it was going to rain today and it did, but i couldn’t be in it because i was working as usual and this is what i miss most about singapore, the rain, the solace, the tranquility and nothing can quite compare to the silence of the rain; i say silence of the rain, because you can only hear the patter of raindrops and nothing else, as opposed to when it’s sunny and too full of life and everything becomes crowded out of your consciousness. sometimes, all i want is my inner voice probing and questioning, like a child all over again and i think we grow up too fast too quickly without realizing the repercussions of it all.
sophie ellis baxtor’s murder on the dancefloor is amazingly catchy and i don’t think there’s anything quite as sexy as a british/irish accent.
there are two halves to the blind assassin, 264 pages and 276 on either side respectively, a moiety of a whole, quiet, despairing and tattering. i never like it when books fall apart but there’s a certain responsibility i have to take, like almost everything i have done because destruction of a pretty thing has been something i have perfected into an art form.
and sometimes, my enthusiasm loses me more things than are necessary. be insouciant, you.
“Is there anything you want, Pak Shu Hwa?”
“Yes, a love story.”
————————————–
april is the cruelest month, but there are 7 days left this week and then it will be may, the fifth month of the year and somewhere on this world the name of a few thousand girls. will i fall in love with a may (had i fallen in love with a may?) and once again i pose myself a question which i cannot answer, unlike the one above.
spring is green and yellow and pink and orange and red, a multitude of colours, a kaleidoscope of life.
baselworld has ended, three months have been concluded and all that remains are centuries of hours before i return. while gymming at vogenstrasse just now, all i could think of while looking at the sunlight pour in through the windows was sprinting on the track back at chinese high, in the sun, in the rain, in the humidity of it all and after completing my first century race in millennia of days i would probably cry at the fact that i can actually still sprint again.
i had almost given up hope of sprinting again because of my bilateral achilles tendinitis, but my tailbone injury has forced me to take a prolonged rest and maybe that was for the best in retrospect because the heels don’t hurt as terribly as before and there’s a sort of youthfulness in my legs that i have yet to feel in years and i don’t suppose i have ever quite looked forward to crying.
i am late for work again, but some things have to be said, some things have to be mentioned and written.
How well have you travelled?
East-West
[Y] Changi Airport – where i send people off.
[N] Expo – funnily enough i have never been for any of the booksales.
[Y] Pasir Ris – BOOKOUT DAYS.
[Y] Tampines – BOOKOUT DAYS.
[N] Simei – wtf does simei have.
[Y] Tanah Merah – because i have to change trains to get to changi airport.
[Y] Bedok – uh. i think it was for food hmm.
[N] Kembangan -
[N] Eunos –
[N] Paya Lebar - i m pretty sure i’ve been there before, but i cant remember what it was exactly for. zzz
[Y] Aljunied – volunteer attachement at upper boon keng road for two weeks.
[Y] Kallang – COLDPLAY. TRACK AND FIELD NATIONALS.
[Y] Lavender – Golden Mile Shopping Centre and heavenly char kuay teow.
[Y] Bugis – old chang kee HAHA
[Y] City Hall – to get to suntec.
[Y] Raffles Place – …. hot spot to get donations roflol.
[N] Tanjong Pagar – again i can’t remember.
[N] Outram Park – ditto.
[Y] Tiong Bahru - Tiong Bahru Market. heavenly porridge, nasi lemak and fishcakes.
[N] Redhill -
[Y] Queenstown – Library, porridge and childhood days.
[Y] Commonwealth – matthew wu and volunteering stint for two days selling cinnamon rolls that go by a fancier name.
[Y] Buona Vista – physiotherapy at nuh.
[N] Dover -
[Y] Clementi – Gramma’s place, primary school, and an old a&w.
[Y] Jurong East - Library and a mushroom farm
[Y] Chinese Garden – for basketball a month before i left.
[N] Lakeside -
[N] Boon Lay – can go and die, so far can.
North-South
[Y] Bukit Batok – Westmall; closest mrt to home.
[N] Bukit Gombak -
[Y] Choa Chu Kang – track and field nationals, training grounds, lot 1 and ARMY DAYS sadflksdafkjsd
[Y] Yew Tee – ARMY DAYS.
[Y] Kranji - ARMY GUARD DUTY DAYS
[N] Marsiling – wtf is at marsiling.
[N] Woodlands – wtf is at woodlands.
[N] Admiralty - wtf is at admiralty other than admirals.
[N] Sembawang – i hate repeating myself.
[Y] Yishun – a huge ass cineplex
[N] Khatib –
[Y] Yio Chu Kang – Grassroots club for lai wai kit’s 21st birthday where i realised i actually said a lot in his video. damn embarrassing lar.
