vision

I saw an angel coming to sit by me. He handed me a scroll, I thought I was suppose to eat it like the prophet would, but instead he handed me a quill-type of pen, and asked me to write.

I think the time has come for me to write as a minister, as a herald, as a scribe for my lover.

But I don't know where to start. I will try.

that splashwurks party

H and my other E

- rather overdue, but yes, that mad party we had at my house in May.

the rule of ten

This is interesting.


According to HairyDonut.


With 10 men, you can have:

up to 3 bastards

2 good looking ones (no personality nair mind)

1 or 2 not so good looking, but with great personalities (who inevitably end up being the front-runners)

1 who is rich (drive sports car/ rich fambly)

1 who is cool (ride motorbike/ models CK underwear)

1 is experimental (like, someone you wouldn't ordinarily date but you just want to try. Someone with tattoos/ a criminal record - am not talking about a traffic offence here/ much much older/ younger/ related to you (gasp!)

I don't think I qualify, I have only gone out with three bastards (quota met), one nice guy (great personality?), one experimental (also one of the bastards), and C does not qualify in this list (no category for good-looking geeks)? I fail the rule of ten, I only have four plus one!

elainities

1. Legs, particularly feet, very tired, swollen and sore from the day's worth of work. Need glucosamine.
2. Visits to the toilet since leaving the house early this morning: one. When I came home and showered at dinnertime.
3. I would rather read than watch TV.
4. Am already sleepy.
   
5. Beer with ice-cream or chips or crackers? Hmm, just the beer in the meantime.
6. Number of lines on tummy when seated: three.
7. Number of lines on hip due to clothes being too small: various, one very red. I am running out of clothes because I am getting fatter. (Don't argue with me on this.)
8. Inspiration: none.
   

I haven't been writing very much to you, or to myself.


My English is in lack, maybe it is a lack of literary stimulation. My sentences are looking even more awkward than ever and I have hardly the reason why I am writing badly.


I am now a closed book. Little to share, and that little fizzes out for my lack of excitement.


I wish I wrote more. But I am not a story-spinner, but a story-teller or reporter at best, and then I have little content to manipulate in word-form.


(Even memes hardly excite me lately). I will try harder.

anger

7/22/2006 11:06:19 AM


There is too much anger in me; I cannot contain it anymore and afterwards I often regret in aches and dreams. I call out in my sleep because I have been victimised in some dreams, and in others I feel my heart beating loudly and carelessly, so hard as it usually does, and I put the words in my mind into my mouth and shout them very loud; I can hear myself. I am angry with more things than I often care to say, and soon it wells up like it often does in a man, and I become violent and destructive.


Yesterday I attempted to prophesy to myself, to forthtell the condition of my heart so that my mind will understand and know the root cause of my distresses. I decded to do that, because last night at my cell group meeting with my church mates, I shared two passages of the Bible with my friend Pat, and both times it turned out to specifically answer or confirm something that she has been wondering about for some time now, something life-changing. I often do this. Not by my own strength, for things of the spirit can only be borne of the Spirit. But I find myself often having dreams and visions, and I know somehow what they mean, like Joseph did when he interpreted Pharoah's dreams. I often find myself ministering to others with verses from the Bible, and they are often prophetic in forthtelling and foretelling, and not usual cliched encouragements. This is my gift, and I will not be ashamed of it, no matter how hard it is not to be.


After last night's conversation with Pat I went home and said to myself, if God can speak through me to other people, He can do the same to me, through me: I become both the steward and the vessel. And I prophesied this to me: stop caring so much about gaining the favour of men, and start working for only God Himself. We know that men are faulty masters, that there will always be wrongs just as many as there are rights, if not more. In the end, everybody hurts me, and it is my own fault for letting that happen. But God is a perfect master, he has no slaves in His house, only well-loved children - all of us, and His cause is noble and a better cause than we are. In serving men, which I do for a living, I have mistakenly allowed my esteem to come from them, which will never come to pass, because men will never care as much as God does. This is why we have so many insecure people in this world, who have such low self-esteem they do the silly things we all know. I have faltered in not realising this deviation in me till now, and now I know that I have faltered, meaning, we always know this truth, but we sometimes point the boat in the wrong way and still steer ahead as always, not knowing we are off-course a few degrees, till a few metres after, or perhaps far lost.


