finding the strength

i'm done!

2008-11-17T21:12:00.002+08:00

This place is new history, as i finally figure that I've got nothing worthwhile(left?) to, and I quote, vent soundlessly into the vacuum of the internet. The A's are quite nearly done and over, the rest of my year is almost fully booked, and I seriously need to get around to emailing to beg for an internship for the first two months of next year despite my abysmal school grades. Non-mobile technology is now obsolete for me, as far as all the things people expect me to get done are concerned.

Truth be told, I've been more or less behaving as if the A's are over, aside from the 4 dreary days of desperately trying to absorb the Study of Visual Arts syllabus. It's hopeless, you know. Am I ever glad I'm a Science student, despite things I may have said.

Anyhow, that time of the year is here, and here's hoping that it'll be different. New things are going on, yeah. Visited Pastor Jason and his newborn daughter Hannah at Gleneagles' on Sunday, grats to him, haha. We're all leaving for new places and new endeavours, new possibilities are just around the bend, so to speak, huh. NS aside la, hahhaha hey enlisting later than the rest of the guys really isn't such a great thing lo. I'll ORD later, how sad is that.

Here's to the rest of the days left! Till everyone enlists, till the girls fly overseas, till we ORD and fly too. Ciao!

erstwhile acquaintances to lifelong friends

2008-10-28T18:57:00.003+08:00

One small problem with talking openly is that people find out too many things that they wouldn't know otherwise; without actually having to spend time to get to know the person in concern. Sure you have to know about a feller's history to get to know him, but you don't really get to know a person just by talking about stuff, that's only the half of it.
Personal things that people normally only find out after being friends for a really long time, sticking loyally through thick and think to slowly build up that silent connection and understanding; it's all coming out too much, too often in this society that it sometimes can get ugly. People whom you don't really know, who don't really know you, get to know things that matter to you, and who knows what happens then.
The whole trouble with this wishy-washy new age desire to sit down and talk about one another and the relationship is the product, at least to some extent i believe, of that unreasonable need to cut things short, to scrimp on the time put into really getting to know a person. Maybe sometimes we really need to stop and consider that it's possible that sincere attempts to find out about people in this way can be quite mistaken, if we mean to be peple who can really say they have many close friends, rather than too many acquaintances who simply know far too much more than they ought.
Still, often things aren't really all that simple. Life is fast-paced and we're all too aware of it, nobody will really turn away a sincere kindred spirit as long there's hope for something more than just another one-time connection. After all, as they say it's so often the case that we go through it all touching so few people, so seldom in such tiny ways only. It's always nice for everyone, to stop and tell one another that we're not alone.

so we all behave like we're that shallow

2008-10-24T02:22:00.005+08:00

10 days to the A's! I can't get to sleep, haha. Well, not because I'm dead excited about that, of course. It's one of those things that linger cause they're not resolved and the ending hasn't been good; either it takes two years then some time to accept, or a little more than courage and luck to fix.

Things have been good, friends passing birthdays and we're all getting older and all. I'm ticking off the different aspects, and we're mostly doing well, praise God, haha. Well course not all good. Why'd you think I'm writing, eh? ;)

I'm just really glad for Avonne, times like this, and I'm not shy to say it.. Even halfway across the world I can get unquestioning support and comfort for when a guy somehow gots to behave like a kid. Stupid, but I'm grateful, so so grateful. Hope things are going well! How's that for a shoutout, haha.

Must have said it before, but J.L. was mostly right about me and running away. But James Licketty Dean knows I'm trying. I'm tired of trying to figure stuff out, whether it was mine or anyone's fault at all, none of it works out right, even to say it's noone's. It's not a reasonable thing, it's just that it's unsettling. It's that word that doesn't have a noun, I'm upset, haha.

Such a bad time. Don't even start the blame game. I'd just wish for it to go back, or then way back.
多想回你身边.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
My help [cometh] from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD [is] thy keeper: the LORD [is] thy shade upon thy right hand.
Psa 121:1-5

we told each other there is no other way

2008-09-30T06:08:00.003+08:00

There are 33 days till the beginning of it, we're watching them go.
A number of things have been happening, but I really don't think I'll write much anymore, words aren't enough anymore, haha. Somehow I don't think they ever were.
I've made a few mistakes recently. Makes a guy wonder if they were really mine to make, or a reflection of some innate stupidity. Hm oh well. Don't quite know what to do about them now. Haven't known how to feel about certain things for some time now. Hah! How's that for being vague.

Making and breaking bonds.. It's come to a point where there really is no other way to cope with it. Oh well. But nobody said I had to like it.

laying the wash

2008-08-28T21:26:00.004+08:00

it's pretty unreal how close everything is to an end here, how we've already taken the first paper of the prelims etc. i really don't feel ready.
things have been a whirlwind of chalkdust, not too substantial while filling in all the spaces. people are leaving, people have left, i'm going to be leaving because i can't always be waiting.. i'm a distracted sort of guy, but maybe that should change.
i may not think i'm fit to handle picking stuff up and putting them down so frequently without some other physical consistency in my life, but here it is and there's nothing else to do. remember when we said, make a beautiful picture of whatever came our way?

it seems like getting ready to say bye is happening so much, so i'll be doing my part and forgetting. all the watercolor that just isn't lightfast enough has done it's time, move on, kid. nobody's hesitating.
these are supposed to be busy days, i get afraid that the work i'm doing just won't be enough, that we're not strong enough. it just doesn't seem right.. i'd pray for more faith.

this ain't so easy to do. still can't stop getting distracted by this, and you.
happy birthday, hm.

these are our personal wars; do we face them alone?

2008-08-21T23:03:00.001+08:00

a few things have happened that make writing a bit worthwhile

KI thesis has been submitted, i printed a copy for myself bound and with the forms and everything, but i included my paper references in this binding. shall get it school-stamped and signed by jarrod lee when i get the chance, i owe him so much haha. i'm proud of my paper (: though i spotted 2 grammatical errors when i reread it this morning! hehheh what the heck.

friday was a crazy day in a 6S way, my class is guitar-crazy, haha. we lasted till 10pm? was nice listening and singing and playing and talking. and i wrote a song this morning, in 2 hours. totally distracting, heh.

also, the Discovery Channel I Love the Whole World song is awesome.

treasuring her for all it's worth

2008-07-15T23:43:00.005+08:00

though you, would not believe the state I'm in

For studies. No, really!
There's not much left and I'm settling down. I'm really glad for people in my life right now whose presence really comforts me and helps me to calm down and refocus myself more quickly even as every day tries me. So it turns out what seemed like bad timing couldn't have been more perfect. x) He works in mysterious ways, hm.
A week or two more to tie up loose ends and close projects in school then bunkering down for the 24-hr grind, it's time to live it like these days were meant to be.. As beautiful as they were meant to be since we imagined it. I'll find love and peace with friends, draw my strength from Him and we'll all pull through this beautifully. A most awesome ride awaits this period's conclusion ;)
爱在这里. (:

compose yourself

2008-07-07T21:34:00.007+08:00

i think at the end of it all i still need some clean clear time to think about this all, and sort all these things out into their own places - but there just isn't this sort of luxury now, won't be until, well, it doesn't matter anymore. trying to lay it out here just makes me more aware of how messed up things are..

living life as if it's supposed to play itself out like a serial is all very nice and all, with the self-indulgence and the memorable parts of it all where things click and stick, and when the good times roll, everything just feels like they're in their places.. but in the long run things go up and down huh? i should just try to make it feel like things are smoothing out again, and hey maybe they'll oblige. it could happen.

just need to be serious about doing stuff.. some things, in the back of my mind i knew i'll never forget, and it may have taken a while to realize how much things mean to a guy and to come to comfortable terms with reality. but maybe with some things, i've just got to be more hardhanded, huh? i don't know what to do, damn i really don't know what to do, but i better darn well get serious about whatever i AM going to do, and there's the only option, right there, quit moping around waiting for the devil already.

sometimes it's hard to live things out properly, since things started falling down or i don't know what started it all, i can be freaking immature about stuff and just get too comfortable behaving in ways that i really shouldn't be comfortable with, would never have been if not for- well circumstances, i can blame them for everyone else's stuff but can i blame it for my stuff. i don't know! i think i need to make more conscious effort once again to be the person i want to be. i'd let myself fall apart far too much and forget to pull it together when the heat dried up.

wake up, kid. by all counts architecture is the only thing that's left. people are illusive, people are too simple or too far away, people only want so much or they get what they want and come and go. every time i try to settle the problems of today i keep ending up feeling so alone. what a screwball, huh. well, i have my days.

it's all still a pretty drama i guess. days when things were technically more complicated, more stuff was going on, more places to go and see, life was just so in line and *snap* alright. now with nothing left on my platter, people just, really get to me. maybe the key was having just such few people who counted, and really taking it all the way.
how do i make that happen again, hm.

i have a theory

2008-07-04T22:30:00.002+08:00

damn, these few days i keep SLEEPING. it's like i'm really tired or something, but i've really no reason to be at all! and i keep dreaming, i bet it's related.

don't know what to do

2008-07-03T16:38:00.005+08:00

She changes your mind
When you see the joy in her eyes
It makes you feel
It makes you feel
That she draws your eyes
From all the things that made you numb
It makes you feel
It makes you feel

And I could open up my heart and let her out
And I would never have to sing her name aloud
It was your hello that kept me hanging on every word
And your goodbye that keeps me listening for your voice around each corner
It keeps me listening for you voice around each corner

And I'll sing songs
To help me stay up all night long
Cause I don't want to go to sleep
And I'll sing a song
And I hope you're listening carefully
And know exactly what I mean
You know exactly what I mean

And I could open up my heart and let her out
And I would never have to sing her name aloud
It was your hello that kept me hanging on every word
And your goodbye that keeps me listening for your voice around each corner
It keeps me listening for you voice around each corner

It's the song you must seek out
When your night has just begun
In the distance you can find
The lips from which was sung a melody.

It was your hello that kept me hanging on every word
And your goodbye that keeps me listening for your voice around each corner
I was hanging on every word
And your goodbye
It keeps me listening for your voice around each corner
It keeps me listening for your voice around each corner

You've got an extra special heart
A perfect light that shines through
And it seems the hardest part
Is shining back at you
Shining back at you

So forgive me
Cause I don't know what to do
When you look at me
There can be no hesitation
There cannot be a close second to you
I don't know what to do
When you look at me
When you look at me

I've got a perfectly normal heart
Bruised and broken from within
At times I don't know how to start
To let you in here
To let you in here

So forgive me
Cause I don't know what to do
When you look at me
There can be no hesitation
There cannot be a close second to you
I don't know what to do
When you look at me
When you look at me
Cause I don't know what to do
When you look at me
There can be no hesitation
There cannot be a close second to you

To let you in here

So forgive me
Cause I don't know what to do
When you look at me
There can be no hesitation
There cannot be a close second to you
I don't know what to do
When you look at me
There can be no hesitation
There cannot be a close second to you

homemade barley

2008-06-27T21:53:00.005+08:00

i must have broken a million things;
my guitar's in one piece though, maybe i'll
where do you go to find a confidant who actually cares and doesn't judge? my Father judges, even as He is good, before i say a word- i don't choose to be this way! since i knew it wouldn't follow through i've been trying to stop, and i don't even know if this is good or bad, but damn if the way i'm feeling about handling it is anything to go by it must be something truly awful. there's nothing else but this to talk about, yes i need to end task. don't tell me to or how to, stay if you will till i've broken through. that's all i need now..
i can't get away without making some people feel uncomfortable, and i can't stand being where i am sometimes, it doesn't help the end-tasking at all. the next time i break down and do something stupid i'll just regress, it's something to do to make it- i don't know. it's something to do to get away. i can't walk off with this, i don't know that time will solve this like it has the other, and even if it did i'd have thrown a year or more away if it comes to nothing, when that part of me, that stupid part finally quits and realizes it won't come to anything. by then it could well be too late, have given up too much that i treasured, once more for the one that i couldn't have or keep.
sigh - breath. the whole trick lies in not expecting anything at all without giving up hope that something could come of it, that one of us could make something of it. you can do that. just.. deep breaths and look at the world -
it's beautiful. i can keep the faith that it'll go on being so, for, long enough.

(will this all work out, how will we ever know?)

2008-06-23T20:38:00.001+08:00

every time i have a short walk under daubed morning skies or a little ways to go on the feeder service in the middle of the evening, and i'm trying to figure these things out, i can't help but go,

no.
i want back.

confusing stars for satellites

2008-06-20T23:08:00.006+08:00

there was a point of time in my life when, though the problems weren't few and the days could become monotonous when a guy begins to slide and forget to look and see the beauty and count his blessings.. i was sure of the future, as in that it would turn out ok, no matter what hit me next, i had the help to back me up and the right places to turn for a bit when i got tired.

天空下有个角落永远张开手等我回来
在那里我又是原来的我不管有多少的路已走过
握着拳的手放松这里有人给你靠
心情我都懂因为我是最了解你的朋友

i could almost begin to feel that way again, i need to go to Him.. i love loads of people, the roads look clear ahead of me, i'm ready to tackle whatever they throw at me, by myself now. i'm beginning to come to terms with history, i know i can't expect anything like the past from anyone, not even myself. i know what counts now; their decision, our commitment to spend the time. how people are beautiful because you love them, and not the other way around.

天空下无数角落有时感觉寂寞没有爱
这世界到底在乱些什么曾经害怕也会想要退缩
握着拳的手放松这里有人给你靠
心情我都懂不管多久都还有朋友

people will be leaving, i could be leaving for somewhere i don't expect, or nowhere at all. the past may revisit me, i'll make it the present if it lets me, i can do anything once i know i'm back where i belong. i'll choose when i'm given the option to, but now i'm good with just loving and living, and well, i'll take what i can get. we're moving on; don't mean we forget, but it does mean the things that gave me happiness in the past won't be the same ever again, no matter what happens. also means, i'll build new, with time and whoever sees value in it; and there's no right or wrong answer, hmm. in this time and age, the things we can build up last for only so long; what lasts is the memories that we save from the time that we spend, because we choose to love.

your increasingly long embraces

2008-06-18T23:26:00.004+08:00

everyone gets free pepsi at pizza hut after a long day of studying thanks to me ! xD

i'm pretty sure it's about 100 days to A's, though i probably won't take the time to count, and well i guess i'm feeling fine about it, as of now. stuff is slowly filtering out of the recesses of my mind after we got back from our competition tour in poland and etc, but there's sooo much to do, i have to say along with everyone else ugh i hate school. i guess the heavy panicking will start when i begin stepping out of exam halls.

i'm running out of things to say, the phrases that pop into my head don't stick anymore. i'm ok now, and well don't know how to feel about it ahha. maybe through time my mind twists it and it becomes a beautiful picture too, a good memory. but well, given, it's definitely not hard to do, and maybe she did it right in going like she did. ah shucks.

mugging in school every day is going, but slowly, i do fear this CT a lot. but i fear other things more, i'm hiding behind the CTs for this week and the next: art class. KI independent study. (college apps); but it won't last forever.. sigh i need to change things.

a lot of people i know have changed a lot over the past two years, and outside that world i think i've changed too. for better or for worse, i'm still hanging on to my end of the rope, will be for a really long time, bet on it. when you tug, i'll start figuring where to get the strength to reel you back in to me.

pocketbook scribbling

2008-05-22T23:09:00.007+08:00

i don't know why i bring up certain things, things that well, for a good reason i choose to erase from my memory. there's a reason why strong drink often makes a man forget what he did when he was drunk, after all. oh well, maybe it's some sort of retarded arrogance, what the hell are you trying to show off man, that you've had experience being more of a retard than the other guys?

SAT results back, i did abysmally. it really does feel like breaking up through sms, how you click a link and there's your answer from a load of colleges right there. i know i didn't really prepare, but oh well sigh. so much for all that, mr. ng was even talking to us about college stuff and all that today, he really can get a guy comfortable talking about these stuff when he's given the time and gets down to it, lol. i asked him about cornell and how i really hoped to study architecture there and he went, almost briskly, lightly and frivolously, oh! our students seem to do quite well with their admissions officers, those who apply are generally accepted. well. perhaps it's a test of how much i want it, haha.

in the end i suppose all such things are idealizations based on what we can imagine and what we hope for, but i'd bet on them, since there's not much more to work on, i won't be able to go and see, duh. and well, reputation precedes them, so whatever. at this kind of time it's depressing to think about such things, even though when you really consider it the fact is we'll have to begin to handle these things seriously only in a few months time.

anyway, what's at hand is our competition tour, and i have only one small prayer for trip, really. better that one's fears not be shared, so shush, haha. flu-thing is mostly cleared up, i do believe i'll be in perfect shape just as the plane takes off. or i hope, but i'm fit to sing my best, haha. now it's a matter of getting into top gear, fine-tuning all the equipment. sigh i wish i had a better recorder. do i sound like that!

life has been trying, as usual. in flashbacks: i'm an absolutely horrible student to mr chia, sigh. i have no excuses, i just really suck, i should drop h1 but! i don't want to! oh gosh how do i work on solidifying my three core subjects, researching and studying for my thesis and KI, and spend all the time and passion i want to on art. i need a time machine, but well isn't this complaint all tired and worn out already from being used by people all over the world.

people have been trying, i've been trying, i don't know! how have i been affecting people, how do i stop being something detrimental when so often some part of me just isn't interested in thinking about that. i appreciate that when i come right out and ask mr lee what it is about me that bothers him he can come right out and just say it too. i'm tired and tired of inadequate communication, if we're all equally mature individuals can't we just accept one another and work from there to better ourselves as we deem fit, to make ourselves easier to be loved. also i'm tired of backstabbing and well i don't know, that's too harsh a thing to call it! and and and come on.. when i ask questions, i'm not trying to challenge you! i'm trying to get a better understanding of what's going through your mind and heart so that i can make better decisions on how to think and feel myself. don't you think, just maybe it's something about you that's making you so defensive, nobody's accusing or judging you yet. and it well, shows, folks' worldviews, what is so surprising about talent and effort spent to develop a passion that's been kept under wraps because a person decides not only to be humble but to be actively so. perhaps all the surprise at a person's capabilities is because you yourself think too much of yourselves. sigh gosh this is so snippish.

i begin to understand the stuckness of my psychological state. so many situations i'm caught in between emotions and beliefs and stands, i'm not angry i'm not hurt, i'm not confident i'm not humble, i'm not unconcerned i'm not desperate to get close, i'm not sorry for the distance i'm not happy about what's working out. what is with all this.

i want to go back, then stop timeeee. nobody here will have anything to do with love it seems, at least as of now.
i'm listening to old music again. really old.
old as us.

dragonfly's wings

2008-05-20T20:45:00.006+08:00

Taking for granted
(taking for granted)
... all of her smiles
That got away

so much for breaking the continuity of the tedium of life
we're back in the emotional poverty cycle, the most
exact description of vocalizing these days must have been
that one; a day-time psychiatric nightmare. not vocalizing
itself though, of course. somehow i've begun to sing with
more heart, maybe something broke

i bought an music player i'm in medium-major debt once again
somehow i don't care for now. i'll get a job or something,
i'll eat flowers and thoughts of her breath, i'll draw
trees and trees, and trees and forests on your paper journal
i'll see you soon, come back from !

what am i? am i a liability, am i a jerk, am i a problem that
needs managing with human resource and thoughtful thoughts and
placing, how do i articulate the separation, the link that seems
to you to be enough, but i see plainly isn't there, we don't
voice-dance in the hall before the lecture theater, we don't
play anything meaningful on that stage. this is a psychiatric
nightmare, i'll have to try harder to be a better person, or even
the person i was though there's no escape and no soft refuge
when people begin to cry only an day and a half after singing

! this is no time to be discouraged, we're all
afraid, this was when we needed the ties of touch
and breath and simple, speaking words on our lips
i've forgotten what we were singing about, i'm singing
about crying out and about things that aren't there oh,
great and marvelous are your ways! Lord God Almighty
let me stand on the rock, where - oh, great mystery.
light, light
warm -
and heavy,
pure
pure, as if gold
they sing and prophesy!
dry your eyes, they chill the body but
not the soul, if i can help it at all,
if i can help it at all.

If you find yourself here on my side of town
I'd pray that you'd come to my door
Talk to me like you don't know what we ever fought about
Cause I don't remember anymore
I just know that she warms my heart
And knows what all my imperfections are
And she said that I was the brightest little firefly in her jar

i'm tired, for what people are talking about
and that somehow for some reason i had to
come to know of it, i don't know. and we'll
all have to go at it even more, i'm helpless
i'll just weaken myself and sing my soul one
last time with us children.

i'm sorry! but for all i've done
i'm sorry too that you've to be
so sure that you're right and
well, maybe you can take the time
to tell me what and who i am and
why i do what i do, as you seem
so sure of, when i sing i seem to
forget exactly.

and maybe i'd ask to know all
about you before you decide
to walk away and i'll close
something that never became
more than acquaintance, you
can ask a better friend of mine
and a closer friend to you why
i can't handle you or you or you
i'm coarser than i thought, and
i'll ask you about you and me
and maybe you'll answer me for a while
so that maybe i'll ask you early on
a polish morning on the porch of a small town motel
after we've missed the sunrise, gosh
it must have been on purpose, wasn't it.
it must have been.

quoth the raven

2008-05-15T20:09:00.006+08:00

hello. it's been a vapid
sort of week. people
falling in and out of love,
doing incomprehensible
things. wondering about
life and themselves, doing
tutorials, singing songs.

i'm in need of a new hobby
because i'm done with all
the tutorials i'm supposed
to be doing, except for
physics, which i intend to
dedicate the tour to. and
art, which i will do to-
morrow, and so forth. so
much for big decisions to
become a lifeless mugger
made at the start of 2007
i'm bored and i haven't
even started properly.

i'm browsing online, possible
subscriptions to architecture
magazines and such. the problem
is they're quite costly, and
a good number of nice ones
aren't available locally, i
think.
i left school earlier today on
impulse and -
other feelings, to distract me
from aksjdfhlaother things
i'm planning on giving up on
cooking, i swear it's impossible
to explore without dedicating
your life and soul. not that i cook
anyway. just produce edible, passable
stuffs carelessly.
haven't had chest pains for two
weeks now, so i'm taking it as
a good sign and training again.
illness is passing, just need to
clear my sinuses; i think i'll be
back into healthy singing form
next next rehearsal latest. that's
good, i guess.

"'tisn't fair!" i swear
it's not worth being
homey and unexciting
no-one appreciates the
peaceable, and annoying
boys who take the effort
to play it gayish and
please the girls in
the weirdest ways, make
me tired after i've
cooled it.

ah whatever really. what
i need is something fresh
something that will keep
me occupied but open to
the people whom i seek
now, but are occupied or
silently hidden, good
grief i don't think i can
take this much longer.

no, EVERYTHING you speak
of is cliché, it is so
to me, and your lack of
charity makes for no
possible conversation
nor engagement with you
with me. no, it's just
me, i'm sheltered, since
i came out of childhood
i'd never been made to
be accustomed to have
to find a way to connect
intimately with people
with no wonder nor
compassion. no, wait
it's just that the world
is made so we don't
connect. oh well

! this is so uppity.
i could set myself on fire
now.
gah bah why am i singing
this game has been drawn out too long
it's really really tiring sitting in the same room as you all
will someone open the door and offer to go for a walk.

de significância

2008-05-13T18:46:00.011+08:00

i wish i had the courage to step uninvited
into your schedule where i need to be
and: if you hadn't told me otherwise, nothing
would have made me doubt for a second that
you were the wonder-ful person who wrote
those words.

