spiderpig | Entries tagged with musings

Technically I should post this right before the first of January, but seeing as how I won't be here to post it personally, and the scheduler is wonky, this goes up now. While I'm waiting for my stew to thaw.

Christmas and soon, the New Year, will be spent with my family as always. Do I regret (this is probably a key phrase in my 2009) not going off with other people (read: friends, people other than friends) and having a holiday season, or any other day for that matter, that might be more fun? Well 'fun' is a subjective word and lately, my version of 'fun' doesn't seem to correlate with the general population of people. So it's just me, not you. Classic break up line. My break up with people.

This year, I discovered that my intolerance for ignorance, laziness, and stupidity (arising from the aforementioned two) hit a new high. I always thought that I was a tolerant person, someone who could sit through the heavy pelting of rain on hours end and not complain. It turns out that being alone in a foreign land has lifted an invisible raincoat off of me and made me realize that I actually can actively dislike people and company. Which is why having friends like YZ, Yen, Sim (who might never read this, if she doesn't read my blog) and Bobo who are simply there means a lot to me. This 2009, I realized that family > friends and that Yen, Sim, Bobo, YZ > friends. It's a mathematical equation that I cannot square-root or divide. They drive me crazy half the time, both groups, but in the end I can count on them to pull me out of hot soup if need me. And I would do the same for them. No strings attached. (Hello this is my confession of the year, I will go and kill myself now.)

I discovered that I like people and things too easily. I get distracted by their shiny exterior and forget about those niggling paint chips and rough edges that when I realize that I'm actually not suitable for that person or thing, it's too late. My awesomely placid nature makes it hard to just stab people -- not to mention a lengthy jail term, which could be better spent! -- or simply mouth off. So when I discover that it's a reject, grade C good, I wonder, was I really so blind? More often than not, yes. So I'm back to simple things. No preservatives, no pretensions, nothing that I don't agree with. I'm taking a similar approach to 2010. If I like it, all systems go. If I don't, then I'll just get the hell out of there. There's no point wasting my time in things that annoy me, that irritate me, or that simply, well, aren't worth the effort. Is it cold? Perhaps. Is it going to save me a lot of grief and emotional, not to mention moral, dilemmas? Yes, I'm pretty sure.

Sometimes I wonder if I should be spending my money not on film, cameras, books and god knows what other things, and spend them on the all-you-can-drink/eat/insertgastronmyrelatedwordhere gathering that the kind International Club (a.k.a let's fraternize with gaijin) hosts every month or so. Twice a month, sometimes. I admit that sometimes I'm overcome with a brief bout of loneliness (self-imposed, I must always add) when I realize that I'm not going for all these events and meeting people, but then again, looking back on all my one-man trips and looking forward to 2010's 人旅, I'm more than satisfied by my solitary, nomadic lifestyle.

And I became a pretty fantastic cook if I do say so myself. I need to cook more in 2010.

Waseda. It took me more than two years to get here, but I finally did. All the sweat, blood, and tears paid off and I am here. The people here are fucking fantastic, and I'm glad I was for Waseda all the way. The classes are a mixed fruit basket but I'm not here to study. If anything, I'm here to learn, to siphon, to absorb off the cool froods that populate the halls and walkways. Learn about their lives, listen to their stories, get inspired. But I'm here, and right now that's all that matters. I remember the first time, two years ago when I first heard about the program and realized that "I need to be in this". This is just the start of something.

(TO BE CONTINUED BECAUSE I MUST EAT DINNER AND RUN OFF TO ZOJOJI FOR THE COUNTDOWN ZZZ I NEED COFFEE)

Current Mood: thoughtful

It always starts like this: I wake up, with my own body clock ringing, get dressed at my own pace and head out for the station. From here on, the route differs depending on my mood. Sometimes I end up in a livehouse, other times I'm miles away on a rickety old train heading to a beach.

It's a lot different here, to be able to just jump on a train, or go on a walk in any direction. Back home it used to be only two directions I could go from: left or right. Here it's up down center right left diagonals criss-cross, so many ways I could change to, move from and into. To hell with the cliched feelings of 'belonging' and revelation that other people feel. It's simply not enough to say, "this is the place" or "I feel this". Fancy words don't cut it. You need to feel it in every bone, every pore, every muscle and sinew as you lift your leg to put it back down on the ground, moving forward ever constantly. Do I feel like this yet? Probably, I am nearly there. The sense of inertia is slowly coming off and while I know I will never speed forth into some dream-laced, figment of a future, I am plodding on at my own pace.

