what are the odds?

my fan is squeaking. daryl is highly irritable today. like pmsing. im feeling bloated. my eyes are crossed from the earring-necklace rush-out just just. my air con is still not working. i couldnt find my black off-shoulder top. why am i so grumpy. oh this morning i did oswald chambers devotion- jesus did not entrust himself to man...for he knew what was in a man. oswald says jesus didnt trust man, not in a cynical way, but because there are just humanly limitations- so we have to put our trust in something more solid, more dependable, more comforting, more permanent, more unchanging, more gentle, more appreciative, more reassuring,
//a cove which will hold you still when all the waves are lapping or crashing down, and keep holding you even if you ask to be put down.

//don't trust man, build on rock.

i cant care to think coherently now. make whatever sense you want of it.

i entrust my life to you, knowing you won't mangle it like wool in the wash, knowing you won't stain it like purple mangosteen on silk, knowing you won't knot it up like chewing gum on hair, knowing you won't toss it out like newspaper in trash, knowing you won't drown me nor dry me, empty me nor pollute me, disappoint me or hurt or tear or stamp or discard- so many million ways to die, and only one life.

queries quizzify

query for the week: should i go for archi o week or usp o week?

eh today i was wondering how i would be like if i were drunk. there are different types of drunkness, the 01.cant stop laughing about nothing 02.blabber your secrets 03.cry in depression 04.incoherent mumbling 05.doing crazy moves 06.saying crazy stuff like "look, i'm flying!"... i think i'l be a mix of the incoherent mumbling and laughing, cos anne my room mate at usp camp says i mumble in my sleep before i fully knock off. haha i never knew that. so the stage of sub-consciousness just before i sleep is roughly equal to the sub-consciousness i have if im drunk right? weird queries.

today i went to tutor alex at angel's house, then we had a fruitful session of dpf. but i must confess now that i dozed off during worship. dont even know why i was so tired. i think i must "buffet my body" more hahaa thats NASB version.. meaning self-discipline. [or sakae, seoul garden... etcetc.] tomorrow morning i'm gonna WAKE up early say 9am, run for an hour, washup, do QT, then leave the house at 12.07 and reach NUS at 1230. hah. witnesses!

pok msn just knocked me out of msn for no good reason. bah. i havent been d/c in years. this is so ANCIENT, like good old irc times! yuck.

You- Carol Ann Duffy is good stuff.

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame’s fierce licks under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.
I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone’s face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

and I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

barbie-qoo!

lounging by the pool (: uhh, checkout holly-joey.

eeeuw! derek, victimised.
alexius. two down.

the last one gets it hardest. weizhen, as you've never seen him before!

suresh's [unglam] moment!

there! cool fiza. (:

haha joshua, anne, joey, and miniscule alexius in the background!


ahahah! shh! miniscule daryl. now not-so-miniscule.

i just ate smooth vanilla icecream with crunchy sweet tasty crushed maltesers- thanks fiza! haha. yum. the weather yesterday was PERFECT i tell you. we were swimming [or flopping, according to maria] for a coupleah hours. and the pasta turned out right eventually, even though in the morning when i was cooking it the metal pot jumped and popped on the stove and now it has burn scars on the bottom. very scary. but i'm a survivor!

i slept in the hall again. just visited gerry's blog, and saw her rj photos and suddenly felt a very strong dose of nostalgia. i always wanted to do that, go around taking photos of rj, of us in class, at the hockey table, at practices, and now im feeling all these mix of emotions once again as i see her photos, just that what i feel about them is probably different from how they feel cos im imagining different faces in those spaces, different conversation topics, different different. and that's what nostalgia is right? missing the same old and knowing that its not the same old anymore, it'l nevr be the same old again, because differences have edged in and whitewashed the walls. aiyah, its not too late, i can still bring a camera to uni and snap away during lectures or something. right. haha. truth is uni life sounds so foreign to me, my only comfort is that its foreign to everyone else around me too haha some of which i know quite well already- a familiarity among the foreign. its the whole "-if you cant make me thin, make them fat God- eevviil philosophy. " hahaa.

i love i love this photo. we are brown and cool and playing happy dappy apples. courtesy of gerryphototaking.