What am I angry about? I could list them out in an effort at release, for they have been within me, I refuse to share them often because I do not want people to be affected by my negativity, neither do I want to be a self-serving person who crowds conversations with complaints, everytime, and lose my friends in doing that. We all used to have these people in our lives; if they are still in yours, it is time to remove them, amputation for gangrene. But repression is a wasted effort, because in the end it comes out worse. I am behaving like a man, who retreats to his cave to mull over things instead of sharing them daily like women do, and in the end when it is said, it is many moons after, and it is explosive. I cannot help it; while I am an open book on my blog, everything else is closed and I have far more beneath this public persona. I am a keeper of secrets. I am extremes.


Not everything that is true needs to be said.


7/23/2006 9:12:55 PM

I had a dream when I was almost waking up, today. In the cinematic frame of my dream-mind, the screen was visually divided into two, left and right. On the right side, I saw Lin in Shantaram, running towards a fire, like a replica of the one that happened in the Bombay slum, where the slum-dwellers banded together to create a fire-break, to save the slum and the people, their people. On the left of the screen, I saw a man setting a place on fire, a pyromaniac. He was consumed with his desire to burn, and the adrenaline within him kept him going at it, very successfully. I know that adrenaline, it is called anger. I have that kind of anger, the kind that makes my heart beat hard and fast, fuels my words and actions and makes everything double-time. I think fast and I act fast with that brand of adrenaline.


Waking up, I heard a voice next to my heart saying: 'Anger is destructive. Do you want to be the one with the passionate ability to destroy a place, or do you want to be the one that saves those in the fire who are dying?'


I would have wept if I not for the fact that I was too tired to do that. I am angry because I am a victim, but I am a victim because I am angry. In both instances I can change things, but how exactly, I haven't yet found out, save for what is written here.


Breathing deeply does not help, it gets interpreted as a clenched jaw, or a black face, a distant countenance. Crying instead of shouting does not help, it is not any more professional as conversation should be. Perhaps Xanax, but it is a junkie's solution, I should avoid forming that. I should complain to Father God, my secrets keeper, my best friend, but I find myself silent many times, like the best friend who sits with you over tea, and loves your company as you do his, even without saying a word, you feel each other's presence. I think, I am going to just see how every tomorrow goes when it comes, and try my best not to create any more regrets.

this music-cubes thingie is fun

via DJ Keishi

status

1. Shantaram, chapter 5
2. The Long Tail, chapter 3
3. Bloglines, 92 feeds
4. Work, full-time and more
5. Number of Shop n Save stickers collected for the month: 4 (10 gives you $6)
6. Laundry, up to date
7. Housework, still awry but passable
8. Hollywood Clicks movies on hand: 2046, A Very Long Engagement, New York New York
9. DVD players currently in house to play said dvds: none
10. Writing, less, because I rather keep secrets, as always

things I crave right now

via my topography


(beause I suddenly have little to say via blogging)

1. the panadol that I accidentally threw away while cleaning out the kitchen
2. time, to do cleaning on the rest of the house
3. a strawberry frozen margarita from alley bar
4. a new home entertainment system to replace the busted sony one
5. my dvds from hollywood clicks
6. bleach anime new episodes please please please
7. a new bottle of my Clarins Multi Active Day Gel and freebies alongside too
8. Biotherm's Abdo Choc to get rid of all my extra fat (combined with sit ups etc. they are cheaper than new clothes, that I badly need because I cannot wear many things I own now)
9. new clothes shoes bags and accessories
   
10. new pillows, and other bedding accessories
11. being able to finally buy my own diamonds and such
12. writing, properly
13. wearing my lips red like I used to when I dressed corporate
14. some nice home-made soup by my mom or maybe C's maid
15. petai, cooked by my mom: best in the world
    
16. more money please
17. sleeeeeeeeeeeeep
    

take this quiz!

I was a little tired and bored and too mildly inspired, so take this quiz I wrote about me and give me one if you have the time to spare (or are bored enough too)! Ahha it is all about elaine...


Update:
There is a bug on question 5. Well the bug is me. I forgot that C and I have gone to Chomp Chomp together before, together with my Rosyth friends. Shucks. Own goal.

dumb

I just have to comment on this article below:


Singapore Human Resources Institute does survey on employee engagement
By S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia



SINGAPORE: In a first time ever comprehensive survey on engaging the employee, conducted by the Singapore Human Resources Institute, one interesting finding was that money was not the most important motivating factor to remain committed in the job.

Taking part in the employee engagement survey were about 130 companies employing between 50 and 800 people, and almost half the respondents are from multi national companies or MNCs.

75 percent of them said they were engaged in the organisation and work, meaning they were loyal, productive and satisfied, and those employed in local companies felt more engaged than those working in the MNCs.