In many ways, I feel like Enoshima. Always patronized by tourists, predictably kitschy and quirky, but surprisingly exhilarating. I struggle to separate myself from the mainland, but even with the choppy strait between, I always have people crossing that damned bridge. Take cover, move out slow, there are always the cliffs to hide out in. The constant influx of tourists, tourists, tourists tires me out. They don't understand that I want to be left alone. Stop chattering, stop talking, stop touching me. I didn't invite you in: so stay out. But I'm like Enoshima. So they come, and I let them, sometimes (only sometimes), because of a freak of nature, they can't come in.

It is liberating, to be able to have fun and enjoy myself without anyone else. To know that I do not need anyone to make me feel something so intense -- it's the quiet sort of knowing as you lightly crack an egg and watch as the crack forms, breaks, and then white slowly dribbles out and then sizzles, as it hits the pan. You fumble as the egg white gets on your hand, but darn, it smells good. The egg's good just by itself. It doesn't need any other additives.

November's going to be rockin' for me. I was born in this month, and I will thrive in it. The air has gotten colder, and I find going out in sweats never enough now, but the biting cold speaks to me. I've got three live concerts waiting for me, and a few more on the way, when the tickets start to go on sale. Am I feeling down that I'm going to all of them alone? I have to be honest, yes. That is a miniscule part of me. Like the tiny drop of MSG cooks still put into their dishes and insist that it's "MSG-Free". But it is that subtle flavour that makes my day (and days) all the more better. People say "Oh you look like you had a wonderful time, can I join you next time?" to me, but they don't realize that I have such a good time because I am by myself. It's a strong statement to make, hence the strong coding (lulz html pun) but repeatedly I've been proven wrong that "the more the merrier".

So while things are bitter sometimes, fuck it!

Current Music: Masquerade-Why So Silent - Andrew Lloyd Webber

Prologue:

Thailand is Yann Tiersen, dog shit, and groves of rubber trees, their thin bark echoing of eternal fearful symmetry.

The smell of dog excrement plagues my nose wherever I and it goes; my nose is not sufficiently blocked – I can still smell Tom Yum (pungent tang of lemon grass rioting in my nose, no I am not hungry) at temples. It’s funny because I am now a “Spice Girl”, according to Pi Wit.

( Cont'd )

Note: Have yet to process most of the photos so, it's pretty picture-less for now!

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Date of Rebirth - Yoko Kanno

Film is loaded (expired film, a gift from my brother; two more rolls of film are nestled in the suticase, a gift from Goat Shabu Shabu lovers), my iPhone has recovered and is filled with over 900 songs to last me 2 weeks (about 282mb of free space for ad-hoc recordings), just sent in my FlowTV article which hopefully will be accepted, have 3 notebooks in my bag (1 for academic stuff and 2 pocket sized ones for my diary of sorts), I am still a little uncomfortable at leaving Auden behind but this is for his own good, suitcase is packed and I'm going through it one more time, I am imagining mountainous landscapes and surreal vistas. I want to scream a little right now.

I just read Dan Baum's story about being hired and fired by The New Yorker - now that's the kind of magazine or publication I would like to write for in the future. I am not and will not be, in the near future, capable of writing anything as intelligent and compelling like the things in The New York Times or The New Yorker, but I hope that someday, after years of putting pen to paper - or in this case, fingers to keyboard - I'll be able to write with flair and distinctive style.

I was at TCO's potluck and I felt like an outsider. This is not to say that TCO has such at atmosphere, it is nothing like that. TCO is wonderfully warm and challenged me in so many more ways that well, other publications do. It's a different spin on things and something that I appreciate. Still, I have this phobia of socializing. And I felt sufficiently unaccomplished because well, I haven't had any of my stories published. Not sad, just unaccomplished.

But it was a fun night. Talked to Jon about Buddhism and the Buddhism programme, watched American Idol and Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader with Dr Perry and TCO team.

Next day saw me getting up waaaaaay too early and hitting 3 Buddhist places before heading down to BooksActually to collect my Goat Shabu Shabu! :D Hung out there for a while before going off to meet my parents. Dr G popped by (was late, got on the wrong bus >__> ) while I was there.

FlowTV article has been giving me lots of grief too. I think I am not cut out to be an academic. Or rather, my insides would have turned inside out before I survive past the first year. It is Tough Work and I would like to labor at it still. If it gets published I will link it, if it doesn't I will post it up and learn from it.

Am bringing The Enchanter (Nabokov) and Design as Art along with me. I would like to bring another book along. Still contemplating if Umberto Eco would be a good choice. It would er, add unnecessary weight and I'm planning to raid bookstores in Thailand and Taiwan for nice old books.

