from closer:

owen: you loved me, that’s why you married me and wanted to have my children. now you want his children?

roberts: (quiet shake of head) [sic]

owen: i thought we were happy; we were happy, weren’t we?
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one day you will wake up to realise that you do not love her anymore, and what would you do? these days i suppose it is finally time for me to be honest with myself and not to just persist just because you refuse to unembrace your memories; they are lies, it is deceit and there is only a certain amount of reality that dreams of yesteryear have. living and dying for love (worn lost torn) is almost like a lifetime away, but if you do not live for love, what do you live for then, what can you live for.

tomorrow the o level results will be released, and the a’s will follow shortly and there is an impeding sense of forbidding regarding acceptance. stasis and fear combine together to form a paralysing bind of titanic proportions and everything slows to a total utter stop.

the sixers lost to the kings this morning, and liverpool will play chelsea for the carling cup tonight; are these a scrying mirror for what is to come?

holy shit. iverson and c-webb on the same team?!? god this is the trade i have been dreaming about for ages! with webb, the sixers now have a legitimate low post threat which significantly beefs up their half court game; they still retain the ability to run the fast break thanks to iverson and iguodala mostly, with green being able to come on to complement either of them. imagine this, two of the league leaders in steals on your perimeter, one of the best young centres around in dalembert, and an all star centre in webber with a three point specialist in kyle korver, the sixers are now officially a beast in the east. i mean, good god, this is the stuff of dreams man, and i thought this only happened in nba live 2005 when i traded williamson and thomas for webber. and on tuesday, liverpool won 3-1 without gerrard and morientes, and hahah this is a truly good week for sports.

my sergeant collects items the way my grandfather did a lifetime ago.

clearing the forklift shed and we were carrying items to the rubbish point and he rummaged through and found a portable spotlight. “well, it seems to be usable; only the bulb is busted, see.” i was silent, before saying “haha what are we going to use it for then?” “i don’t know actually.” another pregnant pause and i said “well, how about soccer in the depot at night?” “ehh. like that can!”

we use items for sentimentality and not utility, maybe we look back into the past too often.
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anyway, welcome back mr lai!

today my sergeant asked if i had any ambitions, whether i had any motive in life and i told him, well of course, to be happy and contented and to be carefree! but surely pak, there has to be more to lifelong ambitions and goals than just the metaphysics of it; the rugger from stanford talked to me about this a few days ago and i think maybe old boy, it’s about time you really stopped being a slacker and roll up your sleeves and get dirty in effort and grime; you did that once before, you took a 4 year sabbatical and sod you, it’s time you started working again.

blood sweat and tears, blood sweat and tears and there’s no such thing called a free buffet in life.

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it is six days to march and i am incredibly petrified.

you are a fucking loser pak; the second time taking your sats and you got the exact same pathetic score? sweet jesus you sodding old shit is there nothing you can do properly?

these days my life have been spent in a quagmire; ns slows everything down in this protective bubble sort of way and you think that you are 19 not 20 and that you still have a long time to serve in slavery; university is a long while away and you still have second chances pak, there are still chances for you. but just how much is enough; the a level results will be out in a month’s time and i am so fucking terribly afraid that i ll get the same results as j2 and that i won’t be able to enter a university; my sats scores certainly were that way and i have no doubts that cornell would reject me in an instant; smu too and there goes my backup.

i think it’s about time i’ve finally learnt that by god, you are not as smart as you did think yourself to be and that everything of note that you have achieved in your life came from effort, from sheer blood sweat and tears and there simply is no replacement for diligence. you ought to have learnt that a long time ago but by god, you are too goddamned stupid you loserish son of a bitch.

one month’s time, and i should stop using national service as an excuse and get my act together. i still have chances i suppose, but this is just not the way to go.

it is one day after valentine’s day and i am writing this in camp; yes in camp because we have internet access on a hewlett packard! while blog surfing for the first time in a very long time (because my home computer is utterly, utterly gay) i realised two of my friends had written on their valentine posts that love, actually is all around and it has been such a long time since i last knew love; i was walking home on saturday night and i was wondering, maybe, just maybe i did end it this year at twenty instead of the stipulated age of fourty because the world is entirely dull and grey and because love doesn’t exist for me. but i cannot give up because i cannot live without a purpose and i shall live on in hope because really la wah lau that is the only thing i can do.

i shall be patient, and wait, and for the time being i shall live in dreams of magnolia fields and blue skies and angel wings.

yesterday was valentine’s day and i saw the florist sweeping dead roses and fallen petals into a dustpan. myraid colours of red yellow pink and brown into plastic green and that about sums it up at 8 pm at night.
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these days i cannot write; i cannot conjure pretty images and black scrawlings on an orange screen are a reflection of a barren soul. there is no joy in me, no lilt nor elation and all i can feel is an impeding sense of doom. i took my sats on the 22nd january and i am waiting for my results; i took my second a levels last year and i am horribly afraid that i would screw it up again; i am a proud boy and a terribly lazy one too and the two of them do not make a good combination.

these days i cannot run as fast as i used to; my basketball is atrophying, my achilles tendinitis is returning to its original state and i am getting decidedly unhealthier. i spend too much for my own good and i really should stop taking taxis but nothing has changed after the first of january and i wonder, what good are resolutions for if they are not resolute.

too much ennui, and too much stasis.

and today was a day of nostalgia; a captain was flying away on a jet plane and i met comrades from a previous lifetime two years ago. three hours later i would be in a car humming tunes i listened to when i was a child – chen shu hua, emil chow, andy lau, wang jie, zhao chuan, wu bai and i wondered how much things have changed a decade later, that a child who shared the same chinese name as the first mentioned singer would now listen to the killers, stina nordenstam, coldplay and l’arc en ciel.

memory lane stretches down in more way than one, calvin drove by clementi avenue one, and then sunset way and then i remembered that for the first time in 21 years (by the lunar calendar), grandma didn’t order cakes from balmoral bakery.

how much more will things change.

it is five in the morning and stina nordenstam whispers in the morning wind.

will i ever find peace within myself?

in 2 hours time, i shall go back to camp because i simply have to; i shall not rant about the idiocy of going back to an idle place but really, it has been a long time since i last spent two and a half days back in the open world and freedom and peace tastes like the five am breeze in the void deck of a sloping hill. there is no describing it, and i tell myself you have to be strong to know that beauty still exists.