made it to church without being more than an hour late. Church is good. I just wish it was in the evening.



Throughout the afternoon till now I nursed a headache for I-have-no-idea-what-reason. The headache climaxed when I was in a cab on my way to my student's house after lunch while I was marking her assignment. It hasn't gone away since. Looks like I am back to the whole rubbish of being ill. I came home after one lesson instead of the usual two lessons I do on Sunday, and napped till late and had an arduous time getting myself a late dinner.



I would write more about the weekend to complete the story but I am in need of sleep sleep and more sleep.



And where sleep is concerned: I wish I could wake up much later after I go to bed, perhaps in a week - and maybe in my parents' house in JB where I would not have to face the gruelling shitty pleasure I call work, for perhaps a year. No my job does not suck - I do, but that is another story - but I am being worn down and aged, to a point where I wonder if the rest of the world is still waiting for me while I plow away. Probably not. My parents will be older, my biological children will be thirty years apart in age from me, at the very least, I will not get to see my Calvin more than I do already, which is seriously still not enough nourishment to my soul where this brand of vitamin C is concerned. But heck it, I will go sleep and just live each day and savour each bite-sized moment, and hope nobody bothers me while I am at it.



They say children have faith, and teenagers have passion - at least that is how I interpret the general opinions. So what are we bloody adults left with - wisdom perhaps? But it is not as fun as passion. I rather have the passion and listen to others for their wisdom. It is not very fun being an adult sometimes - everything gets so desensitised and blah. Sex is uncomfortable instead of pleasurable (sometimes); you infuse yourself with alcohol and manage to walk out of the bar without tripping over, instead of having drunk and do silly dances ala Ridley's and Kylie style (not that I ever did anyway, this I heard from H from years ago); eating becomes a chore and a responsibility sometimes, instead of the bingefests that teenagers can do almost guiltlessly, at least I know I was definitely like that when I was younger. Desensitised desensitised. I just want to go and sleep now and really never wake up for a week.
Your Birthdate: November 18

You are a cohesive force - able to bring many people together for a common cause.
You tend to excel in work situations, but you also facilitate a lot of social gatherings too.
Beyond being a good leader, you are good at inspiring others.
You also keep your powerful emotions in check - you know when to emote and when to repress.

Your strength: Emotional maturity beyond your years

Your weakness: Wearing yourself down with too many responsibilities

Your power color: Crimson red

Your power symbol: Snowflake

Your power month: September

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

list of elainities

1. turpsy hands and paint stains under fingernails
2. bloody pek cek
3. human contact is like leprosy
4. need holiday but no money
5. need holiday but have to bloody work everyday
6. want to celebrate mom's birthday but have to be in singapore and miss her birthday AGAIN
7. cursing will not help, there is nothing wicked enough to use to curse how I feel
8. wish I wasn't sick at all
9. wish I can throw ALL my medicine away
10. wish I can have loads and loads of beer and other alcohol-infused matter
11. I don't want to do anything
12. I want to disappear
13. I want to roar like Aslan, maybe I will feel better
14. I am a bloody escapist
15. I hate so many people
16. I like working with people but I don't like working with people
17. tan from painting in the sun
18. faint and out of sorts from being sick
19. want to sleep cannot sleep want to sleep cannot sleep don't want to sleep feel sleepy what the hell
20. painting is therapeutic
21. being alone is therapeutic
22. living on earth = includes learning to live with people or find means to live without
23. I need to destroy something
24.
25.
26.

les irritables

no explanation -




I am just very pek cek. I feel like the whole world is against me, even inanimate objects. Times enjoyed are when no human beings are involved with the moment and objects are subjected to my wielding. Other than that, get lost.

Monday, March 13, 2006

space

The spider solitaire game ends, and then, silence. I am left with almost nothing at the end of it, it is more than a game, it is a means by which I can avoid lying down with my thoughts in those hours we call ' falling asleep', only mine were really hours yesternight.


"I am not ready to talk yet, Father."


No, it is not really silence, for Itunes plays on. Yet - suddenly without a mind-dumbing game I find myself displaced, like I was disorientated because someone was using my computer at the time, or I just needed to be away from the group to grouch but had no where to go-


(Funny how in art we constantly conceptualise futuristic, post-modern type of ideas, but in writing, we write of old more than anything.) I cannot help but think about the diverse kinds of spaces spent in solitude, there are so many kinds of them I have experienced before. I have written about them so many times: the beer and chocolate nights, the cognac-moments, the lounge music, the times awake in the stillness of the night...