Going abroad reminds me of the brief two day trip Choon and I took to Vietnam, before going on board the Hyogo ship. I remember distinctly, with the dust in my eyes and a dark-skinned lady coming up to us with books balanced on the ends of a pole, beckoning us to buy some of the cheap copies she had. We were mere facsimiles in her eyes, copies of other tourists she hoped to interest. I was more interested the men on the other side of the street, crouched over a small chess board, cigarette in hand. Horrendously orientalized images, but still so true in a strange, Kodak moment way.

I sent

I will return on the 30th, and will immediately set forth in looking for a job. Something that will give me enough time to write - aside from the novella I'm working on, I want to write an academic piece on Disney! - at my own pace: which is slow. Work because I like to work, because I like the industriousness of the Protestant ethic.

Which reminds me, must get de Botton's latest book when I get back and get my allowance.

Posted as a note on my Facebook account. Archived here.

( Why I Write )

Current Mood: envious
Current Location: Home

[Error: unknown template qotd]Well. I was a movie and TV geek when I was a kid (moving lights and loud sounds got to me, as it does for most other kids) and I think I lived my life in a small 20-inch screen. I wailed when the TV in my room (used for watching Darkwing Duck ORZ) was taken away and I did nearly everything with the TV. Eat. Nap. Do my homework. Play. Throw tantrums.

So imagine my utmost delight - and slight fear, because the screens were so much more bigger than anything I had ever seen - when my aunt took me to the cinema.

I've had many favourites, I still do. But I think for me now and for me then, my favourite movie as a child was Beauty and the Beast. I'm not sure if I watched that first, or Aladdin but it's always been B&B that stuck.

I liked the fact that teapots, candlebras, clocks, everything imaginable could talk, move and sing. It was like watching my bed come to life (which would have been awesome as a kid, but disturbing right now) and burst into song and dance.

And, Belle liked to read. I loved to read. Or rather, be read to, because I was a lazy brat and just liked hearing my mum recite things off the 365 Stories book I had. So it was comforting. I could go "Belle reads too!" whenever I was told that I read too much. Watching that movie justified my small existence. It soldered something in me that let me continue believing in the sheer whimsicality of existence for at least, the next 4 years or so, before all that efferverscent - and ignorant - lust of life oxidized into something that just sparkled every now and ten.

Current Mood: dorky

There is some fundamental problem when the main reason (though, not only reason) why I cannot take part in global programes, and hence "give myself more opportunities" is because I don't have the money to travel to location XYZ. Of course the second other main reason is because Singapore is painfully meritocratic so hey, I'm not worth it no mater how much they try to deny that CAP is not the deciding factor.

So it turns into this whole nasty Catch-22 where I can't take part in programmes because I have never taken part in any of the previous programmes.

Random side-note: I've been trying to help my dad do the Pet Society moneyhack but it keeps timing out before we can save the damn game? I think PlayFish has like, resolved the damn hack issue. NOOOOOO. I want my father's pet to be insanely rich!

Attended the Young Writers Seminar yesterday and found it pretty inspiring for most parts (thumbs up to the LitSoc for organizing it!).

( All-In ramblings )

Rest of the day was spent with T04 at Lau Pa Sat and the CBD area where we stuffed our mouths with food and then proceed to walk along the river. Fun times! Alvan (such a nice guy!) sent all of us home 'coz it was late.

Next week's going to be almost too-busy for me so I am going to SLACK AS MUCH AS I CAN NOW!

Note: I'm looking for a Korean shopping service, does anyone have any to recommend me? (I've emailed on LJ user who does a shopping service but she hasn't gotten back to me yet so I'm just keeping my options open!

Current Music: Junkie XL: Cities In Dust (Feat. Lauren Rocket)

I think people are starting to realize that I am not me anymore. Or rather, 2001-2007 Tan Min Qi Alicia is long gone and I'm just well, not very robust and lively in terms of anything. How do I convince the people (nearly everyone who has known me for more than 2 years) that I am no longer that person. I lost that brain, that heart, that soul somewhere along the train-tracks while I was speeding into a life which I now, am not very happy with. It gives me untold amounts of pressure. This is what they mean when they say, the past will come back to haunt you. I have it thrown in my face everyday, apple pies of regret. My mother persistently refers to me in the past tense - my future, for her, is cast in a Botero sculpture minus the beautiful balloon-like fullness. I wish I was one. Plump and bursting at the seams with life -- a fruitful indulgence for life that only can remain inanimated, because if it was contained in a more blood-filled vessel, it would rampage about and devour all of God's creations. So it needs to remain set in stone, carved with tart love and sealed in a shiny veneer so that no one can touch it and awaken it from slumber.

What the fuck am I talking about.