22 haunts me.

joyful darkness

are humans naturally happy or unhappy? ooh guess where i am now! somefink wrong with daryl's aircon- it freezes up into ice on the inside- so they gotta switch off the compressor then my aircon shares the same compressor n end up i got no air con last night very sad. but today i complained and then mama says both of us sleep in the hall with aircon so cool right so now i am typey typey in the hall with cool air blowing around me n no one is around [except darly who is dead asleep] so i got lots of freedom. i am so much happier in the night than in the day. hormones, night-person, moodswings, solitude or what? what goes into the happy stew?

haha i designed the msg shirt howhow. nice? thanks to gerry for lending me her adobe cd and teaching me where to get cool photoshop brushes (:

and right now i wanna sing, sing sing! but who will sing with me? in the darkness which envelopes, i inhale a trickling coolness, oblivious to the silence which the echoes make obvious.

darkness seeps, crawls, oozes. it never flies, never sings or laughs or cries, except with malice.

The Poem of Darkness. Dsida Jeno.

Once more, the vigil season!
Broad pen-strokes on my sheet look grim.
Night’s rust-juice floods the gardens,
by six full to the brim.
damp oozes from the mouldering trees,
you muse on how much time
you’ve left.

Your foot stops dead, in fear
of stumbling into a tomb…But tell me: have you ever leta snow-white sugar-cube soak up
dark liquid, dipped in the bitter night
of coffee in its cup?
Or watched how the dense liquid,
so surely, so insidiously,
will seep up through the white cube’s
pure, crystalline body?

Just so the night seeps into you,
slowly rising, the smells
of night and of the grave all through
your veins, fibres, cells,
until one dank brown evening,
so steeped in it, you melt and sink
-to sweeten, for some unknown god,
his dark and bitter drink.

love.

my tiny faber community

i spent today eating up the hours slowly, painfully, like a bitter pill. let me tell you about my condo shuttle bus uncle- his typical day of work begins at 7.07am, and does not end til late in the evening at 7.45pm. for his sake i refuse to ask for an extension of shuttle bus hours. apart from a one hour break at 12.07pm, his life seems to me to be confined within his smooth and worn leathered seat, his half-winded window on his right, the huge black steering wheel in front and the jerking gear box on the left. his everyday attire is a button shirt- either white or pale blue, and dark gray office pants which he rolls up to his knees. he wears a cap every time, red and blue and emblazoned with Faber Crest Condomium on the front of it. beneath this cap, which is very much a second skin, he folds neatly a page of newspaper, puts it flat on his head and pulls the cap on. i wonder why he does that, perhaps to keep the cap clean from hair oil and sweat, but won't the black newspaper print leak onto his scalp? a form of mild dyeing for his white hairs? perhaps. whenever we reach home he would say "hui lai le" [we've reached home], and about half the passengers would thank him when we alight, the other half are apathetic. there used to be more of us saying 'xie xie uncle', and i think he would appreciate it, living such a dejavu life of endless repeats and cycles. xie xie, uncle.

it is very hot today, and stuffy, even though my brother disagrees. i woke up in the morning and went to the river side to run but before i even reached the 600m mark it started raining, slowly at first then picking up speed, but i just kept my pace and promised myself i'd reach the end of the short road before turning back- and i did! and after that i went to the gym and finished up the 4.6km run.

at the gym as i was running, a woman in a swimming pink big pyjama set was reading the papers and doing the cycle machine, rather half-heartedly. you know when you pedal, the machine registers your speed and calories burnt etc. and the red digits flash on right? but her slow swaying leg movements [i cannot call them cycling] caused the red numbers to do a disco pulse, -flash- red, black space, flash, black, flash, black. instead of a continuous and convincing red glare. then the security guard came in and asked her to put on shoes cos slippers are not allowed, and she pretended to read her newspaper [the weather report] and simply REFUSED to acknowledge the guard's presence, like he was plain invisible and insignificant. gave vague nods and the guard repeated and she gave more vague nods and continued her half-hearted pedalling, and the guard was frickin pissed and left the room for reinforcements. haha. after 5 minutes she was out, and the guard came in with another macho indian guard but guess what? my mother was in, passing me the housekeys and asking questions cause she needed to leave the house. the guards, bless them, needed to do some ghost-busting to spice up their otherwise monotonous day; so though my ma was nearer the door than to any exercise machine, the guards were very determined people and told her to change her shoes. i thought that was kinda funny, you need two big men to chase out two slippered feet.

and at the NTUC queue, i met a old senile man who cut the queue and didnt want to weigh his bunch of bananas but it would take too long describing him and i am already sick of my own voice- so, i shall look forward to tomorrow's bbq and pray for good weather without rain the smell of cod liver oil, like it was today.

