the straits

the straits of singapore come into view and i prep myself for that usual feeling. it's a blend of anticipation, which comes with seeing the green city crisscrossed with lines, and of dread just thinking of the wall of heat that will hit the moment i exit the airport.

this place is really far away. the arctic looks back when i peer out the window flying here, and a few hours later there is the gobi desert right at the same spot. that is a lot of ice and sand between me and the boy i like. that, and an eternity of a week, is what separates me from chip and our sleepovers, tadd pretending to be a robot, ryan singing the chili peppers, miles being intransigent and hannah talking about her girl problems.



it hasnt even been that long since i was last here and i'm already getting excited for full circle moments. back in the fire station, it feels like second nature to lick my fingers at lunch, dash downstairs, gear up, and hop onto the pumper. things are a little different, almost imperceptible, but i'm just glad to be cruising down the city streets at full speed. rudy calls me up tonight and his cracking voice over the telephone is a throwback to younger days and a reminder of why he is always that guy. here and there are little reminders of what i've left - wandering around the city in the sultry heat, sitting by the river with teh love club, and even listening again to dan's diaphanous singing all the way from yorkshire.



in a few days i hit the summer road. my work here in singapore will have been done for now, nieces greeted, parents placated, and old relationships renewed. going across an entire archipelago - the world's largest - i will ask myself, what do you miss? where do you want to be? who do you want beside you? the answer i think i know ("it really doesnt matter") but i would like to believe it and stop feeling so nauseatingly nostalgic. because it's all a big cycle, a kind of tandava and chances are, my one life will blend into the next, nothing to miss, nowhere else to be.

the violent jolt of the city

it has been an entire month in nyc, a month that vacillated between boredom and thrill, routine and discovery. even though cracking the mystery of nyc in such a short time might seem improbable, it finally comes to me on the last sunday. it is a hopeful afternoon and i am sitting in the front row, far left of the nederlander theatre, listening to jonathan larson speak to me.

new york city. the hustle-bustle, unforgiving crush of commuters an tourists, the ebb and flow of human flesh, the squalor of west 41st just one block down from the goddess that is 42nd street. this is where the upper east side borders harlem, where queens residents hop on the immigrant express into town, where hippies and yuppies wear brooklyn pride on their sleeve, and where visitors like me never step into the bronx. it is times square, is rotting subway stations, is leaking roofs, is quiet and pulsing nights, is the wail and yelp of the fire department, is defiant, is amazingly recuperative.


it is defiant. it resists categorization. typically it would be called a melting pot, but that isnt true because nothing really mixes. there is a mélange of peoples - families, yuppies, tourists, couchsurfers, students, artists, immigrants, mothers and brothers all fighting and stuggling to survive. they fight and struggle to survive, and beyond that, to live. we all do it in our own selfish but necessary way. where life offers itself, spread out in front of you as opportunity does in this city, you do all you can to eke out the best living, the best life for yourself and your loved ones.

this is how we live and survive, and it must get better - that is the hope that lights the city, which rushes to fill any void or heal any wound, no matter how gaping. i look at this as an outsider but i have been swept away by this struggle for life and love in the city. after all, this job, the now-dead cat, craig, rooftop bonanzing, and late night storms, these are just my own petty ways of demanding my life, satisfaction, fulfilment and exhilaration from this city and its masses. the city, brimming life and love, the lack thereof, the fight for more.

Naive Melody

It is Wednesday night and cold outside. It's one in the morning and Jeremy's cleaning his room. Me, I'm lying on his bed and screaming along to Built to Spill. I want specifics on the general idea.

It is Thursday night, Wine and Cheese is over and it seems like Jeremy has got lost in the woods. Ryan is floating above the sky and I'm the sober and responsible one. We decide to sleep outside Jeremy's door in the hallway - yes, because I am sober and responsible and this will bring him back. As we drift off to sleep beside each other, Ryan rambles on on life and love and I listen and we suck in deep breaths. Tonight he is soft and feminine, his eyes are bloodshot, his skin perfect and white. I want to think, this is college, 21, a miraculous coincidence of people and time and place, but I leave it at that, unwilling to bring it beyond what it is. We sleep, hard.

