want what?

the only thing i feel like doing these days is lie on my sofa and watch My Girl! gasp! not exactly boredom.. just.. so mindless and easy and entertaining just watching there. it always makes me laugh. i'm halfway through the vcds already! and thats happy but also sad, cos like as you approach the end of a good book- there is a collective sigh- WHY NO MORE?. sulk.

so i am at the half-sigh. ohh driving is kinda fun. yesterday i had a duper wuper instructor who let me drive to clementi. past my house estate and sunset way where i went to kow's house to bai nian just the day before =) and i felt so accomplished cos its like im actually driving around singapore now! not some stupid circuit wasting patrol and time. 'turn right!' turn left. turn right! check blindspot. brake early! turn right! u turn! ya la i know alreayd right right tright. trite.

today i sat in the car and imagined i was driving a bmw, and seated on my left was my father's friend- quite an unfortunate guest who keeps talking, but i still nod smile and tolerate him and his unceasing direction because its okay im in my bmw. i like the word unceasing but i dunno why. hmmmmmm i want to go overseas. i really really want to.

i just realised today as i was on 188 toward bukit batok that i love surprises. especially successful and heartfelt ones. haha. like wohwoh girls' surprise at my house last yr. even though it wasnt that much of a success cos their clumsy plik plak of their flip flops down the stairs gave them away, it was quite funny. i was smiling to myself on the bus (thats why i dont know road names i think. for real. my mind latches onto some memory of something and relives the whole thing in vivid detail. i still remember what i felt and said when i opened the mystery parcel at the door- mum! you open! what if inside there's a cockroach! eer. youopen..

i want to see snow and make a snowman.
i want to go visit rays of peace orphanage, bangalore, india.
i want to go see the children in liulu village, luoping, china.
i want to do a painting on canvas that i can hang up.
i want to build my own house.
i want to fly to europe, australia, dubai.
i want to learn japanese.
i want to read alice in wonderland.
"i want more than this provincial life!" - belle, beauty & the beast.

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latest news: running too much gives you buckled bones and long-short legs. how gratifyingly justifying. !

rested.

today... in the morning i got up and baked pineapple tarts which turned out quite good. then. i went to kow's house with the tays. then.. i went home. nice easygoing boring stuff.

canvas; blotched.

almost been one month since i last posted! you see, i always felt as though i was wasting my time writing here on a superficial level, or chatting on msn, when i could have used that time to read up on work, on the bible, do my design, Sleep, rest, and the rest. and blogging just has that layer of superficial skin that cannot be peeled off. there are many doors, and as i push past one of them i find another behind it. i unlock that door and another appears beyond. the sequence of doors seem endless, and few ever enter in or wish to. i push deeper into the gray fold, when time to time random wanderings take flight- doubts, insecurities and fears are footmarked. the doors continually unfold before my feet, until i am approached by a narrow corridor, so narrow that no one can come with me. it is a passage only i enter, which i guard [like you all do]. there is only a crevice through which i can alone pass, and soon there is only a shaft of light cast upon a peep-hole, the innermost curtain where only my eyes peer through. others pass thinking there is nothing there, seeing nothing.
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blogging almost always stays on the wide flight of steps where experience is common and easily articulated, and here is where i am, unless something triggers a need to share more openly. and that is why i am here now. chinese new year produced that need. people stirred up that vacancy.
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my young cousin, christabelle sits on my lap and cuddles, asking in her wispy voice what the show is about. her hair smells of strawberry baby's shampoo. from time to time she turns around and tells me, 'let's go up!' and we tread up the spiral stairway into the rooms above, where she proudly shows me her new game and laughs with brightly lit eyes. she points to an overturned, blue Gillette shaver on the roof and exclaims, 'look, a scooter!'. i smile and nod my head. that is the upstairs experience, where innocent steps guide the way, and even delusions are truthful.
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but the stairs always lead downwards, and reunions become raiments of rupture. somehow, the adults always stay down. my uncles argued and fought today, and all the ugliness of human nature sprung out- the vulgarities, the grudges of the past, the bitterness, the associated gamut of entanglements, the wives and children, the divorce and debts- what could i do? my brother, sister and i went upstairs. we sat in the room and prayed. and there was nothing more, and nothing less, we could do. when humans fail and other humans are helpless, we get a sense of the human condition in its brokenness. and we look elsewhere, for hope.
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it is always humbling to be in the face of conflict, even if you are not part of it. my family has been blessed so greatly, so so greatly. you are the way, the truth and the life. apart from you we are nothing. so chinese new year has been bittersweet. the facts of life are brutal. thankfully, i have a way to live above them. the unfactual tenets of faith give hope.

+mind canvas.

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the pen scribbles your name all over my mind's canvas

as though in writing and re-writing them you would be realised;

it paints you in a thousand imagined conversations and postures,

as though it were choreographing your dance steps:

drawing your careless and easy smile,

the timbre of your speaking voice,

the train of your thought.

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the only thing it knows is to repeat your name

although things often repeated begin to rhyme,

and like all other rhymes are taken lightly

then forgotten.

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but for now, let the canvas be alive-

let it exhaust its hidden colours

let it dance its secret rhythms

let it make you up the way you unmake me.