Lord, i owe you so much though often feel
so little, for what you have given
i'd run for the scrap of paper in my jacket
where i've jotted down phrases that reminded
me of you, just because they'd be the sort
of meaningless pretty pieces of the language
that i'd blurt out to you when we're walking
arm in arm down the street, then ask you later,
what on earth was that i did utter?

as down the concrete hallway he trod, you could
hear the sound of the kneading of his heels
into the earth,

"i do love your tempered womanliness, he
murmured. learning further in: and i do fear
i love you more for the parsimony with which
you choose to so behave; with a light laugh -
isn't is precious how we speak so in vaulted
whisper? how cloyingly paltered, like the
things we paint gaily in conversation, with
distaste

"

we've only just begun, to live
white lace and promises
a kiss for luck,
and we've on our way

we've only just begun-
before the rising sun
we fly
so many roads to choose
we start off walking, and learn to run!
we've just begun..

sharing horizons that are new to us
watching the signs along the way
talking it over, just the two of us
working together.. day to day, together

and when the evening comes
we smile
so much of life ahead
we'll find a place where there's room to grow
we've just begun

i'm slowly falling in love with bossa all over again
(not that i ever fell out, it just sort of felt like
unfaithfulness, willing yet technically blameless)
this afternoon i walked back with cold sweat
and feeling pretty queasy, but i decided to just go
ahead with the plan; changed and washed to get clean
into a new frame of mind like i've come to like doing
put the stereo under the bed onto track seven and -
in warmth that could only be called so for the artificial cold
lay flat, clutching the sheets and cotton from beneath
i got up at the end of the compilation and got on with life
and that's how music has a coarse, comforting sort of touch on me.

perhaps it's a sign. the discourse on beauty today
reminded me of something; of how though we find it
hard to know what is art, we hardly find it as difficult
to call things art, airily. so if art is meant to represent,
perhaps it is not so important what things represent,
but that things represent important things to us. as reminders
of affections we attach to metaphors for the bits of the
fabric of life.

and so perhaps it's not so important what is
or isn't a sign, but that we are reminded of
something important from time to time, through
our way of living. for so often we might say,
oh! is this what you signify when you did such
and such an action, but the reply comes as, why
no, i didn't mean anything at all. the value of
the lesson learned is inherent, whether or not there
actually is a teacher; life is the teacher for us,
whether we actively pay attention and pick them out
wherever we are given to so do, then ask relevant
questions through our responses to the twists that
she gives, that is more important, perhaps. so maybe
she gives the beautiful answers to questions about
life, only then.

we've only just begun! to live
our life in singing isn't coming
to an end, friend. our education(in song)
has just begun, and life will keep
teaching us about voices and music
through our lives, whether one becomes
a maestro or a mother, and the true
singing is the gentle road of living
a life of song. not ending, or beginning
to sing. only, the gaussian-ed crescents
of our voices in song wafting our hearts
into the time-weathered skies over the
homes of the people whom we will and do love

On Chesil Beach

2008-05-12T00:14:00.004+08:00

i had written a suitably classy-upped two paragraphs to
comment on the book, but rereading gave me one of those
horribly tepid feelings, of disgust. i'll be quite plain, i hope.

the entire writing constantly reminded me of dissimilarities,
of course i cannot but help to draw comparison, haha. one
thing that struck me however was how they too had realized
how chance the meeting was, and how remarkable. i'd begun to
wonder if anyone else has felt this way; then the entire
consciousness slipped into foolish revelation; of course.
how unremarkable.

but! to not appear unsophisticated in reading(that of course
was not the center of the text for me) i'll go on. well. there's
not much that is impersonal to say, with the sort of writing it
is. but the one thing it did was keep me up and down on the flow
of the words between the two protagonists, and on how their
unrestraint was every bit as devastating as their silence. of course,
it is a central issue to pursuing this sort of life; life with another.
the thing at play here is the circumstances under which i read, which
are complicated as that three hour scene in less than an inch of pages,
if that is possible at all. hm. no, it is not, actually. their lives
are more complicated than they themselves, it is a product of
an unhappy uncommunicativeness with those whom they love. we love.

whilst people speak always of treasuring our time, building up
precious moments, i wonder only now if i'm doing the right thing,
trying to drink in the present and be glad in the Lord, now. trying
to give up living on memories; and it is working at the same time as
it is not. i do not think i live on memories anymore, but i keep a face
in mind, of course. gosh, i suddenly felt confessional for a moment there.
anyway. i do not live on the present yet either; packing my suit back into
the wardrobe i fell back onto the carpet and stared onto the mended ceiling-fault
i am living each moment to the fullest. am i, then. it feels empty, maybe because
i am not really, yet? it feels like i am living on nothing. how does that work? hm.
i may regret saying this, or this will have no effect whatsoever, but i wish that
something would irrevocably be thrust upon me and force me to make some decision
that would actually mean something. in any sense at all.

the book is incidentally, like bread and marmalade to me; the wholemeal which
is not coarse bread and therefore obviously high-bred, but- the citrus which
is sharp and tangy, as it should be, but- in its entirety something that is
quite generally not a taste i appreciate. it is a somewhat complex yet
distilled course of experience, yet disagrees intricately with my palate;
it's quite beyond description, i'm hopelessly inapt haha.

either way, in conclusion i would boldly say that
the crux of the difference lay in that we were not
so tightly dedicated and chaste in our thoughts and
passions; we loved every part of the world with complete
and combined fervor; that is how i will recall it. and
because of that, any miscommunication must not be irrevocable
and we must forever be just as sensitive to one another's
shifts in thought and feeling, right up till the moment when
we are not there to sense it.

verse twenty-eleven

2008-05-10T21:09:00.005+08:00

week has been crazy, i see huilin around like the world
actually is a small place, but oh well. i'm not
a good enough person to have the energy to treasure
with all that heart every moment and person with
that sort of intensity, yet. we keep growing.

i'm sort of sick now but this is one of those times
i've decided to man it and slowly run it dry, rather
than knocking myself out for two days and getting back
into top form. i didn't want to miss a moment of it all.
the music can be devastating to your body as it can be
to your heart mind and soul, what do you know, eh.

it's 17 days till competition tour! i do think i'll
thoroughly soak in as much of chorale as i can in
this time. by no means will chorale be the end of
my affair with singing, but there's just a lot of
unspoken unresolvedness, in my heart anyway. i
don't know if i'm man enough to resolve them, but
the fact is that time waits for no-one, and people
leave. i don't know what to say or do about that,
really, haha. i'll do my best? or not so.. or that
inadequacy is a fundamental state, outside of my
control to address. i wish it otherwise, anyway.
i wish that things had turned out so much
different, that i was a different man, sometimes.
that i might have things some other
more desirous way, from this perspective anyway.

not really thinking straight, haven't been for
a while(you can't really blame me, i'm some sort of
quaternary transition ion that can't be isolated! noo)
but what the hell. the bottom line is that when i do
think i'm thinking straight, i can't imagine anything
that i can see now comparing to what we had then, and
60 months and counting down the road i don't
think i can reconcile myself with anyone
just yet, not with a clear conscience.

die Umarmungen du gab, dass so
entwaffnet mich, wenn auch nicht
zu mir, obwohl Ich hätte es so,
sie füllte mich mit solchen
nackt Sehnsucht nach jenem Augenblick,
dann den Rest des Abends,
damit ich kann keine Ruhe.

five hundred thousand lilies

2008-05-07T01:39:00.005+08:00

i'm pretty darn tired but hey i don't want to go offline to sleep
what with everyone still here despite getting home at like 0100
concert was pretty darn good all in all i think. so much for
discussions of which bits were good and which weren't so much
i say it was damn good. every screw-up and every millisecond of
locking into the sound, i think i'll remember for a long time, how
we sang, as we walked off the stage: Great and Marvelous are
Your Deeds! Lord God Almighty! since we're trying to feel, i'd try a
different way now. i felt humbled by what He's done with us, little prayers
backstage and in a quiet corner of the changing room, such beautiful
music given to us. i'd like to believe we've given it back, back to Him and
made our souls richer for the love we've shared. i'd say we've done good (:

subconsciously i'd began to think about what i'd been feeling, so many people to
think about, so many un-usual feelings to expect. ah well, reflection can come
tomorrow, heh. i'll hit the sheets,

five hundred thousand lilies planted in my soul
five hundred thousand lilies golden white to make me whole
fenced-in fields o'er the by and by
satin buds they live and die
through sleepless nights they've come to lie
upon my heart
for since the streams of life must part
and every raindrop bends, breaks, heals and imparts
a gentle brush upon their tender flesh besides
i'll sing a song and move along
touch your face then swell the throng
five hundred thousand lilies in my parted heart belong

blam! floodlights

2008-05-02T21:56:00.005+08:00

do you know, my heart skips a beat when you speak about
confidence- what kind? i'd like to ask, but any-way we're still
sashaying around one another from day to glorious day

i am immensely unprepared for the SATs tomorrow. if somehow i end up in a American university i swear my peers will murder me for how little i've spent on getting ready for this and getting in besides, haha. but whether or not that may happen.. is another cloud of thought altogether.

i'm doing fractions of tests on and offline right now, should really print the admissions slip soon. these have been busy days, busy busy weeks but i don't even really recall where they went. i do think it's time to snap out of unfeeling-ness, at whatever risk. i'm sick of being blank, hahahahah, so help me.

mostly i've been immensely tired from chorale. there have been a few more good moments, though sometimes it still seems like people can't feel and sing at the same time. furthermore i've pinpointed/been shown precisely where+how my technique needs improving, so i have Renewed Sense of Purpose when it comes to singing (: have been working on it. but oh well times is short these days, i'll get to it once this rush period of a week and a half is over.

i do have a sense of how i've slowly developed vocally over these years of choral music, and well. i guess i don't regret it, staying through. it's never been for nothing, and there are always good times and bad times, (however disproportionate it seems all depends on your expectations, doesn't it). i promise never to stop expecting more, expecting something even more picturesquely beautiful.

events coming up are i) SAT Reasoning Test tomorrow, ii)chorale concert, iii) trip, iv) CT2s, v)Singapore Garden Festival + Art Festival, vi)superhardcorefulltime mugging. which really should begin earlier.

i'm listing them over and over to myself. also,
knowledge and inquiry independent study thesis
architecture admissions portfolio
university research(to be done!)
also, ~~(dreaming)~~
vocal lessons
getting back into top form
golf, squash, basketball, frisbee
language course if necessary
getting a job
taking the effort to clean up and be proper.

and i don't know. ice skating? i thought i wanted to, and not just for that, but they say i'm too old and i have to agree hahahhahaa whatever man. oh and i need to go spend money on clothes after concert i swear i have too many t-shirts, people keep giving them to me.

this is like one of- how many? psyche ups into the game of life, which has to happen when you're at the sign-ups. i'm just.. taking it a step early and doing it during the pre-match games, i guess. might as well make the most of it and take it as a practice for the real one, even though it's a completely different ball game. because after you grow up, you can't say, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, as easily anymore.

we are going to win this together.

it must be tropical fever

2008-04-28T21:36:00.008+08:00

your ways are mighter, mightier than my ways
oh, your thoughts are higher than my thoughts

who shall not fear you, who shall not fear you, oh Lord? and glorify Your name?
for here i am, humbled by your Majesty

it may be a large thing to claim in the eyes of some, but i'm decidedly disturbed by some small similarities between me and mr lee. so maybe it's true that people straightaways tend to not like people who are like unto them; and it may be that i've much i can learn from him. how unwholesomely unnatural, haha.

don't be afraid to wear a dress
when you're looking for the monster in Loch Ness

it's a hard time now, though maybe not much more so than recently. and well, less than in times past but not so long ago anyway. got loads of things to do.. big talk, and a lot to live up to. i hope i'm up to these tasks, Lord..

anyway, i don't understand what's going on, it's like some people have all decided to ignore me simultaneously. i'm quite confused, but in the light of past experiences i don't think i dare to care too much yet, unless there's some hint however small that it'll not bring more pain. i'm finding shallow comfort in acquaintances and growth there, i'm trying to be more independant. i'll not forget the world, though.

oh, and i really should bring more food for practices. i just wolfed down the packed lunch on saturday in a few mouthfuls, was so hungry. hm but i can't think of anything that would be cool to prepare and won't spoil after a whole morning. or maybe it doesn't have to last the whole morning. hmmm.

the pebbles you've arranged
in the sand they're strange
They speak to me like constellations-

snow in a bottle

2008-04-27T19:40:00.007+08:00

a dose of reality is, trying to be independent. and living like you are instead of just talking. from now till december -

take the SATs, have a good concert, have a good trip, write a good paper for my Independent Study. study super hard. make a good portfolio for interviews and mailing. do well for prelims, do well for As. sort out college admissions, whatever i can now before it's too late..

improve my vocal technique. learn a language, get involved in more large-scale design/enrivonment-related events(like singapore garden festival coming up), try to get involved in a firm. draw more, write more, ~~talk more with people~~. everything i want to do just makes me feel even more isolated.

i can't decide! i used to think that i have already, but i haven't really. what i should do with my future, what i should do with now; whether i want to be serious or not, what to admit and what to forget, what to do when people call my bluff. what to do with the past.

i want to ask if the four of us are interested in going to learn golf together, i want for chorale to go up to malaysia after the As to celebrate the end of something that's been beautiful at times but was never meant to be any more no matter how much anyone wished it. i want to give up wanting to talk to people, to these individuals, as if they are individuals; who am i to want? i want to talk with fiona again. i want to empty my life then fill it up again starting with Him, i want to end what needs ending, and settle whatever can't be ended into a continuous, meaningful dialogue with life.

i don't know if i want more in my life again, in the old way, but i know that i want more in my life. hard as it sounds, at least then when everything fails and everyone else has other things anyway, i'll have something better to do than going out to the old place or some other in the botanics, gawking at awesome architecture and words in books, and writing rubbish poetry/prose and making rubbish designs. and i don't mean going out with an oversized group of people of whom i don't know the half to talk about nothing and go nowhere.

life is empty when everyone's gone and you've become too emotionally drained to feel anything about the past anymore.

Even though I'll never need her,
even though she's only giving me pain,
I'll be on my knees to feed her,
spend a day to make her smile again
Even though I'll never need her,
even though she's only giving me pain
As the world is soft around her,
leaving me with nothing to disdain.

Even though I'm not her minder,
even though she doesn't want me around,
I am on my feet to find her,
to make sure that she is safe and sound.
Even though I'm not her minder,
even though she doesn't want me around,
I am on my feet to find her,
to make sure that she is safe from harm.

The sun sets on the war,
the day breaks and everything is new...

mochavodka

2008-04-24T21:22:00.007+08:00

tell him how you feel, tell him what you think
tell him how it is when you're on the brink
tell him when you're down, going round and round
and he'll do his best to make it right, now

i'm sorry for how things stand between us as of now. it's like our relationship has held strong through silence and distance and reduced time spent together; it's not supposed to be that way! i'm supposed to spend all the time, the words and heart. but belief is a coherent structure, even if it isn't drawn out on a sheet of paper in my back pocket. why can't i just be disillusioned and get on with life? how are accquiantances around me becoming disillusioned with life and yet appearing to keep the faith. it just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

talked with teach about double degree-ing in the future. i just thought, since i'm degenerating, why not make it an art. take it the full distance - with my shitass grades, if i make it into Todai(or where-ever,) and somehow have the $$ to finance my studies, why not just take the Architecture and Engineering double and have absolutely no life. from too much to none at all. it'd be the sensible thing to do if i'm going to be a stubborn arse and not make things better for myself. been moving from alone to not alone to more alone than before to so, so alone. rather than spending time doing nothing, writing crap, drawing rubbish and moping about in between people who are preoccupied, just work loh.

i'll even be the postmodern man and take part time Law after that if it strikes my fancy then, hahha like some asian feller down under who goes, HI! i'm an architect-doctor-lawyer ya'll. yeah, then i'll be able to curate or sth. what the heck. I should just work and spend more time with Him. what else is there? i've most likely been trying to go about this all wrong. ever since 4 years ago.

i don't see music in my future anymore. musicians, even hobbyists, have to be the most consistently fickle and spiteful artists. it's all about manipulating and cliquing and living at the expense of other's happiness, as i see it; and i'm in talk-rubbish mood. why are you angry? go punch a tree if you want.

He holds me firm and secure whether i rise or fall

really shouldn't do it!

2008-04-21T22:28:00.022+08:00

i wanted to get a new place and start anonymous, but circumstances have made it such that i can only say, i've abused you so and go on writing here.

writing has too often been catharsis, careless release and self-expression+discovery of pent up emotion. i don't think it's a responsible thing way to do it, but i've been falling into desperation lately. will have to temper it with sense as best as i can, i guess. also, i'm sorry no-one ever says anything. oh well. perhaps there's nothing to be said.

i'll write in short sentences, what happens next. and maybe what i think and feel.
(i begin to adore contemporary artists' ways of getting points across. why can't living be an art?)
say it with me - the art of living.

a) i'm so tired. b) how did i get here? c) you hit me right there. d) i'm trying to focus, but e) we need to talk.

today was as mondays tend to go; long, tumultuous morning. falling back into the company of classmates and lecture-tutorial route, with a sigh of release? that i'm allowed not to think about certain things for a while.
living it carelessly. i'm too tired to care about consequences, but i know i can handle them if it comes to that. i'm still a guy in withdrawal, even with iron discipline(haha!) and, His supporting hand.

mr lee seemed different today, or maybe i'm being less intolerable. people vanish without even appearing. i was going to just leave then julian appeared. listened and talked with lee-na and tzung about God and parents and faith for a short while, in the dark. then trashed my voice for the afternoon and evening. took the buses back at the worst possible time.

wasted time and energy thinking and feeling. decided not to get a haircut, after that long walk down yesterday evening and getting turned away by her, she must have been just as weary. steam-blasted the thoughts down the shower and got into clean clothes to start.
the moment the sun sets is the perfect time to begin a new work with a cleansed mind. ran a number of errands at a leisurely pace since i just bathed. got to the part where i fill in birthdays of significant or chance people, from online into the new gray book. got to reading and thinking again. then i got to here.

i shall never go into graphic design. i've lost all faith in my capabilities in 2 dimensions and color. the classic feel of crisp 3d form and body comes easier nowadays. have i mentioned i've several projects i wish to attempt? silkscreen, model, holdall(will cost much to get the parts and cloth!) but there's so little time.. how does anyone have the time to make a portfolio.

i wanted to get a polaroid and start a scrapbook. but they've taken them off the factory lines since february this year. can you tell, we're losing our sense of nostalgia.

i don't really know what i'm going to do yet. i'm really just going it anyhow now. i lost 4kg since i stopped training. no wonder it came down to me not being able to breath when i ran. sigh. basically feel quite fail now, but i know i'll know what to do, and find the strength to do it through Him somehow. just is lousy to feel alone.

this is a haiku.
really, this is a haiku !
damn. this haiku sucks.

steady breath

2008-04-13T22:19:00.011+08:00

ow- you crushed it again, you're crunching the broken glass underfoot happily, aren't you.
just when i fear everything's one-sided, you drop me a line back up to old faith, but i'm fearful, are you, aren't you
duplicitous?
cream of celery actually is pretty good stuff, for veggies
i'm going to put architecture aside for a few months.
develop a few artpiece concepts that i've had into life this year, maybe
miss you like crazy

sigh.
i can give you three good reasons, actually. i'd start going, no four, no five, but- stop thinking. i can give you three good reasons.
why i am annoyed, disappointed, sad, crushed, why i regret choosing certain ways, people, why i question where i am, why i have hope for so much.
"when you feel your life's too hard
just go and have a talk with God"

i am more than singstimme; i am song.
you just had to crush my little happiness, didn't you. but fine, we're all better for our efforts.
i just thought, for my crushingly high expectations of everything and myself, it's good to get a small bit of affirmation, in a world where everyone is unresponsive and it seems that all the pretty things that are done are just suave, poised, invisible men.
it stings my inner eyes like a mist, (of) your withheld words, touch; but beside it all i am extremely glad for my brothers, for all our differences and disagreements at times. when we talk about the world and the people who we love, i feel like all things are firmly in His hands once more.

the spaces in between

2008-04-11T21:04:00.019+08:00

because i love the sight of it, and it's been pushed to the bottom -
doesn't it just look pristinely luscious?
i think i should hiatus. ~~i wanted to type and type and type and try to express it with words, but i am a Failure at such things so, heh. let me try practicing being concise for the benefit of the papers i am meant to write.~~ well that didn't work. for the record i was a lot more angsty in my first try. anyway woohoo! long read for those who are.. really bored i guess. why would you read it otherwise? huh.

i am lost, and i do not like the feeling. In the past, it was once big chaotic disarray and often i didn't know what the heck i was doing and why, and then there would be some parts that would keep me sane, that fed dreams that grew and changed; going to the army, studying and learning things like greek and latin, french and japanese, modeling part time after taking the effort to make myself proper. graduating, becoming a pilot, a chef, opening a restaurant cafe for real, curating art exhibitions and speaking with great people in all sorts of fields. i imagined walking from the louvre in grey and white suits, what is life but a fleeting vision of loveliness.

becoming an architect. working on the forex, flying ever so often for international projects for a foreign firm(i'd junior overseas then charm them into setting up a place in singapore, hah!) entrenching myself in tanglin for what little sweet reminiscence and sentimental beauty; at least the physical environment carried a facade of peace, i can live in the backyard if the world is my home and the former is at least pretty, the world itself is not even sometimes.

etcetera retarded dreams. so many more.. must less idealistic(in the financial sense, but otherwise no), just as retarded. life was so. as idealistic and romanticized as it could be, grit your teeth and block out the uglier parts of life even if they take up so many of the hours when the sun shines. nothing made sense, but there was the sense that i'm doing something, that will get me somewhere, somehow, eventually. somewhere that wouldn't be too bad. now,

not so. i lost a little peace, and my great peace feels empty without a family - with a family so separated, so sparse. i stopped everything, i stopped doing retarded things, things that wasted time. things that ate away at my soul, i thought it would help me feel less broadly and with depth. well, obviously i didn't know what the hell i was getting myself into.

maybe putting up facades is essential to meaningful living, and i missed the memo. trying to condense myself into one coherent personality which i can appreciate is a long and tiring process, but as i find myself getting somewhere with it i wonder if it's a good idea. siiiiigh. i need to slow down and go out and think. like really think about this whole deal for a few days. a week or more.

a) i feel like i am still not communicating with the people in my world.
it could never be more than one or two or three. i don't really mind that it only works between individuals, just grateful that it could at all. i find it hard to describe the kind of language that i use today, with whatever few people i see in my daily life.

it's like.. false closeness. so false, such a lie. a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with white bread that's far too thin and all you taste is the jam and butter, cloyingly sweet and plastic. life that is neither well balanced with both a few close and a good many peripheral, nor life on the brink with one big electron cloud and just one. just.. in between, the (not few not many) who exist are stuck in limbo between close and peripheral which is basically endlessly painful, like the rice paper of hope being torn a-part slowly, slowly, the large sheet as tall as a girl torn straight down the middle in the span of ten hours.

b) i'm less sure of where i'm going/how i am at all, and it's different from not knowing before.
when i had the mind to think about such things in the past(and now upon remembering the past seems so much shorter than it seemed then. sigh.) there was just irrational feeling of it'll-be-fine-ness. well, irrational is as irrational does, and now it's not here. i can take guesses as to why, but they'd be to no end.

not being socially schizo means not being able to artistically experience different paradigms and savour them in full intensity while they lasted. also, not only does life not taste bland(which in itself is an intense archetype), it's just a warbly coagulation of soury emotions. there's something there, but you're think you're pretty sure it's not art, or think you'd like to say that it isn't.

the long and short of it is that it feels like i'm not living meaningfully. i feel anger that i don't have really really really close friends like i romaticize(what is it with girls this age and thinking that every guy who walks up to speak to them is looking to get attached? or that's how it seems), angry at irrational little things like caring and birthdays and anniversaries and words, sigh they're all just meaningless mememtos, symbols, right? not really..

c) i'm tempted to regress, and i'm hungering for some development.
the time spent and sentimental value mean something. yet paradigm shifts are always painful experiences and you wonder if it would have been worth living in ignorance. nahhhh.. but gah. help! connect us.

i am tempted to regress. gosh darn it. i will not. but it's so painful, the idea that what i'd chosen in place of so much else(or what was actually worth nothing at all) is just a sophisticated, educated pretense. and it makes me SO ANGRY and grit teeth walk away look up breath, the little things that make it seem like, damn it's not worth it it's not worth it.

i am grateful. there are beautiful things, but this is the root of the sine curve that's going down, down; where i feel i need to sort things out, before i crash into the troughs of impassioned mid-Atlantic tempest waves. things like understanding terms of (unwritten unspoken)contracts, really coming to terms with how people are. trying to figure out how to be a better person. i don't spend much time balanced it seems, but i am trying to reduce the amplitude and frequency of these offensive swings, during the time i'm stable enough to, haha.

maybe one way to put it is, i'm not so worried about who i'm turning out to be yet(because i haven't allowed myself to let go and run wild, hope i don't) but i am worried about how i'm turning out. i didn't like being empty and everywhere, i don't like being stuck in stasis, lagging in limbo. can i move on now please?

i guess.. i'll just wait here till you decide.
knock knock. open up..?

soul itch

2008-04-10T00:18:00.006+08:00

singing has for so many ages past been intimately tied to love and we can hardly behave otherwise.
but
what? all of you seem strangers to me

i'm weary of this living, sigh. what are we doing all this for? if we've already accepted that we'll fade into obscure parts of one another's memories in but a few years. i hate it when things don't end. can't i?

I RESENT WALLS. THAT BREAK DOWN OUR COMMUNICATION. we wait in tandem with the universe for nothing, because no-one will say something. because to say something means that we hope, and if we believe that we have hope then we will, and when we have hope we fear that it will be crushed.

also, i do hope that, in the end, that's not the reason why you sing.

flambé you!