"From the engagement perspective, we found that many employers are ready to undertake job redesign; another finding is that the employers find they have good experience taking on retrenched and older workers. In fact, one in two or slightly higher find that there is better experience with older than younger workers," said David Ang, Executive Director, Singapore Human Resources Institute.

The survey also found that some of the motivating factors that led to job commitment include a good working environment, good career prospects and employers getting their employees involved in the decision making process.

Interestingly money was no longer a major motivator in job commitment.

Only 24 percent viewed money as an important factor in driving job satisfaction, compared with 56 percent who chose having a good working environment as the most important motivating factor.

The institute also did a second survey on the profile of the Singaporean workforce, interviewing 60 employers.

Half of the employers say the Singaporean worker is generally the preferred choice for all positions.

But employers would rather not have them for overseas assignments as the workforce is not willing to undertake jobs overseas on a local salary package.

"With this survey finding results, we hope that HR practitioners will look at the various factors and see how the findings and perceptions can be aligned for what they are planning for the organisation," said Mr Ang. - CNA /dt




You mean only NOW then they realise that money is not a motivator? Where have they been? Studying HR indeed!

dream.

Returning home today and feeling extremely tired, I took a nap that lasted me the whole afternoon till a call awoke me. The call was an unknown number and there was no one on the other line. But no matter, that was besides the point; the call woke me up, and of course I could not go back to sleep anymore for the day.


While asleep I dreamt that friends of mine, one of them specifically being Jiaying my friend from my previous church, were into missions and a lot of active, meaningful ministry for people in various tangible areas. I was an older adult, maybe at an age truly reflective of how old I really am now, or perhaps some age later than now. I do not know for sure the time represented in my dream, but I know that where I was, time had already passed me by.


It felt like this: Imagine you are on a wheel, a dial that resembles perhaps the knob on the washing machine, or microwave oven. It goes in one direction, say anti-clockwise, for the spring allows it only so. Imagine this wheel is on another, something that rotates more freely, like that of a bicycle or roulette. Aesthetically, or design-wise, this analogy has no visual appeal whatsoever. But for the purposes of my communicating to you, it suffices till I become a better story-weaver. The freer wheel, is time, is rotating in the other direction most of the time (unless you decide to turn back time and reminisce), so smoothly as if it were freshly lubricated and made not a single sound. As you go in one seemingly right direction, time goes by in the other without you even realising it, and time passes you by, while you, in reality, have stagnated.


I felt like time had passed me by, while I was busy with whatever I am busy with now, and I barely realised it, till I realised I was so distant from the things of my friends' worlds. These things of their worlds were promises made and kept on their end, to themselves and to God, for their calling into missions, just like I have my promise. While I supposedly stayed where I was for the moment, thinking it was the right thing to do, time and the season passed and my dial was actually moving backwards against it. In my dream, the things my friend Jiaying was involved in were things that I would have known intimately too were I also in the mission field, but I didn't; they sounded so alien and strange. Jiaying is my age and through growing up somewhat together we both knew our calling was in missions and we would serve out our burdens with fire in our bellies, no longer I that liveth. But in my dream, she had gone on, while I didn't, and I hardly knew anything about missions anymore. At the point I realised that I had stagnated over the years, while the season, the appointed time, kairos, had come and I was not in it like I was supposed to have been. It almost make me bend over with regret to know this.


This dream was like a look into the future, if only a warning and not a foretold prophecy. Here I am, already having been an adult for many years, finally feeling like life is really really too short, that I could have saved some of the time that had passed. Yet this dream makes that feeling of waste even more acute by a number of years. Soon, I will be in my thirties, and it might really be too late. Where am I going?

elainities update

1. I have been away slightly, from the computer anyway, because I have been busy; with work, resting, Calvin. The house is still in a mess.


2. The DVD player is very officially kaput. I will need to buy a new home theatre system of sorts. Stupid Sony.
   


3. I just finished reading Banana Yoshimoto's Lizard, a collection of short stories. Ordinarily I don't like short stories: they take you nowhere, they are merely thoughts on paper with no life-blood, but merely some philosophy, like an essay disguised. I finally decided to try Yoshimoto because of a reader's suggestion some time back, since he knew I liked Murakami. They are rather similar in their tendencies towards the introspective, only so far, it think that Murakami has explained his characters' lives and thoughts much clearer. I will probably try her other books to make my views more balanced.
   


4. I just finished my girly share of chick-lit, through my favourite chick-lit author Marian Keyes's Watermelon. I like Marian Keyes because she writes well despite being in the chick-lit genre, and I hardly touch very many other chick-lit authors.