I need to set up a timetable to force myself to study consistently. Second week of school and I'm already behind on my readings. Not very behind - just a couple, but still. This will trip me up in the future if I don't do something about it. But I've been too distracted, daydreaming about bouncing babies amongst books, and having tea in heavy porcelain mugs.

Which reminds me, I need to haul up some of my old poems to send them to Moniza. And write a strapping review of Fables for her to put into Infusion too. I don't really want to buy another edition of The Tempest because I went a little mad after the A Levels and bought the Complete Arden Shakespeare but there's no way I'm lugging that to school with the Freud Reader and the 324839423 other books I have to read. My pointer is currently hovering over The Life and Adventures of a Module and thinking of whether I should just post my response without thinking it through. I'm terribly afraid of making a fool of myself but after observing Hemingyay for the past one and a half years, I've come to realize that I must go forth and become utterly ridiculous in order to succeed. I wish I wasn't so afraid.

Current Mood: anxious

Fragments, mainly. From the past two days.

This is so gross! I did a quick calculation and even if I get a CAP of 4.6 next semester, I'll only just managed to qualify for second uppers. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME. I feel like a monster. A sort of elite kind of monster who only can work away slavishly. That's what the travesty of semester 2 did to me. I can't even save myself with a projected 4.6 CAP. This is madness ~~, this is NUS!~~
Of all my texts in the 20th Century lit course this semester, I enjoyed Pirandello and Pinter the most - and most curiously, both start with the letter P. There is something raw and alive about their plays (Six Characters and The Birthday Party respectively) which make me almost fall head over heels in love with studying literature again. In the end I always return to the things I'm most familiar with.
I plan to read a book a day - or a book every two days - so hopefully by the end of the month long holiday, I'd have refreshed and refilled my currently vapid mind. I need to tackle some of the texts needed for next semester's classse. I'm planning to buy Robinson Crusoe, Tristam Shandy, a collection of Marlowe's plays, a compilation of Donne's poetry, The Turn of the Screw, Edgar Allan Poe and some Freud?
Probably will start on some Shakespeare and Milton, since I have the texts already. Need to re-read Frankenstein because it's most probably going to be on Psychoanalysis.

Well, the above is mainly my failsafe in order to get a one-up on my reading for next semester.

What's going wrong what's going wrong what's going wrong what's going wrong what's going wrong wrong wrong
Last paper tomorrow. I am 'studying'. 'Studying' and not studying because I'm not sure if what I'm doing constitutes as studying at all. I am just devouring but not digesting. Inner digestive system is all screwed up. I need to go for detox. Read some children's books and just chill.
I want to throw away all the disgusting essays that I've written this semester. Chuck them in an incinerator and watch them burn - first orange, then black, then white until all become a sooty black that disappears when I blow on them. I might eat the ashes, because that's the sort of Chinese voodoo that suits the whole morbid situation but I will get indigestion. But burn. I want to watch them flicker away in the heat, and then never return again.
badkarmabadkarmabadkarmabadkarma
1pm tomorrow. Last chance to salvage my semester. It's not a matter of want or need right now, it's must. With a heaving, bold emphasis, I must rectify this problem of mine. It is a problem, and hence solvable. Dissovlable. Solvent. If it wasn't a problem, but something inherent in me - it is not, I tell myself always that it is not - then no amount of turpentine or hydrochloric acid can burn away the stain. But since it is a problem, a man-made imperfection that only arose out of incompetence and insecurity, it is rectifable. It can be saved; I can be saved. I just need to look for the life buoy and swim to shore. Hide in the pockets of salty sea waves and flow in with the tide. The trick is to go with the ebb and flow, I guessed as much. Fighting against a swirling current is guarentee of an almost certain death. I have been flirting with destruction for the past year. 2008. Not a very prosperous year, but not un-prosperous either. Take things in dualities. I need bad with good. But there is an uneven-ness that haunts this balance. Tipping over, like a teapot. Teapots don't tip do they, or do teapots tip? Teapots don't have any hands to reach into their nonexistent wallets so how do they tip? Can they tip if they aren't supposed to tip? Do not tip, there is a service tax added to your bill. 15% 15%.

God. I'm rambling.
Breathe. Breathe.
Back to Eliot.

Current Music: Cobra Starship - Guilty Pleasure

Hullo, world.

It's been a long time hasn't it?

I'm currently clearing stuff away and packing my room so that I can get down to mugging for my two ltierature tests on Monday and Tuesday. Just that, I haven't read a couple of the texts yet and have to rely on Spark Notes. :\ (I mean, I'd really like to finish Ivanhoe and Middlemarch in two days on top of studying all the dreaded amounts of poetry, but alas. I won't be able to do it and remember anything.) Rushed book reading gives me amnesia.