It is Friday night, and Peter and I meet. We hit his friends' first before we come back to WestCo where I show him how Ryan, Jeremy and I play. As the two of us leave for the male revue at Psi U, he asks me a serious question, and I say yes. We walk fast, giggling under our breath, its condensation leading our way. I tackle him hard, he wants to grind down one of the railings when it starts snowing. Later, we lie down beside the street, waiting for the rest of the guys, and he tells me something serious as well (I didnt think I was prepared to know, I didnt think I wanted to know). Another while later, we're sitting on Jacob's bed, and it's just the two of us. I think, this could be the night, but I know I dont want to know, I dont want to think about it. Ain't it strange that I can dream, when there's nothing I have ever seen.

It is Saturday night, and I'm taking off my clothes. But first, to get shitty enough. (On hindsight, I realise though I was wayy off my legs.) When I'm done, I go upstairs to collect my money and the birthday boy is there. Right there, on the landing, was a semester's worth of holding out, right after two nights of Not Thinking. So right there, on the landing, I was shitfaced, and I thought, hell, I thought.. I couldnt think. I couldnt Not Think. Blurry and fast-forward, I am sick over the toilet and I have no idea where my money is. I dont know where is the money I came here for. Wait, I feel sick.

It's Sunday night, and we've baked green penis cookies and a blue cake for Ryan's birthday. We've hit the sugar ceiling so we go to Miles's room to, uh, chat. I'm in Miles's recliner with Ryan. I want to be there for a long time, I tell him about last night, I tell them about last night, I want to sleep. When I wake up, I leave with Ryan. It's icy outside, and I dont think I can get back all right, all I want to do is tell him about the frickin' weekend. I want to tell him that turning 20 doesnt change much. I turned 21 and still make classic mistakes. But I think he knows, he knows what hopeless basketcases we are, he knows how we're still way too juvenile. So it's Wednesday night, I still dont have the money, and kicking myself in the head. Jeremy is eating mac and cheese and I'm screaming along to Built to Spill. Yea you've become, yea, you have become a fraction of the sum, the middle and the front - a song for the naive and the big joke we are - and now it's coming back, hasn't it come too far? I was trying to help but I guess I pushed too hard, and now we can't even touch it, afraid it will fall apart.

leaving everything behind

the full moon comes out tonight on a day when i begin the process of leaving and detachment. i used to be pretty good at this, but the last five years have been about attachment and building bridges, so expect a few missteps.




two weeks ago i quit all my jobs, upped, and headed down under. saying goodbye to gorgeous gavin today, i realise that maybe i dont want to be the leaving, as much as i dislike being left. there's been something like a suspension of disbelief in the past months. it was as if i never had to leave and i'm spending this perfect life in singapore. now there's no denying the change anymore, and i'm starting to hope again for more time. if there's anything the past year should've taught me, it is courage, understanding and love to cope with change, separation and all sorts of other upshetting things. if thats the case, im not off to a good start seeing how much i'm missing Gorgeous Gavin and Beautiful Byron Bay.

100

The most painful feelings, the most piercing emotions are also the most absurd ones - the longing for impossible things precisely because they are impossible, the nostalgia for what never was, the desire for what might have been, one's bitterness that one is not someone else, or one's dissatisfaction with the very existence of the world. All these half-tones of the world's consciousness create a raw landscape within us, a sun eternally setting on what we are. Our sense of ourselves then becomes a deserted field at nightfall, with sad reeds flanking a boatless river, bright in the darkness growing between the distant shores.
The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa

A little tennis game with Jie Ming is squeezed into the middle of the day, but the rain thwarts our plans. Half way through the game, the court gets too slippery so we sit down in the rain listening to Mayday, and dreading the the university replies (update: both rejected!). On my mind is the meeting with R later, and I sort-of dread it more than.

But it is a dream. The ohm from Concave Scream is left over, so I am calm when I face him. When we hit Changi Coast Road, we're chatting like old friends and I dont miss him anymore. Planes roaring overhead drown out our voices and the Manic Street Preachers, but we're part of the road, so we just listen harder. At the beach, it's disgusting and packed, so we stand a little, staring off into the Straits.

There is something about two boys - running barefoot, chasing each other, tossing a frisbee, swimming across the river, skipping rocks, smashing fish, climbing railings, scaring ghosts - that is so incredibly exhilarating and athletic, the serotonin high still lingers inside. At the end of the night, chatting in the car at R's carpark, just like years ago on the taxis, I know we're friends again. Not hundred dollar friends, and we both know it, but something more. And a night like this, not hundred dollars, but something more.