(:

i would wear it, except i do not have the habit of wearing my sorrows on my sleeve, as if i were tying a red thread to my small finger, inflicting memories on myself, pricking painful wounds that do not fully heal, like pressing a thumb down on a raw scrape to egg on the bleeding. no, i refuse to hurt.

a wash of gray

dont know why everything about today is tired, the train ride was slow, the air around me is heavy musky and lethargic, even after, or perhaps Because, i just slept my afternoon away. awash in a swamp of slowness. maybe its just because i slept late last night, ah! why didnt i think of that.

pretty glad about the upcoming bbq on tuesday. something to moon about. haha today at third level i witnessed the mutation of one of joel's cellgrp persons- he had fashioned wolverine between-the-finger knives at his D&T sessions [who says education does more good than harm!], dangerous killer-looking knife pronged spinner wheels, all super sharp and lethal and a kind of madness. and because the theme of today is boredom and knives and being ignored and education = which explains the damp tiredness of everything, here's Carol Ann Duffy's

Education for Leisure

Today I am going to kill something.
Anything. I have had enough of being ignored and today

I am going to play God.
It is an ordinary day,

a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.

We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in

another language and now the fly is in another language.

I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.

I am a genius.* I could be anything at all, with half

the chance. But today I am going to change the world.

Something's world. The cat avoids me. The cat

knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.

I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.

Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town

for signing on. They don't appreciate my autograph.
There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio

and tell the man he's talking to a superstar.

He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.

The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

----*----

*haha! ahlee! your self-proclaimed geniushood is reduced to this. who has the lyrics to pastorb's 'ohyourlove' song yesterday??

coming up, apackedtimetable:mon prayer meet tues bbq wed tuition/dpf thurs rag/adele+eri fri

windysor

usp camp was fun! (: here are the freshies in fair-and-square alphabetical order: AikHeng, Alexius, Anne, Derek, Felicia, Holly, Joey, Joshua, Maria, WeiZhen.! ten of us fun pricks. then the ogls are: [believe me, we need a list for this, amazing numbers of them joined us from time to time] : Fiza, Jack, Suresh, Laremy, Boredin, Teng Hui, Kent, LionelLego, Y.C, LiFang [n her curlyhaired shortskirted friend.] heh games wise it was kinda pathetic except for the sandcastle rubbish cos our og (Windsor, by the way) dunked one another and created our own fun. the haunted house was abit of a laughing matter. our teebaboom-teeuw-whooah games were spastic fun :D and i dunno la the food was good, speeddating was bit weird initially but turned out fine, rooms were comfy & airconditioned, freebies were surprisingly decent, company was great. Jack and his intricately detailed and blockbusterish dreams were entertaining, Joey and her gutter antics highly amusing, Holly just wrap-tissue-around-her-head truly royally Holly, Laremy the toothy cartoon character/brother/animal [?!joey], fiza and her angry-face-big-laughs, and many, many more. thanks for the memories!

yikes. i canna post any photos up cos apparently i couldnt snip it off fiza's flickr site. bah. :D nevermind i remember your faces. who on earth is d3ject. hah later im gonna meet up with my J1 og Amethyz. how cool and ancient is that! like J3s having og outing hahaa funky la.

memorythroughsounds:

whee! teebaboom! teuw! didididi! omega OOEEI! ah so bright! today...i died... Crazy?Whosaysi'mcrazy? sex.sexjoeysex. GodSaveTheQueen! snoopdog! letmetellyou, you know hor, my sister hor..! i need a barth [barf?] [bath?] oohhh.. windsor! (:
k lah, time to meet my ancient og. be back later.

windsorians remb:
my place, tuesday, 2pm for girls, 5pm for guys [sorry im sexist], all help to bring some food puh-lease, check yr mails for details! [like topsecret address etc.]

