Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah

sunday just to share a pretty nice song. simple chords, simple words. simple mtv. but hell of a good song.

Hey there Delilah

What's it like in New York City?

I'm a thousand miles away

But girl tonight you look so pretty

Yes you do

Time Square can't shine as bright as you

I swear it's true

Hey there Delilah

Don't you worry about the distance

I'm right there if you get lonely

Give this song another listen

Close your eyes

Listen to my voice it's my disguise

I'm by your side

Oh it's what you do to me

Oh it's what you do to me

Oh it's what you do to me

Oh it's what you do to me

What you do to me

Hey there Delilah

I know times are getting hard

But just believe me girl

Someday I'll pay the bills with this guitar

We'll have it good

We'll have the life we knew we would

My word is good

Hey there Delilah

I've got so much left to say

If every simple song I wrote to you

Would take your breath away

I'd write it all

Even more in love with me you'd fall

We'd have it all

Oh it's what you do to me

Oh it's what you do to me

Oh it's what you do to me

Oh it's what you do to me

A thousand miles seems pretty far

But they've got planes and trains and cars

I'd walk to you if I had no other way

Our friends would all make fun of us

and we'll just laugh along because we know

That none of them have felt this way

Delilah I can promise you

That by the time we get through

The world will never ever be the same

And you're to blame

Hey there Delilah

You be good and don't you miss me

Two more years and you'll be done with school

And I'll be making history like I do

You know it's all because of you

We can do whatever we want to

Hey there Delilah here's to you

This one's for you

Oh it's what you do to me

Oh it's what you do to me

Oh it's what you do to me

Oh it's what you do to me

What you do to me

music video is here

eating and eating.

sunday morning just came back from Luxy with jason, kelvin and tim. wasn't as fun as the last time i was there but well. i guess it was alright. in any case, was fun to have known wei yi. if anyone's wondering, she's just some girl i met at the club. but no. i didn't ask for her number and all that. it was just a "hey, someone vomited there. stay away" and subsequently "would you like a drink?" thing. nothing more than that.

so. the lead up to the weekend has been filled with nothing but eating, sleeping and eating. the whole office was at a seafood restaurant on friday night for dinner. was great in the sense that the food was good. the company of my fellow colleagues was good. and the very fact that xiao shi became another person i met in taiwan made it a very interesting night.

then came saturday. out of the blue, someone decided that we should have pot luck and so we did. helped jason cook nasi lemak (not the pre-mixed but from scratch). it was fun and a learning experience in the sense that i now know how to make sambal chilli from scratch. so yeah. it was superb. chicken curry, bak ku teh and pohpiah among others. truly singaporean style.


so yup. to round off a pretty good weekend so far, i've got to be up at 8am for some admin stuff before helping out the rest of the guys at 10am to clean up whatever wasn't cleaned last night.

A Prayer For Faith

thursday

Lord, I believe.
I wish to believe in Thee.
Lord, let my faith be full and unreserved,
and let it penetrate my thoughts,
my way of judging Divine things and human things.

Lord, let my faith be joyful
and give peace and gladness to my spirit,
and dispose it for prayer with God
and conversation with men,
so that the inner bliss of its fortunate possession
may shine forth in sacred and secular conversation.

Lord, let my faith be humble and not presume
to be based on the experience of my thought and of my feeling;
but let it surrender to the testimony of the Holy Spirit,
and not have any better guarantee than in docility to tradition
and to the authority of the magisterium of the Holy Church.

i've lost faith. that very little bit that i lost i need it back. need it now. i need to find my way back again =\

tremors.

monday night just sitting around watching "bad company" and then the shakes and tremors. for the 3rd time this year. bloody earthquakes.

oh. summer tour was a blast. got a good tan thanks to the scorching sun. then there was paintball. boat rides. nature walks and all that jazz. well worth the S$300 spent for the 3D2N tour in hualien.

met up with Sangar, Francis Joseph, Justin and Keng Wee the past week when they were in town. went Luxy on friday night for bikini night (yes yes. boys will be boys. no denying) with the latter 3 together with some other guys.

so anyway, the 8 of us 'opened' a table, popped 3 bottles of Johnnie Walker and clubbed till 4am. had a pretty interesting night. never knew i had the guts to ask for girls' numbers. i guess when you're overseas, you can get away with pretty much anything. so. haha! in any case, Shu Qun and a few of her friends made the night even more fun than it already was. the whole lot of us danced till 2+ before we decided to just sit and chill out until closing. so yeah. that was it for the week. nothing spectacular.

and thanks to a certain elliefant loving person, i have a craving for singapore food - namely black bean sauce hor fun at chen fu ji restaurant. someone hand me serviettes please.. haha..