2008-04-07T17:15:00.012+08:00

(distracts self)
i wish i had the time and effort to spare to learn cooking properly.
like, gourmet. not like, just cooking to eat.

order has been restored in the universe, and i officially hate mondays like everyone else does, once more. before i proceed with some blase grouching about, i disclaim!(because we are a disclaiming society, to protect ourselves when we're talking b******t. "aw hey, i didn't say that. not really. i was pissed/fuming/drunk/stupid") i make no claims about the ethical value of these things i complain about! they just happen to be things that set me off. so there.

i hate it when people ignore me. maybe it's unusual where we live, and we're all expected to go about our own business ignoring everyone else, not being a busybody. it could be. doesn't mean i have to tolerate it quietly. grr!

i can't stand it when people diss folks in front of everyone. what the hell do you hope to do by doing such a thing? is it called for at all? are you trying to dissuade some hardcore gang leader from returning to his evil ways? or addressing a student in front of his peers? grow a brain!

ok those aren't really very good reasons why i'm in such a bad mood today(and the funny thing is that i can say that i'm in a bad mood, which only goes to show i'm not really in such a bad mood). they're not even the precise/only reasons why, but gah whatever. Welch's 100% and Arnott's country cheese to abate my displeasure. mmm.

in the state i'm in, i have this to say also: i'm fed up with dreams about making a difference in the world, in society. people like to say that, power corrupts, knowledge has ethical value. BAH. i say, no, power doesn't corrupt. people are just stupid. stupidity.. stupidifies. screws up the world. that's all there is.

and there's no way you can get anything done like this.. where everyone's blaming everyone else. chances are we're all going to do something stupid sometime, but noooo everyone's all perfect and stuff(to themselves). i'd sooner live life rich and powerless, to stay out of the whole mess. well, rich isn't the point, the point is blahgah stupid.

no idea where those two paragraphs came from. ah shucks. i'm worried about trip; about being substandard again, about $$$, about studies, about how i measure up, about how to continue doing the right thing. it's nice to believe that He has a plan and will bring me along as He has thus far, but i get a little uncomfortable if i'm not nagging myself about something i feel i should be doing(whatever the heck that is this time, anyway), or not being emotionally charged up about something in my life, i guess. it's not so much about faith as it is about habit.

i'm worried about life, stupid things that kids bring up in classrooms after everyone's left and we've been sitting around doing nothing for three hours, just chatting and doing random things, haha. when the men sit down and talk about life and the future together, it's quite different from talking about it with the ladies. i could live with this sort of pointless musing happening more often, if only to take my mind off other things.

oh, also

i will always be sore about exclusiveness and what i feel is failed meritocracy. if we even believed in meritocracy in the first place. or effort put in, or whatsoever similar stuffs. to add to the fire, these are all good people, generally. i try to avoid being reminded about it, and i do appreciate if people avoid letting me be reminded about it as well. source of vast unhappiness/resentment/anger. whatever.

yeah i'm done. gosh. suddenly i feel so alone. hah!
wth.

i'm singing though sometimes

2008-04-04T22:38:00.007+08:00

heavy is the load !
i am tirrreeed, what's new. avonne says, welcome to j2 life! haha i feel totally welcome -.- feel the warmth, no, heat of the environment. folks are stressing out about getting a B among the As! augh irritating. xD ah but heck there are more important things xD

mm this is turning out to be a grubby little pvc entry, so i'll just let it be. i've been feeling a lot(well not now, now i'm just trying to recall stuff. the whole, men are like waffles women are like spaghetti thing you know), not all good, and somehow it feels like i'm doing the world and my friends a great wrong not being as happy as i could possible be, i'm incredibly blessed, haha. it's been awfully nice, and i know that i really love the people around me.

i guess it has to be a step by little step sort of thing after all, and i shouldn't be surprised, haha. i'm trying not to say it i'm trying not to say it i'll say it once and let it rest forever. i loved her so. but hey! i've been through and out the tall fields where you lose sight of yourself, and i've learnt to keep the knowledge close, that truly i'm blessed to be surrounded by beautiful people. it's the beauty that resonates with the spirit of humanity and resounds with faint overtones of heavenly promise. maybe(in fact highly likely) this is just His way of teaching me.

trudging right along, this week has been pretty nice through the haze of fatigue. i want some rest soon, haha. real rest, not just days off. things like- it's hard to say, haha. anyway thanks ruth pam and churchies, upper bukit timah gang and class for everything xD it was all great, haha. yummy japanese pumpkin from suet, and note was a very pleasant surprise. i guess this world will never let me stop believing in the little things, huh! hahahhahaa..

* * *

so, through and through it all it's been a nice eighteenth. i felt a little worse for the wear a few days after the CTs were over and the fatigue started to kick in, i'm not such a stamina mugging sort of guy yet. and with no rest in sight, these things that friends have done have made life a little more pleasant that it could have been (: i could say it again! i'm very thankful, haha.

of course i'm wistful too. but there are only so many stages of reaction to loss, and i do think i'm reaching the last, the one that allows a guy to keep on living properly. there's a certain balance to the archetypes of personality and remembrance and continuity, that results in me saying what i think must have been trying to say itself - i've accepted. these times have been all about teaching me acceptance, and for better or for worse, i've learnt. i dare say i've always been good at adapting to lousy circumstances(resulting from my own stupidity or otherwise), but maybe now i'll be able to do it without the emotional exhaustion. hah! is that quite juvenile ?

damn i keep going on don't i. or it seems so. well maybe i have to get it out, so there. i don't want to make random obscure comments(about it) any more unless they're really meant to frustrate and plant doubt in others, haha, and why would i want to do that? xD but well, i know the feeling too, for example tonight. when i read statements leveled at the anonymous, i begin to fear and question myself - shit, is that me? that is around the lines of what i was trying to do in the past, but - hah! it's not such a pleasant feeling, huh. i'll try to abstain x).

so, summary! all in all life has settled down into a mildly fatigued float-along dance into the day with people all around but none too close. i've been doing stuff in a dream, do you remember the story of the boy who truly loved every lady he knew? who could believe that, hahhaha, pity his innocence. hey friendship i'm open, open, give me a minute to catch my breath(wait, how will i find it even if you give me that minute?), give me some suggestion, some impression, some conspicuous indication and i promise i'll try to take it from there.

hey! tomorrow i sing! and i'll wake up early to go to school and do chem/math, hopefully. i just know i can pull this thing through, haha. 加油吧, 壮凯!

the sweeter it grows

2008-03-31T22:15:00.013+08:00

i just, read it at totally the wrong time, i guess. it put a lump in my throat and that tearing sensation within me. how are we lonely when we're surrounded by people?

they used to joke that it was my perfect birthday present, and we took some small quiet pride in how it was the most unique and special of coincidences: for do not so many things seem to happen by chance, or nature's course trimmed by the Lord? we shared nothing but ourselves and the world. no institution brought us together, so none could take us apart. and so none did.

i can't quite say i've nothing against institutions, somehow. though i've seen the world through them, the world made up of individuals, and it's taught me a lot.. what strikes me is just, how we cling precariously by our fingertips to things that we know would come to an end, so fleetingly! should we turn our backs for but a moment to touch someone else. the things never last; i take Very Strong Offence at their penchant to melt in your hand, indeed.

they hold so much of our lives together, and i wonder if i'm wasting my time. the thing that always amazed me in the past was time, and time. the more time spent.. really, the richer the relationship. it's as simple as that. against all the odds of institution, we would invest the time, just like that. maybe it was a miracle, maybe it was just reaching the stage, and from then on it was easy. but whatever it was, i'll always believe in the power of time.

and time, we have so little of. or so it would seem. i question my decision to do architecture so often because of this; where would it leave me? do i really give up hope on finding people who can understand the need to spend the time as well.

there's got to be another reason, really. sometimes we don't know how far we ought to go, perhaps. and often we don't express by our behavior and speech clearly enough, how far others ought to go, and we all tiptoe around one another's shattered hopefulnesses. or perhaps we were just caught up in ourselves or something else and failed to notice, in time.

but what the time comes, it's too late, and that will forever be my greatest fear, through all the mortal hopes and dreams. that the day is come when it's too late, and i'm even more hopeless to just be there, and help, than i was before.

how could i not love you?

2008-03-30T19:37:00.007+08:00

i'm reaaally tired, been pottering about the room clearing up the post-CTs mess(yes, only now due to various occupations) and just meditating on the past three weeks. and through it all, i'd just like to say that i'm very happy about how i've been spending my time, i think. spending time with the people i have been spending it with, it's been very fulfilling, haha, to the point that i'm bushed xD

often it feels empty, but it's the sort of empty you get when you go to places that are special to more than you, alone. and the people walk beneath the foliage and shadows of streetlamps ambiguously, you're lost in them. the sort of empty that puts a dull tune in my humm and whistle as i walk back home with an untouched sketchpad on a saturday night, tuesday morning. the sort of empty that's, full.

i'm glad for this day, always will be. we always like to say, we'll never forget. but i guess i'm too tired to fool about - i'll always be trying to remember. only God knows if i'm ready for something new.

also my haircut stinks, but what's new. thanks pam for attempting(and failing!) to correct that today -.-
to dreamland and beyond!
(yawn)

we're h-h-happening so quickly

2008-03-28T22:00:00.002+08:00

There are moments when I don't know if it's real
Or if anybody feels the way I feel
I need inspiration
Not just another negotiation

am super tired. been a tough week. i'm still the same though.

there have been late nights in school, and troubling things happening in the periphery. or i think it is. it's the sort that makes me not know whether or not i should care, stop and wonder. wait. where am i?

something launched me into this phase a while back, and as i'm becoming conscious on a higher level i realize i've been doing some things that i wouldn't be very proud of. am not very proud of. they're not serious.. just, well. i wish i had never committed, because once you involve that, it's hard to break free.

i've not been feeling a lot of old things. something taught me acceptance, i think. yes.. that must be the word. hmm. and.. now some part of me is trying to moderate it. all of a sudden i feel the need to get out of this stasis again. it's not that i haven't been feeling, i just haven't been.. feeling everything. never approved of that in the past, but well all things in moderation, moderation, right.

it's the same thing again, but maybe with a clearer head for not feeling certain things. like being awake, but only some parts of the mind and soul are conscious. it's quite sterile and mildly high. i hate to say.. that i feel tied down. and besides, it's not something that just goes away. you're not. i need something to let out the rope, more rope, all the way..

even with the best hopes at the start, it seems that relationships can degenerate into not being able to talk completely honestly with the ones you love. and this whole disaster started when that one went away.

hey, that's the theme song to our friendship

2008-03-25T21:47:00.008+08:00

那颗星　比想像遥远　长大后的我们　慢慢忘了怎么爱
oh　看见自己有一点点无奈　也许你不在　也许放不开
so, please tell me why !

the past few days have been mildly disturbing(euphemism)(largely the things people have been saying), but up till a few minutes ago it was quite ok, i think. trying not to let stuff get to me. 坚持! haha

looking back, i'd said it before sometime, i think, that i'd do something. well, it seems i did it huh, even though i did it so well i lost myself. i'd like to think so, anyway, that i did lose myself. i'm not lost anymore, or so help me. if you want to look at it in another way, you had your chance when i was weak, now it's gone! gone! gone! hahahha

first things this morning(i always get grumpy just hearing the whasername's voice, why couldn't they just promote mr leong?) i was like, ok nice i get a day off on my birthday. but so what eh, folks are all still in school anyway. not going to be much of a birthday anyhow, and now it's cause it's a free day but i'm STILL not going to be able to go out! for the win, eh. sorry that was bitchy but well.

anyway, i resolve not to do (too much) homework on that day, spend a nice day with (overdue) (and recently renewed) architecture books. should take a hint from collegeboard and subscribe to a few of those architecture magazines i'd seen around before. on that note, taking SATs(thanks to geof's awesome parents!) on 3rd may with geof sianying quanquan. go us.

anyhow, all in all life had subsided(finally?) into a genial affability that didn't give or ask for too much. and i can accept that, for the time(or could, now that it's diminishing? self-fulfilling prophecy?). it's like how some people only believe in one true loves when they've found her. right now i'm just trying(hard) not to be such an exorbitant fool. (it's working. you'll have to take my word for it if the actions don't match-)

yeah, sounds familiar to me too. but what the heck. i'll take it as it comes for as long as i can bear to.
out!

choose your getaway car

2008-03-21T23:18:00.014+08:00

"Standing above the street you open a window on its dusty hinge above a leaf-littered lower decking, and you expect some sort of cooling breeze, diffusing in to cool your face from the intenseness of it all. But it's as good as nothing had happened, you'd never opened the window at all, the air sits square before you like a relationship that refuses to move. That is, until you begin to listen to the sounds of the world coming in, touching your heart in its shell."

Coming back across the roads in the hometown neighborhood is nothing new, but the music touches my ears with a fervent prayer, and it puts a kink in the rolling road of thoughts. Her voice caresses my ears with the rising rush of each fresh phrase, i'm placed into a ludicrous abstraction that puts my steps into a dance-walk down the pavement under the dark of Singapore's night-time streetside foliage.

The announcement lights weren't working, so who knew when the carriage would come. But snapping out of it on the brisk walk and skip up the black tarmac hill to meet a bald man walking out, i can only think: this is something that i'd really like to find out, if it could work.

you're like a taser, hey. that works 'special hard on me.

what a week. it's times like this i think about you and i ask myself, what the heck was all that moping for. still wasn't worth it. right after i think about you and i think, gosh, if you were here.

block tests were quite ok, i held my breath and hoped that i wouldn't get demoralized by a paper, for my subsequent papers. and hey, i didn't - the last one, physics, totally slaughtered me. gosh. gen i join your study group, if there's room.

i was actually worried that on thursday after physics i'd have nothing to do, cause people were off at their own various stuff and folks were basically all over the island. 'd have taken you out if you'd asked. brought all the architecture books i'd borrowed like 2 weeks ago and my sketchbook ready to sit down at botanics or starbucks or island creamery to pore over them, but it turned out there was too much to do. they're still sitting by the head of my bedside.

went to Crazy Angmoh, props to Ding, the stuff really ain't half bad. yufang's house after that, we basically lounged around, with Ding being badass on the guitar as usual, and watched some chinese vampire horror-comedy that reminded me of the indian girly-man MV at some points, hahhaha.

was stalking off to the far end of the world, the bus stop at the shell station when i got a message from suet, and tadah they were at Junction 8. had random fun for gosh, two plus three hours? that is classified at the moment, yeah., hahhaha. then i went off yup.

went home to change then leave for pool with amos-arnold and geoff(we are F.A.G!) i turned up super late, like an hour, cause i forgot to bring the goods(which, as it happened, were duds) for the subsequent Event Of The Night. anyway, we three get to spend quality time together so seldom it's sad, was damn sorry i missed the chance to get a bit more. more soon, anyway. somehow i was at the top of my game that night, just that arnold kept getting the last say/shot -.-

then went to royce's place after suitably elaborate planning and panicking(involving me running all the back home in jeans from the standard chartered bank in the nighttime! after suddenly realizing while talking to wenyi on the phone and making a mad dash off with my books upon realizing! not fun! is be hot!). is long story that i cannot do justice to, so shortly, it was teh good stuff. yep.

everyone sticks out their tongues(like giraffes) except geoffrey.
wow this is a lot of reminiscing.

tonight's good friday youth service plus dinner plus quality time was good in a funny way. i'm beginning to understand why i did certain things, what i was thinking and feeling. maybe what others were thinking and feeling too, to a much smaller extent, sigh. every time i try to pray for things, i can't - i can only pray, Thy will be done, Thy will be done. sigh.

to quote (someone or another) on (something about historical significance), it's too close to tonight for me to say anything about it. i feel but i dare not commit, but at least i dared feel.
and you know how long i haven't dared, hey.
goodnight, His will be done, aye.

marmalade fires dancing behind my eyelids

2008-03-15T22:12:00.009+08:00

14th
all of a sudden i feel ridiculously happy, hahahaha. sitting here laughing at the beauty of life while eating a muffin while my notes study yongfeng's notes, and everyone angsts about things like why their math doesn't add up, and other stuff that we would normally mock ourselves for spending the emotional energy angsting on. i believe in the little things again, haha.
10.42

now i'm composed. thank you grace for being a distraction from the issue at hand, i needed something inspersed or i'd start going nuts and never be able to go back to studying. so, thanks, haha.
1 o'clock or so

a few things.

it's clichéd, but it can't help but find genuine child-like wonder of beauty to be even more wonderful and pleasant to gaze at than anything nature has shown me yet. yes, haha. mm. and i regret not getting to know some people better, by reason of well, psychological segregation. oh well, sigh.

oh, and to live my unwanted legacy of "anyone who reads your blog would disagree", i have this to say about the other aspect of today. fsk. yep.

study status is falling behind, i realize that the reason why my essays get such pathetic grades compared to humans kids could well be because i'm not so well versed in all the philosophies, sigh. i can't explain them off the top of my head, i see the question then start formulating a structure off the knowledge of the structure that i have placed in my subconscious mind, haha. darn. will treat KI a lot more seriously.

also i have not started on art properly. like, writing the vocab lists and doing studies of those imba essays. double darn.

today we had quiet moments in botanics, haha. general comfort that just is, without any words. this is what i hope all friendships blossom into, eventually. quiet time in the morning and then ice cream really settled me, before the nonsense i had to face from myself later in the day. thank you (:

i have to say i think i really really needed that. have i mentioned? since last thursday, morning till evening in school! well, except sunday. and on two of the nine days i only came to school at lunch. but still! wah tiring. and in hindsight it doesn't really look like i actually got much done, physically. i do feel Mathematically accomplished, though. i don't think i've ever really finished a whole, entire holiday revision paper for math. well.. technically i haven't finished applications of integration, but lalalalalala.

so! despite looming CTs and not having studied chem at all this hols(exam on tuesday!!!) we shall have lunch tmr! it's another of those feel wonderful things, to have everyone eating and chatting together. i've been very hypocritical, i think, and overly optimistic. let's try small steps.

oh and one last random note. i realized that eating clichéd food just generally gives a good feeling, and i wonder if it's universal. salted pretzels and rich, pulpy orange juice, cookies/pie and chilly fresh milk, toasty buttered croissants and the perfect cupful of hot chocolate/coffee. tea, tea, glorious tea. roasted fowl and something with essence of grape, sipping soda floats in an amusement park with friends, and (my personal favorite ever since you, donchaknow) warm-hot sugary cinnamon churros on a cool blustery day between the rides. food is so mystical, if i weren't supposed to be all educated and blargh i would have gone into cooking properly ages ago, i think. also, if i hadn't discovered architecture and become so adamant about it ><

i continue to angst about issue number one till i sleep. goodnight!

smother

2008-03-13T23:04:00.010+08:00

i really love deborah's to-do postits, hahhaha, they make me feel Formally organized, which is more than i can usually say. i tend to just figure out what i generally am trying to accomplish and how, then just make up the details as i go along and the situation becomes clearer.

writing here as the day grows out of it's ethereal dawn to something a little more substantial, it feels like doing something natural, making my plans for the (near) future more less whispy and more material, more real as well :) it feels like architecture to me, but nobody will be able to make that connection, right? x)
7.45 thereabouts

awesome metal cutter sitting there, what if i took my right hand off right now? what would life become? i'm tackling one thing at a time, i said, and CTs don't count, some other self-concept is handling that problem. me, about this issue, 'm screaming AHHHH
sometime i can't remember when

when i'm looking at you i'm sure-
and all i need now is a reason
to keep those doubts at bay through the
seasons when you're away
gosh, please don't keep me locked here this way

i paid attention, and whoa, i really do have incredibly fast micro-mood swings, when i feel certain ways about certain little things that happen. this really can't be healthy - but at least i can keep my mouth shut and face silent when i'm sincere in wanting to hide it. or i think i do.

sometimes when you're speaking out as a person in a group, there's no need to be balanced about it. each individual contributes to the balancedness, and so long as in your speech you phrase yourself in an obviously open-minded fashion enough to show that you don't mean to offend anyone - you know what a person or people need to hear, just say it, man.. especially when it's just something Encouraging, even if it seems superficial.

because sometimes we just need a change in perspective, if even just for a bit; and to know that people believe in you, and to have a little help keeping the mood from degenerating into something too dark and dangerous. maybe that's why for all the philosophical crap and psychological angst that comes out of this mouth, i've had to play the role of the whimsy laughing guy(well now there's no need to, since all the guys grew more sensitive senses of humor after exposure to girls -.-)(en garde! defend yourselves! xD). overdone numerous times, but that was a risk to take.. better than the alternative. nobody should ever be really angry or depressed at the same time as me if we're like, i don't know, supposed to be doing stuff together or are just together. we'll probably just die from it all together, hahahha..

much as i'd perhaps hate to admit it(due to various reasons but maybe one thirdly because of ben low, of whom i must say i've probably had skewed perceptions of because of certain associations), i sort of like this current graduating batch of RV kids. They have the general makings of a certain sort of people that i can really appreciate: good, sensible folk who are innately focused and logical but whom have the most incredible sense of humor and a mature sensitivity towards other individuals. it's far off, and we all have our own goals of what sort of person we'd want to be, eh. but i think i'd be awfully proud if someone could describe me like that, so, eh, even though you all are still far off, you better be damn flattered friedemann can say this sort of thing k! xD

yeah that's all. this is like my destress of the day. i've been so tired i haven't even ran since monday, doubt i will till good friday. gonna turn into a blob. hah! gosh, i keep making jokes or wanting to say things that are related to KI class, but nobody would get it anyways. oh well.

gosh all this sounds so whimsy. oh well. goodnight!

cold evenings in singapore

2008-03-12T21:24:00.009+08:00

it always makes me feel like i'm psychologically consolidating all my cares and concerns when i discuss random things about life with geoffrey. it's a good feeling.

i'm hurrying to write this down before i forget it, and before i have my dinner; i found the words to express one more thing that just bugs me. i find it hard to accept that.. people who i think well of- well, people who are friends, who i love lah, basically, can have such.. seemingly bad opinions? is that the word? ahh, i don't know again.. well, this case in particular(just so i can recall the feeling and perhaps find the world for it in the future), it's how these people(there aren't really words to describe one's psychological relationship with them) can be so.. judgemental? in a way that just seems.. wrong. ahhh.

i think the problem with me is that i'm slowly becoming more conscious about the issues i have with how the universe works. i do think i'll keep them in mind when i see the Lord and ask Him, why? is that ok..? xS

* * *
this is post-dinner and birthday cake cutting..
suddenly i'm really really tired. falling asleep on the couch while waiting tired. like, both physically and mentally, but more mentally i think. psychologically has become a perpetual state, whilst cycling from issue to issue, hahha. gosh. is this burnout from studying? i think my stamina and speed for mugging really suck xp

i'm feeling more settled. like there are fewer pokey things jabbing me? cause the jabbing motion is like, over. now they're just, there. like how pain becomes a habit, that's how you're affecting my mind, you and you and you and you, haha. it's not meant to be morbid, actually(and i'm saying this because upon rereading that's how it sound ><), it's just that well. it's just the feeling when problems stop arising and you can start trying to accept life with the problems that exist already, and
hey, maybe together we'll resolve them.

no matter who you're with, life can't help but go on.

204

2008-03-11T10:16:00.005+08:00

yawn(then he really yawns)
slept in late today, just woke up half an hour ago. this'll be my rest day for the week.. i'll need it, i think. hm, now that i think about it, it's funny how i slept so much just now, while someone must have slept really little.

did i say? studying all day like this really feels right, like i'm not wasting time. lectures and tutorials seems so ugh now. company doesn't hurt either (: and whaddya know, timing today is perfect for me to grab lunch. hm. memo to self to call ivan or something later.

what are you looking for? a lot of random musing people do often can be explained by the answer to that question.. and often it's, i don't know. so the question becomes, are you trying to find out what you're looking for, or are you just moseying along, exploring life? which do you want to be doing?

*sigh*(and this is an actually ok, but then again.. sort of sigh) i swear, i never stopped thinking of you, or you. and maybe what i'm looking for(or part of what i'm looking for now) is to be able to say,

没什么特别
只是回忆

i'm off to shower then school. please keep me in your prayer, as i do you, haha.
(:

2008-03-08T21:32:00.007+08:00

they say wishing for you is like wishing for snow in southern California
i'll talk about singing, fine, hahhaha.. singing was good today, somehow. it's such a sine curve; does that sound familiar? seems to remind me of someone, hm. well, it's the cycle between facing the questions inside and trying to accept things. somehow, every time, it seems like so long ago, but when it was here it seemed like it would last forever. dayam.

when the time comes around, the sunflowers in the corner
of the junction
down the path out of my house into
the world,
(which i only ever see darkened, covered in morning dew)
(instead of bathed in morning light, as is their birthright)
turn their heads and
plant their rich, ripe countenances on the concrete paving in homage to man's tragedy of life. they
shed their earthy vestiges that brighten our days with such
colorful flavor, how can i make it up to ya?
tell me, what a
humble mockery you've made of me. in the rainy pre-dawn i can only think of the same things. can't i ever think of anything but the old and new things.
?
6march

wondering about things that shouldn't even be relevant to me right now! that aren't, that aren't, haha. yeah, i despise my descriptions of today, though i'm not trying to say it was stellar, i just don't describe well enough. it was like beginning to wish again. there. huilin was back today! hey, we aren't alone huh. nope.

i've got so much inside me right now, i think. i remember, i do remember every one of the things that matter to me, though sometimes it seems that i'm occupied with something else with which i'm acting like it means only everything.