Actually, the 'currently clearing' was a day ago. That's how long I've been putting off finishing this journal entry. Words all stuck in my head. It's a side effect of not speaking up enough. I get everything sitting contentedly in my brain, like a baby that doesn't really want to be ejected into the world.

I'm facing an... ~~existentialist~~ identity crisis as of late. My whole life I was dying to be a journalist. It didn't really matter what kind I wanted to be -- as long as I could get out into the front lines and write, I thought that I'd be okay. But lately, that spark for hardliner journalism has faded. I don't know if I was never passionate enough (no, scratch that, I was always too over zealous but just unsure of my capabilities) but lately I've been swinging more to the easier side of things. Lifestyle writing -- which I have to say for myself and all other lifestyle writers, is not exactly easy to do. Basically, I don't know what I want to be when I graduate. Coming into university and USP has made things a lot less simple. I have a whole range of things I could do, and another slab of things I can't do. Which makes me itching for some trouble. I just want to... I don't know. Open a bookstore. Form my own magazine for all things cult culture. But. I don't know. Stream of consciousness fading.

I'm seriously lagging behind in my reading this semester. It's so bad that it's not funny anymore. The holidays will be spent getting a headstart on next semester's books. The worst thing about me is that I know I'm not doing my utmost best -- ti's different from trying my best, that I am doing -- to live Literature. Is it possible to become so... entrenched in something that it takes so much for me to get excited about it? I feel that it's happening and I'm terrified. Rouse.

Frankly, I don't even know what I'm typing right now. My brain is clearing itself of whatever flotsam and jetsam that's been floating and jettisoning around. I need to find a zest for life. I think I might hve found something, in all that book reading and ink wasting but I need to take some action. I feel like some Bronte heroine who's passive. I'll be honest here, I never never really liked the Bronte heroines. I never disliked them either, but it's a sort of neutrality that borders of "Hmmm. Well now."

Double lines double lines. I should post some of the poetry I've been writing. Haven't had time to edit them. I haven't had time for anything. For myself. I've been sitting in this same chair nearly 24/7 and it's getting tiring. Don't want to hear my mother scream at me to get out of the house and stop staring at my notes and the computer screen.

But don't you see, I have to do all this. My dream (I haven't exactly found it yet) depends on it. I'm a fool for chasing after a pot of gold but the thing is, fuck all that. I'm going to have that gold, and that fucking leprechaun in the end. And I'll sit on top of the rainbow and laugh at everyone else who's toiling below me. But before I can do any of that, I need to work.

Work rhythm is totally screwed up. Improving, but still screwed up. I have the concentration of a goldfish following a finger.

Current Mood: full
Current Music: Anberlin - Cold War Transmissions

I've more or less been slowly but steadily moving away from pure (mindless, I suppose) anime/manga otakuism. I don't know if it's because I'm gradually letting myself get caught up in the realities of well, real life, or the fact that I don't see that pressing need for me to fulfill myself in that way. What way? I see myself as having been collecting like a lemming. I like to collect, I have been for ages: stolen lego pieces from school when I was in kindergarten; old tacky badges, free from computer games and events when I was in primary school; Sailor Moon trading stickers and cards -- I managed to set up an awesome business in my class "selling" those stickers for a couple of bucks; then Pokemon cards, most of which I still have (even that $100 Charizard 1st edition foil when $100 was impossible to save and took many, many skipped lunches; then manga and lots of it; now it's turned to PVC figures, something I've dabbled in since 2005 but went full swing into around last year. And boy, it's been one hell of a ride.

I've been collecting mainly, to fulfill this impossible desire of mine to manifest my personality in some sort of corporeal form. It's as though I've always needed a container to stuff the stages of my life into, easy to compartmentalize, easy to put up on shelves and take a look at - but always hard to dispose of because you've always got that lingering attachment to your posessions.

But now I want something bigger -- a lifestyle to encompass everything. Something that will influence my whole way of living day to day. An aesthetic value of sorts. Something to live by. Other than these pretty phrases that I'm throwing out right now.

Right now, I'm about a quarter way there. Maybe a third. Not half though. But I guess it's a good start, now that I've weaned myself off impulsive PVC figure buying. It's a lot more calculated now: do I really want this?; am I getting this merely because it "completes the collection"?; why the hell am I getting this? Because, when it comes to collecting things, it's never really about a tangible need (like how I need to drink water right now because I'm parched - side note: strange how Parch and Parchment... okay nevermind) but always more of a want. I acknowledge that. But yeah, I've slowed down quite a bit. I deliberate, much to my annoyance because these are really trivial things, a lot more over what not to buy and what to buy. Why?

