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cigarettes and chocolate milk -
these are just a couple of my cravings.
everything it seems i like's a little bit stronger,
a little bit thicker,
a little bit harmful for me.

and then there's those other things
which for several reasons we won't mention.
everything about them is a little bit stranger,
a little bit harder,
a little bit deadly.

still there's not a show on my back,
holes or a friendly intervention.
i'm just a little bit heiress, a little bit irish,
a little bit tower of pisa whenever i see you.
so please be kind if i'm a mess

cigarettes and chocolate milk, rufus wainwright

"and just because nobody yet knew he was in london, except clarissa, and the earth, after the voyage, still seemed an island to him, the strangeness of standing alone, alive, unknown, at half-past eleven in trafalgar square overcame him. what is it? where am i? and why, after all, does one do it?"

"where should he go? no matter. up the street, then, towards regent's park. his boots on the pavement struck out 'no matter'; for it was early, still very early."

victor gan chee how

fog

dont want to think about yes, dont want to think about no. dont want to think about faith and and dont want to think about tomorrow. straight into the obscuring fog of haha, because everything i want is all in a dream anyway.

well, i dreamt i saw the silver spaceships flying
in the yellow haze of the sun
there were children crying and colours flying
all around the chosen ones
all in a dream, all in a dream
the loading had begun
flying mother nature's silver seed
to a new home in the sun

after the gold rush, flaming lips

clarissa

"in people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; london; this moment of june."

"did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards bond street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of london, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself."

"the world has raised its whip; where will it descend?"

"so on a summer's day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying 'that is all' more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, that is all. fear no more, says the heart. fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall."

place.

1] "Islam is too important to be left to the state." - Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im
2] "Don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally paid to such a person." - Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller

seriously

me: actually i want to go running tomorrow
vania: ha i just went running. ok la where? evening can?
me: yea. im very tempted to make you come to the east le..
vania: huh? then what's stopping you?

well, how about my consideration for your convenience? you just have to love this girl.

ah

so very tired now. even more so because i know it's entirely my own doing. already i hear the toast scraping under the knife. just want to wind down, get ready for dying, if i could only get down to stopping.

listening to ska sucks by propagandhi.

oh

oh wow how fast things change. how we've spiralled!

i will always have that one kiss with daryl, and in that moment i will always be innocent. i will always remember monica's cherries, and in that moment i will have endless possibilities. i will always see dalglish sitting alone outside the council room, and in that moment i will see the face of dark temptation. i will always hear you breathing with your back against me as i cycle you down the hill, and in that moment i will know what it feels like to be out of control.

there will be so many hours after all this. cruel, unrelenting hours, with clocks threatening by the minute to strike fear into my aging heart. but i live for moments like these, for the memory of moments like these.

red letters

in my room now and maybe i dont want to choose clothes to see relatives in. maybe sometime in the next 5 seconds some mysterious ailment will grip me so tight i cant leave home. no didnt happen. jeans or trousers? should i go red? shirt or tshirt? try or dont try at all?

chinesenewyear in all its do's and dont's and gaudy festivities just makes me sick. i have to remember to smile and say nice words and spout my lousy chinese to relatives who prolly care less about me than i for them. handphone is out of bounds, so what will i do when all the things just get too much? - when i just really want to drink plain iced water, thank you. when no, i really dont want to eat anymore. when i smile quietly but say to myself yes i want to study in the states not in spite of my parents but because of them. when i shrug my shoulders but think to myself no i prolly dont want a girlfriend, not while im still sane.

this chinesenewyear rhs is in johor, my father's in jakarta, and my mother goes to sydney tomorrow. i think after the first day, after the initial explosion of kinship and reunion and bonds stretched to the limits of their strength, i would have gone through the most tasteless days of the year.

trudging slowly over wet sand
back to the bench where your clothes were stolen
this is the coastal town
that they forgot to close down
armageddon - come armageddon!
come, armageddon! come!

every day is like sunday
every day is silent and grey
every day is like sunday by morrissey

scratchings.