•hate it a strong world, but i really really really don't like all affairs exclusive, most intensely. especially if i'm conscious of them.
•nine days! !! !!!!!!!!
•i wikied Monterey. who knew it was such a homey place throughout. i only recall snippets, haha. i remember about the wharf though! and the marine center.. and of course the navy preschool, but that and everything else isn't documented there, of course.
•i feel incredibly untalented and stupid.
•joseph ooi! where did you buy your mike!

i think i have a slow reaction time to music or something; or perhaps it's just that i've learnt not to really really trust my snap judgement, because i love things like that too easily. but well, certain song is stuck in my head now, and phone's looping to sate the desire.

i can read things, and then i can read into things. i swear i won't get my hopes up, but hey
you don't get anything if you don't expect anything, right?

we'll get along.

and it's worth it just to hear you say

2008-03-06T09:03:00.003+08:00

not been so good, somehow. haven't been able to enjoy singing lately as much as i ought to, sigh. i must be doing all the wrong stuff already. a number of things rationally received but to be psychologically accepted. i ask myself if i'm going too far, but then thoughts get messy with all the possible subconscious implications so i stop myself short. do i read too much into this?

the more i learn about the fine arts the more intrigued i am with them, hahha. though fine arts isn't such an apt label anymore, it'd seem to me, but well. every person has their own artistic character. i only wish i'd explored it more in depth instead of, absconding to my lack of natural talent, lol. not like i've got any in any other field anyhow.

on happier notes, math has been kinder to me lately, though i still got crappy grades on the latest test -.- he deducted so many marks due to calculation errors and error carried forward! is it any wonder i failed!!?! but oh well, CTs CTs.. going to sing some then study with the guys today. sigh, it's another of those odd feeling things.

oh, self-indulgence is just fine for me, cause otherwise, i get too absorbed with others. then it's what the hell and all downhill from there. distractions from you must be good.

non-example

2008-03-04T19:34:00.002+08:00

just then, i was so angry. i'm trying so hard to hold it in, up till now. stopping myself from doing anything, i was so hot, sweating so hard. picked up my things, i don't know how i survived the way back.

i tried thinking, and actually i gained an inkling as to why. but i don't really want to care right now, because i'm still angry. very, very angry.

do you know what i mean?

when will we realize?

2008-03-03T20:13:00.008+08:00

i'm beginning to understand.. that a lot of the things we talk about in life, won't be accomplished, just like that(snaps fingers). it's not that i thought it would be easy, and it's not that i didn't appreciate that the beauty of life is the walk, not the door at then end. it's just that..

too many times, i think, i keep saying things as if i can do them. as if i can make them come true, somehow, just by believing it. the thing is, a lot of these stuff can't just be done, just like that.. it really takes time, and effort, and not just by any single person. and i believe i haven't been doing enough.. it's just that, augh. i keep saying that, but something is just wrong.

i won't say i don't want to be held back, because i'm not really being held back! i mean, augh. well, imagine what i'd mean in a way that makes sense, that'd be it. it's the whole part of your past experiences thing. it's something that i'd keep with me. and with past as the keyword, i cannot but come to terms with how it takes as much time as it does. and yet, i don't want to do the wrong things, with what i have now. i've fouled up something that meant a lot to me already, call it misfortune or sheer idiocy. i probably just aren't able to see it now, as i wasn't before, but i don't want to do it again. you have no idea how i don't want to. that's why i have to constantly make now the most important thing, if only i can.

yet, i want to go back to living life properly, like, now. i want to live life so that if i realized i had only (number) days to live, or hours, i wouldn't live them out in an unusual way at all. just as i always would. my gran turns 73 today.. she looked really happy yesterday at the dinner, so many 孙儿女 crowded about her and in her lap, it's not hard to understand why our ancestors liked to have large families, hahhah..

i realize that i'd have a lot of things to say to people, and time needed to be spent, if it came to that anytime soon at all - and it makes me unsettled. not counting "i love you", because somehow that's something that can never be said enough, but just doesn't mean anything unless you can say/do something more. i'd be inclined to say that at one's deathbed, it's appropriate that that's the only thing left to be said to anyone at all, haha.

well, what's up with this sort of musing, eh. sigh. i don't really know, honestly. it feels like i'd completed a designated part of my course and, given a moment's respite, had a shocking cold shower and then such a steaming one to melt all the tension away, and come out drying my hair, rested. but then it suddenly seems that it didn't really happen, and it feels like it wouldn't have made much of a difference if i'd been made to continue walking towards the next stop for a rest instead. like the shower was only good while it lasted, and wait- did it even? when was it? what was it?
oh, right. it never came.

i swear, that while we're

2008-03-01T23:30:00.004+08:00

paper life comes folding down as we
we fall into town
oh, -
i know it means nothing to you at all.
i think i know what it is now. it's that. the 不值得, the 不明白. the 无尽头, the 舞花台. hiiiigh drama.
*swears* so what's the solution to this problem?

put the lime in the coconut

2008-03-01T20:17:00.003+08:00

so much for being at peace with the world.

it's difficult to say, but.. i'm feeling once more like maybe deciding to wait, not to do anything might turn out to be a bad decision. it's just a feeling, you know. the thing is, logical things can always be explained away with counterlogic. feelings.. just are.

could be the crappy day. well, i don't know. it wasn't really that crappy. i feel it's the whole internal aura thing, you know? little things nagging my unconscious mind just making me unsettled and on the edge. i'd try to understand them, but i don't know if i can.

retarded chinese common test yesterday had some passage about not living any moment of your life like it's just a dry run; it's the real deal, all the way, boys. somehow most of the times i've been to chinese class this year and the teacher tried to say something instead of showing a movie, i actually got reminded about something about life. can't say why, but i hate it. augh.

gramps is in the hospital cause of some breathing problems.. mom's betting on him chowing down on all the leftover CNY stuff, plus not taking his meds regularly for his various old person ailments. he always was an ok-shape sort of guy.. messing with chemicals in the spare room in the old, larger flat the grandparents used to stay in, hitting the beer hard. not too hard, anyway. but now he's hospitalized. a thing like that can really affect the resolve and inner strength of a person.

then, granny's birthday celebs at GWC on sunday evening. it's quite an interesting feeling, like some bittersweet-lemon gum of a feeling. i'm quite happy for her, cause her children generally are really one big family with her, but maybe that's just me contrasting with the other side of the family. and as one of the oldest male grandchildren.. it's a certain feeling, haha. like i want to make the rest of her life good as it can be, feeling. sigh.

on the way back via mrt today i discovered something important about music and me, and extending the reasoning just right now, i learn something new. i like for things to have, meaning.. i can't stand songs when they don't mean anything, aren't trying to say something meaningful. likewise with art, in hindsight. thankfully, though, that doesn't often happen, cause it's quite hard to do these things without trying to express something, and that in itself is meaning. i could well be wrong about Mondrian. perhaps i just don't understand him, like i seem not to understand so many things.

so maybe i'm just feeling stagnant, like something about life just isn't moving on and growing. maybe the non-action is by choice, and it annoys me in some profound way that i can't deny. maybe it's just today, and i can sleep it off. maybe reminders about certain relationships ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE tempting the socks off of me, and then tempting me to headbang(insert object). maybe after tomorrow something else little will provide the little tweak to my mood and it'll be alright.

or maybe there's a solution to this thisthisthsitshit problem.

you know what i mean.

2008-02-28T23:45:00.004+08:00

when i look at you in the eyes, be it "the heck is wrong with you, bringing your girls here to have games where we're studying, just cause it's sunny out and the darlings need to stay cool and protect their skin?" or something more.

iiiit's been a good week. i summarize the feeling here, ok?

like i said(or i think i did..?), i've gotten quite a lot of work done, in the past week. not exactly sure when the run began, but i've been clearing things out of my file more rapidly than usual(perhaps it's cause they're all old tutorials and the flurry of new ones makes my unconscious mind nervous, hm?). i've done more math now than in any other period of my life, i think, hahhaha. finishing a physics tutorial some afternoon alone in my classroom(cause annoying J1s were using the chorale table and no-one was anywhere in sight or hearing), i put down the pen to wipe my face and reach for a stapler. i can't be sad anymore, somehow. i can only laugh softly to myself at the little meories that pop up in times like this. how annoying, haha.. mm.

semi-late bus rides home have a different affective archetype, that i kinda like, actually. getting on at 8, and at nine-thirty, taking a slow walk down a mottled, (fuzzy streetlamp-glow yellow) and (water-in-the-dark black) road 1/3 the way down a homey hump of a hill that houses old memories that don't seem to want me anymore. for how long more can i be a student in uniform standing with my pack and file singing in the night outside the bus stop sheltering dotted outlines of old men and girls? how long more can we be lame dudes singing into the night on the piano and mike in the LT in the school with the crutch sitting by seven-11, no-one wants it, really, and the clock says 8:47 - time to go home and eat dinner. no island creamery for you, the rest of us aren't here.

i press forward when that song comes around, really. the more i see and reflect, the more i don't understand what on earth.. i saw in it at all. i'm not angry, because i'm at peace with myself now, remember. in the general sense, anyway. but i'm, miffed? at the emotional energy spent. there was something that was worth the energy, but this, i have doubts now. i'm not melancholically attached to the song ~~anymore~~, but it doesn't set me off either. it's just that it's something that i don't want to be reminded to think about, because the more i think about it the more i have doubts about this thing that supposedly gave me happiness for a while.

in other news, the little things. one, old habits die hard. two, i strike you off the list. three, nicole quah as KI teacher was a relaxing change, she's quite cute, hahhaha. four, i realize that if i check in after CT1s i'll have to take NAPFA later in the year. damn. think i can do well in napfa and get it over with despite this stupid ailment? then go operate after that.. but that would mean operating in late april, gah. affect trip? maybe. but then again, already $$ issues. double gah.

art essay that would get negative marks from mr chia, hahha.. well, it's not meant to be a SOVA essay anyway. it's just a, the way i feel essay. not really an essay either if you think about it, so narrative. but i can create my own style and start a new movement! the same way i contemplated a new philosophy of government. will get down to writing it, unlike social paper. society's much more convoluted, doubt i'd ever be up to analyzing, constructing and expressing my concept into a working system properly.

when i was younger, back when i didn't have to worry about that, i kinda looked up to those musician-singers who went on to complete their studies in university in whatever they were passionate about besides music, and carry on with their lives. because it just seemed like a sensible and awesome way to live out music and reality: singers in asian bands that never were number one on the charts for more than a few weeks, after getting the experience, earning some cash and getting some limelight, continuing with studies. i remember there was one guy who went on and graduated in architecture, i thought it was pretty cool, haha. and i remember telling her, hey, i can only think of one thing that would be cooler than being able to say i'm a vocalist-architect-teacher―

won't you take a guess, as to what it is?

Impassioned !

2008-02-28T22:21:00.008+08:00

"A poem should not mean,
but be."

Comparing Mondrian's reduction of the art of painting to Plato's idyllic abstraction of every concept that exists in this universe to his Forms is like comparing a genetically-modified Hercules to the gods - it isn't even original, and despite trying to imitate something imperfect in itself, the end result turns out conceptually worse off, and the whole experiment is not much more than a mockery of the good idea that gave birth to it, as well as itself.

Plato's abstraction of all concepts to the form of "Good" is subject to considerable criticism as it is, philosophically speaking. This we know, but what is truly important in the context of this discussion is the purpose of the abstraction, both of art and of thought, and it's end result.

Plato's conception of the forms was in an attempt to form a formal system, somewhat, of knowledge, upon which we can build all the knowledge we have; a rational, objective one, not subject to human imperfections. Here lies the similarity of Mondrian's abstraction to Plato's philosophy: it seeks to find a way to help us understand the nature of all art, all representation, by abstracting forms and space to the most elemental colors and shapes(supposedly, anyway).

However, the follow-ups to the understanding gained were vastly different. For Plato, they were obviously a means to an end: to the end of gaining more knowledge, by using this knowledge as a structure by which to understand and learn more about the world. Mondrian, on the other hand, treated the "forms" as an end in themselves.

Here comes the normative bit of my essay: understanding of the forms should NOT be the end of our efforts in themselves. The forms in themselves, being completely neutral, hold no value to us, cannot expound anything to us nor give us any experiences. Thus, say what you like, Mondrian. You may claim that your abstract paintings are "not meaningless but neutral", but this much is evident: they are useless.

Sure, they show us the pure forms in themselves: the primary colors and black and white and lines and squares and rectangles. But I already know that these are the pure elements! It is the basic lesson in art that any art student learns before even formally acquainting himself or herself with any artist's work. Even if you mean to remind us of this, with such abstract work, how would you gain the attention of the laymen or tired students who are the ones who would not probe your motivation and thus miss out on the knowledge of your intentions?

Furthermore, for all your claims of objectivity, what justification is there for the use of such a blue-colored patch here, and such a black line there? Sure it looks "right", because of balance in the forms, but there is a multitude of permutations and combinations of such arrangements that could be formed to give such aesthetic balance. perhaps this number is finite, but there remains no justification for your selection of representing these particular examples in which the pure elements of art are balanced in their pure states. Your choice of representing just these, removes your precious objectivity right out of your art, Mondrian my man. and besides all these, isn't art not supposed to be about aesthetics?

Note, though, that I am far from slamming abstraction: rather, I find it a field that has not been represented well by the artists through time, generally. I'd desire to rescue it to society. There is so much good done already: Jackson Pollock's representation of his "inner psyche" through his particular methods carries certain meaning, or tries to, at least, compared to Mondrian's retarded "art in itself". I hold expressionism in high regard, personally, for the focus on emotion, something intelligent people in contemporary society would fear to delve into due to its convoluted nature.

The logical extension of Mondrian's interpretation and philosophy of art, I personally feel, is the work of the late Chuck Close - demonstrating and informing his philosophy of the structure of art to his audience through explanation, or in the art itself, in his pixelization(representation of the colors in the most elemental forms) to serve a greater purpose; be it realistic representation or any other(though the necessity of representing your philosophy of the structure of art in the artwork itself so blatently may be a course of action whose justification is debatable. this as opposed to representing your philosophy of art, such as i will elaborate of mine later, in your artwork: which is of course, absolutely crucial, duh.)

Extreme Comments

2008-02-24T20:21:00.018+08:00

it's not pleasant to admit, but i don't usually go through any song we do properly; take the time to sit down and look at every section's line, every phrase and chord, understand them the way i do, with insignificant formal musical background to speak of. still, i did, more recently, for this little sonnet we have in our hands, and i'm quite pleased by it, haha. it's an odd way to say it, maybe, but that's how it feels, a little warm glow of satisfaction. i'm glad we're trying it, and i do hope we can do it well (:

" i disagree. should i take a friend, or a stranger, and place him on a pedestal in a museum beside the marble and alabaster works of the masters, or invite her into the gallery as an exhibit, it is indeed art. as over the hours he unreasonably holds the pose i had demonstrated - gets tired and sits down, changes into various positions against what i requested, or starts reading a novel he got a friend to sneak in, in the air-conditioned hallway whilst leaning against the pedestal itself; as she begins to paint in the room with a glass wall, her every pose, expression, thought, turn of the head and little shake of her hair. it is art.

no, friend, it is not performance art, contrary to what you may accuse. I am the artist, not them. my art is intervention, and they are my medium; and it is art because, it is not reality. had i done nothing, they would be going about their normal lives, in his cubicle, or at the photocopying machine at her office. not wearing that silly beret painting for critics to gawk at when she isn't even a particularly excellent painter. but i take them out of their normal lives, and this representation of them is NOT the truth, it is the expression of a more profound meaning than three misrepresentations of chairs side by side, or the poor color pencil scribbles of a child counterposed with an amateur art student's pastels.

it is an expression of my impression of the world, the poetry i see in her moves, the feelings that must run through his face like they're being acted out by clichéd leading men in clichéd black and white films running on a projected behind his face. even you cannot observe every part of my art, friend. but if i know what i'm doing, i know each emotion, and you can try to understand it if you took a minute to think.

THIS is why life can be art: there i disagree too. when i choose to live my life like disjointed prose, or some other construction of my fuddled emotions; when i have a message, something to say about the truth that perhaps only i can see clearly for now(but to others, in their subsequent understanding it is déjà vu). that i could explain to you if only you asked, and i fished it out of my ~~present~~ unconsciousness. so yes, what you taught me, affirms me, sir. this is art, because it is the truth, and because i choose for it to be."

there's one thing i'd hesitate forever to speak poorly of, but here it is. it's easy to say that the situation is discouraging, and alas, the cynic has invaded the part of my life that was supposed to be eternally optimistic. the fight's not done, though. and that's what's giving the stress.

in other news, it's week 9, gosh gasp golly. send in the potato-hawks, she's a big one - Charlie Tango One. have i mentioned i hate studying alone. oh well. can i-?

it's all ok, alright now, really. i'm fine, life goes on blah blah. i'd be quite able to handle whatever shocking news that may come my way now. like, news, any news, coming my way, you know. you coming my way, something coming my way. knowing stuff. of course, it's ok if it doesn't come.. but yeah.

in other news, there must be so many digital art competitions out there that there isn't big enough an artist base to take part in all of them, all the entries i saw in these two were really crappy, i really really want to take part and grab this opportunity that i wouldn't get otherwise(i'm not really a stellar digital artist myself) to take part, earn a bit of money to go towards the trip, earn the right to say i took part in a few local digital art competitions and put them in my portfolio. but gah, time. gah, insecurity and high standards set upon self.

in other news, if a miracle happened, right now, i'd have X plus one more reason to be glad, i realized.
i wouldn't have to make any decision about that any more. if it were a real miracle, things would just go back to how they were, as if ~~we'd been carrying on and nothing had happened~~ we're really really ok, and we're carrying on.

working and waiting

2008-02-21T21:22:00.010+08:00

i wanted to write yesterday, but i fell asleep before i did anything useful after the evening ended, zz. recovering from whatever transpired and have almost closed the gap on tutorials, haha. i'm going to be optimistic and say, close the gap by this weekend, then i can go do stuff.

it's been lousy, pretty much, but in the end you grow to live with things. each of these things.. like a pin in the shoulder, you get used to them, regardless. like living with tubes up the side of your chest for so long, it's not that it doesn't hurt; it's just that it takes too much energy, too much emotional energy to feel, let alone think, anything about them at all(because you cannot feel only a little if your heart will make you feel a lot), you've just got to be superhuman with a magnesium-iridium blood pump keeping you going to keep it up. in the end the mind does what it does so that you live rather than die; you get accustomed to it. that's what i meant when i said, i'd gotten used to loving.

it could well be a bad thing, in certain circumstances. i can name one, right here and now; not treasuring enough, and probably couldn't have without having made people think i was crazy or obsessive. after all, we all would act differently if we had foreknowledge of what was going to happen. but all in all, realistically speaking, a guy can live that that for only a while at a go. when i say gotten accustomed, i don't mean, it matters to me but i have to move on. i mean, i'm working and i'm waiting. i'm patient as long as i have to be.

i'm making a resolution for this weekend! and for the year, if i can and dare, haha. i suddenly realize that i should and do feel horribly stagnant and boring. not that there's anything interesting that i think i could/should be doing, but i'll find it if i can, heh. i'm going to start going out for those city walks again(but now with a bag of papers and books) and settle down at some old haunts again. it's alright already, haha, in that sense at least. it's time i got busy again.

some things aren't meant to be talked about in the public domain, and i hope i have enough discretion to lay the appropriate amount of pressure down. but a lot of times there's a lot of fear and doubt that go by other names, when i want to make late night calls or ask someone out for lunch. ohhhhh well. hahhaha. maybe i can blame all that all my year of NATO. then again, it's hard to understand unless you were close by to see it. siigh. hehh. we'll live yet.

whistle while you work

2008-02-19T21:56:00.006+08:00

gosh, it's tuesday already.
the days at this time of the year agree with me almost perfectly, meteorologically speaking. the sun rises late in the mornings, making them all the more warm, quiet and private, like something carried over from the past evening till falling asleep. and the moon's glowing like that three am in the morning shine, by seven, when the sun has only dimmed the sky only ever so little.. and on the bus back, the clouds seem very three-dimensional indeed. poking into our world like a pop-up book from Treasure Planet, how surreal. mm.

i was going to say, short hair rocks x) but yeah, it's just me, after i've cut my hair. most probably some subconscious Ah Q jing1shen3 at work. and yeah, i refrain from any further comment on this issue, hahhaha.

other than that, these few days have sucked. honest-to-truth chest pains now, i totally know what's wrong. argh.. i really really really really really really really don't want to go in.. damn apprentice doctors and having to help them with bedside surgery, waiting forever and half a day for the real docs to come in to finally operate. freaking boredom and irritation and thinking about things. i hate thinking about things under these conditions! but there wouldn't be much else to do. i think i should know. cogito ergo doleo, mm? i think therefore i am depressed, hahhahaha.

and i haven't even started studying, like studying studying, stuff other than tutorials and compulsory stuff, this year. what the hell.

and the evenings could suck if i only let them, but of course i don't. not now, not any more.

and i hate studying alone.

suck.

Nein, es ist MEIN fisch!

2008-02-17T22:49:00.005+08:00

oh! the real world. right.

take 5 was ok. sushi buffet was, i quote, BADASS.

6s is be the good stuff.

reading about architecture admissions and studies is damn stressful, understatement understatement. emphasis on drawing skills! portfolio portfolio portfolio. trinity accepts 1-2 applications a year. japan looks less attractive, i think i've mentioned. i never saw myself looking at the Big Ones. MIT, cambridge.. please, i'm a regular guy. way out of my league. so where am i supposed to go??

the whole process is so bloody messy it's like the professors in brown tweed coats and julian-spoofing-mrtoh-esque trousers strew fish guts all over the place on purpose, just for laughs. stupid educated people and their gray wigs and lousy morbid senses of humor. i'm quite stressed. bah.

also, valentines day coupled with CNY take their toll on everyone and the world! thank God i don't fall sick except insignificantly or desperately, so i'm not too much worse for the wear. i'm inexplicably tired though. like muscle aches and general fatigue. didn't even run this yesterday. pig. even slept from 7 to 8+ and woke up still aching. sucks. oh, and (things i can't say)

anyway, make no mistake, things are not ok. gosh, how do postmodernists do it. being conscious of all the opinions and options. it's overkill. it's like the blue robot going, YAY! new and improved, now with multiple moods at once!

ugh. i can't believe i'm being like this. STUPID! what the hell is this? augh!

say nothing at all

2008-02-16T23:53:00.015+08:00

these are those times when, while pushing everything away, clearing the mind and soul with city breezes and urban garden walks, gently crowded streets mildly bricked, cobbled and paved with palms walks. something persists, in a way that rattles my insides quietly so loud that i'm shaking and my breath becomes irregular, but it's a warm sort of pseudo-darling annoyingness that's pouting on the line that brings it over to unbearable heat, heat that makes my vision noisy and consumes the inside, with every involuntary recollection. i won't ask what i don't want to know for sure.

i'll do my assignments and my richard gere innocent glance-about whenever you want me to, but i just don't have the propensity for small talk. that sort of daily comfort only comes when it's just that, close and true. then it looses the frivolity and becomes enduring, endearing concern, don't you think? hahhahaha. but it's pretty much beside the point, isn't it. this whole thing makes me feel ill at ease(euphemism), you make me feel ill at ease, haha. how's that for a dilemma.

in other news. i'll count the years while they're young, because it's the thing to do. and my tick-tock clockwork soul does it for me anyway, like the fingers on your timeless tender hands. counting the occasions off one by one, happy birthday to this memory, heart's transparent pillory through the times and looks that mean nothing at all.

lying on the crossbar of the playground swings in the dark of the early morning, with you going up and down below like you're sleepily encouraging the sun to rise, so we can get up and walk slowly back to the house and crumpled cottony sheets of warm, embracing air.
facing away from the ocean because, gosh, it isn't really there for us with it's ups and it's outs, it's got more in its foamy arms than wet crumbly sands can caress the soles of her tanned, supple footprints. walk away, very, very slowly. this is where we don't go, keep to the grass and lined pathways out and away from you. the sea, she's got other shores she teases when it so pleases, her; try to let this knowledge ease your paiiiiin. yellow breezes blowing the isles farther and farther away.

Music:Plain White T's - Hate (I Really Don't Like You)

i suppose you're over me now

2008-02-12T18:35:00.000+08:00

all of a sudden today, life felt awesomely boring. i'm not doing anything anymore, nothing to look forward too, nothing to prepare for(besides A levels), nothing to do to meet new folks. it's like the sky suddenly got a little wider and emptied itself of that single big cloud that filled the big baby blue, and from the cockpit you peer out and see: hey! there's nothing going on up here.

i'm not thinking about a lot of things, consciously, but it's ok, for now. with nothing but chorale and studies and little personal things that don't involve anyone else, the general feeling is rather lazy. makes me want to engage in whimsical, inconsequential pointless activities to help me pass the time that i don't have. sit down with the pressed and ironed paper on an unusually cool and wet morning with toasted spam, a plate of rich croissants and half a flask of cold milk.

live in an imaginary, virtual reality; lounge around stacks of literature and research fiction in immense carpeted libraries with table lights that illuminate each of our faces and hands, closed in from the bright sunny greenery outside by two-storey windows veiled with massive curtains that look like they could have clothed the cold, hard stone walls of Arthur-who-existed-not's halls. browse writings and ideas and dreams of other men and girls, look at pretty pictures of architecture that's beyond my construction. snuggle up in a plump armchair like it all doesn't mean anything to me, except some special lucky person, or i am.

the thing about life that gets us down is the way we were brought up, and the society we live in, as we already know. i could dream of buying a nice little house in that little corner of the world where we can look out the window in the morning, at night, and the world is quite pretty; look forward to old age and being surrounded by family and little grandkids who go, ooh rasin! but it's placed in the little bottle, broken in the heart, to angst. and we've inherited expensive dreams; not from our parents, but from us, ourselves, the society we've built as we grew up in cots on the third and top floor of poorly-lit HDB flats.

so i'm walking around and around, missed my stop one too many times, took the wrong bus. when i get there, i'm not really; and every corner i turn to walk into a heaven, it's disappointment again, and again, until - not the body, but the spirit is tired and broken and we're ready to cry. but oh, boys don't cry.

i realize i'm not doing all the things that i used to do, that i used to just for the sake of it, just for me. and these things that i did brought me good things.. brought me people, brought me to people and places. things that gave my life more meaning. but as for now.. i guess it's still early, and maybe i'll go back to them when i've picked myself up and become independent again. then again, if i hadn't thought of it that way, it could have been that i'd be afraid of the same things happening again. things going.. like this.

but i realize that i'm not afraid, because i can not think about things, consciously. i just jump right back into the desert in search of something again, after being torn to pieces by the wind and bandits, and friends. and it's alright, so long as i don't see them, so long as i'm not reminded of them. haha.. mm, yes. in fact, maybe i overreacted. so long as i don't see, or hear of, much less touch.. the dance of life goes on. it seems i knew this before i did; not keeping anything at all. i really surprised myself. i can't avoid seeing, or hearing about them, really. so something inside tightens, and.. it's selective perception. you can't avoid it, and you most certainly can't blame. after all, other people mention them only in love.

walks really do me good, when i can just go on and on. helps me clear my mind, helps me think or make decisions about something at hand, even gives me my inspiration sometimes. if only they could give me motivation and warmth, that would be all i need for leisure, hahhaha..! too many people are saying how they like long, slow walks on the beach: the part of me that doesn't think about things, consciously, doesn't believe you. surely you're just saying that to sound sophisticated and like a nice person. can't you see that isn't what makes anyone one?

sometimes i don't even feel like singing anymore, because for every note i sing whilst having certain people in any, any corner or crevice of the mind, there are just so many strings attatched, tied, holding the sound back, keeping it from soaring over rooftops and into windows. but i still sing, haha. i really can't explain it. somehow, it just doesn't feel.. bad. mm.

i doubt i could ever tell, because that's how i'd like it to be and so, what i tell myself. if i could tell, it would mean certain things are gone now, and it all doesn't really matter anymore. i'm thinking optimistically, consciously, haha.

so. are you over me now?