Well, I'm trying to turn my life in a differection - a different direction. I'd like to do a whole lot of other things, like set up my own online magazine, an online portfolio, seriously get into photography and not waste Kobain's (that's my stupidly named S3 IS) functions, I want to read more, I want to be able to buy a button press and make buttons -- a whole bunch of things that I want to do but unfortunately cost a whole shitload of money. So I need to cut something off. Like this crazy impulsive hobby of mine. ^^;; Really I don't even know why I bought that horrible Revoltech Tohsaka Rin other than for the pure novelty of it -- it is hideous, if you pardon by digression - - and the fact that "it came after Revoltech Rei, so I need it too". Whoop-dee-doo: thirty bucks gone just like that.

But yes, I need to get back to my unfornuate turn of events right now. Being Entertainment Ed for the school e-zine is a lot more harrying than I expected (by the way, if you have any film, music or tech events or happenings that you want to promote, e-mail me at mint at nus.edu.sg, haha) and I've been bombarded with full-time PR duties and part-time studying opportunities. Very bad for my academic career but it has more or less spurred me on to want to get my online magazine up and running. I hope the A7X and FFF collaborations don't bail out on me. I cannot take such shocks in the midst of a few more hell weeks I have to go through before the exam period and then holidays (say that with a huge sigh of relief).

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: UVERworld - Byouteki Kikyuu Nikki

image from livingworld.net

"A natural planetarium," a voice said from somewhere in the darkness.

It's not like I was trying to be faux-dramatic over there, but really -- it was pitchblack and in the most cliche way possible.

But standing at the top deck, with the salty sea breeze (look, another cliche) pushing past my face as they raced to return back to the sea, it was beautiful. Neck tilted at an angle of 30 degrees, the position that would probably develop from sitting in the front row of cinemas too often. But in this theatre, I wanted to sit in the front row forever.

Looking straight ahead, it was nothing but endless sea and sky - as though sailing to the end of the world. But just that 30 degrees, a mere negligible cocking of the head, revealed a whole tablecloth of midnight blue with the pattern of stars.

I don't even know how to begin in trying to describe the countless number of stars I saw that night. It's the same way my camera failed to capture any ounce of its perfection. I never believed that stars could be so... breathtaking until that night. Yeah, I knew that such things existed - but they existed for other people up till that moment.

So I stood there, for fortyfive minutes or so, just singing songs under my breath, a soundtrack for falling stars and taking in the 270 (the remainig 90 degrees were the ship itself) degrees that simply surrounded me. I felt content. I could probably throw myself off the deck and float in the ocean and die happy because I'd die looking at the most perfect night sky ever.

Instead, I laid on the floor. No hair whiping my face, just looking straight up as the stars moved slowly past me. Shooting star, shock, wonder. Another shooting star, I decide to make a wish on the next one. The next one comes, and again I'm caught by surprise in the closet and can't do anything but just stare and gape.

Gave up on singing, the salt made my voice hoarse. Switched to playing Mraz on my mobile phone, muffled with the cuff of my sweater.

I wanted to fall asleep there.

Current Music: Jason Mraz - Wordplay

I love the ocean.

Tonight's breeze reminded me of sitting on Australia's beaches and letting the soft sea breeze kiss my cheeks and wisp over my bare arms. It was cooling, and comfortingly slow and as I pulled my jacket over me, I just felt a sense of nostalgia of the sea and of watching the sea.

( Cut from Ru Yu )

Seriously, if I could be this good with words, I'd be the Devil.

I don't agree totally with it (then I'd be a mindless robot) but really, wow.

Current Mood: oh well. the shit hit the fan!

These past few days, I've had this unbearable itch to pick up my saxophone and just play some mellow, bluesy tunes on it. Jason Mraz's horn section sealed the deal for me and all I wanted to do that night, was to be that tenor saxophonist and blast out that awe inspiring solo.

It's strange how music runs in my veins despite having parents who aren't musical at all. My mum doesn't listen to music and my dad, well my dad is my dad. He just hoardes things. X3 Not exactly a connoisseur of music.

I haven't used my Sennheisers for a long time, and it's time to put it through the hamster wheel again. Running through my playlist of blues, jazz, metal, rock, alternative, pop... what do I not have? Hell, I even have techno and electronica. :D()

But what I really want to do, is create music. I've more or less failed as a musician. 中途半端, the half-hearted musician. Never mastered the piano because I hated my teacher, and was too lazy to master the basics of sight-reading.

Gave up after the failed jazz band auditions - I'm stuck in a rut where I can't audition if I want to, over a year of not-playing, I'm not sure if I can do it anymore - and there hasn't been an alumni band practice for ages so...