ACL Reconstruction

sunday evening as title suggests. hence the disappearance over the past two week. so after 4 times under the knife, the long journey towards rehabilitation and recovery begins. first up, it's a 12-week muscle and strength building regime that needs to be followed together with strict dieting rules. damn.

the chill of winter.

sunday morning posting from my phone. i like cheap and good internet connections especially if i only have my phone with me. in any case, this week and the next are going to be a total bore.

winter. known for it's temperature, the coldness rather. the occasional snow-fall. and the warm clothings we wrap ourselves in. winter. all about fun in the snow and such. happy thoughts really.

here's the odd thing though. you can run around in t-shirt and shorts in sub-zero temperatures and not feel cold. trust me. i've done it in finland. -52deg and i was running around. what made me run back to my room was the wind. it brought along the chill - one that tingles every part of your body.

this chill. i'm feeling it now. but not because it's cold. not because i'm running a fever. it's because i'm scared. scared of myself - scared of what i've turned into. it's been months since things became a downward spiral. months mind you, not days nor weeks.

gone are the bright shining days of summer. the last of the light i saw back in september 2006, maybe even december 2005 when everything was just fine. when everything was surreal: eGarage pals. messing around with gps receivers. half a year to graduation. mini eurotrip. old trafford. watching swedish floorball at it's finest. the whole works. but now. now comes the dark winter. how quickly the winds of change take effect.

events that i thought and dare i say it, believed, would never happen to me came true. things that i wish would never happen to anyone happened and in the end, circumstances conspired to take me on this road. perhaps it's a mix of incidents and accidents, injuries, people who mattered, people who still matter and a conflict of interest with a system that i believed in. put them all together and maybe you can begin to understand why i'm like that now.

the tears have dried up. the smiles have long disappeared. i'm not as happy as i thought i'd be. i can't. not with all that has happened and all that is happening. it doesn't help in any way when a few people whom i've come to expect to be there for me aren't there. doesn't help that i'm dealing with my inner demons that were suppressed for so long, dealing with both physical and emotional pain and of course the other minor factors that affect one's everyday life. in some ways, those people have been a major part of my life the past 6 months or so and thus the disappointment is far greater than say, not getting an a1 for english when you expect it, to the point you feel you have the right to get it.

for the best part of 5 years, i've been as cheerful, happy, contented and loved as i could wish for. not now, not anymore. the irony is that i've counseled people before. i've given advise as to how to deal with it, how to get a grip on things and retain some form of control over events and circumstances. now that it's my turn to deal with them, i'm completely lost.

i thought i'd turn into someone stronger, someone able to take the stress and get a move on in life like i always do. but on the contrary, i've become cynical, a bit more pessimistic and worse of all, i find myself filled with anger and a certain amount of vengeance. i find myself unable to forgive as readily as i do all the time. unable to control this mounting frustration that threatens to not only push me over the edge, but threatens to make me a very insensitive and cold person.

the last time i felt anything close to this was way back in secondary school. back when hotheadedness took precedence over being logical and sensible. back when fists did the talking. gone are those days now. it's true that violence doesn't solve anything and i won't raise my fist against someone unless it's truly justifiable. now, everything is different. years on and that urge is creeping back. i guess i'm restraining better because of my sensibility. the consequences of one's own actions are greater at 21 years old than at 14/15 years.

if only to express myself better now, imagine this: spiderman gone "black" in spiderman 3. this darkness that threatens to overwhelm me. it must end and end soon enough. lest i become so full of hatred and unforgiving feelings that i turn into something i can't even describe.

thanks to the select few who are helping me get through this. no thanks to those whom i thought i could count on. to put names to the select few, i'd like to believe the world needs more friends like chin han, jolene, jason, delin, marilyn and shuren.

never be a cynic, even a gentle one. never help out a sneer, even the devil.
- vachel lindsay

anthem

monday morning

phantom planet - anthem

I woke up today a song was swimming in my head
And I hummed it to myself as I got out of bed
And on the way to take a shower it all just dawned on me
That a song like this just might go down in history
I quickly ran back to get my guitar
A pen and some paper

'Cause this whole world needs an Anthem
And I'm trying to put the words where they belong
Yeah this whole world needs an Anthem
And I'm hoping everyone will sing along

Well I quickly got to work and put the song in gear
And my neighbor rang the doorbell said it caught his ear
I was playing it so loud the whole neighborhood could hear
And at night from every household it became quite clear
Everyone was singing along
The same notes the same song
Or maybe I heard it wrong

'Cause this whole world needs an Anthem
And I'm trying to put the words where they belong
Yeah this whole world needs an Anthem
And I'm hoping everyone will sing along.

drums.

sunday morning was watching some drum videos that i kept from last time as well as on youtube. brought back memories of the fun times i had playing sherman, aaron, victor and clarence. had loads of fun playing in church during camps, for mass and even a wedding. then came the gigs in pubs, youth park and eventually esplanade. even made a cd with sherman and aaron. oddly i wrote the songs instead of playing drums in them. but that said, sherman is one musician whom i'll always be in awe of. being able to be gifted with one instrument is one thing, two is a feat. but being gifted with almost 10 different instruments, i don't know what to make of it other than to call him a musical genius of sorts. in any case, learnt a lot from him.

was playing loud and fast songs (aka rock) before i switched over to jazz and eventually settling on alternative rock. but no more loud and fast songs for me. i settled on songs that have a constant rhythm, a steady beat and has the right breaks to throw in something special. songs done by dave matthews band, lifehouse, coldplay, dishwalla all fall into that category. so yeah. the right amount of fun and musicianship.

one can really get a lot of satisfaction, sitting on the drum chair behind the set, listening to the applause and the cheers. more so when it's an open gig. none more satisfying than the one at the open field next to wisma atria. that night was wild beyond wild. never played in front of such a crowd before nor did i expect that many people. play we did and it was great.

the only time i played funk was when i was in year one of poly. cedge joined in and the four of us went on to get 2nd in my school's talentime. so yeah. for someone who isn't musically-inclined in any way, someone who doesn't know how to read notes and is self-taught in drumming, i think i did alright. had a lot of fun along the way and man, i wish i had a drum set now..