I haven't had a beer for so long, since I was ill till now, it is so tense within me without. If I were to be conscious of it, my muscles are aching from tension of thought.


Every activity conjurable now in the space of tonight, seems futile to fill the gaps of numbness and tension. Perhaps only sloth abides, and that limits what I can do. But, I do know the answer - wounds must be dressed, dust swept, toilets cleaned, and so on.


"Call me something, call me nothing, For I am yours, and I am all mine, and I have nothing to offer, yet I have your whole world." The vagueness of this, juxtaposed against the barrage of thoughts I have in volumes of un-ironed mass. Who would be able to sleep in a pile of cloth like that, smelling of your own scent, unstraightened out, but burgeoning almost to the point of no ironing? I am not ready to iron, and I am yet also unready to sleep in all of that thought-laundry on my bed.

controlling anger before it controls you

Ever wept from reading an online article before?

Sunday, March 12, 2006

waking

I sleep, I wake again:


at 6am before the sun rises or my alarm rings. My throat is sore and I have run out of Danzen. I wake and find it hard to sleep again. I stir from drowsiness of medicine, but am no longer completely knocked out - or not yet.


Let's just do work and laundry instead.

random pre-sleep jitters

I can't sleep again; it seems I always need intoxication - by then, I will sleep too much. Perhaps it was the tea, supposedly chamomile, but probably a chamomile plus other leaves of a real tea, that's why.


We find ourselves writing like the authors we read, and more. I was leafing through Jane Eyre, and no, I am not really in the mood for classics now really, but I just did, for the feel of old. Suddenly I find that in my mind's voice, I sound rather like that, a bit staid, rather Victorian though not completely - modernised form of course.


I do not think I write like Murakami's translated novels, simply because it is translated from Japanese to English. I do find that, he words thoughts I have thought of, of perhaps never have, in a simple conversational way, that leaves your heart with a missing beat to be lost forever.






Suddenly I do not feel like writing this thread any longer at this time; perhaps another time, and I will go find away to coax myself to sleep as quickly as possible.

cognac-moment

There are some moments simply meant for sipping cognacs on ice, lounging about on a plush sofa with a book almost divine.


- triggered by Lush 99.5

Saturday, March 11, 2006

this one is for keemin

"Except for a few letters, it's been a long time since I've written something purely for myself, and I'm not very confident I can express myself the way I'd like to. [...] What happened after I met Miu is that I stopped thinking. (Of course, I am using my own definition of thinking here.) Miu and I were always together, two interlocking spoons, and with here I was swept away somewhere - someplace I couldn't fathom - and I just thought, Okay, go with the flow.
In other words, I had to get rid of a lot of baggage to get closer to her. Even the act of thinking became a burden. I think that explains it..."


From Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami. This was written by Sumire who was in love with Miu, who she worked for, and was on a trip overseas with her. Sumire is an aspiring novelist, but seems to have lost a part of herself when she is with the first person she has ever loved in that way, Miu.


If I stop writing, I have stopped thinking.

Thursday, March 9, 2006

dinner today

Guess where I went for dinner? En route home from the west-end boondocks that is Choa Chu Kang, I diverted from the train and took a bus from Marsiling that went in the direction of my house - but not really, I would have to change another bus to get home or else walk rather far for a tired day. The bus, on its long journey, went past the Macpherson kopitiam and I decided to get down, premature before my stop, to eat the Whitley Road macaroni there for my dinner.


When I stayed in Potong Pasir for a part of my life, about ten years ago now - wow - I used to eat this macaroni for dinner by myself when I had the chance. It comes with pork slices, minced pork, liver, lettuce, two quails' eggs, all in a delicious stock that is so good to drink steaming hot, when they have just poured it out from the pot it was cooked in. So good, and I love quails' eggs. I could eat a skewer-full of quails' eggs, the kind that my Dad would buy for supper from the luk-luk van if I were in JB with them.


It does relive some old feelings, and it sure beats eating the same old Ubi food. Despite my gastric, I had a good appetite. Now I know what is really good to eat, on a sick tummy.

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

recluse

I am feeling very reclusive now, and I desire very minimal indulgent contact with people during such a moment. I suppose this is one of the moments I swing to the other extreme of myself, a polar opposite of my social self - when really, I don't feel like talking to people very much. Perhaps not to the point of actually staging a mock alien-capture and disappearing so that I don't have to answer to anyone - ! A regular reclusive moment: if I could, I would rather be alone for the rest of the days ahead, and let you read me as if I were but a stranger, like you would a novelist or anonymous producer of text that you read in your leisure and semi-quiet moments.