[N] Ang Mo Kio -
[Y] Bishan – Junction 8, and ri science quiz when i was a pri school kid.
[N] Braddell -
[Y] Toa Payoh – humance gathering in 2005.
[Y] Novena – Tan Tock Seng Hospital?!
[Y] Newton – Newton Circus lor.
[Y] Orchard – Kino, taka, cine <3
[Y] Somerset - … all those busking sessions for afua.
[Y] Dhoby Ghaut – Plaza Singapura and of course Park Lane when Dota reigns supreme. nice chicken rice too incidentally.
[Y] Marina Bay - steamboat and kite flying once upon a time.
North-East
[Y] Harbourfront – Sentosa.
[Y] Chinatown – Chinatown?!
[Y] Clarke Quay – Brewerkz, frisbee, Wine Garage?
[Y] Little India – Sim Lim.
[N] Farrer Park
[N] Boon Keng
[N] Potong Pasir – Chiam See Tong ftw
[Y] Serangoon – damn shiok chicken rice
[Y] Kovan – step
[Y] Hougang – gramma used to bring me here when she has to work.
[N] Buangkok - clrly not an rgs girl.
[N] Sengkang -
[N] Punggol – jurgen lives here i think, but i dont talk to him now.
there’s not much to say these days and i wonder if giving up the soul of a younger self to protect my persona is worth it. i guess it isn’t but the trauma from 2005-06 dictated otherwise and sometimes in life, it’s too late for regrets because you cannot do anything about it.
baselworld has been all it’s feted to be and yesterday night i had to serve two bookings of guests; i had to be fast enough for the first batch to be done, reset the table, and serve the second. but murphy’s laws dictate that something had to go wrong, and it is people who know that they were squeezed in because of a last minute reservation who eat terrifically slowly.
yesterday marked the first time in my life i calculated a bill wrongly which no one noticed; we mark the beverages the guests consumed on a piece of paper but sometimes our managers help us with it too; yesterday a bill for three people totalled up to 9 bottles of water and i was like, did they consume so much?! but i didn’t have much time left so i sent the bill to the gentleman, whom i asked to check the bill and see if it was right and he smiled and said yes, it is without looking at it because there was an implicit sense of trust i suppose. by right i should have just left it as that, but i’m obsessive i guess, and i mentally went through what they ordered again and i realised that there were three extra bottles of water, and.
sometimes we give up too much just for things to go smoothly, but there’s too much guilt, too much pain, and too many failures; i hate failing, i hate disappointing people, i hate misbilling people because regardless of how rich they are because money is still money and there s acutally a sort of fiscal responsibility in this line.
as my colleague said two days ago, i’ve already completed half of my internship; more i wanted to say, more.
i always made hot chocolate with warm water and nothing else because there’s no mention of milk in the word hot chocolate; i take things too literally sometimes.
this afternoon i remembered my dreams from the previous night which is a momentous occasion in itself because i don’t usually do so until much later, whereupon everything seems to be deja vu like. this time i dreamt that i was back in chinese high, preparing to run my first century sprint in centuries of days and yok was as usual was beside me, the way we always used to, two old sprinters from a bygone era picking up where they left behind years ago. but things meandered the way they always would with me, and i woke up with a start, left foot not even lifting off the starting block. some things, it seems, are not meant to be continued.
i wonder how it is like to sprint again, but somehow i have the feeling that my achilles tendons and tailbone will not quite agree with me and much of that immortality i used to carry as a child is now gone. there’s not much to say these days, only shadows of echoes of a chattering youth.
i miss people, the voices, the laughs, the touches, the words, the interaction.
——————
everything’s changing these days, nothing’s impermanent but that’s how life is, innit. at the end of it all i am just thankful for this easter, for this time to be alone, to be quiet, silent and occasionally maudlin because i won’t have time for myself otherwise. five days without interaction with strangers nor colleagues and tomorrow, tomorrow i think i will sit outside the starbucks by the corner of the road where i will read atwood and drink a hot mug of coffee, look out of the window and smile. a sad cafe, the eagles sang decades of years ago, a melancholic one and yet beautific in its incandescence.
——————
i sleep too often in the light of the morning.
closure is never easy, and neither is progression, but sometimes the latter is easier when there are simply no alternatives.
dandelionwine.wordpress.com, because i have not been able to log onto blogger due to some registry errors in my laptop; i will not reformat it here, 6 time zones away from home because i do not have the necessary software to reinstall everything again, so.
till the end of june, hubriz will of temporal closure, because sometimes you cannot give things up. there is too much history, too much life here.
even though it is spring now, and the sun shines gently, warmly.
