wrestle with me til the day breaks over the eastern sky
when wren and lion meet in the twain.
i'll sing you a love song of candy and roses
and kiss your sweet lips again and again.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
I looked up this morning, saw a helen-shaped person walk by the pantry and said hello. It's interesting how the mind works in associating shapes, sounds and smells with names, places and events.
The bus today was quiet and conducive to mulling over the week's events. Thought about a hundred things that I will probably never think about again, like whether B Tambunan understood me when I spoke to him in Chinese, or the possibility of having an office badminton event and if B will get a special rate for the court, and how P Teo is older than most of the bishops , and how the idea of Bps on treadmills during their meeting seems silly on hindsight. Pondered about whether it is really necessary to make a mistake to learn, about how I almost missed the handrail on the bus cos they put in these new funky shaped yellow handrails when I've grown accustomed to the normal straight ones. True, I didn't miss it on the way down, but can that be considered "learning"? Or is it only "adapting"? Thought about S and her comment about the train taking faster in the morning than the evenings. I've always known that about my trip to and from work, but I've always blamed it on traffic and the empty bus lanes in the morning.
And so I mulled my way to work.
Had Chee Cheong Fan for breakfast today while typing this entry, and a cup of milky coffee. I'm getting to like this coffee in the morning business. :) Last night, when I saw a pack of instant coffee in my kitchen, I actually felt happy and an urge to open a pack to drink. Perhaps this is what addiction is like. I bet you can addicted to people too.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
releasing tension
30 minutes to lunch. I'm obviously at a stand-still place at work.
yesterday i ran 4km and did 50 pushups, 50 tripcep pushups (i hate those!), 50 situps, 50 leg raisers and 8 log lifts. It was great! :) Apart from the fact that by the time i finished jogging and started dinner it was already 10pm. But the clarity of mind a long exhausting jog gives you! It felt like some of the gunk in my brain was taken away, and i remembered the things that truly mattered.
I plan to be able to run 10km by the end of the year. Gasp. The thought of that frightens me.
Do you think anyone reads this site?
Monday, March 01, 2004
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
Narrator: "Joining Larry are Pa Grape and Mr. Lunt, who together make up the infamous gang of scalliwags, the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything!"
Larry, Pa, Mr. Lunt: "We are the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything! We just stay home and lie around. And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you ..."
Larry: "We don't do anything!"
Pa: "Well, I've never been Greenland and I've never been to Denver, and I've never buried treasure in St. Louis or St. Paul, and I've never been to Moscow and I've never been to Tampa, and I've never been to Boston in the fall."
All: "'Cuz we're the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything! We just stay home and lie around. And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you.."
Mr. Lunt: "We don't do anything. And I never hoist the mainstay and I never swab the poop deck, and I never veer to starboard 'cuz I never sail at all, and I've never walked the gang plank and I've never owned a parrot, and I've never been to Boston in the fall."
All: "'Cuz we're the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything! We just stay at home and lie around. And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you.. We don't do anything!"
Larry: "Well, I've never plucked a rooster and I'm not too good at
ping-pong, and I've never thrown my mashed potatoes up against the wall, and I've never kissed a chipmunk and I've never gotten head lice, and I've never been to Boston in the fall!"
Pa: "Huh? What are you talking about? What's a rooster and mashed
potatoes have to do with being a pirate??"
Mr. Lunt: "Hey, that's right! We're supposed to sing about pirate-y things!"
Larry: "Oh ..."
Pa: "And who ever kissed a chipmunk? That's just nonsense! Why even bring it up? Am I right? What do you think?"
Mr. Lunt: "I think you look like Cap'n Crunch!"
Pa: "Huh? No I don't!"
Mr. Lunt: "Do too."
Pa: "Do not!"
Mr. Lunt: "You're making me hungry."
Pa: "That's it, you're walkin' the plank!"
Mr. Lunt: "Says who?"
Pa: "Says the captain, that's who!"
Mr. Lunt: "Oh, yeah? Aye aye, Cap'n Crunch!"
Larry: "And I've never licked a spark plug and I've never sniffed a stink bug, and I've never painted daisies on a big red rubber ball, and I've never bathed in yogurt and I don't look good in leggings ..."
Pa: "You just don't get it!"
All: "And we've never been to Boston in the fall!"
Friday, January 30, 2004
I am feeling a need to gripe, but I don't want to let it out on my friends or colleagues. My friends have enough to deal with on their own, and my woes sound so miniscule beside theirs.