Hush

So, Jie Ming and I, both Espy virgins, go watch Concave Scream's Hush together. Somewhere, ten seconds into the first song, I get the shiver-shake moment that "Safari Pete" speaks of. Whow! And really, isnt this whole night just a huge shiver-shake moment? Except it's a really quiet moment, not so loud, like Concave Scream promised at the beginning of the set. This is meant to be a huge weekend, one filled with disappointment, healing, resolution, driving, exercise, food, party and farewells. But tonight, the first night, if anything, has been inspiration and hope.

Back in 2005, Jie Ming and I went to the Mayday concert which was loud, emotional and buzz. That was the punctuation for Central-BOC. Now, to punctuate this weekend, we go to Hush, and it really is that, quiet, sweetly nostalgic, and comfortably emotional. Perhaps that is the way it is as we turn 21, everything starts being less Love and Hate, and more Give and Take, and we start to settle down into our small quiet lives. Maybe once in a while we will go mad at a Cure concert, but in between these wild breaks, we'll all be a little more comfortable in our skins, nicer to ourselves and inner ears.

Tomorrow, I will see R, and it has all been settled in my mind. Just pack an eski, frisbee and some stuff into the car, and the land and water and sky will take care of everything else. Same goes for the future.

Tummy Mouse

The thing about ex-friends, people who used to be so close but are now strangers, is that they are not alone. From way back in secondary school, six years ago, I had began to lose sight of myself. The same also for parts of JC, which meant that these buddies had only made friends with an approximation of myself, a projection. That is why, now, it is so hard to go back to Huan Ling, for example, and get nostalgic. Because I do not know very well, or remember, the person that they knew and remember. For that matter, I am my own ex-friend, and that's why if you're an ex-friend reading this, you're not alone. But it's getting better now, we're getting chummier.

It seems to me that the toilet has bore witness to many changes of mind and realisations. Appropriately enough for the venue, my mental tempest can only be paralleled by my bowel movement, or there lackof. It all started in 2001 when things began to go a little crazy, and when I got the first bout of tummy mouse. Over the years, it's come and gone inasmuch the same way as I vacillate between personalities. Many a time, I get stressed/ nervous/ frightened, and I can feel the constipation right there in my tummy. One day, past all these purgings, everything will be clear, completely detoxed. Oh, what a day that will be.

I Want to Go Home

I decided to continue... until I had got over my pain by comparing it with other people's, or had worn out my own story through sheer repetition.

But continuing, it is too difficult. Two years on, I am having the same jitters as if I had met you just last week. The sadness is too real to forget still, and the reasons are even more apparent, though less distinct. It is the green light on the other side of the river, it is there but it comes and goes and at times it is blur around the edges, though some nights it is sharp and pierces my heart through my eyes. That is why it will never be worn out, it takes different shapes, it is never the same thing. It burns and rises again from the ashes to fly, circling above my head. Home is a feeling I buried in you, so maybe that is why, thinking about you, all I understand is the longing for home, the yearning for you. I'm tired now, off to bed, perchance to dream of a better home.

Notes from the Past

A little writing on an order chit from CCSG was stuck inside the The Postal Service's Give Up CD case.

Soup of the Day: Tomato
Upsell: IMT and apple crumble
86: maple walnut, ny cheese, choc opera, chix pie

"despair is the sudden calm in the cafe on sunday evening. the perspiration of fear as i see, things will never be... (overleaf) ... it is seeing something and then not, and... then seeing again and knowing that this is the way it will always be... and it is the certainty the..."

God, I needed a pill.

POW, wow

Harith Bizarro calls me out and after much bitching we decide to meet in our old haunt, Little India. As is very typical, I get there early and he late so I'm hanging out alone at POW for about two hours. Our theme for tonight is "I Remember When I Was a Backpacker Last Month", but Harith states plainly, "So, slippers and shorts right?"

It's been a bit more than a half-year since we last met and it starts out a little awkward but things begin to warm up. His pint of Hoegaarden and my stubby of VB lubricates things just enough, and the tension in me eases somewhat. We're speaking fondly like old ns kakis again.