1. the frozen food section: along aisles and aisles of the supermarket, stacked atop one another, lined beside one another, are boxes of frozen food. neon packaging promise golden-brown nights and epicurean ecstasies within minutes. lingering through these aisles are men for whom there are no wives waiting with dinner, for whom there will never be the hope of everyday dinners with bouffoned hair and hips. what lies ahead is only artificial, transient, pleasures created by the minute, unlike those slaved upon for hours and days. these are pleasures that come easily and these are pleasures that do not last; these instant dinners are void of nutrition. wandering along the aisles, they satiate themselves with the colours and bright lights, with the promise of happiness, the promise being fulfilling in itself, because they know very well the pits that lie ahead. here we are at the frozen food section. i think i'll go for the cocktail shrimps tonight.

2. his memories remained fresh and vivid, and pink the colour of a wound that kept being picked and scratched over and over again.

3. he felt like the greatest years of his life were wasted in mediocrity and a lack of colour. like a leaf among the thousand others that go unnotice during its time on the branch. he anticipated his shrivelling, his browning, when people would begin to pay attention to him, and sweep him away.

4. the days are black and/ the nights are but shadier twins -/ the days choked with impossibilities/ the nights drenched in dark possibilities.

5. disjointed - maybe it was my dislocation with everything in general that made me miss my juniors and seniors more than i did my batch mates.

6. it was a nightmare finding out that it was only an illusion that led me into the dark.

yes, lectures now are so boring they drive me to this.

holy trinity, and then some more.

1. there can only be one reason for the high that im on right now at 9.05 on chinese new year eve [no, not the promise of kueh tarts or money]. at rough calculation, i managed to squash and swim within a matter of only 18 hours, and nothing makes me happier than exercising while people stuff their faces and waste their youth away. yay! plus many [read: enough] people say i look good in my too-small trunks. you CAN wait for photos if you want to.

2. the two days of public holidays - free time as far as the eye can see in ns-speak - mean i can finally get into the groove of reading mrs. dalloway. this is definitely not a book to be read between lectures or before lights out. it requires, demands, your focus, good posture, adequate lighting, iced water and perfect temperature. otherwise it descends into a string of woolfian sentences, which in turn are strings of random thoughts. oh dear, how delicious. can hardly wait.

3. while mr hodge had recounted "the deep dark feeling you get on sunday afternoons before you book in" in all sincerity, i have to say it's prolly because he did not have a mac and acquisition a.k.a. the world's best p2p programme. sunday night before booking in was spent on more criminal thieving of intellectual property. for the aurally starved, here, receive your manna.

a question for emily foreman, disconnect the dots, good morning mr. edminton by of montreal
god killed the queen, louis XIV by louis XIV
good i feel bad, queen of verlaine by high water marks
in action by we are scientists
last nite by strokes somehow "nite" becomes cool when it's the strokes that spells it like that
i want to tell you by timewellspent
the go in go-for-it by grandaddy
every day by buddy holly
man of the hour by pearl jam

4. this week i start my stint with toyfactory. i wonder... i hope... argh! so many possibilities. oh i hope i dont lose interest. like chingay.

wee beng has been comically engrossed in my deviant lifestyle, and i in his no less deviant one. tales of parangs, sex, big fishes [no, really] fill our nightly slumber party conversations. i always thought i mixed well with bengs and mats.

coincidentally, i watched big fish in the past week. a tightly constructed film with a stirring soundtrack to boot. right now im thinking about my father and all the stories he's told me [motorcycling naked, punching people, leaving home, travelling the world], and all the stories i know he hasnt told me, and im wondering whether i should be less judgemental of him. maybe like in the movie [ewan mcgregor's TEETH!], im just a continuation of my father and im destined to commit the same mistakes, and then some more.

so maybe all these things dont mean so much in themselves as compared to the light in which they are seen. if i hadnt reconciled with rhs, would i have been this... this dormant? and maybe we havent really reconciled, maybe i need to reconcile myself first. seeing ellery with his girlfriend just makes me wonder why on earth i even bother trying. seeing ellery with his girlfriend somehow just makes me want to put rhs down and run away. i could run away to afternoons at sicc and hanging out at thomson plaza. i couldnt, i wouldnt. i want to be the broken-hearted one; i dont want to be the ungrateful one. oh dear, maybe this is what being married is about. thinking you might have made a mistake, and having to live it out hour after hour of your life. how mrs. brown.

so!

so, while waiting for rhs at kino today, i saw ellery with his girlfriend.