Anyway, the EML welcome tea has more or less got me hooked. I do want to try and learn some composition basics so I can at least one-up on my dream to compose a game soundtrack one day. 8-bit music, updated for the masses. Something like that. SUBARASHIKI SOUNDTRACK! One day I can do something like that, I hope.

Sat at the keyboard for some time and pressed some half-assed melody to the main one that was going on. It sounded okay, but I was doing rubbish anyway. I like repetitive tunes in electronic music. It's... soothing in a sense.

But of course HOOKED > EML. I am afterall, head of a desk. (I'm sorry, my ego can't stop me from saying it!) I can't sacrifice my hard work of one year for anything else.

Listening to old, old music that kept me alive during my secondary school years. Blink 182, Simpleplan - all rebellious punk-ish; then it was Sugarcult and more mellow alternative rock in JC. I like good lyrics (that make me go </3) and melodies. Everything else is just gravy. I just realized that all my Simple Plan and New Found Glory are in my CDs and not my computer. Need to get a harddisk for my muzak. Have to leave the house soon. I'll just blast a little more on my headphones and then head out.

Current Music: Hanaeryca - Make or Break

Day Two of Singfest starts in a couple of hours.

Day One ended with me feeling really old in knowing that I knew the lyrics to Welcome to My Life (I am embarrassed to say this but, I nearly cried when I was singing that song last night) and that I couldn't handle the 12 hours of pure moshing madness I managed to sustain last year.

And that I fell asleep during Travis's set.

It's now that time of the month and my plans to mosh for P!ATD are well, tossed into the rubbish bin (wrapped nicely in tissue paper) because it'd be very dirty (literally and figuratively) for me to do so.

I'm going to sit on the grass like an old person.

Maybe I'll get a beer this time.

I haven't been writing lately. On my wordpress blog or here. Everything's just swimming in and out of my mind at the moment, I seem to be preoccupied with "bigger things" but I keep on forgetting to do the smaller things that sustain me.

Like writing.

After tonight, I'll get down to it. Updating. Updating my life to version 2.0, August 2008.

"To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them."
-Chinua Achebe

Library next week. Will be traversing through 3 or 4 libraries to pick out books. My mum has forbidden me to buy any more for the time being, so I shall borrow! And make notes. Lots of notes and collections of quotations.

What I want from life, and what I want to do is very simple: it is the pursuit of knowledge. Why? Because it's enjoyable. I don't want to use paragraphs and long lines to describe why; reading, learning, understanding and absorbing anything is enjoyable. That's what I strive for.

While watching The Holiday with Bobo and Yen, I mused at how painfully true most of the lines were.

"The scriptwriter must be a woman," I said.

And lo, Nancy Meyers, you just made my week melt into a puddle of warm and fuzzy feelings abetted with dollops of lemon cream.

How else could your heart fall into itself (caved in! An avalanche of forlorn feelings!) when you hear Kate Winslet's lilting British accent say this?

I've found almost everything ever written about love to be true.
Shakespeare said "Journeys end in lovers meeting." What an extraordinary thought. Personally, I have not experienced anything remotely close to that, but I am more than willing to believe Shakespeare had.
I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should. I am constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives. It was Shakespeare who also said "love is blind". Now that is something I know to be true. For some quite inexplicably, love fades; for others love is simply lost. But then of course love can also be found, even if just for the night.
And then, there's another kind of love: the cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. Its called unrequited love. Of that I am an expert. Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other.
But what about the rest of us? What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone?
We are the victims of the one sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones, the walking wounded. The handicapped without the advantage of a great parking space!
Yes, you are looking at one such individual. And I have willingly loved that man for over three miserable years! The absolute worst years of my life! The worst Christmas', the worst Birthday's, New Years Eve's brought in by tears and valium. These years that I have been in love have been the darkest days of my life. All because I've been cursed by being in love with a man who does not and will not love me back.
Oh god, just the sight of him! Heart pounding! Throat thickening! Absolutely can't swallow! All the usual symptoms.

I feel a slight fading of the writer's block lodged in my being. Maybe I can start loving words again.

Just when I was about to give up on school, an e-mail came in.

I've lost count - but I can still recall, if I count on my fingers - how many times I've left the stale air of the aeroplane and stepped into manufactured air so full of that feeling of comfort. It's strange but I've never felt more me after stepping into and out of an airport. After a brief moment of apprehension, I'm entirely back to myself.

Everything's tentative at the moment. The plan's on tenterhooks. I'm wishing it, on April showers that bring May flowers, so hard for it to become a reality.

It's only there that I don't need to be afraid of making mistakes. Somehow here, I'm terrified of using the wrong piece of grammar or placing a particle in the wrong situation. Back there, my point comes across. Even if I'm making errors, like little bits of weeds in a garden, people don't judge me because hey - they make mistakes too. It isn't cut-throat. It isn't "oh hey I'm better than you".