如果妳确定，那我也确定。

2008-02-09T19:10:00.000+08:00

i'm quite blown over, i think. but then again i don't really care. people changing.. isn't important. in the end if people don't care anyway, i'd be better off giving up caring as well. the feeling, as usual, is quite inexpressible, but ok. deep breaths. yeah, i think i can not really care.

today was, nice in the way it is when you pull down the dusty gray curtains and the sunlight comes streaming through the stale, stale air, illuminating the tiny floating particles, coughing and squinting. something inside went quite hard and numb, and i could spare a few laughs, haha.. i'm quite sorry. i have most awesome friends x)

always a few things to think about. the whole thing about social life and the people you don't really know is, a guy wants to make himself look good for his friends and to these people, when he goes out with said friends, so that in the end nobody looks down on us; so the whole atmosphere of the travelling party isn't affected negatively and everyone generally has a good time and we go home feeling, gosh, what a beautifully quaint people we are.

this morning i woke up late, and i forgot to switch on the water heater before going to do the sets, so when i got back i just had a cold shower with little lather and a hurried towel off; thus the post-WWII-student hair. ugh to that >< the irony lies in the slow didn't-really-eat-anything breakfast when i talked with my mom over hot chocolate. i'm liking where family life is going, and i would have been quite happy over these times, if not for missing things in the other parts of proposed idealized lifestyle and certain occurences and reminders. i swear everything that could, reminds me now; as in, right now. i'd say it's irritating, but rather, it numbs.

for the record: today we went visiting! it was fun, and it really makes me miss childhood. and by that i mean the times when we visited gramma and grampa every sunday for lunch, would look forward so much to going all the way across the island whenever we could to see granny and frolic in general old-time family living. geoffrey, jorel, royce, wenyi. so things bothered me, but some things are usually bothering me anyway, haha. i think i had a good time (:

Music: The War - Melee

It's so soft to the see the glow from the city up ahead
Connect my heart to the rhythm it's lead
Straight forward and ready 'cause I'm on my way home
It's so good to be alive in such a hazardous world
To be alive and see the victory unfurled
I'm anxious and waiting 'cause I'm on my way home
Yeah, your war is won oh my friend your're finally done
On that day you'll find ambitions don't lie here anymore
The one you love has gone and settled the score
What more could you ask for now
It's so good to be alive in such a wonderful year
To be alive and see the end of your fear
With peace in your ear 'cause you're on your way home
And all this time we walk the line through pain and giving in to you
But now it's gone so we'll move on and know that this is not the end
On that simple night when we've all lost our sight
You believed in what I said
From those cursed beginnings to those blessed ends
In between we've found our way to live

i took a good half hour walk the long way round to get home, after dropping off the bus by the railway tracks to malaysia. and well, i think i've sorted most things out. a pained part of me will always, always be waiting and praying for the opportunity to make things go back to how they were, but my conscious, constant self can't believe in that all the time. it's too rending to the sight and faith. i need to keep believing in people, so this all never happened. don't even talk to me about denial, friend. this never happened.

oh, and all this except the last few lines apply to more than just one thing. they are very recent, not so recent, feels-recent-to-me-but-i-guess-it-isn't-really. haha, this is so pathetically cheesy and melodramatic, but this is the world i live in. we all live in our own worlds, don't we, haha. maybe it's true that the real world is just a proxy. like how i was a proxy in your life, to others. a proxy of experience.

i'm going to, stop thinking about it. yes, i have vision, i'm not a aimless drifting character in the story, haha. so let me forget that this was part of the story and continue with things immaterial until i can bear it again. i have essays to write, equations to complete, theses to research for, training schedules to observe, drafts to finish drawing, portfolio to compile. i'll wait for it to come.. i'll wait for it to come.

oh and on that note i lie to my constant conscious self that i have snapped out of it, haha. friends are too good. mm yes, in this and only this sort of situation, i give my complete blessing, haha. i'm too deadened to feel so foolishly about this sort of thing now, though i'm not so unconcerned as not to feel happy for anything that can go right, nor so insensate as not to feel a certain tinge of jealousy. i accept the mistaken attribute, hahhaha, i'll gladly do a harry truman if it'll make me a better man. the buck stops here: i have high standards, right? so it is, so it shall be.

thank you, friends, for the day (:
thank you Lord, for the friends.
i'm begging, haha. come talk to me and tell me what's running through your mind, and what was, if you can. i'd really rather it so.
otherwise, let me live.

tranquil as concrete

2008-02-08T08:37:00.000+08:00

isn't morning such a peaceful time.
like the flame from a (hydrocarbon) torch.

8.41am 那就是寂寞灰云泪成雪之处。

8.52am 今早的感觉真像小时候，当小孩所做的事事都对世界与他所爱的人无关紧要。
like an acrylic shard. how it says, there's nothing to see here, i'm really truly empty and good for nothing, see.

9.06am 到此时仍无联讯。死了这条心吧!小子，美人鱼绿色的大海也仍是那么的大。

9.07am oh, i don't know what it is like to swim through chocolate, or how it feels to walk sadness. but i do think i know how to rain

grandkids by 50

2008-02-07T21:46:00.000+08:00

(this was just so full of bittergourd that i'dve replaced sentences with * and words with _ to leave the pretty parts, but it's such a completely disgusting feeling that i'll push this post away tomorrow like a bill on an evening after a long day, homework on chinese new year's eve. good night.)

have i mentioned it before? haha.

今年初一还过得去，虽然大部分是因为到了母亲的娘家见了奶奶。她一年比一年样子变得更健康更开心，it gives me a funny feeling inside. makes me wish that she would move nearer to our side of the island so i could visit her so much more often, that i could talk with her in the hokkien that i don't know and tell her about the inconsequential things we young'uns do with our time and the nonsensical romantic ideas and antics that we get up to that she would tsk tsk tsk about to me all afternoon, any afternoon, and i would only laugh along, hahhaa..

老父家是另外一回事了。grandfather never lets a hint of what he's feeling get to his face，而婆婆与四五年前比起好像完全变了人似的。或许这就是所谓的人生一路灾难把一个人心中真正是怎么样的都显示出来。但我对她而她所做的还是又埋怨又是心痛。。。这就是让我对未来的家庭，有的期望那么无情地高尚的原因。haha. but maybe i'm just romanticizing everything eh? every family has their problems.

还有另外的呐。这是我刚才对自己说的: 万事都要彼此。这不是我自己想要的。但我总是觉得我实在是在缠着各位。哈哈! 看我这个样子，真是太可笑了。我的确是太习惯某种方法过着日子了。能怪我无法适应吗。真是可怜。大男子汉一点气质都没。
嗨，真是的 - 意思是，无论你会怎么说我心中还是知道我为何行为这样:实在是太丢脸了。人家生活过得快快乐乐的，这傻脑袋还总是在胡思乱想。我是过的还可以。hahaha look at me go on and on.

the stupid thing about philosophy is how only those who have learned it all, then forsaken it for the simple and honest life are those understood to truly have gone through the process and come out wiser for it. those who "realize earlier before wasting all that time reading long extended monologues about insignificant human thoughts and how it all works" are just ignorant lazy bastards who think they know everything. no, i don't really find kant and nietzsche fascinating, though i could go through their arguments and debates with you all day if i bothered. so judge me.

yeah, i'm in a rubbishy mood. i thought the past few days were nice, because of conversations, but obviously my subconsciousness or whatever it wants to call itself has other ideas, and actually these few days have been utterly rubbishy, like that exhibition i went to during the singapore art festival last year. supposedly oh so creative and unique and oddly, cutely-ugly-but-adorably beautiful like the sunflower made from the metal lid of a trash can.

with every line and every paragraph i only get more angry at the doubt that's resultant of that. yes, i do think i blame all the doubt that floats like debris in the singapore river and the fish tank of my life on that. so i'm a selfish little idiot who'd rather be self-absorbed out of reality. fsk ! flutterby! _ _ _ _! *. i blame beauty itself, i blame moments. i blame not growing up properly like a real boy. i blame singing.

sweat doesn't even water the smoldering grass for a microsecond, cause of the puny frame. there's no kick in breaking things. i don't want to be this way! like a goldfish in a bowl of hot soup, for a brief moment - get me out of this frame of mind, this ugh.

no, actually. i'm pretty sure it's just me.
God help me.

special people

2008-02-05T20:29:00.000+08:00

5 days of distance begin to-day.

it's quite ironic. i can't really just come out and say it, you know, haha. but it's something that i'm sure some folks can see. anyway, i'm hurt, because. i'm angry because, i'm irrationally angry. deep breaths.

folks have been unwell. physically, emotionally. i can still say, take care, friends.. haha. two empty benches on monday afternoon were a testament to the school on that.. the way they are of something else, every other day. and every time i take a deep breath i'm reminded of the decision to be made.

oh, it's a small matter, comparatively. mm, i've decided to wait. these five days were meant to be for catching up with all those tutorials and studying. plus it's on and off, i can still lie to myself that i may just be imagining things and being paranoid, so i'm just going to wait till after, then i'll see how. this will NOT affect trip. whatever my course of actions must be.. i only pray that i'll get to go, and sing.

today everyone vanished, then everyone appeared, then vanished. it was nice, but i'm plagued by doubt when i allow myself to think, hahhaha, tell me not to think. a nice concept popped into my head, a solution to a imaginary problem. i took the time to draw it out nicely: it actually felt good, haha.. i never have the time for these things, to do random reading and research and document special little pictures that pop into mind.

another special thing about architecture is how every once in a while, oh such a long while, there are a few things that pop in and, are actually beautiful forever. it's a unique kind of beautful: the scene is unfulfilled, misty and full of uncertainty, what color is it, where does it begin or end? it's a vague sort of beauty that is only when you are actually there, then you stop to examine the surface that you sit on and everyone around you, everyone there with you vanishes and oh, you're not there anymore.

but there's no doubt about it, though you don't know what it was or how it was like in any way but the most dreamy and leaf-like. the built form.. can only give this sort of emotion if you linger, and if there are people. and the very introduction of people introduces so much.. of such a different beauty, you wonder how they co-exist and amplify one another so.

i can't really call so many people anymore. now that my head is a little more clear, now, this year when the cloud of trauma has settled into the dust layer of pseudo-indifference, aching quasi-acceptance. how one year could be so devastating. all the time, all the distance. it's just been too long? what can i say. people change.

no, actually. it's probably just revelation. we never treasured anything we had enough - that's what i believe. and the most important thing, now, could just fall prey. i refuse to predict anything. the self-fulfilling prophecy is in our hearts, or it isn't.

bleargh. why can't i believe that actually, every word could be just as sincere?
wasn't i once that way.

that certain night

2008-02-03T21:55:00.001+08:00

feeling really lethargic now. have not had an appetite all day. grr.

camp is over. so many thing happened that i'm not saying, it'd been the usual roller-coaster ride of mixed feelings, but in the end sitting at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for our rides, with whoever was there too - deb, kialiang, suet, julian, quanquan - made it alright.

this will be a happy post, haha. i declare it so. i learned about people, things that i didn't know before. it was the little things. isaac, suet, julian, bennett. i blame the distance, and how i am. but i'm really thankful for how we are, can i say we? it's quiet scary to declare how beautiful a people is after a while. but i have to say i feel a lot, even though i shouldn't really dare to.

chorale really is the only thing in my life now. which comes pretty hard, because i doubt affiliations; they're so much more tenuous than personal relationships, which in themselves are already so fragile unless well-used. i'm grateful for geoffrey, for all this time, really. i thank God, and circumstances, and commitment.

other than that, all my personal relationships now feel so useless all of a sudden. all of them others now. so tender and wisp-like, like if someone drew a breath out of turn it all wouldn't really matter. which totally sucks. i blame who i am, dammit.

(food for thought, wenyi, hahhaha). i'm running too many processes at once at any one time, and they're all core programs that support the system. the whole system engine's coding is very poorly written, from trial and error, resulting in this convoluted mess that just begins to overheat handling the most mundane affairs(they must be) the cooling system must be really God-given or something. i googled local student psychiatric help just a while ago, hahha. damn. i'm not some wilting stalk. i don't really want a shrink.

this really was the first of the lasts. past half a year with just our batch was amazing. we've had last practice with just us, we've had our last camp. i refuse to begin listing the other lasts - but this whole experience carries undertones of the experience i get every time after a particularly good concert, or after that special camp at st.johns'.

it's a more recent thing, but events associate themselves with songs. events that matter so much, they're quite surreal to recall - ~~something stupid~~, moulin rouge, coffee. and there are those that are for times that were not so nice at all.

There's plenty of time left tonight
I promised I'd have you home before daylight
...
There're so many things I have to say
I'll stay up all night to hear about your day

ahh.
yeah, i think that's all that can be said here.
'night.

chorale

2008-01-31T22:38:00.000+08:00

all in all this has been not such a bad day, i think.

loads of j1s were streaming into the school as i walked out of the ruddy back gate(that you can no longer climb over on saturdays and sundays when it's locked, darn) today. and as i did i felt unusually energetic, like i do when i recall what i'm working for, why i put up with myself, why i'm holding on, and it's all right again. the thing is, i don't quite know what made me feel that way. i had just been surrendering myself to lé whimsy, or trying to do work like a normal student.

art is odd, and ever since yihui dropped i've been questioning myself about it in ways that i never had before. because really, in all ways i should have been the one to drop. and well, when i use the wrong words, or say the wrong answer out loud, or sit speechless, the question shakes my heart like loose change on a laundromat dryer.

for some reason or another i'd reconsidered studying architecture in japan just today. i do think it'd be an awesome place to study, technically - the way their minds work, as it seems when you read what they say and see how they design, it's quite mindblowing sometimes. but the culture.. the people. they just don't seem like a very friendly receptive country, one couldn't really fit in and and and..
basically i can imagine myself studying there and those things, it would be so amazing, but when you put in the people.. i grow doubts. and frankly, now, i can't believe i never really gave this serious thought before.

i'm giving up on certain things that were to mean a lot to me, from then till a while. so often you don't realize how you really appear to others, or you might just make a change; even looking in the mirror doesn't show you what others see when they look at you. then again, maybe it's just me being oblivious. but either way, some people get all the luck, haha.

but i'm going to buck up with just a few things that should matter just because i want them too, for now. i'm going to study, basically. in spare time that i don't waste.. i'm to practice guitar and continue singing and have a proper training schedule. and in all the spare time that i do waste i'm to continue drawing. i've not done a project in more than a year. with reason, but still.

chinese new year it here, and the extended family is having tuanyuanfan earlier, for some reason or another. at the old man's side, it's such a tense affair, sigh. on mother's side it's really frivolous, but it's silly enough to make it feel like home, if only we actually spent the time together. but no, we don't, we didn't. i'm missing tuanyuanfan with father's, for it's to be on the 2nd. i don't know whether to be glad or to be sorry.

fine, so too close can be a bad thing. it's quite easy for me to believe that i do this thing all wrong, actually, because some things transcend personae. frankly - it may be wrong, but regardless, i'd rather it than too distant. moments that cause us to draw back later.. so long it's a distance only because of too much proximity(giving that there is such a thing), i trust that it can be picked up in the future. like i always say, eternity's a long time. we'll find time.

i'm going to quit asking myself what some people mean for a while, because i think i don't really want to know. there just hasn't been enough time yet, or proper. you can tell i'm not a very talky guy, under casual circumstances, but i have my ways of making up for that, hahhaha. but the point is, i've just decided that it can't go on, and i need to stop chasing rainbows and just follow the dotted line.
and trust God that there's something worthwhile waiting at the other end.

oh!

2008-01-29T22:09:00.000+08:00

how they romanticize literature! and a block of pulp becomes a dream-holder, like a picture frame in the nighttime. i can hardly breath - green and scarred sits on my shelf, flat on it's side beside philosophy and technical volumes. what did it mean-? it passed away.

it had started raining! yes i am listening, keep on going sir, yes 1,2-di-rain streaking across the palette of the view framed by the lab door and more. can't hear the rain though, can't hear anything- Are you listening? snap out of it, the rain's stopped streaking, now it's streami -

the day is so musically devastating. after the tone she speaks; the ring of her soft voice and careless words. my hopes are dashed and dashed again. but seriously. stupid day.

what a waste of time and energy this must be-! i have no idea if any of these in the world play in this nonsensical charade with me. it used to be like we were actors, changing from one character to the other, dissonant or complimentary at just the right moments. hm. how irreplaceabley quaint and false.

oh! these insults and suan-ses are the only time in the past year that we've spent together. is that all you wanted? why wouldn't you communicate that instead of acting like a four-year-old? like-

rainbow angst and emo

2008-01-27T00:30:00.000+08:00

i'm going to try to write something short to compensate for the convoluted nature of the previous write. i'm sure i'll fail, haha. but hopefully only in the "short" bit.

today is be less happy. it's always a combination of things, little little things that.. matter. can i try to write it out and away from my head?

it's like walking on smouldering coals: if you don't keep going and going quick enough, the heat will really get to you, and you bet it hurts. was feeling like i was getting sick this morning, and i was late, and there's this other thing, so was generally feeling irritated this morning. did Rash Things, but seems this time it turned out fine. still, j1s give much doubt. but this whole affair has ever been Doubtful, and furthermore my life has been a sea of Doubt with islands of Certainty, oh rainbow emo and angst, hahhaha. i'm not even going to say, what island.

friday i did the stupidest thing, also. running away to sort things out was just all at the wrong time, and i went to just the wrong place to think. have i mentioned how long it's been since i sat and tried to figure things out. it didn't work that day, anyway. gosh, i'm trying so hard not to descend into vagueness and abstraction today, hahha. pretty much sucks.

the other thing is-is the convoluted thing. basically, i hate gaps in communication that cannot be bridged. there is no beauty in the breakdown, friend. they just say that to make themselves feel better. the beauty is there when people do nothing when actually, they can do something about their problems that afflict their small hearts, small exploding hearts. but they do nothing. i don't think i can believe in that anymore. i still don't believe in provisional arbitrary feelings, but i cannot believe in this sort of beauty anymore. it's just can't really be beautiful.

this is what i spent the whole of today on, friend. woke up and groaned and grabbed the sheets to collapse back into cotton polyester navy, woke up and ran and ran and ran late for appointment. had a date where we sat and didn't really say anything meaningful, a 12-hour date with where i can only feel unwanted because of innate stupidity. walked back, walked back on autopilot, woke up to find myself stumbling down the bus at my stop before the highway to the north. went home, ate, pottered about and it's tomorrow. hello, today.

i appreciate, i do i do i really do. i appreciate attempts, small talk that yearns for evolution to something bigger and stronger, your countenance native to my eyes, persons that i think i can understand, people whom i'd trust. i appreciate comments and words that my heart understands, long distance communication, silent dependable (flower) buds for mundane matters. i appreciate you.

but the truth is, friend, that i'm plagued by doubt, hahha, and to cut a messy aberration right off, i'm bothered in an ineffable way. it cannot be effed and forgotten. not just like that, anyway.

just when i was eating dinner and my mother was doing something or another in the room, i just randomly asked if my father and her would consider migrating, like 10+ years down the road. and what surprised me is that she softened her tone to ask why.

i don't want the world to bring us apart. but at the mention of this, i could start swearing and swearing, yes i could, oh yes, friend. no effort against this will have any effect at all unless the people concerned can understand and close their eyes and wish, and then act together. to stop being men and women who secretly desire to lead extraordinary lives, but just to live together. and here i presume much, but i don't care, d_____.

i repeat myself a lot. yesterday was rescued, though the sun had already set; how will today be? i really really hate feeling like this. the sun may have set and yesterday gone, but i haven't slept yet, so this will not be pleasant. ugh.

all i need, is to be occupied with something that, between us, we can make sure won't go wrong.
but that brings me back to para.3, you may replay it.

sigh. i was happy, friend. what happened?

in circles, circles

2008-01-24T22:05:00.000+08:00

whimsically: this morning there was talk of a boat show on the radio. your sea-bound dreams are intriguing, 'cause having read such fantastic history(and real, if anyone knows it)the seas seem to grow more silent, sullen as they thrash on, though only empty outlines of true ships ride their foamy maxima. As commercial cargos plow their way through these phantoms' visages via straight curves around this flat world.. a familiar presence on the waters would somehow feed the urge to create a hidden safe haven on a bought isle. there are dreams of riches and pointless living, for aesthetic's sake. It's a plastic beauty i abandon with great abandon.

Quite amazingly, i've felt happier than i've been in a long time these few days or weeks, (large)kinks in schoolwork aside. The moments have been unsure of themselves, but i'm sure i've felt more relaxed. before it'd always been like the tragic bloom of flowers in the morning; the dried wilted leavings only good for pressing into mouldy old books that no-one looks at are right there, in the special tint on that petal that the dawning star's first touch puts into my eyes. Foreshadowing. I.. don't quite know what the change is/has been. Maybe i've been given new perspective, or been given back some fraction of my old. What i do know is, when the night's breath hit me this morning at 0030 hours, i too could breath full again.

i'd never known the meaning of self-indulgence until the word was mentioned, and you've got one guess as to why. maybe i could be disgusted with the way i would handle things if i was so given the ability to. but maybe leopards can't change their spots, so they can only get used to it already and try to blend in. maybe i'm just not thinking about it, and singing, because i can't think about it. i'm still recovering.

to every thing, there is a season. for every purpose under heaven.. there is a time, a proper time. a time to cast away! to bring together. a time to be afraid, to be alone.. to fight! to yeild, to kill, and heal, there is a time, there is a time..

i know, i know. but it doesn't mean that even if things change, i'd stick to plan A. Because certain things don't happen every day, some things i refuse to wait for unless i must, and then some things just draw me inexplicably with some unutterable fragrance.

wow that was coherent.
yeah, basically i'm good as long as i'm talking with you, or singing with folks, or drawing, or running, or walking. not thinking about myself. still, when you put things into Safe Mode.. it doesn't mean we can't reboot. but it's got to be strong, to touch my heart in its shell
and i'll wait for it to come.

can only hope

2008-01-21T22:09:00.000+08:00

"He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."

travelling travelling

2008-01-19T19:55:00.000+08:00

today i sang until i couldn't sing no more, literally, haha.
today i bought the great gatsby, finally. curiosity's stronger, literature never killed, hurt hasn't killed, what doesn't kill only makes you stronger. i'll be up tonight reading it, i think.
today it actually felt almost ok when people parted ways. who knows why.

can you see me struggling with emotions? that wash over like waves and waves that leave you blinking and trying to turn the corners of your mouth up in the morning and raise your eyebrows to friends who gather round? emotions that come from every little thing seen, every thing i see people doing, every thing i hear. every thing i hear people singing.

your voice is such a big clue into your character. maybe it changes every day, it's so unstable you wish you'd grow up and stabilize and lead a happy life. maybe it's bipolar but not a mask, because both sides are as much a part of who you are, so you can live the fullest most amazing life you can. maybe it's my inspiration, maybe it fuels my intuition, my imagination, every word out of your mouth, every expression that appears when you tell your story and laugh till you cry.

maybe if we all worked together our fear could be left behind. let go, let go, like the walking stick left leaning against the wall at the LRT station early this evening, no doubt by some generously mature senior who forgot that he depended on it, forgot that he can't go on for long without it. forgot that we can't stop him walking on, forgot that fear can't make us keep holding back, if we only
let go, let go-

intimate friendship.

