To retrieve what had been lost

some things are just not meant to be gotten back- once lost, forever out of sight. of course it could relate to philosophical lifetalk but i only meant to refer to my ring. it really did not augur well within me that when i finally reach the bohemian sector of London that is Camden Town, the upstart jewellery designer that once offered just refreshing men's jewellery was not there anymore. and thus i'm still left ringless, frodo would have been so disappointed.

the weather here has almost been alternating between dreary rain and bursting sunshine. i stayed home yesterday, believe it or not, in probably the most exciting city in the world, entirely just sponging up bad daytime tv, reruns of Friends and DVDs like house of the flying daggers. today's been beautiful although winds were a tad chilly and i braved it for like an hour in my happy orange sail shorts and cotton tee. i think the passers-by at high kensington street must be so amused at me. today i also revisited my nifty little crepes place near gwen's place which was such a delight, still. i had this thing called crepe complete which had a soft egg layer beneath the crispy crepe layer and smouldering so sultrily atop my ham and cheese stuffing. slurp. but still give me 3 bowls of laksa and i'll gobble them up in a blinking second. you guys must know how lucky we are to be blessed with the most ingenious food concept in the form of hawker centres. you can get nothing filling here below four quid. save the occasional mac specials, how gastronomically exciting.

and get this i have not gotten myself a single piece of garment, accessory or ostentatious item since i stepped foot in london. i must be attaining financial-scringing nirvana. come to me and get healed.

Simmering patience

oxygen doesn't keep one alive here in england, it's patience. without which, you would probably start drowning yourself in your own bath tub or something. or then again i think it's always more fun and sensible (yes no wrong choice of vocabulary here) to take those people responsible for erecting the red tapes and worshipping bureaucracy as a religion, down. and if you're not patient with the weather conditions here and grumble all day like Singaporeans do, be it too much rain or too much sun, you're gonna have one tough time here. it's raining now and on monday but at least i was compensated with a lovely day yesterday, which we aptly spent in the museums and galleries. see, if you're not patient with the weather, you can kiss cheeriness goodbye and say a forever hello to underbreath cursing.

speaking of which, i thought the national portrait gallery that i went to yesterday was a pretty nifty place. as the name suggests, it hangs all portraits and photographs of various people important in the UK. joan collins, greta garbo, the royal family, statesmen of past and present and an impressive collection of queen victoria, of whom one shows her so graciously presenting a tribesmen from Zanzibar a bible and making him much better with the locks of English imperialism. the English sure has a way of euphemising her encapsulating hoods of colonialism. as with the British Museum i suppose- the world's largest publicly-displayed loot warehouse. from egyptian facsimiles to greek doric orders and parthenon parts to Tang porcelain in flawless condition, the English might be the most daring and care-less thieves of all times. hail the glories and might of english imperialism.

coming back to 2005- yesterday was indeed gorgeous for just spreading out on the grasspatch in a park and having a sandwich and orange and carrot cake from Tesco's (it was the cheapest pleasure we could find in london at £1.49!). and slow walks by the Thames where the wind's slightly nibby and the sun's still up.

so how's everyone back home, in the promising vibrant global city-to-be? =)

The archetypal English beginning

and so it begins, my english one year. i'm in London for slightly more than 24 hours now after a crappy flight with seats highly inconsiderate to my legs. so i was left groggy and slightly PMSed when i arrived at heathrow. food was good though, so at least that saved me from shooting everyone on board. of course, i'm kidding, even my subconscious ain't that exciting.

then came the tedious immigration process and the lugging of the 4 pieces of luggage that had me wanting to shoot everyone around me. more so the former- menopausal nurses pretending to have PMS while efficiency levels were clearly reflective of their age. so i waited. waited. and waited. and reached my place of accomodation only 4 hours later. all in the name of world famous english efficiency- how archetypal and cliche.

but at least i'm safe and no major hiccups burped in my face. except for maybe that minor glitch of me forgetting to collect my sharp items from baggage retrieval and thus i effectively said au revoir to my sweden souvenir nail clippers (i never knew someone could kill with a nail clipper, or endeavour to teach me how) and my scissors. and also i realised i forgot to bring my phytomer after-shave solution. but putting these aside, i was blessed with disturbingly good weather by standards of an approaching London fall. there was sun, breeze, all at a comfortable 20 celsius. and i donned the Borough market with my presense with a light breeze on my back. haha. and caught up with a primary school pal, who i haven't seen even in the vaguest form for almost 11 donkey years. how we age.

so for those who don't know, i have an english mobile number so get it fgrom me via email or hsien has it as well. miss all you guys already and i'm temporarily striking out Buble's 'Home' from my playlist, just in case.