5. I went and procured myself a copy of Gregory David Robert's Shantaram after checking it out at Joseph's suggestion. Will be reading it next, together with


6. In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami. I actually resisted buying it for about a year, when it was still lurking in shelves no one knew about. I read it standing up in bookstores over extended repeated visits to the bookshops, and stopped somewhere, and now I have it to continue. Apparently Ryu Murakami is one of Haruki Murakami's favourite writers, or at least one of them.


7. I just went to collect my copy of The Long Tail at the post office today.
   

I am Singaporean

iamsingaporean, via mb

My IC number starts with S and ends with the letter H and my IC is pink like every Singaporean's.


I had six years of compulsory primary education, with streaming in Primary 3 which I did badly in but it identified the boys and girls who were gifted and put them in another class. We still got along together, but they had different files. We played catching, where you can 'twist' or 'chope' to ensure immunity, or you can run to a 'home' which ensures the same. 'Who stole the cookie?' was fun too. There were other ditties: 'Copy cat, kiss the rat, go home let your mother slap' which I still hear kids today chanting, nothing has changed twenty years on. I had to learn Civics and Moral Education and Hao Gong Ming where we were taught about how we should not let the stranger give us things and take us away, about how different ethnicities and religions have different wedding traditions, and how a boy named Si Ma Kuang got himself or his friend or someone out of a big water pot. I also learned that a pot like that with still water breeds mosquitoes and probably dengue fever.


We have pavements to walk on along the roads which is something we should not take for granted because it is not a norm in every Asian city. We learn to walk on pavements and not take up road space. My mom calls the pavement the 'five foot way', till today.


I am part of the strong kopitiam culture, where we hang out, eat out, over extended periods of time, and often. When I was a kid my parents will take me along to their adult gatherings at kopitiams and other eating-out places, or sometimes those that say (air-con). We stay out late into the night to do so. This is our solidarity.


I own a mortgage on ninety percent of my house and I have technically twenty-something years to fill it out, and this house is on ninety-nine year lease hold like all flats do, so like many others in Singapore, I have debts but not my own place.


I call all food sellers and taxi drivers uncle and auntie, even though we are obviously not related and they might even seem young. They call me xiao mei if I am wearing my home clothes and makeup-less or xiao jie if I am dressed my age.


I enjoy shopping at places like NTUC or Shop n Save where I can collect coupons or watch out for great deals on the newspapers and such. I kiap my wallet under my arm like most aunties do when they buy things at the supermarket.


I understand acronyms, even some army ones, and we seem to like forming more and more of them everyday. It is a whole new language.


I know Singaporean road names, and I have friends who share names with certain roads, such as Flora Road (at Changi) and Wilkie Road (at Selegie). I also know that there are two Sennetts, and Crescent Girls' School is not at Crescent Road (which is near Guillemard). I know that roads like Woodlands Avenue 7 and Ang Mo Kio Ave 8 are also roads that run alongside MRT track lines. To get from my house to Bishan you can take Paya Lebar, Bartley and then Braddell Road, or you can take the PIE (Jurong) exit CTE (Ang Mo Kio) at Upper Serangoon Road and exit Ang Mo Kio Ave 1. But CTE is always jammed. Alternatively you can take bus 55.


I watch movies, and help contribute to the statistics that say Singaporeans are some of the most avid movie-goers in the world.


I know many hokkien swear words, which we have the habit of being able to spell them out in English, wah lau, hong gan, tulan, and maybe even make them into acronyms: knnbccb.


I am not a boy but all the boys I know around me have one thing in common, and that is army. I understand how army took away the boys around me, and how sometimes they need a girl to accompany them to some events. I understand most army speak, and enjoy hearing them. I even like the songs, the lingo and the typical things said. 'You think I thought who confirm?!'


I love Singaporean men, especially mine. I could bear with their soccer, gaming, sports, male buddies, for a long time.

reminiscing residences

I was just thinking of all the places I have ever stayed in in my lifetime of almost twenty-seven years, and thought about the good and bad and favourite things about them all. I cannot say that I have a specific favourite place I have ever stayed in, though I think I tend to like the rustic, quieter and more sparsely populated places.