2008-01-18T21:53:00.000+08:00

this is a surprise, because i try not to write on consecutive days.

in the last year i'd become a stick-my-neck-out sort of guy. in some ways, anyway. basically, i do stupid stuff that no-one in their right mind would do, and hope that by some miracle it turns out as well as it possibly could. so, so seldom it has. and in the same old areas it just came(no other better expression for this) crashing down. and yeah. it actually hurts, what do you know.

and i do hate doing this. seriously. i'm pretty normal, in the sense that i like a familiar scene, with close friends, a comfortable atmosphere, and for the good times to just roll. it's just that in past year i'd realized that i never really had that feeling properly outside the one, or at least not for long enough.

what do you call the irrepressible urge to form close, healthy, well-meaning, mature, fun-filled, through and through well balanced platonic relationships with people? i'm well aware of how things are, how the world just is, and things like that "aren't always possible". but there's you and there's me, isn't there. and this is a you and me to whoever would actually come and read this.

i've honestly come to believe that everything, all the relationships to be made in the world, all depend on commitment. because i remember what i believed before i was made to think that i'd been disillusioned, and it's hard not to see the beauty in anyone if only you can make yourself take the time, i'd like to believe.

insofar as the people whom i've been placed amongst are concerned, it's true for me, anyway. maybe because the choice to take the time wasn't always given to me, but that's not the point. the point is, so much more time has to be taken after that, and it all has to be mutual. if a person realizes he could fall in love with anyone he choses, he can't allow himself to just, make a decision, right? there's only one intuitive criteria for this choice, i think.

sometimes, we make bad decisions. i know i've made more than my share. sometimes shit just happens. sometimes it did. but everything to be done is done in vain if a guy's alone, altogether.

and a lot of the times it's just hard to speak.

platonic marriage

2008-01-16T22:17:00.000+08:00

two people telling me to and not to read the great gatsby, haha. and the matters that are entwined with this in my mind are so much lengthier than the vine these things are plucked off from, it's not even funny.

now it seems that chorale has actually started again, and it didn't really feel good. i love choral singing, but every time i walk away from one more practice the feelings just add to an overarching heartache that's unutterable. and for as long as i can remember i've walked away from chorale practices feeling like this without quite knowing why. it's pretty disheartening, and it's things like this that make me wonder what it would have been like if i'd developed musically another way.

i really appreciate the people, mostly. i could feel a whole lot more, but there's a lot of doubt in me, associated with chorale, somehow. can you tell i'm going down the sinusoidal curve again, ahhahaha. i think, it's due to too many letdowns? and continual draining of hope, from every note sung, but not so much that as the other. disallowing myself to feel so strongly about certain things, because i think i shouldn't be: suppresion, haha. this will supposedly come back and kick me in the ass in the future. Freud would slap me. but then again i never did like Freud, so i'm not supposed to care.

mood is a pretty simple thing, actually. it's the little things that happen in life that affect my mood, somehow. every conversation, people i get to see and talk to, how much and what about, every word, every response, every expression. it's a subconscious sort of thing, lol. and it all adds up, at the end of the day, or year. i could write about it in my IS, but i'd just confuse myself.. but yes. it all matters.

today finally saw what they were doing with our dear old mini-canteen, sort of. and ideas for how i would do it started popping into my head, haha. and talk on portfolios, and how all my sketchbooks are totally not presentable, and how i don't have the time to properly complete and present nicely every one of those projects, or even a few. make time, she says. when i have to.

school is BAD FOR MY MENTAL HEALTH, i want Off to NS. all these people are bad for my mental health, too many possible regrets not to have. maybe it's cause it's too late? waited too long. or maybe i'm really just in the wrong place. what the hell. totally degenerating, haha, forgive me.

but yeah. every little thing contributes. it doesn't seem like much to anyone at first, but i'm so grateful to the smile that tips the scale at the end of the day. the conversation that lightened the mood, that didn't remind, that lets me forget.
the sun's rays falling, falling like paint upon our collective thoughts and dreams. shouting out-
live.
live
live

and burn

2008-01-13T16:30:00.000+08:00

it's odd to see that
something weird about me
seems to be, i know how i sort of want to(as opposed to sort of know how i want to) live my life.
as in every moment and every day; this period and that stage of life where we're young and happy, trying to mature like good wine, living it up with friends and grandkids.
in other words, i somehow manage to have a pretty optimistic idealistic outlook on life. and i can see the moments, and that's what keeps me going sometimes. it's a good thing.

of course, it's a look forward for encouragement sort of thing, and ever so often things don't work out. most of the time things have gone horribly different, but i like to think that it's just the postmodern vibes of our generation's youth, and we'll settle down and stabilize soon enough, haha.

even if we don't, there'll be another way about it. the idea of architecture as a way of life just sits better and better with me every day. there are many escape routes, haha. the people are what give it it's life; the design team, the clients, the consultants. the people who are close to us, not because of architecture but just because of us. the passion associated with the place, with LT4, with under block A, with St. John's island, with that little corner in the botanical gardens - it's because of the lives that we live and the emotions we attach to places, because of people.

but so often people leave, or we don't feel close enough to them. because of doubt, because of aliens. then the place has to be enough, and the memories, the cumulation of our past experiences. intuition, the feeling that everything will be alright. it's pretty sad, but a guy needs something to grasp onto. i'd be inclined to think that, independence is a lie.

still, the place is empty. i can't but desire more. walking brick and glass-lined streets full of happy people in the bright daylight has never done anything but good, and the design process begins because of desire. because a man desires more than a place; it must be filled with people who love and hate. nothing can bring back the feeling the old relationship, the old place gave. nothing can make it alright again, but it's the desire for relationships like that that makes a person sitting on a concrete slab by the cool, clear water pick up his pencil again. because the need is greater than the pain, whether it should be that way or not.

i wanted to say, i'd decided to wait. because i can imagine myself waiting: it is a good picture. i could be content waiting; i can be good at waiting, i can carry on happily with friends and family, waiting. with jobs and studies, with music and sweat.
but i think i'd not be waiting for that anymore, not precisely. because what mattered was not that i gave, because i feel that i could give so freely if i allowed myself to, to almost anyone. what mattered was what was given in return. and, cursed be the breath that brought this thought, but i doubt about things going back to how they were. because of a bad experience while you were gone.

i'd decided to wait. i'd given myself too much slack, i'd told people. maybe it's given a bad impression. but crash-crush, i've found a use for the notebook you'd given me, deb. this is an impressionist tale - sing me this song. soundtrack not of anyone's life, but of this scene where there were two people, three people, one person. soundtracks of impressions.

remembering

2008-01-09T23:38:00.000+08:00

    i went upstairs to my room at nine thirty planning to do my math(and here all the fears and doubts about studies this year arise from the swash of thoughts pulsing back and forth on the shore of my consciousness). but something made me decide to go search for the old sunday school songbook(which i somehow found this time after so many failed search expeditions in this mess of a house) and pick up and tune my guitar from it's case in the corner, which i have so sadly neglected(for months!) that i could barely say, i can play.

    and i sat on my bed and propped the book open with my knee under crossed legs and began playing and singing. i miss this so much, and yet it's like i've never really done it before: singing these simple songs with other children of the Lord. there have had been special moments, but lately i've been chiding myself for romanticising so many memories, impressions, and i wonder if i can trust these, they seem like they're from so far away. why didn't we keep singing?

    there are a number of things that sit on my mind, all the time. and this is one of them: to have a real family. this is one aspect of my life in which i do not want to not have an anchor, to not have a home to return to after wrestling with the world. i hope and hope and hope, i do. i just wish that we could all really come home to us and to Him.

    and i wish that we could sing. hey, we're choristers, but more importantly we're children also in Christ. i wish also that we could sing, and share, but people have lives and truth be told, i'm afraid. if it doesn't matter enough to you, it won't do any good, however much it could to me, would it. but i do wish we could sing. and if i had given myself a Christmas wish, this is what i would wish. but.. for a way to make it come true..

    our time is so short, and i can only hope that silence is because we're all afraid. because then there's some small measure of hope, than if it didn't matter. and i should know that time is short.

    and i miss sitting together, two, singing. about God.

physical reassurance

2008-01-07T03:24:00.001+08:00

".. which (just to be provocative) we propose to call Epistemic Romanticism. One central idea of 19th century Romanticism was that our real selves, the essence of our identity, is implanted within us, and that to discover who we really are we but need let that real identity emerge. Epistemic.."

    truth be told, that's what i miss, i think.

    unfortunately i find myself in quite a cut up state of mind, as the distressed leather of my now-empty wallet. i don't know why i care about these things, precisely, but i do know that i'd decided to care and still do, somehow. whether i want to is another thing entirely and a question i'd rather not examine, for fear that i'd stop.

    it's a number of things that are hard to talk about, and it's early in the morning, my current source of distress is KI IS, but the blinding pressure that was reaching childhood-recurring-nightmare-that-wakes-me-up-covered-in-sweat standards started lessening a while ago when i began rereading gen's article. thank you, flap of a butterly's wings. of late i just haven't been able to think.. philosophically. i've only been able to act.. provisionally, and then only barely. my thoughts are a mess, they have as much direction as zero length vectors. i find myself silent more often than not, more often than usual. the belief i ascribe is that i'm burnt out of energy, so what if it's a state of mind. the belief is in fact that i'm afraid of acting, because i don't know, beause you seem so contradictory.

    in other words, yes, i have arisen, awoken. yawn. nobody likes a mopey kid. real men cry streams of blood, and then some, blah etc basically you can only romanticize for so long, and then you have to slap yourself(assuming, as it is, that there's noone to save you the trouble and slap you first) and try to go on living. please don't come to me and tell me, hey, glad you're feeling better. i'm glad that you're glad, i truly am, but the blade is still in the wound in a number of cases. now the healing can begin, i said. i'd said it for that one thing, that one thing only. and now i would even have doubts about that.

    in other words, i still feel and always will. for you and you and you, and things that need catching up and building and dreaming but wait- are you too tired, too afraid too? or maybe it's my imagination and you basically don't give a damn, as i'm being convinced it is. i'll put down my ego someday and take the risk myself and ask, but as for now we've got no choice but to continue walking our own ways. straight as the frisbee flies isn't very straight at all, and eventually the disk will connect with the dirt, if it isn't caught by someone first.

    here's to hoping one of us will reach out and catch.

night and day

2008-01-01T21:11:00.000+08:00

good feeling's gone.
some things are easier said than done, and

and there's helplessness.
how does a person change so much in half a year?
by all rights i should know.
and actually, i think i do.
and there's helplessness.

my every waking thought

2008-01-01T08:06:00.000+08:00

how bout something in a normal voice today.

i guess reflections are due this year, and thanks to a very special person, i'm in a fit state of mind to narrate it properly.. the walk and Starbucks were wonderful, and even though it was hardly much more than an hour, i'm very thankful for Huilin (: weathering the rainstorms of friendship have made for a beautiful relationship, and i'm quite sad that now that i can really call and talk anytime, i can't really anymore. it's personal understanding that makes these feelings last beyond affiliation to a group of people, and i really hope to forge more like this, so, so much. haha. ok. anyway, i know you'll read sometime or another, and i just want to say i can only wish the very best for you, and i shamelessly volunteer myself to be the best man when the time comes! xD yup. ok, better stop, haha. tugging heartstrings too much just makes them raw and wet, and it's not even new year's eve.
-30th december

yesterday was a funny day, but i'm very glad it passed the way it did.. played soccer with the j2 guys one last time in the morning. it's just something that i'm going to miss i suppose, from deep down to the days in sec2, when people like chin ee and gengrui weren't tied down by feelings of duty, we were just happy regular kids and we played basketball in the mornings before sectionals on saturdays or soccer on the astroturf. i guess have to say i really envy the graduating batch of guys. the kind of camaraderie that transcends understanding is really beautiful, and it must be great to have such a group of buddies who have and will go through so much of life together. cherish! and i hope i could gain something like that too..

bubble tea, dinners at the playground, at s11 and the PDA place under the hdb flats will be missed too, lol. was good to just sit there and listen, always has been, and the most interesting topics surfaced at these places, hahhaha. this was our own inadequate, insecure way of displaying affection, lol, and i'm going to miss it so, it's just not something that our batch would do. and there are things that haven't been said yet, thought nobody knows quite what they are, and i hope that this proves not to be one of those self-terminating applications, as i sense it isn't. because they are most certainly not low-priority. sometimes one wonders whether one should be there but.. i'm really going to miss these j2s.

overall, the truth is i don't recall much about the year in detail. personal things have occupied me, i'd just gone on the blink and done stupid things. i'd neglected a lot of things that should have been very important to me, which are, which really are. there really isn't an explanation.. only a very poor decision.

i'm very thankful for geoffrey and wenyi, haha. i do such insanely stupid things, but some friends have a knack for seeing true colors, and i'm ever so grateful. i'm grateful for a friendship that's stood the test of time and circumstances, and i'm grateful for a friendship that's blossomed when, well, i needed it the most. things like this don't happen for any old reason. i think i kept too many things to myself, and actually some things can't be explained or described even if i tried, but i'm glad that i could open up yesterday evening, and i'm glad that you could stand the cheese. because as someone who may not understand what had transpired over these four years, for reasons, it's easy to dismiss this as just guy nonsense. and i may very well have if i'd been in your position. so, thank you for seeing me as an actual real person..

this year has been a very trying year, and unfortunately i had to go through a lot of it myself. i don't think anyone could understand how hard it was for so much that was important to collapse or disappear at once. but i know i handled it very poorly indeed, and i'm paying the price. and some things aren't salvageable, i fear. people change.. i cried when i first sang that song. and it had been there all along, but i happened to pass it by, and i can only say that your words seem very cold, and i'm losing hope too, and then it really will be beyond rescue. and why not. i know i've only got myself to blame, and i sometimes keep telling myself that i'd just idealized all those memories to make them so beautiful, more beautiful than they were, and i keep humming that song to try to desensitize myself, to make it possible for it to go away easier, and it seems that i'm already preparing myself for it. one day i will find closure, and i already know how.

it'd been one thing after the other, as cliché as that sounds. i could draw a timeline in my head. denial, depression, anger, what else was there? contrary to what anyone may think, many things have affected me this year. i'd lost one after the other, and chorale just gave me so much.. dunnowhat. there were no fresh starts this year, as much as i'd hoped, coming over from RV and RI. and i think i'd given up so long ago it's not even funny, and i could be really angry because of it all. and sometimes i am, and when i'm angry i do things. but i try not to think about it, and some things are salvageable, in some small sense anyway. although some feelings are going to be hard to change, i want to understand some of these people, only because i know i can't have it all. we only have so little time, and i'd never put enough effort into these incredibly special people because i'd been so distracted by things, and so angry, and so afraid. and i'm not experienced, i'd never picked things up from halfway before. not really, anyway. but i'm going to try, because i know it'll be worth it when things last beyond this affiliation.

a lot of things are left hanging, of course, and i don't forget. i still remember what i swore, and i wonder about danne, and i ponder about grace. i miss huiqi in the oddest way. i want to grab ~~amos~~arnold away from all his busy-ness and him and geof and me would go on a two month holiday trashing up some unfortunate city or state with our fun and nonsense and serious chats(once in a while). i have regrets for 6k too. i think about how arthur's been doing, about matthias, mull over pamela, and churchies and issues that affect me so much, but seem more impossible to talk about with every passing day. and despite everything said and done, i'll probably always be thinking about ivy.

can you tell i'm avoiding thinking about it? yes, i think i was brought to my senses, but it doesn't mean that anything important has changed, really. it just means that i've decided what's important to me, and what's important to me, and i've decided on what i'm going to do for now. yesterday, it almost felt like i'd decided this already, and i'd only just discovered that this was what i'd decided.. but it's ok. i'll just have to distract myself with studies, and distract myself from studies, as is fit. many things are important. but in the end i guess we had better do what we must, and we will do what we just have to anyway. but nothing has changed, because i get the feeling that this is something else that i'd already decided but have yet to realize.

ok. there's more, but i'll leave it at that. there's so much to be done.. i'd better continue working. i will get what i want. because i've decided that i want it. ok, haha, suddenly i really miss huilin. to work!

may we fight the good fight ,and run our course well in the year ahead. please bless the ones whom we love, and help us to do Your will.
amen.

q

2007-12-29T10:15:00.000+08:00

    even as people talk to me about other things that should concern me so, i find it impossible to think of anything else. isn't that unfair? isn't that dangerous? meet the tide, charades wasn't meant to be a way of life in this sense.

    unspeakable.

    i dreamt of some ugly town, and i can't remember the earlier bits. but deep inside the tower of the enemy i found a massive place, with the most magical spaces and architecture, with hints of classical and an aura of a fairytale miracle. there were children, not so derelict as full of wonder, only five or six or seven of them, rich in personality but not unveiled, because it wasn't important.
    f was there, and she presided over the children and the place like a lie, now that i'm awake i feel. fulfilled in understanding, with the calm peace that extrudes and mature glow which is made complete only by the most special sort of relationship. i was amazed, to tell the truth, when she showed me the place, by the way she showed me the place, and how i had already seen all that she could show in my search for her in that hollow, though who can say why or how i knew. and she was the center of the dream, the one that lasts beyond misty eyes. but the thing that hit hardest upon open eyes is how it's all a lie, self-fabricated.
    and i met a man, mature and grayed who presided over the whole grounds, though the place was not so much grounds as air, and platforms floated as if the whole place were not in the tower but on some other plane. the man gave the feeling of the sort who wore a suit and a kingly purple and peasant gray robe that hid it, and he showed me upwards, away from her. some sort of tinted light permeated the whole place, and it was such a dream. i saw the children building upwards, i remember that i said this: i wished i could build like this, out of the heart and inspiration only, in stone. and stone represented so much.
    i did remember what happened to the end, but now i don't. but in the end the thoughts that stayed were how idealized everything was, and how vision is so dependent on decision. i decided to love you, i decided to set myself to this purpose, i decide to commit to this feeling. there could be reasons, but they are not really reasons so much as they are attempts to justify decisions. but whatever they are, the most important thing is still the decision. because i want to say, i have decided, and i almost can, but i cannot. and this cannot continue, and charades cannot be a way of life, only real drama can. and you, others. i have a love-hate relationship with you only for these others' sakes.

    and g dreamt that i was going to die. i have never dreamt that, but i know what i would do, and how i would feel, because it's something i'm prepared for always. because you never know when something will crop up, and i will decide that to give this person, or these people more time to decide is so much more important that anything i could do with the rest of my time. because time is short only for such a short while, then time is long and nothing is left but that which was not. and i wonder if it's His will, even as i pray for only His will every time i pray, believe me. because the more i think of it this way, the more it feels like soon all this won't matter. and i wonder if i'll ever have the fortune to have that pleasure, to have someone, you, by my side looking at the work my hands would have wrought.

    and i have a blade too. but, unlike yours, it is double-edged, soiled, gray gold with a steel blade and two red tassels, tattered and frayed. there are reasons why there is nothing physical i fear more that being stabbed, but the reasons are probably just justifications for some below-the-surface decision. the significance is this: i have never trusted any man more. and this blade will be for someone special. as yours was.

    what else? hm. i bought a bracelet, of moonstone. it was for someone special too, but i realized that she'd left. i'd realized before i chose it with the attendant, but i continued because of a lie, self-fabricated. now it sits in a red and gold cotton pouch in the inner breast pocket of a blazer that was never supposed to be warm enough for the winter.

    and when i came back i bought a cross and a silver chain that's short because i wouldn't put it on properly to check, because nobody made me. because someone saw mine, and tsk-ed, and said they'd get a proper silver one with me. so ok. i went and got one with them. but they hadn't been there for a year.

    happy anniversary.

    what did you dream?
    there's always the chance that it was important.

faith and blush

2007-12-28T00:16:00.000+08:00

i was just Googling the meaning of "quintessentialising", and in the very page where i found it i came across the definitions of callipygian and zaftig, which just reminded me of *ahem* some ~~people~~ body, not because these words are applicable but rather because they might find them rather useful, hahhaha! also the serious composed person's version of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: antidisestablishmentarianism. way to go, English.

when we begin talking about random things that happened or will, about life and the world and things that shouldn't be able to get much more cliché, it's unusual that i can walk away with a good feeling at all. and how the words don't become cold and reserved and vague and everyone's afraid. and how it's not impersonal anymore. it's a good feeling.. special people aren't real, because they are only after you experience them, and you make them so for you. maybe it's got something to do with how boys can ask for kisses but never hugs, but sometimes people happen to need the same things. it's a world out there.

it's true that a lot of the time, you only realize certain things when you sit down face to face and begin talking, talking about one another and yourself. it's also true that sometimes some things need to be a conscious effort, because in the end it's all for the best, no matter how others feel about it. there are many things three or four or five people could talk about, but so little time to sit down over it. but we knew that already.. priorities are such nonsense that i'd almost cease to believe in them.

i do know that i blink from one picture to another too fast sometimes. facades are not only seen by others, but experienced by yourself, more importantly.. a lot of times things are felt and you decide that things are so, though there are so many other possible ways to interpret the situation. so few people really communicate, as cold as a word it is. so many people speak, but so few talk.

this is an abrupt end to this year, and in one way at least it seems like the new year's come already, fresh with new issues. reality and work has yet to hit back since beijing, and so little seems to have been done.. paper and concrete have to be hammered out, but tomorrow i think i'll experience the archetype i hope to if i can. these two years.. or rather this year. has been so much more trying, without the one more lifeline. it's true, even though you want something so, so much, and would give yourself for it, people will conspire and the middlemen don't understand your passion. but i believe they're saying, you've said, he'll get over it. of course i will, of course we will. but only because the only other choice can never be an option, because there are things left to be done, and though i cannot do them, i have to try.

i don't know what's going on with you, because i don't look in a mirror very often. but the water's been a little clearer where i'd been on vacation lately, and i've reflected a little when it calmed down enough so that i had that bit of time to breath. and from now on, i know, though i don't see, at least to some extent. maybe it doesn't work, maybe it doesn't seem right, doesn't fit your archetype, but in the end i think i cannot care so long these things aren't so and you're ok. because i think i'm past searching for archetypes to live out, i want to experience a better one than any ever experienced.

o holy night

2007-12-25T20:41:00.000+08:00

i quite nearly went - and started writing a little while ago. it's a good thing i waited, though. i'd rather not do anything foolish tonight.

yesterday night i would have said, it'd been a good Christmas eve, considering the circumstances. backspace backspace. not being able to do anything about it is still a new concept to me.. and you should be surprised, it's been so long. or it has felt like it.

i just realized that my pen's nib has unblocked.. i thought it had been out of ink, even though i'd so seldom used it. that was not a special occasion.. say it like you believe it. i'm getting disoriented again, give me a minute.. there are just so many feelings falling like stars this season that sometimes i think i'm forgetting what it's all about.

* * *

i'll forget the other things for now. let's talk about what's special.
truth is, i don't know what to say. this is so unlike before. i'm not very experienced, haha. asdkajshf.
i'll be perfectly honest. i suck at waiting. i'm like a drainpipe or something, from when you pull the plug, you know all the hope starts to flow out, slowly but surely, but you never know when the emotional gunk is going to give way and the rate is gonna woosh. i can't believe i'm saying this, haha. it'd been so long, but it's also been very long. this sort of thing is relative. damn, am i giving excuses? can i just say, it's not rational, then. it's a feeling too. i believe it's a commitment, but how do you commit to someone who isn't there?

i'm not going to go into all the speculations i've had. - i can't believe i'm even writing this. i know it could be this and it could be that, it could be that hey, i'm dense, i'm stubborn, i've been taking too long as it is. or it could be the exact opposite. I DON'T KNOW, dammit. gah. how did i even begin talking about this? to justify what's going on inside now? to whom?

i'm going to stop here. this is just one thing. get me agitated, there other things going on that get me into the family's heirloom mood. don't need reminders, mail. how did the good feeling become this? sigh.

it's very simple. i suck at waiting. so i make myself wait. i'll wait a month, i'll wait ten if i still don't believe me. i'm very good at lying to myself, so that's a necessary test, i figure. i've waited myself out before, i could and did make myself give up hope on things that probably could have been. there were always reasons. i'd take any to walk away, just to make sure that i wouldn't commit again until nothing in the damn universe would make me change my mind. not even giving up eternity.
these aren't results, but there isn't supposed to be a switch that's there to be flicked. did i just grow up a little? why can i see a future here?
this has been a year. i don't want to believe me yet, but i can't help it, and it doesn't help that i almost know that the time isn't right yet, not at all. i can't even ask the question.

it's hard to be neutral about this, but for some insane stupid reason you're out there, go ahead and laugh at me, if you can. i would. who would have thought i'd become the tool lying in bed pining on christmas, with this record. you know it, hah. jealous? ashamed, maybe. all this thought and taking up space in my mind and all i've achieved is my near-transformation into a full-fledged woman. when do i get breasts?

yeah. you'd probably never have expected it before this, but here's to wishing maybe you've a clue now. what then? i don't know, haha. yup. i'm nuts on christmas.

so much for the true meaning of Christmas.

checking my shoelaces standing beside you

2007-12-23T23:05:00.000+08:00

when i blog, the words tend to come out pretty odd.. but that's probably 'cause most of the time when i blog, i'm not feeling anything in particular very strongly. if you find yourself lost in the nonsensical rhetoric, that's probably what i'm experiencing too. when i'm done.. whatever i write gives back the feeling i'm experiencing then, so rereading it gives me a taste of what i was feeling then. maybe, hopefully, it does for you too. then you'll notice how confused i'm feeling a lot of the time when i write.

for a while there i was feeling a little calmer.. like there was only one thing to think about. then i started singing, haha. if i could only think of one thing right now.. it wouldn't be the same thing as what had always occupied me this season for the previous years.

that thought ends there. it's not entirely a conscious choice, you don't have to speculate or convince me of anything, cause i'm not saying i've decided that it was one way or another. i've decided that i don't know and it's probably going to leave a scar, but some part of me is moving on and i'm not sure i like it. or don't. maybe it was true, what- whose mother? -said about me. but this wasn't part of any plan. i'm no rayne summers.

there's one paragraph that, out of everyone who will see it, i'm probably the only one who will understand, haha. humor me. but seriously, the whole messy thing is all me. i suck at planning details, if you hadn't noticed. i put folks into jazz. but i'm not going to play around.. i just won't let me see whatever i shouldn't, want what i can't. i can't want anything now. convince me otherwise.

but the whole messy thing really doesn't work for me. for no good reason i believe everything should be felt at it's truest, if at all. there's an archetype for emotions in the city and in desert oases and in north european townships.. so to make yourself feel only happy always.. and only one type of gladness, it's self-deprivation of the complete human experience. it's a sad pampered world-view, but i'm a sad little protected city kid. but that's another story altogether.

i try pretty hard to appear calm sometimes. don't ask me why, but something about my human experience has just made me value this facade more, at this point in my life. and of course a lot of times we don't appear like we think we do. so people change. beliefs change, anyway. but the point is, calm is just something i'm not. a lot of the time when i'm not, i'm a very confused person.. what are people thinking now, feeling now? a lot of questions, conflicting emotions. anger runs deep and strong in my family. we do very well at experiencing and expressing the archetype for anger. so i try to avoid it before those i care about. it's always a struggle, and i'm not a nameless philanthropist. it's not easy.

when i'm glad, the calm comes for a while. usually after that it's a mix of certain, no elaboration. when i'm excited, little else matters. safety of everyone.. it's another thing that's implanted.

hahh, i'm giving myself a headache, thinking clearly. this clearly isn't the season for it. this is different, not because i'm moving on.. but because i'm going to try to stop. i'm not fasting, i'm just not eating. yes i had been angry, but i was taking a stroll to cool off.

i'm sorry, but i can't sing for you this december. please, please, do ask something else..

it's too damn easy to find me.