I have blown my food budget this month. What shall I do? I have all these things that are priorities in my life - like my colleague's last day of work today, and A's birthday, and wanting to buy stuff for friends, and shoes and sandals falling apart - but not enough money to support these priorities. And worse, there doesn't look like there is going to be an increment. I am deathly afraid that if I just blink my eyes, 12 years would have passed me by and I will still be at this job, at the same miserable pay. J commented once that what they don't give me in money, they give me in office space. ha ha. how true.
Do I gripe about money a lot? Have i become shallow and materialistic? I'm not sure, frankly.
I've got to go - the team is coming next week and I have work out of the wazoo. Have to prepare keynote address, talk on M, arrange transport and logistics, call people, and this is not even taking in to account the Y project that is sitting on my shelf uncompleted, collecting dust. That ought to have been out beginning of this year but there is simply no time and i can't get the P's cooperation.
But enough for now. If you have two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf with one and a lily with the other, cos you're just screwed.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
I had a wonderful evening yesteday.
Went for a jog with S through SGH, and did 50 push-ups, 50 sit-ups and 50 tricep push-ups. My muscles ache today. Went home to heat up porridge to eat with spicy pork cubes (my sis introduced me to them. it's really quite yummy. you can't tell from its unglamourous name at all), stir-fried broccoli and acha.
Then I finished summarising "State, Society and Religious Engineering: Towards a Reformist Buddhism in Singapore" by Kuah-Pearce Khun Eng, read a bit of "The Two Towers", played around and then fell soundly and happily asleep. I think I will remember this evening in 20 years. Good memories stick. Bad ones too though.
j's film and a's birthday are falling on the same day! I'm torn. I want to be at two places at one time and I don't know what to do. I guess when it comes down to it I will have to forego the film.
I would like a job that pays me better.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
I am very tired. And still in a fairly bad mood. The good feelings of the past two weeks have dissipated, leaving me quite grouchy and very sleepy.
today i will be going to play badminton with my colleagues at 8pm. it feels weird because of this other colleague - i can't figure out whether she has anything against me. Of course it wouldn't matter if i had nothing to do with her, but she is on good terms with another collegue whom i am rather fond of. and now it seems like i have become an intrusion in their happy relationship. how drammatic and secondary-school-ish! But it bothers me. :S
I am hoping a good rousing game of badminton would do me good.
Monday, November 10, 2003
do the funky chicken
the very first time I write an article, the website goes down! i am curious what talkingcock did to it. i am expecting that it would be funnier and better since i wrote it in all of 5 minutes and was rather embarrassed about it the next day.
i'm home. its a different feeling to be home and online than to be at the office online. i've been in a funky mood for many reasons, none of which i wish to elaborate here. so it puts me in a halfway sad and very precocious mood, likely to shoot my trap.
i have many sandfly bites on my feet. :(
there is nothing online about the last service of c. chapel. there are no stories, no goodbyes, nothing. and all i have left is a webpage from the past.
what was it like, that last service? i remember the first service in the refurbished sports hall. it is terribly sad to me.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Tamil poetry part 1
Where is my poem, the poem I had written and folded in my dreams?
Oh mother! Did it dissolve before my waking eyes?
Tamil poetry part 2
It only takes you a moment to say No.
To bear the hurt I will have to be born again and again and again
Oh! What will your answer be?
Is it fair to shut the windows against the sandal(wood) breeze?
Your eyes are silent.
Is that their answer to my love's question?
A second is enough, sweetheart, to declare my love.
To prove it will take a lifetime!
What kind of night receives no light even after sunrise? -
Your hair which smells of flowers.
Which part of the world stays bright even after darkness has fallen everywhere?
Your eyes in which the rays of the sun leap.
Beauties of the world let us get together and wash her feet.
it feels like a day of unravelling. today the headlines reported that the Mariott blast in Jarkarta is the first of many attacks to come planned by a team of 15 JI members. Yesterday my trusty computer system got infected by the W32 Blaster Worm, not through my ignorance of or my laziness to install the Windows patch, but because my internet connection at home is so bloody slow that i gave up after an hour and a half. Now i have a viscious worm. Shit.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
what is the name of those red bits of wood and mush that they use to cover the flowerbeds so they the soil wouldn't dry up in the hot summer heat? it smells of cool woody rain, and it sinks under a bare foot. it turns tshirts and knees red, and gets lodged in your shoes all day. summer should be coming soon over there. its time to bring out the gardening tools, and the blue bandana.
Friday, June 13, 2003
The Darkling Thrush
By Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings from broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice outburst among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carollings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
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