It's a Goodbye

Farewells are never easy. especially when one wants to package it as a surprise (haha).

but all went well- simple, cosy and nice. so much for my grand entrance and to-death rehearsals of feigning surprise. i guess everyone thought it was out of the bag, there wasn't much else to, well, surprise. the tables were turned on me when i was actually one of the earlier ones to arrive, so another time perhaps. food was great though, a galore of localities, enough to make me miss them even more as i embark to a land of culinary obliqueness. my taste buds are going to have such a tough time over there. and when the silence arrived after the food settled, i became more lucid, for better or worse. i was thinking of the new excitements that will beface me, and how this is the first time i'm absolutely going over the safe bounds of my comfort zone. it's a collage of fear, adrenaline-rush and worry. as i see my friends before me, it's a mish-mesh of emotions colliding with rationality. how i will get new friends, new experiences but yet apprehensive of what's to come and uncertain how i might deal with new circumstances. i understand that it's probably pre-departure jitters, thus i'll still manage and embrace with open arms.

then today i'm awakened from my jitters and startled into reality when my packing came up to nearly 40kg. i need someone to cast some semblance of weightlessness spell on the check-in weighing belt, fast.

p.s. pictures, not too many since photographer du jour was fired midway the party, are at photos.yahoo.com/platoianz- 'Farewell' Album

Reluctant awakening from a misty dream of reality

As the title goes, i am still officially cocooned in the hong kong dream of 'shopping-eating-shopping-eating-and then more shopping'. for the first time i gladly submit myself to the harangues of modern day bureaucratic-advertising: hong kong tourism board should be so proud, they should crown me the foreign mascot or the likes. and for the record, before i get serious flak from people bitten most unguardedly by the green monster from the relating of such events, i'm only here to record for the souvenir of my memory and dare not serve any other purpose otherwise. thus i have been absolve of all liabilities and responsibilities arising forthwith.

shopping.

divine doesn't even start to describe it. and since i have to cut down on the usage of 'gorgeous', i'll just leave it as that it was great. i might have cleared out half of adidas' storage in hong kong and it has definitely found a new spokesperson for its vintage line. along with my decadence with gagdets, which was unbelivably cheap over there, i singlehandedly engineered the crater hole in my wallet. the exercise of shopping had never set my mind so settled on spending and the resolve to keep going is something i've probably rarely felt, where spending is concerned. it was an out-of-body experience but definitely one to remember and revisit. if i shall proceed with this, it might rescind into histrionics so let the goods do the talking. and they sure spoke volumes, as some would attest. curb my enthusiasm, someone.

gastronomy.

came in little packages of delight and generous servings of ala-carte heaven in posh restaurants i can almost not afford. it was a good balance though and it was good that even right up to my last meal at the airport food court (which was a butt-slapping delicious serving of roast goose noodle with some hell of a gravy) there was hardly a whine of a complaint. i had the flakiest warm egg-tarts, char siew which could not be compared with here, dim sum which i do not think it wise to start describing in fear of an intestinal riot and other miscellanous foodstuff that i just wanna eat NOW. so much for that. curb your saliva flow, everyone.

and plus the business class arrangement, it was a nice icing on the cake to the entire trip. i am left satisfied but now have to resort to rationing for food back home. of course i'm exagerrating but in the event one reads this and sympathy compels him/her to contribute to the 'repair-GJ's-bank account-fund', your kindness would not go unappreciated. london's gonna hate an impoverished student, sigh.

back to reality, visa application is finally completed, just hope that things proceed well and they nip-picking of documents will not get onto my application. God forbid.