2007-12-21T02:07:00.000+08:00

you know the little red cotton pouch in my inner coat pocket? the jade pendant that replaced my own wouldn't understand where it's going, for all the honor and respect that forged it into it's place on my chest under flowered collars. this wasn't fun at all, and i hadn't even taken it anywhere. would anything like this be worth it? can i even make a judgment call, just on this 不完整的旋律?

almost not a waste of time. you never do know where things will go; it's a quick year ahead and we're not to have a life. you were born ten years too late, do you understand now why a man will dedicate his life to only his work? nothing else responds with an equal passion. i'm not like the people you know, miss. you can only wish.

it seems i've missed a lot. but hey, it was a choice to make, i don't think i regret it. people change.. things are over, i haven't even started researching, if they knew, i would be dead, and i am anyhow. i wonder how it would have been if i hadn't missed the singing, if i hadn't missed the fellowship. put me into the picture, maybe i'd have been a little more melancholy. at least this way i can not think about it.

i'm really not as miserable as i sound, lol. a little downbeat maybe, though not quite because i'd been caught off pulse. more like back into the same sound, a little messier than before. i can make just that wee less sense of it all now that i'm back. like i said, i regret nothing. it was a final trip with my parents, so they'd be happy, noone will ever be allowed to say i'm unfilial. i'd learnt a little about myself, a little about other things. i've made a few friends, and maybe passed up on a few chances for no good reason at all. or maybe with a little cause.

at the moment i'm coughing like a seventeen year old vacuum in reverse, the stay there really made me appreciate the local humidity. it's just my type of weather. i can take the heat, and i can bear with whatever cold, but the dry air is just vocalist hell, i couldn't have sung properly any of the days there i'd reckon. may have spent twenty bucks or more on international messages and calls, but what the heck. on that last night before the flight had a very short talk with the guide from singapore side in between rounds of pool and mocktails and the one grasshopper that got all the kids semi-drunk. interesting how these things chase up to me whereever i go. but maybe whatever anyone heard or said was good for them, i hope so.

i'm not really ready, but i want to get rid of this cough as soon as possible and lock my heart away. there's so much to be done.. there's really no way for me to express how afraid i am for this year, under the circumstances. it may be that that's for the best, anyhow. or maybe it's just going to keep me in this paralyzing limbo.. sigh. but there's no use praying for an answer, is there? this time it's not going to come, it seems.

i can't sleep. sigh. by the way, no, it hasn't really been settled, to me. nothing really has been. didn't it seem very familiar? it did to me. just saying it doesn't work. reassure my soul before i shut it away for thirteen months.

wefeelfine.org

2007-12-11T00:51:00.000+08:00

i'm all out of metaphors. i would say this is very trying, but at the same time i don't quite know what is, so i'd just say, living like this. the grouses of contemporary living are so old they don't even count as cliché anymore, when you experience something and feel a certain way that makes you understand what reality show characters are yammering on and on about. no, it didn't really take the box for students in America and Singapore to realize, it was more like drawing the line after absorbing the media.

* * *

i feel like history really doesn't exist, at this point in time. isn't that interesting. how much of a lie was it? i can't remember, but i really can't believe this shit. shit. what the hell. is this how it ends? read: have problems leaving bad relationships.

i'm ready for nothing now; HIT ME, China. there's just no balance, good things is empty and bad things tips down. unresolved issues are just negative karma, i'm fluttering like a rock in a hurricane, i've said it before and i'll say it again, if there ever was a time i needed.. shit, shut up and get a grip, b******.

this stinks. i wanted to talk about things important to me before i fly off with a 2% chance of lung 'splody and never coming back again, about three people and then some. but i'm just in a spin now, ok. we could look at is as, i've got no initiative, or we could say, i'm fraid 'o the consequences, and it sometimes doesn't seem worth the risk. but the more these things pile up, when i finally snap i'm just going to keep going until something clicks, i think.

goodnight, i'm going home. this world is not my home, i'm just a passing through..

you old has-been! gasp

2007-12-04T22:21:00.000+08:00

there will always come a point in time when everything has already been said, i suppose, if people aren't really into one another's lives so there are always recent happenings to talk about, so we know each other so well a mention of the news can escalate into a two hours discussion about city planning or the weather, with no hard feelings.

the thing about dreaming out loud is that in all likelihood if you're unable to motivate and actually get stuff done you're just a pile of fluff, and nobody can appreciate that. i know what i suck at too. although it's been said many times many ways, i'm gonna not care and just try to do something now. i'm tired of trying to look top down and consider everyone perspective and try to decide what's best, how we can salvage something. maybe it's time i woke up and saw there was never a we..? i can't do this sort of thing.. i'm just a single kid. that has so much more than a dual meaning.

翻开日记, 整理心情
hu ~ 我真的, 真的想放弃

my mind is calm but my ball of spirit yarn is all mussed up and trying to untangle it just gets me so AURGH that i have to take my deep breaths and sit down by the pool to meditate again. i figure i'll just do my little and i'm done.. people obviously have other priorities, or something, i'm trying so hard not to step away and go chasing more lively butterflies like psychologists say it's in my brain's hardware to do. i hate to admit that my doubts are THIS big, but they are. in a way it feels like i'd be trying once more just for the sake of it, the more i think about it. i don't want to walk away, and i say that in this sort of self-contradictory way, with the implications of saying "i wish i didn't have to walk away", but considering that i don't actually have to. but the fact remains that these are such awesome people, i've said it since i knew them, and they are, it's just.. stuff.

sigh ok yeah. what else is there. hm yeah basically rotting away, going awfully slowly can you believe i haven't even finished the tys yet? muchos pathetico oi, but it's like i'm breathing wool, the air just hurts, a little much. i haven't started on the IS. KI is suddenly such a guilty pin that it's grown into a full sized steel dirk poking up my gut, every time i think about the mini-IS another pint of blood drains away.. and commitments, designs, plans. i haven't even called huiqi yet. but that's another thing i suppose.. it sort of wasn't that i didn't have the time. i guess i was afraid, of.. stuff.

um. past few days. i keep having architecture books on me that go overdue, it's like post read-8-a-week syndrome, they sit there on my pillow and on the carpet by the white bear that needs a bath, without being read. BE READ, ?*#&@! standard chartered run was ok, weather was awesome, blah blah i really don't have much to say so i just talk about the weather. timing was below expectations, but not by too much so i'm ok. it was just 10km after all. i said i'd train these hols, but i haven't really. full marathon next year will just have to see how.. what with having to delay taking SATs cause of wretched full exam venues, what with our kiasu batch chionging and koping all the places, CT2s clashing with the May exam dates, and coming back from overseas competition right about then. just perfect, eh.

so yeah, next year will be some bomb, but twas expected, i just wonder if it has hit me yet. sometimes you really can't tell these things. sometimes you think it's hit you already, then it hits you again, and you're like whoa? i thought that'd happened already? and it's like, shit i'm getting way more than my share of déjà vu in this lifetime. seriously. i get it far too often for it to be normal. like, as in, compared to the normal amount of déjà vu a person would normally experience over a given time period. is there even such a thing? there must be.

when there's not enough time, it always flies by faster.. stupid murphy. anyway, today jetted down to BPP to get a flu jab 'afore flying off to china next wednesday, went to IMM after that and noteably got a damn nice sport coat at an awesome price from samuel & kevin, that place is so going to become another one of my pet places to get clothes. not that i've many. tomorrow gonna see if i can ugh ugh ugh self-motivational power! and get up and run even though i don't have to go to school, lol been a while since i ran out here, can't stand vehicle exhaust but hey you can't grow a running track on the field by the expressway. i would run at bukit batok's track, but will be er overshadowed, literally? by some NS hardcore training club that has its base there or something, not sure if public's even allowed to use, it's the place that had the office in a broken down shed to sign up for the standard chartered run.

oh then after that there's Archifest @ City Hall, gotta check when they open. and some other art exhibit there. then meeting yongfeng and wenyi at harbourfront to (finally) check out the swedish architecture school/firm(not sure which) thing going on at the atrium there. maybe have starbucks again, bizzarely nice to sit down and drink and talk about nothing, lol. then off to NUS for lecture by some architect dude/dudette. oh what fun, architecture day. oh and perhaps do a little shopping on the way. still haven't got that black buttonup. i have half a mind to just use the military shirt i have, lol. what am i supposed to do with a plain black long-sleeved collared shirt when i'm not performing?

guitar has been growing dusty in the corner, so much for appealing to that unreasonable senseless fetish girls these days have for classical/acoustic guitar-wielding blokes. on a more personal level it just sorta bugs me extremely such that bug is no longer strong enough a word to use that people can actually have these sorts of things on their list of desired attributes. well hey, i hope whoever she is is damn sexy and sings up a storm and is some sweet fashion designer who isn't the typical bimbo fashion junkie, but i don't write these stuff on my santa's list of babes. whatever. i don't need to know these things about your dumbass shallow fantasies. especially not when you're hitting on me

going overboard there. no i'm not really tired.. hungry maybe. been trying to sleep early. yeah, would it been extremely dumb to say don't bother reading the small print? i guess so. people always assume stuff is reverse psychology nowadays, plus they go, hey, why'd you put it there if you didn't want people to read it? venting, stupid. don't read it.

isn't it.

2007-11-30T23:44:00.000+08:00

i don't know what you or anyone expects, but.. some things are personal, and sometimes i can't and won't say stuff. yes, expectations are high, but what's given is just as precious.. it's a willing sacrifice, with risks and no deductible.
i really miss the way things were, in more ways than one, feel it for more than one period of time. i want to move, but i'm not, and there's nowhere to go anyway.
yeah, actually the point is i don't know what to say, and i can't tell you anything anymore. actually, i don't think i ever really could, it was just stupidity and impulsiveness and no-one else. pretty sad case. the problem is, it's all about seeing what you want to see. i'm in love with an idea, the product of wishful thinking, and when a guy considers the illusions unveiled he wonders if those pretty pictures passed over were actually for real.

there is a point of no return, isn't there. no turning backwards, no second chances. it just sickens me to see how everything is so interlinked, and how the universe can be a hypocrite.
i'm not going to make the same mistake twice though. i know what i stand for, though i may not have a clue where this is all leading, and i've no choice really, have i. there can be no receiving if there's no giving, and there can be no giving if there's no-one to receive. i can sing, though.. ai zai na li? fine. maybe.. for now, ai zai xin li.

haha. you look cold. sound cold. feel cold.
whatever happened to that project, warmth.
help me to move on to something new.

like a pine cone

2007-11-28T00:06:00.000+08:00

this really is pretty sad, but i don't really have much motivation to do anything these days. when i find myself actually doing something, it's usually cause i'm out there anyway and there isn't anything else i would rather be doing, or i just randomly have the craving for some feeling, to experience some state of mind and body, to be somewhere and think about something. it's just spur of the moment, and when the prick is gone i'm sleeping like a manhole cover on a Manhattan sidewalk dreaming about berlin and rustic houses that don't reek of old man with no family and friends-

i find myself lying face up on the floor in the middle of the room thinking about things you don't want to, pick up Le Corbusier and the Reader's Digest just to be doing something other than that, something which doesn't really require any thinking or commitment or guilt about things past or future besides, but before you know it i'm asleep on fuzzy browns till three, isn't a beautiful thing to have had early mornings? i still feel a little guilty napping for those two hours though, it's not like i did anything useful. not that i have at all anyway, for a long time now..

realizing i'm not good at committing, what with the always looking for something fresher and more beautiful, can you keep up? 이유리, multiple personalities isn't such a bad thing, i think. values are values, but things don't have to be dull. true diversity's hard to find.. perhaps the bad thing is that shifts aren't always picked up immediately, even by the closest of friends. can you keep up?

subliminal messages and unconscious influences in our actions and choices, does this face look familiar to you? i'm not saying i can help it, the truth is that i don't think i dare commit again unless i'm dead sure in so many ways, or it's just a fling. this is so not going to work out. but times are a changin', the 6th page of the papers read: Dylan scares schoolchildren by singing while waiting to pick up grandkid. haha.. isn't it kinda sad. somehow i can't think about anything else for more than ten minutes.

cookies and milk at one in the morning are an attempt to make it all feel alright again, traditions keep, for some reason. it's just to draw the feeling out, and also cause i'm hungry and pasta burns fast. also, getting fat and not caring. in five and twenty..

* * *

i call it the midlife crisis of the new millennia, because while elder sis is flying away and caring for two-year-olds, i find i'm the one who's lost his direction. the most important things in life have lost their urgency because of some genial yet somehow condescending belittlement that makes no sense to me at all.. how is anyone falling for this, how am i. it's not just the closeness and care that i'm missing, it's the meaning that it gave to me and to life, to the things that we did, whatever they were, whoever they involved.

please bless the ones we love, and help us to do thy will. amen.

when you find the one,

2007-11-24T23:12:00.000+08:00

hello, whoever's there. it's been a while, because somehow i've been busy doing things. a few useful things, a number of incredibly stupid things. and a number of ok stuff that's been good. november's coming to an end.. i suppose it has been good.

have to say though, there are a good number of things that i wish i had done better. i said i'd study like crap, but duh i haven't really been.. have been catching up though, and well i say i plan to double triple quadruple in the month to come, but.. things happen, commitments busy blah.

there are like a million things that i was supposed to do. that i haven't done for people. i sort of know where this started, now that i think about it..and it really stinks. this is why i can't let myself slacken anytime, but just to digress and give excuses, it's not and has never been easy alone.

i'm not going to list them out for myself here, but i know.. things that i owe people, things that i owe myself to do. but more importantly owe people i guess.

but well, this month has been fairly brainless now that i think about it. basically have been in this sort of emergency freeze mode or something, i don't know what went wrong when to trigger it, but i do know that when i start trying to think about it, everything just.. augh. can't explain it. it's that sort of fuzzy crushing feeling that i got from that childhood nightmare that kept coming over and over..

to tell the truth, i'm still locked up in that shutdown. things haven't been going well, in my eyes anyway, and well i've just left myself hanging. come right down to it, i've basically been acting like nothing was wrong and ignoring the problems, it seems. been just studying without thinking about it, reading all sorts of weird architecture stuff just to fill my head with something to try to make it feel better. but yeah, you know how it turns out.

the thing is, a lot of people just don't realize that to know the problems is one thing, and to know how to fix them is another altogether.. makes me wish for that big pencil that guy from that game had and to use the giant eraser on the end to rub out all these things.. one big issue is this, i suppose: i can see the next few years, these really really important years, important to me. i really wish things can turn out certain ways, not because of anyone or anything else. but these things don't just happen.. people have to make them happen, and i'm really not strong enough to pick up the pieces and start fitting them together properly. i don't even know which pieces belong in this puzzle.. but i do know what it's supposed to look like, and i know that things have seldom worked out for long in the past, if at all.

and well, my mind is flitting, but i haven't been true to myself and a lot of people i suppose. i've been thinking too much about how i envisioned things, and tried too hard to connect with people. just haven't been myself, really been out of sorts.. choir, chorale has always made me very, very tired in that sort of way. the last one or two times i don't know what this feeling is anymore. maybe i'm being brought to my senses, maybe i'm quitting trying to do things and just going to let them happen if they're meant to be.. because i'm finally accepting that i can't do things..?

sigh. the truth is, i treasure a lot of things, and a lot of these things aren't physical. i know i envision things to be better than a lot of people would, so in the end different goals means we get to neither or we get there alone, and there's no point in that for me. i know a lot of times i see people to be better than they actually are, but that's just how the pieces fall into place for me. at the end of it all, if things go well i just want to be happy with someone, and well, if things don't go so well i'd settle for being alone knowing certain people are happy. maybe i had to be tired out till i couldn't do anything more before i let go and let God, and just went back to just being the best me i could be. i would love people more than anything heaven can promise, but sometimes i don't, because it's painful sometimes, the way things turn out. and when i get mad, i know inside that i'm actually angry with myself.

time is really short, you know. i'd like very much for everything to be settled in ten years time. it's too tiring, and i don't think i can keep up with this sort of game for too long.. i keep losing sight of what's really important to me, and already once this foolishness has taken happiness away. it never had a second chance to take it away.. for all the wrong reasons. in this kind of situation, all i can say to anyone who might wonder in any way(and i know i'm not very personally approachable to some people) is well,

hold on tighter than i did.

such a young, happy family

2007-11-16T20:51:00.001+08:00

wish i could draw like that.

do stars have dimmers?

i would.

2007-11-11T23:20:00.000+08:00

i'd be gone real quick, and so would we all. the paperbacks are piling up and the smoke isn't from candles or last year's issues burning. can a cardboard box? if a tin can. rainbow chains of paper cranes take far too long to fold, the wishes i make are so hopelessly worded, we'll never get this scene right, not till never.

in two years my dad will be gone for three, off to see the US of A, i'll be enlisted in the army, then it's on to university. david'll be a littler kid brother, and it'll be forever till we see each other; who cares? it's only fair, nobody even bothers while we're all here, jobs and friends could matter more, what can i do now? is it worth trying to make these years count, what is with the obsession of starting afresh. can a guy really say, since i can't go deep, i'll just try for far and wide. tip me to one side or the other if you care in the least, friend or less, whatever stands between us. when is love worth fighting for?

this is the last flight to blood over water, choose or dye between dysfunctional and unable to reject though so richly deserved -no, that hasn't even been thought through, the paperweights cover more than prints, move like kings and queens on the chessboard of the ocean of failed, bugged programming and winesy dressers. seize it because it's worth it, or try it because there's nothing to lose, or just go and spare yourself the pain. choose for me, ivy. russian roulette never seemed such an easy gamble.

responsibility falls to your fancy ruffled collar, all your satin and silk and fair white frill could do naught but nick off another chip and send me reeling. first mates don't always rise willingly, what if the baker was happy being stupid and innocent in his little town, to marry the miller's daughter? there's work to be done, and it sure as codfish isn't going to do itself, or we'd be halfway to pluto and about the belt, the even balloons don't inflate themselves in space. i'm not some sort of supercapable genius. pray do, do let me live normal..

because just because you can imagine things doesn't mean i can build them for you in two minutes, the fire of the heart and mind is all but that powerful, and when people don't talk -sit down and talk properly, arm over shoulder brother to brother to sister, i can't make small talk on the bus at eight when i'm neither high nor enamored. yes, would be, body language should say so much, but only if you're reading. i could all but say, 还是姐弟关系好, the hope's still there, cause i'm too blinded by desire.

sigh. it's true. every time we go, the candle goes out faster now. there's no pretense, girls and boys. i'm not up to this. i'd ask to be held, but the nib's broken and my voice is gone. what's there left to sing for? too many internal conflicts, external disappointments. i'm disappointed in what i believed in, because it was too little to compensate for how it turns out. i'm serious when i say, who can spark the fire? no one man, friends(for lack of another word). no man can do it alone. i don't miss the escapades: i miss the support and care i got. i think i only really just realized that.

all i can say is, emotional weather was stormy sea enough to tilt my charts off course and send my marbles spinning even before this sort of love came into the doodleboard. i do need this kind of questioning, but i really don't think i can handle it now, alone, bonnie. catch my sails and take me to that calm stretch now, i'm torn to enough little tiny pieces to say, i can only worry about love lost when eternity's already begun. i'm too tired from nothing now.

no, no no no

2007-11-07T22:28:00.000+08:00

this is the way puddles grow anyway. rain comes and goes, but inside is personal, nobody sees it there. people find ways to take the meaning away from things you love, the training curve is up then maximum then dip. whatever. little boys pick up the smoothest, flattest stones only to skip them away across the surface of what's calm and both passionate and uncaring, plink pink pink pink plonk. how far will you go. and i've really never met anyone as shallow as you before. should we still meet for coffee and cream on tuesday by the eiffel?

this is friedemann saying, back off! suddenly so many friends saying they decided they want to do architecture in the future, agrhh i'm giving it too much positive advertisement, later all you frikkin pro people will kope my potential places in uni/jobs! nooooooo..! time to show the boring side of it..? hahhaha.. just kidding. but really, imagine friends from school going into different parts of the same industry and working together on stuff. would be awesome..

bah this sucks. have i mentioned it. people are bloody insensitive and unappreciative. woohoo tickle me emo, yeah i'm semi-high on oatmeal, it's my long-lost midnight drink-snack. except it's not midnight yet. i realized that fringe is damn emo-ish. so time to think of something new. darn. and now for something completely different.

living in a daze of emotions and issues and things that need contemplation, sorry please hold the line is busy the singtel mobile customer you have reached is not available please try again later. thursday and the day after will be a little while to gather myself together again perhaps. school is short.. gonna milk the rest of these days for all they're worth, every moment in this uniform, haha.

you never really know what's going on

2007-11-06T00:14:00.000+08:00

i'm a happy sort of guy. i like to laugh, and joke around, and make other people laugh, but there are just some things that have this predisposition to get me really pissed off.. and yeah, i know it's me. relativism and all that. but i'm done trying to accommodate here, as much as i'd love to be a part of it all. this is just beyond me. i'll have to refrain from comment.

crazy days, crazy days. got to school early this morning, was supposed to run but late night and light rain made me lazy, so i koped a classroom on the fifth floor and read on green design and marketing for architecture. the first opened up a few new ideas.. i'd always thought the structure's design should be to minimize impact and cost of HVAC and lighting, but didn't realize it was such a big international project. and the second was just boring..

in the end i got bored until started trying to get comfy to catch some shuteye cause of late night before, but after like 45 min the guard came to lock up the room just before 9am, goodness knows why such a weird time. so went down to find yuhyiing, then went to bum around lt2 for a few minutes before going for CIP.

other than that, today was pretty much waste of time.. lunch took forever for certain reasons, so got back super late unforch. at least got some stuff done after that, then junda suddenly suggested going to shoot some hoops and shanhui was there, so played for an hour plus. surprisingly after like 2-3 years of not practicing i've still got it, sort of, haha.. handling is damn off, but shooting is just cause of lack of practice i think, hehh. felt good, even though we three never really got to know one another after those two years.. made those hours ploughing through old books that made me sneeze(but were actually pretty interesting, some anyway) feel significant, haha. yeah, actually i don't really see the connection either, but whatever, lol. well, there are more basketball than squash courts in singapore. if nobody will play frisbee with me i really don't mind going back basketball crazy like those days, provided there's the right crowd to play with, hahhaha

tomorrow long day too. gonna see if i can run in the morning to make up for today, then go help out the isle folks for a while, then if we're mostly done maybe go down to whatevertheplaceis where chorale people are playing badminton to watch for a while. after badminton in primary school.. i can never give that sport any respect anymore, unless it's like those national folks who are uber zai, hahaha. oh well.

then.. gonna shoot some with me class.. haha, we are funky folks. but i've been blowing a whole lot of money on pool since chinese A levels been over, as a number of people have noted.. so gotta tone it down for a while, go do cheaper stuff, like RAID LIBRARIES. but then again gotta get done with those borrowed first. also, going to see again if i can pick up something special.. been a pain to find. oh for a way to buy stuff online..

