mood porcelain


Oh look, some colour.

It is a mad house in here. For the past few days ever since I landed in this stinky little island I had been busy figuring out stupid things like How the hell to walk to the train station from here? and Where on earth am I supposed to store all my stuff in this stuffy little hole?

Spent the last few days buying and re-arranging furnitures and also went for a round of major grocery shopping. Managed to squeeze in a 16-lap swim in between too. Yayness.

As I was walking down the aisles of the supermarket, I found myself in a sad predicament where a part of myself was trying to juxtapose the present with the past, trying to make believe that the place was really not NTUC, but Woolworth, or maybe Coles. Like a salmon in a river, I was pushing my big trolley against throngs of overzealous housewives, navigating my way like I was in a maze, when I felt a pang of physical and mental claustrophobia and instantly felt like crap. And as though to seek solace from reality, I found myself shopping with total abandon, clinging onto traces of Australia I thought I could bring back with me in a plastic bag. I thought maybe that would lessen the dull ache a little. I ended up with a trolley chockers with so much junk. A big tub of yoghurt, Moccona, Weetbix, a giant tin of Milo I know I cannot finish, and whatnot.

A part of me was still wishing that I was elsewhere - Crestridge Crescent, Toorak, all sorts of backpacker hostels. Anywhere but here. A part of me was wishing that at that very moment I was breathing the chilly winter air, sitting on a bench at constitution dock eating half a dozen fresh oysters or feeling the wind blowing in my face. Anything but this.

But nowadays I will my mind into thinking about nothing. I try to create some sort of vacuum in my head so that perhaps everything will lighten up and soon I will see myself starting to move along together with the rest of the world instead of being stuck in this standstill moment I know isn't going anywhere.

So it's time to practice what I preach and get the engine running. Because I bloody CANNOT stand people who cannot move on and have their bums nailed to the past.

So! moving along, look what I got myself!

Labels: emo, mumble jumbles

Monday, 25/06/2007


mood crappy

Closure

As I'm typing this, I am a few hundred feet above the Indian Ocean. The roaring engine of the plane is drowning the cheesy tunes of Ben Lee reverberating through my ipod, and through the little oval of transparent plastic on my right, a bed of fluffy white clouds beneath me is all I see. I am confined to my tiny economy class seat, legs jammed together and elbows clamped to my side while all around me everyone else is lost in their own little world. It is during moments such as this, that I want to just close my eyes, imagine myself floating on a random cloud, and just forget everything.

In 3 hours I will be touching down in Singapore, and the reality of it is mentally knocking me out. I spent the past (and last) 3 days in Gold Coast somewhat in a daze, not knowing what to feel and how to act. Deep down I knew that it is time to go home, but a part of me just refused to acknowledge the fact that now that the time has finally come, the only right thing to do is really to let go.

Wayne dropped me off at the train station this morning on his way to work. I woke up early, and even though somewhat delirious from lack of sleep, I managed to pack up the last remaining bits and pieces of my life, give them a final shove into the suitcase and prepared myself to leave. But every little thing I did, right down to the mundane routine of opening the cupboard and turning off the tap, seemed to trigger off some sort of intense emotion. A knowing that every small routine act I had somewhat taken for granted in the past was going to be the last. The last morning shower, the last breakfast, the last flop on the couch, the last glance out the window, and the last walk down the hall. I felt absolutely crappy.

As the car started moving, with every house that we drove past and left behind, the feeling only intensified, and before I knew it, my face had grown hot and my visions were starting to blur.

In the train station as I waited for the train, I was a total wreck and a complete mess, all covered with tears and snot. I must have made quite a scene because an old lady who had seated herself opposite me actually tried to make some semblance of a conversation. Except that she was speaking with a mixture of curiosity and definitive tone that I wasn’t sure if she was asking me a question or making a statement. “You are sad. I can see that you are crying.” Then she made a crying motion and continued by saying, “You are going home?” And her two companions chipped in by throwing me a sympathetic look.

It cost me every fibre of my being just to will myself to stop crying. But it just wasn't happening. I was tearing all the way to the airport, and all the way to the boarding gate. Even when the plane started to gain momentum and I watched the ground going further from beneath me and the houses looking progressively smaller until they finally disappeared out of sight, I was digging deep into the abyss of my memories and replaying them one by one until I felt faint. Trying to savour every moment and imprint them into the deepest corner of my mind so that I would not forget. I felt like my head was going to explode.

Everyone loves an escapade, and noone likes going back to reality. The bills to pay, the assignments to finish, and parents breathing down your neck and piling responsibilities onto your back. But what can I say? The past 6 months have been a dream. It had been above and beyond what I asked for, and I cannot possibly feel more blessed that God has granted me the opportunity to write this beautiful chapter in my life. In the words of Green Day, I have had the time of my life. And like how the cliche saying goes, be thankful for the memories.

So that, is what I will do.




Time Of Your Life by Green Day

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 it's 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 it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

I hope you had the time of your life.

Labels: aussie, emo

mood HOT


Back in Singapore

... and HATING it!

Sorry for the major lack of updates for the past few weeks. Was in Tasmania for 12 days (where we had a great time and it was snowing in the mountains!) after which I stopped over in Gold Coast for the weekend before grudgingly flying back to Singapore yesterday night. Haven't had access to internet all those weeks so updates will have to wait a little longer.