When this reclusivity sets in, I feel strangely moonish - semi-conscious, though very awake and able. And actually - paradoxically it will seem for me to say this - I feel rather lonely. Inexplicable, and though I would be able to figure it out as I write on, I am too weary to continue, as it is late.


And yes, though it is late, sleep is something I barely long for because (apart from the fact that I napped because I was tired, unwell in the afternoon, and had no computer to work with at the time - this nap, I use as a pseudo-excuse to my delaying sleep despite finishing my work a while ago already), sleep means really facing the fact that I am alone, it means facing loneliness straight up, neat.


That makes me feel a bit sad and out of place: I secretly, partly, wish to escape, live for a while on an island enclave that contains almost no one, else beings who smile but respect your privacy like they would like you to respect theirs, a non-tourist place really. But that is a foolish thought, a goal not to be immediately possible, and best not to be thought of, because it insinuates that I really do not enjoy my work nor my work-mates, which, quite the contrary, I do.


No, I will trudge on, learn to be friendly despite, and just steer clear away from undesirable company if any though unlikely, talk behind the comfort of internet, and in silences - hopefully, you will understand.

night at the home office

So here I am, with Elton John singing for Diana on Gold 90 FM on the lounge radio, and me, I am here on the computers doing some art works and a presentation for a still life art class for P4 kids. With a chamomile brewing in the cup on the coaster by the monitor, I research on still lifes done by artists throughout history: Artlex has a good summary on still lifes in art history.



The radio plays on, the reception surprisingly clear tonight; it usually crackles. The radio station played awhile ago, 'Time after time' by Cyndi Lauper, the one done as a duet during some recent awards show. This song is such music trite when heard elseways, but Cyndi Lauper brought it alive for me again. I love her raspy voice, and her soulful playing on the stringed instrument she was playing - sounded like a harpsichord! I only guess so because it sounded like the harpsichord effect on my childhood Yamaha organ.



Time seems to stop sometimes, at night especially: the lighting remains the same throughout the night, and if you are awake and have by your side 24-hour radio and internet, I suppose even more so.



Writing here as if I am my own witness into my work-tonight, no other witness would write about me this way save for me. Not that I mean to be self centred or egotistic, for otherwise, I would not be alone, and the moment would not be the same even if immaculately written.



I am just on a break here, too short, but too long away from the immediate tasks at hand.

Monday, March 6, 2006

writing to think

Suddenly, sleep eludes me. Not completely, but I lie in bed with eyelids finally drooped from reading, yet I am squinting them to force them shut. I feel irritated about the minutiae of my Monday to the point where I am forced, to talk to myself aloud, in gibberish, in tongues, in words to which I reply myself.


I need to wake in another three hours or so. Tonight I took Tramadol again, which it turns out, on its own, it just puts me out of sorts, now that I try to sleep after taking it earlier in the night. Finally, out of my pathetic sleep, I roused myself awake to take half-a-tablet of the Lorazepam I still had left, which hopefully as it promises, reduces anxiety and aids sleep.


I have nothing to be anxious about really. I pray and God answers. I go and He provides. It is really as simple as that, has been always, and I have no fear that it will be otherwise.


But my emotions continue to churn, and this time it is of irritation. Sumire in Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami, writes the same thing I once did, and still believe to be true: that we write to think about things, and if we stop writing, we have stopped thinking.


I do admit I have anger management problems. About eleven years ago, I contemplated studying abroad and actually made a step towards that, by applying for UWC - United World College. As part of admissions, I wrote an essay which in it, I expounded on the issue of anger. Back then, I had just met God, and I felt strangely calmer and less angry at people. Somehow I felt peace and was always eager to forgive more than I felt like hollering or being violent. I wrote this new found revelation in the essay, as it was the keynote on my heart in that phase of my life. (Of course, eventually I remained studying in Singapore, as all my ex-classmates will know, and on hindsight I was too immature even though sixteen years of age, too myopic and self-centred to have passed the admissions interview).