22.praiseAdonai!

would you rather i didnt bother and not say a word and leave the broken silence?
i easily could have- its easier to be mute than trying to string honest words in the dark. how dumb i can be.

mannerisms of maturity

mannerisms- today what paul's momma said made me think haha. she said she/they/we miss beng's mannerisms, like his heehee chortled laugh and dunno what la. does everyone have mannerisms? i guess for some people its more pronounced, perhaps for those who are more outgoing.. like for ahlee, its doh-inyourface-unmistakeableNOISE, for gerry its her speed-talking and tight grin and ruffling of hair and finger games. for zhonyun her trademark 'huh' face, twirling of her hair, talking rubbish, for jac her high-pitched 'hurhurhur' and covering of her mouth as she laughs, and her horizontal-cuttingair-hand-motion [right??] [im getting so good at this], for edlyn.. her bright-eyed apple smile face, how her face lights up when there's chocolate, for cherie..uhh.. uhh.. her fav phrase "eh, no lor..", her pointed finger whenever she's laughing hard, for me.. gerry said i always say "yeah, correct" when i didnt even realise i do so. haha. and i guess my scary face, which is my normal face, which half of wohwoh used to be afraid of, for reasons up til now i do not understand and would rather not know. i gotta look in the mirror every morning you know, i cant be trained to be afraid of myself then every morning its like a nightmare. eeyer. what a scary thought.


(...i cant be that bad right.)


hahahaa. anyhow, this is such a crappy entry because suddenly i got a bit sick of typing proper english- isnt it fun just to rattle off and commit all the spelling errors and typo errors and leave out te the punctuation marks. at least for the moment la im pretty sure the next entry will be different- how exicint exciting and unpredictable!! :D i got a USP camp on tues-thurs honestly im abit camp-weary i hope there arent dirty games i hope my group is fun ok you know what im gonna pray about it now, because the last time i prayed n i got a super group :) prayer works wonders because GOD is WONDERfull! <- thats on PuRrpOsE ok. haha remember the retarded fonts of secondary school times, all the 'O's are '0's and tHe FonTs Ar3 in A soRtA reTarDeD MAfaN JumBlE, w0nDeR whY i b othered smsing then, when now with all the normal sized fonts and precise/succinct lingo and all [signs of maturity!] i cant be bothered smsing already. -the mature typist. [note: NOT matured because only WINES get matured, humans dont :) ]
eeehee. another sign of maturity. ehhehe.

sigh.

the rain smells of berries.

it rained in the evening, a gray musky rain. its smell had a sweetness, like preserved berries, that was very strong. i finished reading 'everything is illuminated' by jonathan safran foer in the chair by the window, then went to sleep in the evening. it was a very milky day, the day in which time swirls around and you sense much but nothing much really happens. and there was a mild sadness to it, the kind of sadness that goes with finishing a good book perhaps. whenever i flip towards the end of a good book i want to turn it the other way around and continue reading backwards, but it is never the same, never as fresh and crisp, nor as moving. there is only one way forward, and i guess that is somewhat like life. even if i were given a chance to revert time and let the sand rise up the hourglass i think i would not, because there are too many 'what ifs' to live through after that, the consequences of my limitations, my imperfect human-ness involved in making that one choice.

sometimes i feel like i wander too much through the past, most of which are haunting and make me cringe, very few happy moments. like in safran's book- "why are the painful things always electromagnets?"
i do not like being shouted at. like how collected my pay yesterday at fosters, and met johnny, the fierce manager, he railed at me for coming on and off, when just last sunday i told my friends that they were very nice people cos they told me 'just tell us when you're free, then we can schedule you in', but that was just a bluff. a front of niceness because they are in the service line and are oh-so-naturally hospitable to every one, they stab you with a smile. i am stabbed, i recoil, and i don't want to have anything to do with them. haha.

.excerpts from everything is illuminated.

"she undressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, i dont love you."

"i used to think that humor was the only way to appreciate how wonderful and terrible the world is, to celebrate how big life is. But now i think it's the opposite. Humor is a way of shrinking from that wonderful and terrible world."

and i think that is true. i remember laughing that one time the rain poured down suddenly, i was in white on my way to church and was drenched through. i laughed my way running to the bus-stop for shelter, and couldn't stop laughing, thinking how fitting it was for a comedy, tragi-comedy.. and now i think it was my way of taking things lightly, of disengaging myself from the reality of this world, and making everything seem smaller than it is, and if that is not a way of 'shrinking from this wonderful and terrible world', then what is?