The first place I can actually remember staying, not from photos or stories retold by my parents, but from direct memories I collected since I learnt to remember anything, is in Toa Payoh. I stayed there when I was in my kindergarten years, and perhaps during the time I went into primary school too. It was a three-room flat, on the second floor. The carpet was green. I watched my first ever SBC channel 8 dramas there: The Awakening, Flying Fish, etc. I also did many other firsts, such as, going out of the house by myself. I did that one afternoon when I was bored and by myself as usual, with nothing to do, and probably feeling contemplative, with too many thoughts but nowhere to run. I unlocked the lock on the main gate and went out of the house quietly so my maid, the only guardian at home at the time, would not be able to hear me going out. It was in the afternoon, probably a weekday, a work-day. I walked down the stairs which were right next to my flat, and hung around outside the confectionery downstairs, pacing as far as the coffeeshop, the provision store, and back. There was a man deep-frying some french fries at the confectionery. I wished to myself that I had money to buy a packet of fries too, lightly yet visibly salted, but hot, and I did some futile calculations in my mind on how I could get that kind of money. (Not possible, the fries were a dollar a packet, even by the age of seven my pocket money was only seventy cents a day). As I sat on the steps, just looking at the greyish world go past, I sometimes stared at the confectionery man. Soon enough I experienced some kindness: the confectionery man offered me a fry! I went back upstairs after consuming the fry, and no one knew anything about my solitary walk at the age of five years old (or so, I cannot remember for sure). I only recently told my mom this incident, it actually still worried her when she heard this, even after twenty years on. When I was due to enter primary one, staying in Toa Payoh, my parents tried to enrol me in CHIJ primary, but then we lost the ballot, and I, very thankfully actually, ended up in Rosyth Primary 1F. I guess that's partially why we moved nearer my school after that.


I think we moved to Jalan Limbok, off Phillips Avenue. That was probably when I was nine years old. If in doubt where this place is, it is near the Japanese cemetary, which is a rather quaint place actually, they say Yamashita was buried there. There was a saga seed tree along Phillips Avenue, at the fork of the road near the cemetary, but I am pretty sure it is no longer there now. My house had a rambutan tree in the garden, one which neighbours tried to harvest after tasting our gifts of the fruit. There was also a flowering bush, I think it is the allamanda flower. My primary school friend Goi stayed near me, on the same street.


Subsequently I think we moved to somewhere in Seletar when I was ten years old. It is even quieter than Phillips Avenue, I remember even sighting an owl once, perched on a road sign. It was also near the old Woodbridge hospital, the original site at Jalan Woodbridge. My primary school friend Paul stayed near me, on the next street. I had a balcony adjoining my room, and this was how I got to know my neighbours, two children, a boy and a girl. We figured we could visit each other through our balconies, which we did, of course the boy did more climbing than we did, and I think I got along more with him than I did with his sister, who was younger, and possibly too girly for me. I didn't do very much girly things when I was young, I remember him, but I don't really remember her. Opposite my house there was a playground, I played there with my neighbours too, and learnt how to walk on seesaws from one end to another right there.


When I was about eleven we moved to Serangoon Gardens, which I have to say is one of my favourite places. I loved the old second hand bookshop (now Happy Daze), Times the bookshop which is no longer there too, eating kueh tu tu from the Johnson Duck coffeeshop, and fish soup from Chomp Chomp, among others. One of the best parts was that I could visit my best friend Julie who also stayed in Gardens. I remember that there was a point where my cousins stayed with me, and my parents were away in Malaysia, leaving me with my auntie and uncle as guardians, in the very same house. I hate staying with relatives, this and other future experiences proved this true again and again. But my cousins and I had much fun cycling around the neighbourhood, catching tadpoles and building campfires at the plot of empty land behind my house (now the French School), cycling to 7-11 to get our snack loot. It is absolutely charming growing up in Gardens.


When I entered secondary school, my parents were still away, though they came back for brief moments, and I remember having to stay in Jurong with another aunt and family at that time. I hate Jurong, it is far, it is gloomy, and it was depressing. I used to take bus 66 from school all the way home, and because the journey was so long - I start from Macpherson - I used to sleep on the bus so much that the bus uncle scolded me when he had to wake me up at the interchange two days in a row. Soon after this, my mom rescued me with a solution: I moved to JB to stay with my parents, and commuted to school daily across the causeway.


I stayed in a then sparsely populated town, now it is more crowded of course, but at that time, there weren't even phone lines. We got burglarised twice, and I lost my Sony walkman forever. I do remember nice moments though: I remember seeing a beautiful flash of lightning that illuminated the sky one late afternoon. Because storms in JB are more dramatic, that second of light in a city-lightless town, made the view outside my house look surreal, like we were in a partial eclipse of the sun, but only for a moment. There was also nice wantan mee in this town, (yes, for the over-informed, it is the same guy who flips the noodles real high), and other JB food.


Subsequently I moved somewhere nearer to town, where it cost me only about four or five ringgit to take a cab from the customs checkpoint. It was at this house where I met my dog. We would go for walks to the nearby Pelangi shopping centre, where she would then go off to play by herself in the neighbourhood while I went shopping, and ate delicious Baskin Robbins ice cream. In this house I stayed in the attic, where I sought refuge, where I did my art, where I wrote my diary, where God found me. A spacious solace.