Monkeys on Aerobics

there is a concept known as shame, or more affectionately known as self-awareness. yet this concept, as tonight would and did showcase, seemed to be quantum physics to some. what with the exhibitionist flower-power-hand-movements dancing extravagance on the platform and glorification of the ego, when let's just say not everyone takes to your kind of display and narcissistic exuberance, the net effect is just undesirable. this is not about to degenerate into some zoo-display categorizing but i shall just leave it as that clubbing should be left to the beautiful. then again i was informed by some close company that the beautiful have no reason to come out anyhow since they have enough ego-boosters in the day to set them for life. but then again, it's about the company that you have while you're boozing and trancing so it's still worth a trip in the end.

as the day draws closer for my protracted length of absence from the sandy shores of safe-haven Singapore, it seems the logistical bonanza is taking shape. i just received my official acceptance letter, which leaves my entry clearance into the UK status much to be desired for. and the rice cooker my mum bought together with five thousand and one packets of sauces, instant food-thingys, etc, packing doesn't seem too fun anymore. the addendum to this nightmare is my trip to Hong Kong which is right round the corner. i need my last taste of Asia before i go so no one's gonna deprive me of that. but anyone who wants to be deigned as the official packer is most welcome.

and they called it 'London: Strike 2'. seriously, when will it all end? it's mind-numbingly senseless and language becomes so inadequately overhyped, in this case.

till then, i have my Edinburgh address out. just drop me a line should you require it.

Monsters Inc.

definitely not as adorable and cheek-pinching worthy as the title suggests, what i'm about to relate, on this, indeed, fateful day.

London has been assaulted, like what happened to NYC 9/11, this is a literal stab in the back. even with all the precautions in place and necessary emergency plans installed, it doesn't seem to be enough in the face of blindless hate and staunch revenge. it will never be enough. the human nature is contorted and bent beyond recognition. this is of course an extreme, that i'm speaking of. there are most certainly glimpses of human light shining upon this shadow of our times. but when this simple organ of the human heart becomes so complex and contains much more than the brain can come up with, we can never be too prepared against it. this is why i always believe that the human heart is always stronger than the human mind. when the heart is set forth on an agenda, ever so furtively, the mind has no power over it- it is conditioned by the heart to gallop on that agenda and kill all opposing thoughts. the mind is indeed a dangerous place, that's why the smartest people tread and make these their playgrounds whenever they need to hover power over the simple plebians.

that aside, it's still meanderingly depressing that this had to happen. when the sense of abhorrence is so entrenched, the only probable solution is perhaps a thorough brainwashing or an entire brain transplant altogether. i hope i'm making sense. these atrocities make me verbally spurt in torrents.

until these roots of nameless hate and susceptible psychological indignance is utterly eradicated, it almost seems like pain is going to be limitless.

And Henry stole Christmas and refused to give it back

july's here, almost creepingly did. i don't like the feeling of time creeping up onto you like this, so unannounced. then again the heralding of each month's end would be ridiculous and we already do have enough drama around us. God forbid more.

this is especially a creep i all the more want to avoid because it's drawing nearer to my going away. it's the first time yesterday i realised i could say that i'm leaving next month. somehow still so many things dangle and are in flux, it seems weird to go. then again, i reckon a change of environment and way of living would be a good thing for me. this drone of comfort and helpless routine can be quite that strangle on that excitability of life we are all dying to have while we can. then again the human nature is paradoxical and insatiable. when life gets too exciting, one yearns to head home to comfort. it's the same with people, maybe. you can never ask for too much from someone close to you. and with techonology advancing at speed of light the personal bubble becomes invariably smaller and distance becomes a non-issue. by the rate i'm going, without need of elaborating too far, i'm doomed to the oblivions of singledom and happy doing remixes to 'all by myself'. then again when i do get that someone, in this blurry and ever misty tunnel of love, i will read back in retrospect and hopefully laugh at the follies of youth and that i was so ever frequently its undying mouthpiece.

i had a good last week though, it has to be noted. go to The Line for jets of gastronomic delight, that is the fountain of chocolate, tasting suspiciously like the divine Godiva. and of course the impossible spread of cuisines that would have your stomach screaming for leniency. there were those conversations that left me exhausted and sad but happy that i have someone to understand what all these crafty concepts of human interaction do to me. empathy is a powerful tool- it is that rope that saves you from falling down the endless spirals of gut-wrenching pain. so to this person, i'm gonna miss you, you cunt.=)

july's here. best enjoy it before august comes along, steals it and refuses to give it back.

