limbo much??

days are spent underwater. everything is either muted or in hypercolour, and there is an unjustifiable tendency to shake head in time to a conjured rhythm. the more you blink the more your eyes sting! after awhile, you close your eyes and feel with outstretched hands, pray to a nameless deity that all will be well.

1. job
2. interpersonal relationships
3. nocturnal breathlessness

serious fun

some films are supposed to be mindless. sex and the city, from the title alone, definitely falls into such a category. but there is good fun and bad fun. i enjoyed the first instalment, but the 2nd one is crap. sheer indulgence with little regard for continuity, strong narrative motivation, or even decent and convincing acting (not even compelling yet)

cannot stand just writing off things with the security blanket that genre apparently provides. fun does not mean stupid. yikes

twisted limbs like knotted tree

this is not going to make sense.

hui min said, moments before we fell asleep (or at least i did), when she alighted from her friend's car on our side of the road, she heard a person calling her name from across the street. she turned, but she's shortsighted so she couldn't see who the person was. she turned back, and the person called her name again

"hwee been"

i cannot lose my sister! i would gladly (very frightened but yes gladly) take on anything in her place.

this was what i dreamt of:

a huge tattoo of an intricate dragon across my left shoulder and upper arm, and a huge floral tattoo on my left hip. the terror of papa finding out. and finally mustering enough courage to show mama, who gently laughed at me and pointed out that they weren't permanent. i gingerly picked at the edges of the dragon's tail, and it came out free. i peeled it off like a flattened gummy sweet pasted fervently onto my skin.

and then, at the corner of a large field, against the fence of which there is an immense jerrycan of water. a big water hose, water gushing out, people going mad about the water being wasted. mama basically going completely berserk, hosing everyone and everything down in her panic. "waste water!" the horrified bystanders scream at her. "waste water!" mama screams into space, her wild eyes seeing nothing.

"mama. mama! MAMA CALM DOWN. direct the water into that container instead, it needs filling up!" she does it and calms down. there is peace.

i wake up.

"i'm a cocoon"

"i cannot hear anything!"

sunday nights

tonight i am home alone again but it is not a good night. i crave silent company. this is one of the times i wished more people read my blog so i would get a text asking me to go out for a silent supper. askmeout askmeout askmeout.

in the ideal world

i would, foremost, play the piano and guitar and cello. and i would sing well.

small, nondescript, fringe pubs frequented by the heartbroken and mocked by the popular would allow me to sing on the occasional weekends their entourage of heartbroken and (thus) brilliant musicians fall too lovesick to perform. on these nights i will take the stage and sing into the microphone. i will imagine gazes at me, and on the final night when i do summon enough unwarranted courage to peek at the audience i will realise the floor empty save the janitor cleaning up, who is deaf because of the war. a war, any war.

nights at the rented attic. frantic writing, always writing, always reading, always churning strings of words. i will paste these strips of semi-poetry on noticeboards, on the backs of toilet doors, in lifts, in fitting rooms, and most importantly, on the tables of all the cafes obscure enough to be crowded with fellow striving struggling writers. we will be one in our paper chase.

because i will be poor and mad (hmm. actually..lol), i will no longer have qualms about talking to people about the realities of their lives. i know about you, and i notice more than i let on. after all, pretending to be stupid is firstly more convenient, and secondly not all that far off the mark because i am truly an unaccomplished being.

see the world and the skies from different places, face upward eyes closed pasted smile and deep inhalations, loud sighs. no one around so i can imagine in entirety your fingers through my hair

my dear!

you are the moon and the stars, and i really like stargazing. mooncakes rock socks but the moon..ok la. abit mor peng but important to have for tides so can watch the stars with the sound of the waves.

you are my sunshine you are my snow. but i still wanna go paris and vienna and those are on you. so are africa timbuktu japan and new zealand.

you are the unsaid, the unintended, the inextricable the abit fat super white but still very cute one.