yeah, heck load of stuff to do actually. weiren's gonna help me ask if i can join frisbee proper, THANK YOU WEIREN, then shall have to see where that goes, haha. i'm super noob compared to that bunch loh.. but learn, yes hah. so on weds maybe join them, then chorale prac too, then go shoot pool with joseph to unveil his power. darn why shoot so much.. can we go back to playing tennis instead, lol.

and of course the multitude of paperwork to be done, and when i mean paperwork i mean all un-fun reading and writing(basically all such things that have nothing to do with architecture). SATs, class CIP planning, jacket/shirt designs for people here and there, arrange that meeting that's to be so important, zz. why can't things just, happen. people are so un-spontaneous. oh well.

yeah, that was a lot of blah. all in all, yeah things keep popping up, i'm going to make myself sit down and finish the three tutorials by.. this thursday. yeah ok. hm and well people are people, super fun and super annoying(in an un-fun way), what can i say, people are the world, haha.. even those who don't say anything. you never really know what's going on, about and around and down the line. maybe someone's thinking of you. maybe someone's going to push you over the railing on the seventh floor tomorrow.

we're one big bundle of warmth

2007-11-02T22:29:00.000+08:00

pw is OVER! presentation was freaking awesome, woo! now that it's actually gone for good, realize that it's a little sad in a way, no more ahem productive sessions together, haha.. but has been absolutely awesome working with you guys, great job woohoo! can you tell i love my group, hahhaha.

yeah now it's back to the real world, study study mug mug(yeah right) haha but seriously got loads to catch up with. people and stuff and work alike.

singing is be the demoralizing.. is the sort of thing i really wish i had someone to just talk to about, hahaha, but oh well things is things, we live as we are. not gonna jabber here. but grah.

took the time to raid a few libraries, bishan, jurong, bpp, cck of their architecture stuff, and the more i read and see, the more i realize how pathetic all the stuff i've done up till now really is.. lol there are like a million and one things i'd never stopped to consider in any one project. sigh. now what. read read read. educate self.

also, sianying taints my dream profession with her tiny rampaging urban ninjas. meh. back off! hahaha.. darn really got a lot of reading to do. i'm really super noob at all this stuff. architecture, philo.. need to stop randomly doing stuff and self-educate systematically. art too.. for school. and bleargh of course there's math. dammit, i know i can come to terms with this dumb subject. just gotta find and flick the switch..

time really flying by, walking down the same streets in this uniform for who knows how long more, i realize that even whilst doing all these other stuff i'm just not able to find that peace.. sigh. it really bothers me so much more than i'm able to talk about with the people about me right now. i need to be able to sing again. this totally stinks. zz.

forty things to do before graduating

2007-11-01T22:30:00.000+08:00

as PW draws to a close, begin to realize that we're going to be J2s.. time is really so short.. there's really so much to regret, things that aren't in my hands to do, but sigh no point thinking about it, huh? hmm. things are only going to get even more busy in the year to come, especially for stupid little me, gotta study even harder.. really regret those days in useless little RI now. no more PW, no more forcibly spending time with these people, won't be as close..? haha.. perhaps not.. small class after all. hope not, anyways.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

really going into the tougher bit of being sick now.. funny taste and muscle ache and tired.. darn don't share drinks with me, haha. ok never mind.. just hope this gets over soon!

i realize that actually i've already got a lot of stuff to do this holidays, like it or not.. sigh now to slot in stuff and plan roughly what to do when. this coming year is going to be such a blur. missed out and failed in so much this year already. well, i know what i'm going to try for now that certain things are out of my hands. other things..

oh hm. had an interesting dream this morning. hm.
ahhh. i'm going to sleep.

it's been a hard day's night

2007-10-31T00:19:00.000+08:00

it's raining super heavy right now, the sort that suddenly slamms the roofs just above me then slowly lightens, with that pitterpatter and random growls of lightning, then just when it's stopping WHAM, once again. it's about the sixth round now. i like.

is be a nice song. beatles ftw, hahaha. robert allen zimmerman and all that. yeah, i don't really have anything to say. public angsting never gave any kick, lol, though confusing people with cryptic stuff that meant nine things at once did for a while. but is be boring.

i need to do stuff this hols, or i swear i'm just gonna stress out and either fossilize or just do studies and uni related stuff all hols. inspersed with pool. and frisbee and squash if anyone will play with me. which isn't too likely. sigh. not going to complain.

i need to compile a portfolio. gah. i'm walking away. that's MY line. no touchy.

not 'less you have privileges. which you don't. nyeh. yes feeling irritated and acting stupidly. go away, i don't want any balloons.

when i get back to who? nobody lah. seriously.

ashes, ashes

2007-10-26T22:14:00.000+08:00

today for a period of time was really ready to go rawrBOOMbishwheesplat, tried to calm the nerves and turn to Him, but i just suck too much. i'm just too disappointing. somewhere along the way, i think it was the little things and the people around that took the edge off, somewhat.. or maybe it was time and complacency. i'd like to this it was the former.. sigh

so thank God for 6S.

we all fall down

my fair lady

2007-10-26T03:57:00.000+08:00

we're all falling sick together, i comment dryly: take care. how many people out there are complaining that it isn't fair? how do you enclose a space and give it the most efficient natural ventilation, make full use of natural light and minimize power consumption by temperature control in a tropical climate? is it possible to reconcile é Confucian relationship-centered model of civil society with contemporary political philosophy? shut up, i've got questions too.

sipping tea and antioxidants is bad for your health if ~~and only if~~ you have severe adverse reactions to all things green or you are at the wrong place at the wrong time; that is the only conclusion i can come to. don't get me wrong, i wouldn't have it so, i'd rather just take things as they come.. but we're all tired, and i'm falling sick, i don't know what on earth's going through your mind, quite frankly. it had seemed that things were getting better, but to ask if it's grades.. give it up, the camel's already dead.

fssh. ~~i think we can make it now the pain is gone~~

sunshiny day.

passionfruit icecream

2007-10-22T02:42:00.000+08:00

The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) is stuck in my head, seriously. not the whole song, the base tune that loops.. it's super catchy, there must be only half a million ways to improvise to it, hahha.

beach was good on saturday, my forehand is improving(i think) so woohoo. a lot of things i could say, but i think i won't.. there's really nothing to talk about. not even as friends, haha. quite sad. it's a character flaw, but i'm bored. boring boring boring. boring girls and boys, boring beach boring city. ok, not so, is actually nice to lie there, but then joseph and royce start doing weird stuff to geoffrey, and there are people all around with dogs and little kids, and i'm just floating like, away with the frisbee.. what am i doing here. i need to study, i need to write, and sing and learn. i need more fun and more talking..

i have issues too. screw it,but i just have problems telling people that i can't do stuff. i promise people things when the stupidly optimistic side of me thinks i can pull it off, and then when i can't make it i don't know how to tell, and that just makes it so much worse,i know i know. gah. how? counselling.

but yeah, i'm just about done dreaming about every single thing under the sun i want to do, now i want to go do them. then blah constraints friends school time work money too stupid to learn. sigh.. basically i just wish for people with passion for life. or person. i know noone can keep lively run around up, i know i can't, lol but that's not what i mean. there's just that perfect living as students as islanders as asians as young people and Christians! things that we should be doing, life that we should be living, it's all there within reach, but but then it's all mehblehblahmmblphht.

yes fine it is PARTIALLY because tomorrow be results day, and i know that i'm really not meant to be here, academic-wise. nobody can say that i'm actually smart and it's just that i'm not hardworking anymore. just take it as it is, i'm no good at the sort of thing we have here. so the RP gave a horrible burden now, but in the long run if God wills it could be such a blessing. the label of raffles. ah well. the world.

i want to SIT down and talk about anything and everything under the sun. be it all afternoon with coffee somewhere busy in the city with people shooming by or after a long day under the sun at a nice quiet place airconditioned and icecream and cocoa and soft sofas and dim lights by the water or drinks and jazz by the fake river. i just want to do stuff with people, that matters.
.. i talk too much.

2007-10-20T00:41:00.001+08:00

you assume far too much.

can't you see all that stuff's a sideshow?

2007-10-18T23:59:00.001+08:00

i'm not ready, but it's alright. the question is, why is everyone in such a hurry to be happy..?

we all grew up, but the someone who used to be so special to me so long ago left me with this, and i haven't forgotten. i don't do this often.. and there's so much more to this than just the beginning, but ecclesiastes 3:1's brought me back before, and now i've been brought to it again. the lyrics went, to ev'ry thing, there is a season.. to ev'ry thing, there is a time.. for ev'ry purpose under heaven.. there is a time,a proper time..

this has really been a major down. things this year that others(if they had known about it) might have been more to me.. well. maybe i was just more prepared for them, in some sense, even though i might have been unable to accept that. the thing that i'm thinking about, anyway, haha. but i'd really tried really, really hard to lock that door and just sit down and blast it out, cause i really don't want to do anything to make it worse than it is.

this is just something that, thinking about won't help, so even as i try to pick up the ball again, i'm all about moving on and away, so help me. this was my last chance, as i see it, and i'll admit it, i'm not going to be able to just sit down and cry for you. i need to go elsewhere, i really can't be fooled by these illusions anymore, even if i wanted to be.. sigh. now more than ever i need

why is everyone in such a hurry to be happy? everyone's just blaming the whole instant gratification generation thing for every other problem we have as people.. so ok, it's true i guess. technology, pop culture, etcetera.. but it's something that's been a problem. it really hits me how this works for both situations, and others too. most people are just so ready to just sweep everything aside and not settle it properly, just get high and be happy all the time for no real reason, just because.. it's good..? perhaps.. but if you can take this as i mean it and not as you may interpret it, if you're old enough, this sort of thing just can't last..

when we get right down to it, every thing has a reason, and when we cannot grasp it we still feel it and that's where faith and trust come in.. but how do these come into play when there are no grounds for it..? i'm losing faith, how can people be so shallow, so blatantly? it's clichéd, but still. that's another thing, actually. to tell the truth i never liked what i was doing, cause really i never saw anything in this, except the possibility of hurting more people, but i just, stopped thinking and did it, cause i needed.. something? i know i make no sense in doing that, and especially in bringing this up when i'm trying to make a point, but yeah. there's a reason there too, as to why, but i'm not going to say it here.

on that note, yeah, i guess i'm tired of being that person. i'm really not always being emo, this is just me. get used to it, when i write i'm serious =)

so this saturday's going to be hard, and sunday, and monday, and the following saturday, but i really don't know what will happen, hmm. the truth of the matter is, i don't have a very long attention span unless something really catches me about the something or someone, whatever or whoever we're talking about. but when it's like everything i do doesn't matter a la bohemian, it really hurts, even though i hate it when things are over, and so much is left undone. what's to be done? haha. oh well. i pray i'll always have a refuge.

a time to cast away !
to bring together..
a time to be embraced,
to be alone..
to find! and lose, to keep, and give..
there is a time, there is a time..

your ways are mightier.

really really really.

2007-10-15T21:43:00.000+08:00

i have to say, sunday was great, today was great. i'm comforted that maybe perhaps to some extent we're in this together, but i'm afraid for so many other things.. and there's this whole thing we're pushing for, little time and too many sounds. i see too many parallels, i can't keep up with the thoughts and referencing that tell me how to do the right thing from what i've experienced.. and all the while i'm reminded of this damn thing that's totally screwed my faith in myself, in the way i do things. why am i so bloody gullible? i can bluff myself any day of the week.

maybe i should, but i don't feel completely comfortable with any of these things. it affects things, even though i can't say that when i feel right,things turn out okay anymore. i'm just afraid that something will mess up and that'll be it for good, and then i'm afraid that this was all a mistake, and we're not ready to do this together, or we're the right people at the wrong places. i'm too worried about screwing up all of a sudden, but you can hardly blame me, these things build up, i go up and down and when was the last time i fell into this rut? oh yeah.

i DON'T want to think about this whole mess, really. i wanted to leave it behind me, but there's something still there, and maybe it's not about the people. i hope it's not about the people, because that's what i'm supposed to be leaving behind, really. really, i don't like feeling this way. i'm a new person, sure, and it's good for me, maybe it's one of the changes you talked about. but really, even thought i go PAH when people go on about the past and last time and don't spend enough time doing things about now, i miss that, really. i'm tired again, there's no need for explanations. i won't say it here, all the things, but really, really, really. i'd actually be content to just go back and loop.

and i know you'll laugh at me, hahhaha. maybe i can find help. if only people talked.. i don't talk. i make stupid noises, excuses, only certain people certain things certain times, only one for all. i'll keep moving, hopefully if all this crumbles on down i'll still have strength to get up. i want to talk to someone, but she's just a memory now and we all know memories are mostly made up from dreams. Déjà vu. but i'll try.. i hope. after all this time.

but yeah, amos. you're right. disillusioned. my eyes been opened to a lot of things suddenly, and i'm quite afraid. all this has been because people don't talk.. will i, now? will i keep my word.

how much will you take?

2007-10-13T11:06:00.000+08:00

(from us)

after a year and all it's nonsense, days of falling asleep sprawled on the carpet or in the corner next to my guitar and the stuffed toy from my angel, finally i got to get into bed and curl up and go to sleep properly after a shower, an hour into the night.
not after beating myself sore and collapsing exhausted, not after scheming and planning and dreaming while awake and getting about excited about doing things with people, unable to fall asleep for all the adrenaline, not after sitting on the ledge behind the curtain unable to turn in, thinking about troubles now, or worrying about things that i must do, or remembering the past.
not drenched in soaked jeans from running home in the rain with my jacket bundled under my shirt in hopes that i wouldn't have to wash it again, not salty and burnt and tired out from laughing too much. not with damp trousers and a newly filled sketchbook and leaves and grass and bark stuck to my bag.
NOT with a funny voice from hours on end of singing in that way that makes my voice go w0nK, not touched and uplifted from a heart to heart talk, not content from an evening with people and ice cream, a shady table in the corner and warm lights, not after sending anyone home at eleven forty five.

how much do you figure you know, how much do you think you understand? don't take for granted that i forgive so i forget, it's not always something that i do willingly. i wondered what had become of me, i felt like i was hurt but what's with that? if you don't give a damn you'll never feel the stab, eh. they say only the ones you love hurt you, what what. cheers and love then, maybe i've hurt you too.

settling down

2007-10-07T00:04:00.000+08:00

finally slept in today, but ended waking up just before eight out of habit, but it was good.. cause fell asleep at ten plus, as i could tell from the unreplied message on my phone in my hand when i woke up, hahha..

open house was good. meant something that he commented, really, but it did feel quite good, especially the first time round when we weren't that tired.we went a little out at times, and rushed a little, but overall i think people really had fun on stage, which is really a good thing =) you know it means something when i'm not being critical, hahh! it wasn't a competition, so of course we were sort of more relaxed, but we can do it from now till then =) yay optimism, lol.

as a group we grow a little. now i see toh and i'm reminded of pastor davy somehow. it's like.. seeing how we can grow closer as a group, wish he'd be closer and more involved with individuals too. it's the same in church, but that's another story, hahha. this isn't an empty stage.. but it was for him. this isn't the way we should be treating our teachers..

and as for the music, i can envision things and ways of doing it, but it's really hard.. difficult to think of the right way to do things, so they don't go horribly wrong. then there's the saying, 100% of punches that are not thrown miss. we could race, guys and girls to experiment with pure male and pure female voices and see where we go, hahaha =D but want us as a choir to be more involved in the school, events like this open house, we could have played a much bigger role, picked up some repertoire suitable for such stuff. we're people! the most mobile instruments there are, we could have done so much. bring voices back to the fore of music.. what do you guys think? talk to me..

working with other folks has taught me too. at this point a lot of people are just fixed and unwilling to accept changes.. we may seem like quite a pai don't care batch but i get the feeling it's cause people've already made their close friends and have mostly closed doors to others.. it's that cool calm professionalism, or discomfort with themselves however well hidden, or just plain weirdness. appearances matter to some extent though, and we know it, so there's always the need to fit into a group. but we knew that already. never mind..

anyway! now a lot of stuff coming up. today in the afternoon suddenly remembered how much shopping i had wanted to do, but lazy to go out today, so probably this coming week, after PW-OP dry run is out of the way. also see it we can finish this song with the boys, hahhha, maybe we can actually do something. if everyone's ready to quit being boring and sleepy, we can finally see some action around this joint =)

gotta do load of things i'd planned too.. work work work.. design class tee, KI shirt? hahaha.. chorale jacket and file.. shall i find a friend to tailor design for a traveling outfit? hahhaha, exciting. all for fun.. would you all want one? lol. guitar.. i wanna try going electric too, after talking to an old.. friend. need to plan class CIP project, need to study for chinese AO levels, want to go out with 08S06S, with arnold and geof, with chorale, with churchies, with some friends.. that reminds me.. sigh. i want to pay someone a visit.

about what i had said too. now in the middle of the stress of promos and getting back results + AOs, a little release from all the rush and hype, calm down a little and i do feel it, haha. then i think too much, then i start finding things to distract myself =) well, that's life.

time to come to terms with things, time to settle down. i do want to settle down, i have wanted to, but then you didn't notice, and now all of you are so mysterious, i don't know what any of your looks mean. nothing, perhaps. i'll just continue the path i'm walking.. and do whatever i decide to. i want an awesome hi-fi setup for my room, i want to move closer to the city, i want us to make more music, more music, more fun and love. i want to settle down into it.

break the tradition, un-emo-fy this season? perhaps.. i forget so many things, things i'd felt, things i've said, things i thought, but some things, a guy doesn't forget just like that.

but that said, i'm happy with where we're walking towards, i think. =)

go ahead, i won't avert my eyes.

2007-10-05T06:31:00.000+08:00

i probably do this too much, but misrepresenting david, it's amusing to see your reactions, hahhaha.

past few days have been major headache.. even after exams still so busy, argh. haven't managed to sleep in for a single day, still up at 5.30 every morning, gah. then there's OP to prepare for once open house is over.. we are so going sentosa next saturday. if we're not i'm going anyway.

besides open house stuff and chorale, which actually has been quite good so far, i think i think, been doing random stuff too.. playing and experimenting with drawing and coloring with tablet, haha, interesting. but i'm noob at photoshop, shading also cannot get it right, lol. nevermind, i'm a work in progress, hehh.

also invented numerous things, such as frisboccer, where you ram soccer ball and pass frisbee across entire amphi, hahhaha, qihan had a role in inventing too, lol. oh and made pizza cookie(basically what is says, a cookie as big as a pizza, lol) for arnold's birthday, hahhaha. k lah, i admit it, the amos thing is getting old, too bad it's the most fun thing to do, better than beeleng and liansee, HAH ! but still, 好兄弟就是好兄弟, it's something to treasure, hahh.

the year really had passed so fast, thinking about it. i don't wanna be j2 -.- seventeen is THE age to be, and graduating.. i'm really going to miss being able to don a school uniform and mess around, hahha. it almost makes it all worthwhile, cause of all the implications. it draws people together in it's own way, let's just leave it at that, hahha.

hm ok yeah, so basically haven't been doing much studying since promos, really had no time.. or no mood xP but i will, quite soon actually, once OP is more or less out of the way, in terms of preparation. a few other things i need to do fast so i can concentrate on that too, write mini-IS, start gathering material for the actual IS proposal, design various apparel for classes, arrange a few songs. on that note i really hope the choir can do something more than toh repertoire, and there are numerous thoughts there, but the bottom line is oh well, if the people don't want to there's nothing there.

about that, i think it's just a phase, so relax, hahha. it's not such a bad one, i guess, cause i was having fun, so to speak, but now i'm starting to get irritated with myself, so we'll just have to wait and see. people don't change that much that quickly, after all, so there's no point to it in the end. but still, things have made a little turn for the better, i think i think and i know i hope. but overall it's been quite ok, and well older guys are always telling me enjoy your freedom now. i know they're teasing, but hahhaha, it's been quite ok actually. freedom does have its merits. it's just interesting how now i'm flying solo and beeleng and amos.. hahh!

ok that's it. hm yeah, i'm here so early cause i woke up late, zz, so decided to go myself later rather than kill myself by rushing and catching a lift from my dad and ending up in school at seven tired-er with nothing to do till 9.45. oh well. hope all goes well today! up and up and away -

grow a house co.

2007-10-01T22:53:00.000+08:00

it's finally over! not to say that it's going to be much of a break, but at least some stress is off my neck.. began to clear up the masses of papers strewn over the floor on the carpet, but there's sooo much, i'm only half done sorting through them.. and the vacuum's out of clean filters -.- genius. tomorrow go buy after coming back from school.

but i get to do little stuff at least, haha, somewhat a break. talked to matthias! cripes it's been forever lah, zz. australia is seriously koping a lot of friends and would-be close friends, if it goes and does it to just ONE MORE person, i'm going to have a peaceful protest or something, lol.

talked to ms tan too, haven't heard from her in ages either. guess some things don't really change much, haha.. it's comforting in a weird way. and if you can draw the link, of late people whom i warn that they had better invite me to their wedding keep giving the excuse that they don't want young boy like me to spend so much money on angpow. haahh! don't worry, i can settle that in my way, hahahaha xD

a little time to do other things too. little mindmap thing will be done later, hm ruth, haha. send you a copy. spacewolfone concept to be developed, i was trying to get out the main design, but the expression and tilt wasn't right, and i'm bushed, really.. weekend and this morning pia-ing art. so i just turned it into what you see above. i'll draw the actual design when i've got more energy.. it's a cool concept, i just need to be able to materialize it ><

yeah, actually i'm not so much tired-need-sleep as tired-no-energy-to-move, somehow. there seems to be a subtle difference, even though the lack of energy is really a result of being deprived of sleep in my case. oh well. whatever, lol.

yeah, i er, mess around a while then off to bed with me, haha. tomorrow could be much fun, hahhahaha =]

blue suede shoes -

2007-09-30T16:18:00.000+08:00

well, it's been some time. promos aren't QUITE over yet, and i'm horribly scared for art, cause i really haven't been keeping up, what with trying to fix my problem with other subjects, to the extent of totally embarrassing myself in class by confusing one movement with another completely, zz.. i really begin to regret not going the humans path, taken geog, art, ki and math and h3 geog or h1jap, hahhaha, but it's kinda too late for this sort of regret. we'll get where we're going, somehow, hmm..

yeah, so i'm.. wasting time here, lol no lah, just trying to destress. woke up at 9.35 this morning and like zzz grope about the sheets for specs, then see the time on handphone WHOMP fly out of bed to shower, hahhaha.. but really tired, i think i'm reading a lot of unnecessary stuff for art, somehow, cause there's just sooooo much i read till 4am, i think i'm going to die. i borrow phrase: ttm.

i don't talk much about my church or God here, you'll realize.. i don't know, sometimes i ask myself what's going on too, why i am where i am, hahhaha. it's convoluted, but sometimes people can be frustrating, and i'm starting to babble. it's just that sometimes i wish things were just, better, too, but they can't be, and i can't walk away again, not like others can or might. it's like wishing to help, but this boy's already waist deep in other smelly crap called studies, and sinking..

and to top it off, it's that same feeling. every time i get the itch to do something about stuff, to organize stuff, to get things happening, i just get overcome by this horrible whatchamacallit. fear, or depression, whatever. i guess it's fear. so many times things don't work out because people don't have the vision, don't think they can do it. well if you don't do anything, of course you can't! sigh, i stop, yes.

but then again i've been through this, so i begin to ask myself, so what. if someone's got to try it might as well be you, you've somehow managed to bounce back so many times with only a broken heart and injured spirit that refuses to die despite having it's arms and legs lopped off a la black knight. what can i do, i guess i'll try if some part of me wants to. tired is as tired does, i'll try whatever i can convince myself to..

so yeah, big ole project yay ! i asked my dad, do you know what he's doing..? is he for real, but he wouldn't answer me. i'll just have to try and see i guess. in the end it's not about him anyway, it's about the people. i guess i won't die from one more awesome project being turned into farce by skeptical folks. it's just that.. it's such an incredibly disgusting waste.

it's most definitely not just there either. chorale's starting up, and i'm getting the blues again as you can tell, HAH ! it's no fun, i hate it. i need to do other things, i need to learn to live with extended failure. cause failure isn't a destination, it's a way of doing things that undermines the dreams that we had as little children and ran around on pebble beaches while your parents are waiting patiently in the car around the clump of connifers with your sis grumbling about it being late and wanting to go home, but you just have to find the biggest, smoothest, roundest "pebble" that you can pick up to bring back and nestle into your luggage midst the little red and white and blue polos with odd designs that all little boys have at some point in their lives, bring back home on the plane and then forget about it, only to have it put with so many other smaller pebbles from the gardener's in the little garden with the clipped grass and squat black light sitting alone. my dad used to call it "that 金枕头", which i never got, cause i'd go, but it's not gold! and he would have this lack of any sort of expression on his face when you looked at it. blank. come back to today, to 2007, these times are blank.

i don't like this, but heck, it's too long already. i'm not in the mood to take the effort to mess with aesthetics, art is cramping my mind up, why am i such an incompetent ***************** grah. i'll get this over with, fingers crossed and leave the rest up to Him, go shoot pool and spend money money money, run and hit and throw, bake something nice and ridiculous, start calling people, do PW, study for chinese and mug my ass off. i just refuse to believe that i couldn't do it even when i tried so hard. i must not have tried hard enough.

oh, and about Him. it's because it's a very personal relationship, that's the way relationships go with me, hahhaha. and because really, it should all be in your heart already, or someone's planted the seed, and singing to it too much may or may not encourage it to grow =)