When it was time for JC I told my parents I had to move out, because I wouldn't be able to bear any longer, the commuting to and from JB to Singapore, with longer school hours now. My parents moved again too, to another favourite place of mine, a town not very much further away, Melodies Garden. My mom and my dad would sit in the front porch of our house, near the fish pond, drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and chat till two a.m. Once when H and I were at my place we climbed out of my room window and sat chatting on the roof, watching whatever stars we could find. My parents stayed in this house for a few years, till about over a year ago when they bought a new place again, smaller now, single-storey so my mom doesnt have to climb the stairs to talk to my dad if they were on different stories.


So when I was seventeen, I moved out of my parents' house and stayed with another family of relatives, in Ang Mo Kio. I moved there the night before my JC orientation. I lasted eight months. Never again will I stay with relatives I can ever help it.


I then moved to Potong Pasir, a place I was already familiar with, as it was near my secondary school, and I had bunked in with a friend here during my O level weeks so I could get to school for exams easier. Now, I rented a room from my mom's friend who also stayed in that quaint estate. My first real shot at freedom, without the relatives. I do remember Potong Pasir fondly. I remember the river. Now the St Andrew's Village cuts over it, but before, it was a nice quiet stroll you would have wanted to take, longer, if only to enjoy the view.


I moved home after my A levels, back to Melodies Garden, for a couple of years before moving out again, this time back to Ang Mo Kio, where I rented a room through a friend, to stay with their grandparents in their spare room. It was lonely, but I overcame it. Ang Mo Kio is fun to live in if you like to take late night strolls to s-11 to have tea and supper, something H and I often did too, when we both had stayed in AMK at the same time, and Enid was nearby in Bishan. Ang Mo Kio folks are really one of a kind though, they like to gather in crowds like wildfire to see anything: fights, accidents, snake oil, hot pants on sale for two dollars, etc. The police might be nonchalant to this AMK behaviour - they took more than twenty minutes to arrive at a scene where a fight (albeit a small one) broke out after a call had been made. And completely dismissed whatever bystanders had to say too. I felt slighted at that. But then again, I probably was behaving like a typical Ang Mo Kio-ian bystander at the time.


Subsequently I moved to Woodlands to stay, which I didn't particularly enjoy, because Woodlands is far from anywhere (except JB, Yishun, AMK), and Woodlands is dangerous. No police patrols, only two police stations in the whole of the Sembawang GRC, and I once witnessed policemen behaving like ruffians in public. (I did once submit this feedback to the Police, via a form, urged by a policeman, who also stayed in Woodlands, so I have done my part and am just stating the facts at the time.) I stopped taking night jogs. I did however brave the danger and walked out to meet H for suppers; he had also moved to Woodlands.


Then, eight months later, I moved to Clementi, which was a nice change. No suppers now, Clementi, in fact the west in general has nothing much to eat at supper time. I had rented a flat by myself, and had the opportunity to entertain friends and absolve much loneliness through both good and bad ways. It was at this point in time where I revived this blog, on my archaic laptop. I also remember there was once a power outage in the area. C told me, when I first got to know him, that he initiated the sparklers light up in Holland V at the time of this power outage.


One day God answered a specific prayer I made over the years past; a desire for a place of my own: my parents decided to go to HDB to see if we could buy a flat, so that I could pay mortgage instead of rent. That is how I am now in Ubi, happily, and always thankful to God for answering my prayer. I like Ubi because the people here are friendly, they never shove, not like in say Boon Lay or Tampines, and they always smile and say hello if they have seen you around. Something like Katong, but more down to earth and less sleazy. I actually enjoy talking to my neighbour. There are many things to eat here, and it is a self sufficient kampung, save for perhaps a Guardian pharmacy or Watsons. East Coast is ten bus stops away, town is seven bucks away, Geylang and Old Airport Road etc. are all near enough. Oh and the Geylang NPC police folk in charge of my area are the best I have ever encountered. In years to come I might move again, but for now, I am really, really thankful to God for this house. Time for a house party!

at C's

Good things about being at C's house while he is busying himself with WOW and I have no book to read for now:

1. Dinners. Food at C's is always fabulous because his maid and his mom cook very well. They have a hard-copy collection of recipes. C's mom's family is in the restaurant business. Gourmet dinners almost all the time. Today we had pineapple rice, spicy chicken chops, gyoza or woh-tit, veggies (kai lan), old cucumber soup. Gourmet to me.