If it doesn't materialize, I don't know what I'd do. I can't possibly wait till the end of next semester any longer. Everyday's slow torture for me. Like those agonizing three minutes of waiting for your cup noodles to be cooked; or that one minute to be over before you can jump up from your seat and dash to the loo after the exam.

My heart was left there and now it's calling me to join it. Not to take it back here, not to retrieve it from there. I need to be with it. To be there, that's all I need to continue surviving for another semester. It's my Viagra for Life, it's my Prozac, my Want-It-Larger-Look-Here remedy.

10 days. All I need is 10 days. To ask anymore of this would be too much of a desperate gesture - something that I loathe to make.

I sent the reply with a little too much enthusiasm. I am interested. "I am interested, in keeping me alive. If you don't want a dead scholar in Chatterbox, you might want this to happen," I wanted to add. But they would think that I belong in the Chalet rather than there so I omitted that part out. I think I'm already far into my descent as a crazy cat lady. (I just need cats, that's all.)

Those 10 days will save me from every kind of ruin that has plagued me thus far. I will stop speaking like a Singaporean trying to speak Japanese- Note: TRYING - and regain that wonderful accent I used to have. I will, hopefully, run up to a tofuya and ask the kind old proprietress which bus to take to the hanamachi and having her understand me, and me understand her. It's communication.

It's communication.

I can't communicate in here.

It may be all psychological but I might very possibly need somewhere that's even more rule-bound and tradition-oppressed to survive. Anywhere but this farcical place I'm in. I don't think I'm even living at the moment. Not when all I can think about is elsewhere.

Elsewhere and curious habits of chain-smoking in a neat line. Elsewhere and painful ignorance of racial differences. Elsewhere and temporary solace - until I find it time to return back here again.

Current Mood: melancholy

I'm feeling increasingly disillusioned with school (disillusioned is probably the ~~wright~~ right word because I've always had this lovely, Ivy-laced image of varsity life *snorts*) and well, not with life, but I just feel...... empty, well not empty but just absent. Something like that.

Oh wow, my first sentence was so Ron DeLite. ~~I should really stop playing PW3.~~

I really, honest to God, wish that I had more of my friends in this limbo that I'm stuck in. Something, someone to let me look forward to so that I don't dread getting on the bus and listening to will you turn your fucking handphone down I don't share your taste in music and then repeating the same thing in reverse on the way back.

It's exhausting. Today, just after a mere 2 hours of lessons with Prof Chew, I came back looking like someone who aged 20 years. My mum is all incredulous that I'm so tired, but the fact is that I am. Oh fuck it. Everything seems to be "cheemified" on the pretext of "intelligence". I'm so sick and tired of all the complicating people to do very simple concepts and things. I'm not saying that you have to accept everything as a truth, or be a cynic to everything you hear but fuck, just stop overstretching things.

Why do we read Shakespeare? Seriously why? It's not a complex matter of that his rhyme scheme or his lyrical writing, it's very simple actually. We read Shakespeare, we watch Shakespeare because we find it entertaining. It entertains whoever who finds it entertaining. In my Shakespeare class, I had to sit through line after line of preaches, of how great Shakespeare is, or because he has literary value. All those things hold true, I'm not denying that but arrrrrrrrrgh. I should have just shouted "BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING ENTERTAINING, THAT'S WHY."

Which is why Rach's post on how people just overgeneralize commercialism just hits home. I mean, dude. How is the effort put into producing Transformers or Star Wars any less than some artyfarty French/Iranian/insertNationalityhere film? Argh. I wish I had spoken up like her. I mean, what the fuck. I just sat there in my class and just kept quiet.

Another point. I don't know why I'm so silent this semester. I seem to have verbal constipation and it pisses me off.

Anyway, public service annoucement time: HI PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM ME, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. I DON'T APPRECIATE YOUR FORM OF "FRIENDSHIP". IT CREEPS ME OUT. REALLY.

This Chinese New Year sucks. I can't wait for Saturday. T04Time.

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: SPEED - Ｌｕｖ　Ｖｉｂｒａｔｉｏｎ

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A Tan

September 2011

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A Tan

Entries tagged with musings

the last day.

traveling

Of Thai Temples

Before I leave for Thailand and Taiwan,

On Why I Write

Writer's Block: The Kids' Section

It ends with XYZ

you've been had!

in which i moan about school for the 100th time

hullo, world.

moving away

「天然のプラネタリウム」

sea breeze.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

music makes my world go round. and around.

another day, another time.

(no subject)

and to dream again;

powericious, yo.

so you want to be alternative?