On the walk back to catch the last train, our conversation turns to what exactly happened in the last few days. But really, who knows and who cares why things turned sour? Nothing much matters now, we're mates again. The placid night holds in it some kind of expectancy, the kind that makes it placid, not still, not calm, the kind that brings with it some kind of tremulous sensation in each ticking of the second hand.

It is trying to say something, though it was not apparent then. But now, putting thoughts down, sketching a mind map, it is clear. This new independence, confidence and willingness to be with myself, seems to have put a rest to the unresolved feelings towards abandonment, perceived or otherwise. More specifically, the benefit of hindsight made it clear how badly Harith must have wanted to get away from Jurong. It felt so real then, it still does, the silver sharpness still glistening in the back of my mind. But I understand it enough now, enough to shine a little bit of light in that corner, and know it for what it is, know that it itsnt a threat anymore.

Open Eyes

We go to Wild Wild Wet in the morning and again, it's a first for all of us. Man, was I even alive in the past year? It's a CNY crowd, which means that of course it's packed, but with MIO's only. The place is pretty small and the rides arent even scary at all except perhaps for this one ride. In any case, it's a chance to swim and get some sun and exercise, not to mention that they're paying.




I have to go visiting after that while they wisely decide to go to Bukit Timah. This is the year that the aunties start asking for me about my girlfriend, of which there is none. For that matter, boy or girl, whatev, maybe I dont want anything now because it's great as it is and I dont want to spoil it. (But if twas R, I take that back.) Cue awkward smile, pretend to be the asexual boy I was a decade ago and keep stuffing my face so I dont have to talk. Ugh.. Chinese New Year will never be the same again. Not after puberty, NS, leaving the country and studying overseas. Now I am almost the adult son who needs to carry on the family name (which name?), challenge my father for the patriarchy (what from whom?), and be able to discuss cheerfully When I Will Come To Be Filial To You Too (when? where?).

Is it any wonder then, any wrong, that I dont want to have to be here anymore?

Dividends

Morning is just a rehash of last night except we're dirtier because there hasnt been a real shower for either. I'm sitting topless in the passenger seat as Daryl brings us home. The wind is passing us by and I want to scream, which I do. We stop for three spots fishing for barra but fail quite miserably. Well, at least money buys us barra at Fisherman's Wharf again, just like the first time, but here we bump into Teddy and Ayumi, my trainmates who inspire laughter in between their Japanese-Korean attempts at English.



It's time to say goodbye, and this is the final entry On the Southern Road. But I know, when the police pulls us over on the way to the airport, there is no need to say goodbye, because, well, too many things can happen. You just gotta have faith, faith, faith.

Warmer Weather

They climb to the top of King's Canyon in drag and at the top, they wonder at all the space that doesnt seem to end. Where do they want to go now? Home. Maybe that is the purpose of travel, to go to the ends of the world in order to appreciate the place where you came from, to understand your relationship with your origins,because, perhaps, proximity breeds contempt.


Mercury reads 47. Yes, it's celsius.

anticipation and post-realisation

Mt. Ebenezer Roadhouse is a name I remember from surfing the TourismNT website back home. I'm having a shit, im here moment.

Sitting in the front of the Yulara fire truck as they bring me on a little joyride around town.



On a day that feels as if nothing could happen, on a coach, just sitting and drifting in and out of sleep. Dan is guiding the coach on the meandering road just as his voice on the microphone accompanies me as I meander through a shallow sleep. In the distance there is a shadow. Large, looming, like lions do as they wait to pounce on their prey. Only... it is a rock, and it is my prey, or is it? It draws me closer, I'm rapt as it takes a step, two steps, another step closer towards me. I did not understand. I had tried to find to prey on it, but now I am the hunted, as its power pulling me is stronger than anything I imagined.








Standing in the Walpa Gorge, Mt. Walpa and Mt. Olga start closing in on me, I am trapped, suffocated and choking. Someday, in a way i might understand only then, The Great Game will change. I could be the hunted or the hunter, the left or the leaving, and it wouldnt matter. Because you never know, you never control, so you let it be.


The tour bring us for the Uluru sunset viewing with half of the rest of Australia there too. They're serving us red, white and canapes too. The old fogeys on the tour cant stop taking pictures and for a while I'm ashamed to be seen there by the backpacker tour group behind. But hell, why be ashamed of a good deal? I'm living it up!