2. Showers are nice (when I have everything I need) because the bathroom is rather hotel-standard.


3. Cable television, which until right now I haven't thought about succumbing to. Yet.

I have dined (although still a bit hungry), and I have showered. Yeah.

finished reading

I have just finished reading Kerouac's On The Road. It is going up as one of my favourite books.


It ends in Mexico, before Sal heads back to New York. Another one of my favourite paragraphs occurs climatically at the end of the book, when they were en route to Mexico City via mountainous roads, and they encounter the indigenous Indians that reside there. Sal and Dean and his friends have been living life decadently, typically, with drugs and sex and alcohol and all that has been popularised as decadence in the cities. A sudden contrast occurs when they hit the tropics and mountains that the road leads them to:

As we climbed, the air grew cooler and the Indian girls on the road wore shawls over their heads and shoulders. They hailed us desperately; we stopped to see. They wanted to sell us little pieces of rock crystal. Their great brown, innocent eyes looked into ours with such soulful intensity that not one of us had the slightest sexual thought about them; moreover they were very young, some of them eleven and looking almost thirty. 'Look at those eyes!' breathed Dean. They were like the eyes of the Virgin Mother when she was a child. We saw in them the tender and forgiving gaze of Jesus. And they stared unflinching into ours. [...]

I think one will only use rapturous imagery and spiritual analogies like Kerouac has done here, when human images can no longer define what is being experienced. It is hard to write well, if you have a lack in your storehouse of extreme experiences. Everything will seem bland, monotonous writing with no contrasts, and hardly any living. Sometimes you have to write about things bigger than yourself, to capture your audience up there with you. It can be extremes of anything, highs and pleasures, encounters with God, depression beyond the mind. I think that any writing that lacks that will lack, doubtlessly. It will become like, news reporting? Or just general fare that no one will truly enjoy reading, because it never changes anything.


What did I see when I read this? I saw images of brown children with discolourations in their hair from malnourishment, covered in dust from the streets; the only images closest possible to what they saw, for I have not been to South America, so what I can conjure up in my mind are the Asian parallels I have seen.


















Street kids at the immigration checkpoint of border town of Poi Pet, Cambodia.




I have finished this book, and I know I won't stop reading, nor writing, for that matter.

more about On The Road - on passion

I took up a conversation with a gorgeous country girl wearing a low-cut cotton blouse that displayed the beautiful sun-tan on her breast tops. She was dull. She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. Once this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do. 'And what else do you do for fun?' I tried to bring up boy friends and sex. Her great dark eyes surveyed me with emptiness and a kind of chagrin that reached back generations and generations in her blood from not having done what was crying to be done - whatever it was, and everybody knows what it was. 'What do you want out of life?' I wanted to take her and wring it out of her. She didn't have the slightest idea what she wanted. She mumbled of jobs, movies, going to her grandmother's for the summer, wishing she could go to New York and visit the Roxy, what kind of outfit she would wear - something like the one she wore last Easter, white bonnet, roses, rose pumps, and lavender gabardine coat. 'What do you do on Sunday afternoons?' I asked. She sat on her porch. The boys went by on bicycles and stopped to chat. She read the funny papers, she reclined on the hammock. 'What do you do on a warm summer's night?' She sat on the porch, she watched the cars on the road. She and her mother made popcorn. 'What does your father do on a summer's night?' He works, he has an all-night shift at the boiler factory, he's spent his whole life supporting a woman and her outpoppings and no credit or adoration.'What does your brother do on a summer's night?' He rides around on his bicycle, he hangs out in front of the soda fountain. 'What is he aching to do? What are we all aching to do? What do we want?' She didn't know. She yawned. She was sleepy. It was too much. Nobody could tell. Nobody would ever tell. It was all over. She was eighteen and most lovely, and lost.

From On The Road, Jack Kerouac.

Some people speak of even the simplest things with passion, and some, simply without. Funny how a bum like Sal Paradise has it, it as in, a passion for life, albeit in pleasure, and it is up to him to tell the others, the readers, how not having it is as good as being lost.


Isn't passion so important?


I don't want to be lost, in Kerouac's terms: sleepy, empty, regretful. Where is my passion; and am I actually doing anything about it, or merely holding it in with the past generations, with chagrin as he says?


If we have passion for the simple things, even the wayward things, as so it will seem in On The Road, then we can also draw passion for the great things that will change this generation, and those to come.


I draw a parallel from the Bible's story about the woman at the well. She spoke out against Jesus without restraint: why are you talking to me, I am a Samaritan, you are a Jew, we don't associate! It may seem wrong to question God's authority and actions, but if she hadn't done that so boldly, and had walked away, she might never have found out that Jesus had living water for her. And with the same fire and forthrightness in her spirit, she went and told her whole village about the prophetic things that Jesus shared with her at the well.