Today I feel the peace differently: my peace guides me to where I should go or stay, and it rarely stays in the same place. Perhaps that's why it is said, 'Seek peace and pursue it', in the Bible. If I compare that same peace I had towards people when I was sixteen, these days I feel a comfort of a similar magnitude, when I am with C. I almost never feel the urge to holler at him. And seeing him makes everything seem less monstrous and all okay, completely.


But I have completely misplaced that peace with people, when I talk to H, with him somehow every sentence exchanged is like a test on my anger management skills. Which of course I will most definitely fail every now and then, more often than not. I feel like I have a rope to manage, pulled taut, but very fragile, and every conversation exchanged is like a multiple collection of pressure point attacks on my rope, which I have to try to shield, or thereafter, repair the rope if the attacks were successful. Tension, and I have no idea how to let go of the rope.


How could I not be angry? Everything angers me. But the problem with H and I is that, we are so similar yet so different. Together we have the same mindset, the same attitudes and ideals, the same love for people and for God, and for us to build a business together has never been a mistake from the beginning, despite everything. There is so much everything. But we both expect more from each other, and thus the communication ideal is crushed, the intermittent failures are falls from greater heights, and we are both busy, not just one of us at any time, but both, everytime almost. And think trying to communicate extremely complicated art/ideas/business matters, with all those parameters too. Holler-bomb! It is nobody's fault, and not a problem that can be dealt with entirely, especially not in the immediate. I will have to just learn not to holler. H and I work better together for our staff and clients, yet it is hard to work for each other because of all those everythings and everythings as stated.


Even as I speak, my heart pounds like it always does when my emotions churn. I wish I could lower my heart rate. The soul has transcended the boundary into the body, and manifests in a pounding heart. Perhaps beta-blockers, or likely, perhaps I continue to write.


So it seems I like to help people, and talking to a girlfriend tonight helped me remind myself of that fact. There is no true altruism, H has said before. Perhaps I like to help people because I feel good if I prove to be helpful indeed. Maybe also, I like to solve problems, like a man does, and yes I can be quite a man if you need instead just a utter listening ear. Whichever way I see it, I might really do have a Martian quality about me in that: speaking top-down, giving solutions and fixing the machines in peoples' lives.


It hurts me when someone I care about is hurt, more so by me, it is twice the hurt because I carry my weakness and its iniquity with me. I want, so much, to change so that I can do things properly - no better way to have worded that, really.


Can I stop you from feeling your grief, or disappointment, or broken-heartedness? My days are living challenges for me to learn how to manage my emotions, to learn how to deal with issues in my life better. Everyday, I live to conquer challenges - to prevent the negative really, to prevent myself from getting depressed again, or stressed to the point of incapacitation, or irritated and angry to the point of extremely violent words. Suddenly, everyday is a prevention, I start out with zero, and everything that happens in my days takes away, so I have a net negative result at the end of the day, which I must learn how to deal with, or else I do not let the things that happen subtract from me at all.


I must learn how to love and protect H like I do for the people who I truly love. H is a memory, an undead friend, and I have not been adding to us what everyday things have been subtracting from us, to revive and pump life into our relationship. I have learn again to cry the tears H cries, and feel the losses he feels, and the hopes he has, just as I would for the close ones I have.


For every tear my loved ones shed, I imagine I was there shedding the same tear.


"I saw you in that toilet, crying so that no one will see.
With no one but rough toilet paper to wipe your tears
Even though you would have looked great that day
as you always do when teaching, I noticed
you are always a happy sight!
I know it was ashen inside
that house of pink shirt and white skirt
(just what I imagined).
I was far away with work with no in between time
Else I would have been there
Despite that -
you remained strong,
made plans to get up,
and I know will not be beaten for it.
I was there when you said you cried in that toilet
I really was, and I shed these tears for you now."



I write to think, I write to sleep. - elaine

Sunday, March 5, 2006

I woke up this Sunday late again

Finally, he woke me up at 1pm today, from the nightmares I was having from my drug-cocktail induced sleep.



[Saturday night, I resurrected the painkillers NUH A&E doctor prescribed to me previously - Tramadol - upon my realisation that they were still edible as the expiration date was in 2007. These were for my gastric pains that refused to go away no matter how much Famodine I was ingesting by Saturday. I still had a headache, but there was not a single trace of paracetamol left save for one singular Panadol Extra. I ate it. I was also having allergies, hence I took Piriton, my antihystemines for night].