Still trying to re-adjust back to life (and weather) in Singapore and boy it's a pain. Came back to the new flat in AMK which I only stayed in for a night in January before flying to OZ and I SO feel like a guest, yo.


Where is the switch??

Where do you keep the cups?

How come this doesn't lock?

How do I turn this thing on?

Is there a toaster here??

You mean we don't normally have milk in the fridge??



But I shan't complain, because back to reality it is.

Labels: mumble jumbles

mood constipated


A family where the way to show love is to make fun of each other.

I just found out that my sister reads my blog. HELLO, POO-FACE! :)

As you can see, we totally don't look alike, because she gets all the good genes. SHE gets the double eyelids. SHE gets the thick eyebrows. SHE gets the long lashes. SHE gets all the good facial proportion. While I, have to be happy with a collection of heterozygous genes and hope upon hope that my partner will contribute enough dominant genes so our future children will be better looking.

World, meet my sister. Sister, meet world.

And hey, that's my shirt!

Labels: family, mumble jumbles

mood tired


Just One.

Have I told you that I hate narrative blogs? Blogs that go, today I woke up at 9am to go to blahdeblah and then had lunch at blahdeblah and then bought blahdeblah and oh by the way I am so pissed with so-and-so because of this and that and yadda yadda, so at 10pm I came home to sleep, the end.

They bore me so bad that within 10 seconds of reading the page I fall asleep and start dribbling all over my keyboard. Perhaps that is also why I refrain from talking about the mundane and the technical details of everyday life. Partly because documenting my thoughts alone is so complex and gargantuan a task that everything else seems secondary. Partly because I just can't be bothered. Life is complicated enough as it is, why bother to remember more than what is necessary?

But now I am going to do just that. Talking about the boring nitty-gritty of school, just because I'm feeling like it.

You know, for the longest time, I had been trying to decide whether or not to stay on for another year doing honours. And trust me, when I say long, I really mean long. It is not an understatement to say that I had never before experienced such a pure state of bewilderment and confusion as I oscillate between the two possibilities like some sick pendulum.

I feel like I am standing at a fork road in my life where every single decision that I am compelled to make seems to carry so much weight. A domino piece that if not placed carefully enough, is going to make one big royal topple, stir the crap out of my life and leave me cleaning up after my own mess. It is not just about doing honours or not. It is about my time, my finances, my family, my career, my time, and basically my life. I only have one, and I wasn't about to be flippant about my choices because unlike computer games, you don't get to reset and try again.

A few days ago, I finally decided to graduate. No more honours year. And I procrastinated on making the decision up til the very last few hours before the registration closed. Perhaps I was just leaving my options open, hoping for some sort of divine intervention, like maybe a big fat angel that I would find flapping away outside my window holding a big banner that says "DON'T DO IT!".

So yadda yadda, click confirm, enter, done. Yay, graduating.

Then two days ago I received a notification that said that my graduation application was rejected, because I didn't fulfil the faculty requirement. So I did a quick check here and there, to find that everything was closing around me. To cut the long story short, once upon a time, I had misinterpreted something, taken the wrong module, and was hence short of one module to graduate. Sounds like a joke right? Yea, you can laugh, because I am laughing too. I was in disbelief. I mean, this is the sort of things that only happens in my mind, man! The kind of mock scenario I used associate with an imaginary doofus and laugh at. Not the kind of thing that I would imagine happening to MYSELF. So technically, all along I had been laughing at myself. ha-ha.

In retrospect, it is all very amusing, because when I registered for graduation I jokingly told Rudy, Oh well, lets just see how this goes. If it turns out that I cannot graduate, then maybe it's God telling me that I should do honours.

Talk about Murphy's law, man!!!???!!

Absolutely speechless. While I know it bespeaks poor character to blame something else for my own stupidity, I can't help but partly blame the school for my misfortune. Why do they have to make everything so vague? I think every freshman should get an idiotproof guidebook of some sort which lists out exactly what to do without us having to crash about and ask around and risk screwing everything up. Things like how many level 1000 modules are we allowed to take throughout the duration of our course. It was never much emphasised. How the hell are we supposed to know these things?

I spent one very miserable night considering a lot of options and moping around feeling morose because everything was so effed up. But I think amidst all the frustration God really showed Himself to me. I remember previously asking God for signs and answers but always ending up disappointed because I thought God didn't care enough to give me an answer. But now that I think of it, probably I was the one who wasn't listening. I was too preoccupied with telling God how big my problems were, too busy feeling victimised. It really is ironic how you only manage to see the big picture when you are standing at the end of the road and looking back at what has already been said and done. Now everything seems to acquire greater contrasts and sharper edges. Actually even the gray bits seemed not-so-gray afterall if you look real close.

And to jolt me out from my stupor, I suppose He just had to make use of drastic measures like this. Leading me to a no-through road so that I can make a U-turn. Employing the assistance of NUS admin to ask me to get my bum back to school to mug some more.

I may sound like a schmuck trying to sound over optimistic, but all is good now. Because it is really in times like these that God feels so real. So close. From feeling absolutely lousy, I am now looking ahead. Bordering on excitement, even, if you push it a little.

God, i'm telling you, has got a sense of humour. Trust me on that.

Labels: school