The Biggest

Two years later and I'm still not over R and all the sick feelings that come with him and maybe I'll never be over R but thats a little okay now because it's been so long ago and I can prolly live with it.

You Agnostic

What is this about making the mind big, about shining light in the dark corners? This line from Woman Warrior comes back for a cameo. Sitting on the IP again, one cannot look past the trees and the earth and scrub and red soil. And these are just the parts that make the whole. The postcard shows that the train snakes through breathtaking scenery - it is a silver line streaked across the bush-covered mountains on the coast and I am in the midst of it all. Yet any given passenger would never quite know this. Perhaps it'd be better to take a plane and look at the train ride then to sit in the train.

Not necessarily. The plane ride is a Plane Ride and the Train Ride a separate matter; one would be poorer to observe life all the time and not to live it. Perhaps I just have to know things for what they are, and the understanding will, if it will, come with time and love and luck.

Looking at McNaught's comet, this big lump of ice and rock blazing across the sky, dropping above the barren land, I can now barely contain my disbelief that we're the only ones in the universe trying to understand it all. In both senses of the word, surely life extends beyond our understanding. Well, at least now I know.


"GARB" reappears in Cook in 2007.

Dub Side of the Moon

Rachel is lying in bed being morose all over the younger dude. So I lie down beside her listening to Pink Floyd. listening to your heart takes a bit of practice. it is trying to hear the tides of the ocean as the busy highway of your mind is crisscrossed by today's traffic.

China Dreaming

this dream was a big motif throughout my australia trip. this was from a few nights after the dream on the train.

Chinese watchtowers are rapidly sending smoke signals with fires from the tops of the walls. Rafflesians are all around dressed in evocative Chinese armour with bright red streamers waving from the top of their helmets. We're all fighting for the one noble cause - Chinese independence. Sword in hand im fighting with all the rage of the universe but around me comrade dudes are falling like paper mache figures. These are people like Sherman (!) and loads of faces from the O-Team. Finally the battle is over and we've won the war! The victory parade is at the spex gal where the Chinese populace wish to idolise us. But i have no wish to go, not when so many of the comrades-in-arms are dead. So i cry the cry of a thousand widows, echoing on and on in the halls of history.

So what was that about? Maybe I'm not afraid of dying anymore!

Cunning Canadian

We agree to go to Tandanya together, with the free tickets, instead of going to the human zoo. It is great. We walk there, and make fun of everything and everyone when we're there. The dance demonstration at 12 was kind of a hoax but still very fun nonetheless. Rika leaves us after that to spend more time in the gallery. The boys go to lunch at Rundle Mall and sit down judging people. We go shopping at Woolie's where I'm pronounced the slow shopper. Back home, the heat is getting to our head so Ambiguous Andrew and I go to the bottle-o for something cold. Every second with AA is excruciating because for the first time I'm on the other side of the closet. It doesnt matter if my wild heart is beating too fast. This is the year to live fast. I might die young but in the end it'd have been an exciting fight for hearts and minds. Getting back, we conclude the nastiest flirting session of the year and play risk, eat roo steak from Rika and guzzle Smirnoff (Lady Drinks). Every city is the same, every time is the same but the people are the ones who make the difference.

Throwback

It rained at ConFest this morning, the first time since 1984. The pelting water through the trees settled the pervading dust. Now, what used to be everywhere in the air, in our eyes, in our clothes and tent, has settled down to earth with the rain. And so it is, as Blake pointed out at breakfast, sitting on tree trunks eating our icecreams, that it's the last day of the year. Just the last two days out here in the bush has laid everything in the past year to rest. Perhaps it is the general comatose here, or perhaps it is the benefit of hindsight, but nothing that happened is worth holding onto now. Past relationships, most essentially R, and from this year Chia Lun, and maybe even Harith dont seem to grate too terribly anymore. The mega-decision of dropping NUS Law School seems more to be a release than a commitment. Working in the past year at CCSG was prolly one of the better decisions. 'Twas the only social life to be had for a while and helped to pay for me to be here now. For a while maybe I should have been doing something like theatre or organised sports. Perhaps I should've, but it was all I could do to keep up at NS and whenever I could keep up all that was on my mind was getting out to the rest of the world. This is a typical feeling. This year was about coping. But next year, next year the world shall cope with me. I shall be a whirlwind and know every tree and tune. Next year, over the shoulder, will be mine, mine, mine.