Nightmares or none, I would have continued sleeping if C did not wake me for lunch. My first waking thoughts were: What if I was seriously ill, and I could no longer teach my kids which I do on weekends (barely when I am this sick)? I thought of measures to take to find another tutor good enough for them. My thoughts rested on Jiahui, as I know not many can teach English and Geography well. In the end, I told myself, heck the pain, and just go, I teach sitting down anyway, and I am already better with the Tramadol application last night.



We had lunch at Hoe Nam Prawn Mee at Macpherson. It was, good - C and I ate our own bowls of noodles without exchanging a word, silences throughout most of the lunch-ingestation. This is the relationship we each have with food - utter enjoyment, with a companion beside.



My nightmares revolved around death, not mine but of others around me. I had dreamt up almost everyone I knew in my life, from primary school time till today. We were all in a room, a second floor of an old shophouse, really old and not modern kitschy-like, more like the ones along Mackensie Road than along Seah Street. This bunch of everybody I know, was gathered in a small room, too small, and we were supposed to take a picture together. But the photographer somehow screwed up the organisation of the group together and it became so chaotic. Like a civilised, educated stampede about to happen. Suddenly, from the balcony, demonic monsters of sorts came from nowhere - and we were all about to die! We ran like, mad, like, really mad, at least I did. I tried to retrieve my friends from different parts of the shophouse, even outside, because the monsters' presence was already burgeoning outside of the shophouse before long.



In my dream, I went back to the place, long after this monster-chase died down, and I found out, some of my friends died in that shophouse. There are more details, my dreams are too vivid for a lazy descriptive writer like me. But I remember, that I saw from the windows to the shophouse, a blood-stained brown handkerchief hanging inside, and the lights and fans were still switched on, just like that night when this happened.



Eerie ain't it. I wonder what it means, or perhaps it was merely the result of too much medication in one stomach, one night.



Had Tramadol again tonight, so, here my night ends, before some early morning laundry, and work. I hope all turns out ravishingly well tomorrow - its all yours, God.

Thursday, March 2, 2006

In the SOHO:

Today we set up the room in my house that is to be our office. H moved over the things from his place with a rented lorry, driver, and Karin, and now we have a proper workspace for real again.


One side of the room, against the lengthwise stretch of wall that is opposite the windows, are the workstations in the form of two tables side by side, where my computer now sits on. These tables were the tables from our previous studio: longish white rectangular ones, with staid black metal legs. There are also two previously-bedside tables, and they are now workstation add-ons under and beside these white rectangular tables, acting as drawer units for stationery and the like. One is for the fax machine cum telephone, which I have brought it from the living room bench. Another drawer unit that used to be under my table in my bedroom, that I placed the laser printer on, is now also part of the workstation, housing also the CPU tower and the scanner. Tomorrow, we will add to these tables, three new black swivel chairs that cost us about $43 each.


Facing the other lengthwise stretch of wall - the one in front of the windows, is our big table which is meant for meetings and artwork. Huge, with two 'legs' that act also as storage stands (housing now, all kinds of paper for water colours, markers, acrylics, etc. and the other, the camera tripod). Pulled out away from the windows, we can use it as a conference type of table for larger-scale meetings and trainings. On top of the huge table now, is a huge A2 size cutting mat, a small dustbin, paper towels, an old-skool T-square purely for the artsy feel, and a stack of students' artworks on Masonite boards.


The wall right next to the door to the room, has full-length cupboards, really deep ones. We have all our art materials within, with space to spare, labels, compartments in plastic boxes, trays, cartons, in drawers, dangling S-hooks, and H even repaired the one of the cupboard doors that was spoilt.


The final wall - yes, it is an ordinary rectangular room with four walls in total - has two cantilever shelves, and now with another metal shelf beneath them, next to the has-been dressing table and half-length mirror. The shelves are full to their brims, and so is the space under the has-been dressing table. This wall is filled with boxes (some empty, used for storage and removal of our hardware, some full, such as the Wacom tablet and the Creative speakers meant for the new computer to come).


This room is air-conditioned, as I am seated here now, feet on the cosy laminate flooring, typing with my arms rested on my makeshift wrist-rest that once was a piece of sarong cloth - still is, actually. My mousepad is still a cutting mat and I still have a calendar in front of me and a coaster by my side for the quintessential work-accompaniment drink.


Since I now have work to do in preparation for tomorrow, this room is brilliant, as are the replenishment of my bookshelf in the form of more art&design books from H's place. I am happy as I go about my bacon-generating activities. Being a 'workaholic', is a great thing.

Wednesday, March 1, 2006