The virtue of passion, and in it, forthrightness, courage, these cut both ways. It merely takes knowledge and wisdom, to direct it. To get this knowledge, you have just got to find it, ask for it, meet the right people, read the right stuff.


But without passion, there is little to direct any where.

More about On The Road

It is like reading organised thoughts in prose, straight off the mind of an author. It has been soberly amazing.


Sal Paradise has a mad friend, Dean Moriarty, who is constantly sweating with excitement about everything. Although he may seem like a bum, which he is, yet his thirst for new things, and his passion for music and for being with people, are inspiring enough.


Sal himself, takes in every sight and scene he comes across in his America. To him, the road and all it contains, are almost enough for life itself. He words the pictures and colours he sees: the sun is red, the Mexican girl is honey-coloured. He describes the deserts, the salt plains, the oil-scented air of Texas, the dust of New York, the streets everywhere, the life of the people.


And they say, in all of these things, there must be a God. I agree.


I have yet to see such excitement myself about pure travel, I thought I had it when I saw the mountains of Kazakstan, or read it second-hand about India through Popagandhi. But all that I have experienced are trails of the levels of excitement in On The Road. They are but trails. Today we rely on movies and info-documentaries and such to tell us the beauty of this world. But if a writer can bring across to you, the passion involved in every beat of the jazz musician's drum, make you imagine lights and sounds that are directly teleported from the late 40s to you, right here right now, then that is a true writer's art, the experience conquers even that of some films and other visual displays.


I am three-quarters done completing this book, and there have been no regrets since I started. What will this book accomplish? It is not sad, like some books. It makes me desire to travel like they do, perhaps America too, but my heart is with Asia. I hunger for jazz; but my DVD player is now defunct and my house is no longer loungey for the mess; I will have to overhaul my home through cleaning and clearing up, and get a new music player - or better, go see live jazz music for kicks, as Dean and Sal put it. Or, as Hanif Kureishi, another favourite author of mine, puts it via review on the cover of the book: "It changed the way I saw the world, making me yearn for fresh experience." What indeed, have we been missing out on? We need to live more, and take in every experience.



And reading Kerouac, makes me hope that my writing will improve even more. His writing style, what he has termed as spontaneous prose, brings to mind the need to always be writing, always be thinking about your thoughts, the need to take in everything with your eyes. When reading his sentences, I feel that he has less regard for the form of the sentence, but rather, he merely uses each sentence because he wants to tell you about what he is on about at that moment, and if it needs to be a long sentence with semi-colons and commas, then so be it, or if just one short five-word sentence, then so be it too. There is no forced stylistic effort, and that is exactly the way I like it. He coins slangs through over-using certain words in his own way, hence the word 'beat' comes about (as in, 'it was a beat suitcase', 'he looked beat', like saying 'worn', but without the preposition), alongside other words like 'kicks' and 'dig'. I think that also helps to create that generation, that experience, that character, that Kerouac is portraying through his book. Just like how Bridget Jones (Helen Fielding) is known for 'v.good' and 'oh my bloody god and fuck' etc, it creates the character.


Writing about Kerouac makes me want to write too. It also makes me realise that I like semi-autobiographical novels, as I think of D H Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, which is another book I like. Seeing that I have no patience to create characters and stories from thin air or through stitching real life with completely fictional ideas, I think if I were to ever write a novel, it would have to be semi-autobiographical too. The very thought that a novel I read is semi-autobiographical makes it appealing too, because it means that these thoughts are real, the writer really thought about it this way once, and as I read it, it is as if that thought transcends time and continent to come to me, right where I am.

"Our battered suitacases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."

From On The Road.

Johnny Cash

I came across this MTV first in Popmatters, reviewing his album A Hundred Highways produced before he passed on 2003. It is such a moving song, with amazing yet straightforward imagery.


I first learnt about Johnny Cash in proper, through Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in Walk The Line, a movie detailing Cash's life and rise to fame. It is an inspiring film, and the two actors did both Johnny Cash and June Carter much justice. The songs in the film are performed by the actors themselves. (Phoenix actually did some rudimentary guitar lessons before he did this film, although he still does not actually play the guitar).


A Hundred Highways sees Cash as a much older man, uttering his death-anticipatory lyrics along to soulful playing of the guit (and piano). It may seem morbid, but really, I have not seen an MTV that interests me much, and if it has to be an old Cash that does it, well so be it.


Hope you enjoy the song.