maybe, you are the one

for lai de yans and da de bians

eventually, acquiscence

robin hood: grip, grit, weep, but never this - a conscious slackening of defense, slowing breaths into shallow intake of thin air, and expressionless the only remaining protection (a membrane, quivering)

the handmaid's tale

home alone again! spring cleaning. i need to stop hoarding things like memories. hairband and hair tied into a sprout (a la snowman) and f.i.r's fly away. let's sing more chinese songs and clean more homes. if i finish quick i will go to ikea alone. bliss

you're like perfection

how do i feel this good sober

run to the computer!

a rainy night at home! it hasn't happened for awhile. takeaway dinner, a novel about mad people, and an entire night to digest both. oh, and the sporadic traffic sounds - vehicles sound different when they pass by under the rain. tonight's gonna be a good night.

meanings layer like clouds, some heavy, others wispy

don't you just love recontextualisation?

i know i do.

cabinet of pigeonholes crashed and from the ashes, strange flowers

if you are reading this, you know how well separated the parts of my life are. different people even call me by my different names. each group of people clearly differentiated, comfortably distanced.

well, this all came to nought tonight. every sphere of my life from childhood to university converged at filament and all watched the fyp that my groupmates and i have toiled over for the past year. i have to say, part of the reason i sat at the furthest corner of the floor hugging my knees to myself was from the sheer surreality of it.

i have absolutely nothing to ground this upon: the nostalgia from looking at the bcs people. there are practically no friends, but i just.. really appreciate them, and their efforts toward their own projects and towards filament. and of course. my fellow we the people. how to say. this is a potential lump in throat, let's not embarrass me. lol

i hope to learn the guitar. then i can strum and sing like holly golightly. as i age, i want less of appearing mysterious and shit. the peace from solitude is precious enough in itself. and please don't look at me, there is nothing impressive here. really. maybe sometimes i dress up and put enough makeup can look halfway decent, but i would rather read and weep and write and make people weep. that is honestly, sincerely what i wish to do most.

all the lonely people can hold hands and have some moments of golden silence for abit.

hello junejune

i really miss you.

will you ever wane

voice of a siren strumming strings like angels' harps
this tune she plays she plays upon your heart

final few of 22

everything is related. above all, everything is intertwined. the past present and future, love life school projects employment history, friendship woes scandalous undercurrents unspeakable transgressions, architecture ideology literature film politics economics sociology, can think of how many variables is how many things there are in the mix. everytime a task is extricated from the tangle something else is invariably involved. too much goo, everything sticks.

the biggest failure this year was fyp. overcoming my groundless terror in general and persistent lack of versatility in particular. not a problem-solver, not a fantastic group member.

the biggest achievement this year was fyp. the necessity to just suck it all up and go on as best as possible is a lesson unlike any other on the inevitability of continuity, and the absolute impossibility of giving up.

the happiest moments: (spent 15 minutes trying to think of something) (where got people laugh so much but cannot remember happy moments one) (cui) (if is relief got a lot ah but happy is like) (er hello seriously got so tragic not) (OI) ok la. boyboy turning 18, all of us celebrating at aunt's place with all the cousins. the most important people in my life.

the saddest thing this year, and for the next few years, was that neither my brother, my sister, nor me got to accompany my mother during the final moments of her life.

23 loh

*-* >_< :'(

first of all the extremely crucial fact is this usually happens in the night. it must be a result of last night's sumptuous dinner, strawberry vanilla cake, late night singing and later supper. you know, nostalgia wham bam like a rocket bomb asking for your seat. "ex kiu zay mua, cane ah hairf dees seed"

it is ending. i don't want it to end. going to shafiah's solemnisation. i don't want to bawl in front of the salsa people again. all this heartwrenching moments how could we ever have been expected to hold this immense miracle by ourselves, we cannot.

i was wondering, if each moment (birth wedding death graduation anniversary whatever) is precious and i wail at absolutely every single one of them, does it make things less so? aiya. things to ponder. gotta shit. let's hope this self-deprecatory reflexivity holds up.

have a good day YOU