Women with Men's Ego

what's more to say regarding this? almost guarantees lifetime torment leading to post-menopausal PMS, and a sure way to say bye-gone to men- brand new mutated form of social suicide.

honey, do tone it down. unless of course you're all geared to play for the other team.

Of Generality and Necessary Sculpting of Ongoings

i thought i would make the title more ornate to attract more to read, at least the first ramblings of this post: packaging is everything in this plastic, superficial hoola we live in. yes, it has not been too smooth a ride these few weeks of absentia. but we survive, that's what we do.

work has been taking centrespot these three weeks. not actual working per se, just the mere presence at the office arena and to beg for work when sitting in front of the computer staring at inane websites, heating up your seat becomes too much to bear. i've become quite atuned and sharpened at the skill of proof-reading whilst i was there and gained a quasi-reputation for it that after my first good piece of work, the others streamed in unceremoniously. but well if not for anything, other than it being a good skill to arm myself with for my potential career, it makes for good reading- finding out first hand what big transactions or joint ventures are happening, etc. i've yet to make my court appearance debut yet, make it seems like that's gonna happen next week so stringing up my fingers as we speak. then there are the lunches and the tini-weeny tea breaks which become highlights of the day. and the very maternal (i stand politically corrected) secretaries feeding you food and trying to source out whether you're an intern or a new lawyer and your background and your whatever. darlings all. in all, it's just to experience, and that remains really just that. i have a career of this to followup, there really is no rush to force myself to enjoy it now- at least the lawyers working now agree with me, ever so readily, on this point.

then there was father's day lunch at doc cheng's which was quite a delight, apart from it being a prolonged lunch and wasn't much work to go back to, to speak of. a 3 course treat of foie gras, duck breast and pandan creme brulee is enough to titillate the gastronomic sensories for a while.

yes then there's batman- in batman begins. the most brooding, darkest and credible batman that will almost certainly be the breath of fresh air, much needed to revive the dying batman franchaise. and a batman with real abs, instead of relying on the suit to superimpose them as with the cases of christian bale's predecessors. well moments of tacky retorts and faux pas smart oneliners weren't enough to kill the essence of the whole darkish feel and the entire psychological entrapment of batman was circulated in the film intact and smartly. katie holmes's rachael dawes was more of a dole-eyed barbie walking-vase than a kickass assistant district attorney whose life-agenda to eradicate injustice and uphold the pride of Gotham. otherwise this is quite a keeper film.

i would go on to relate the emotional hiccups that occured over the time and space of these past weeks but i thought the mere trying to remember them to put them in words here would just force me to rethink them which, evidently, is not a very healthy process and is clearly an antithesis to the healthier option of moving along with life, looking forward, et al. many people disappoint but who are we to have expectations of them anyways. the most important person you never should disappoint, is yourself. in any case, the 'use-and-discard' theory was quite a chirpy (plausibly workable) solution to so many unsatisfactory developments that has arisen. that's a grand idea, indeed.

Vladimir Horowitz, the genius with his fingers at the piano, had a Hanon's piano exercises clutched in his hands when he died, and remains with him when he was buried, supposedly. it was (again supposedly) in accordance with his wishes of "I never want to do anything without warming up; that includes dying." In a singularly introspective episode of Desperate Housewives, it was said that human beings are made for a lot of things but loneliness isn't one of them, maybe with Horowitz's mantra, we could be. a rosier future lies ahead..

Functionary People

Thought this might garner some response and/or guilt-pricking in some. otherwise i thought this interesting from an anthropological point of view.

What's a Meantime Girl?

She's the one you call when you're bored because she makes you laugh.

She's the one you talk to when you're feeling down because she's willing to lend an ear and be a friend.

She's not the one you call when you need a date to your company's Christmas party, or to go dancing with on a Saturday night.

She's the one you spend time with between girlfriends, before you find "The One". You know, the one who you keep around in the meantime.

She's not one of the guys, not a tomboy, but you don't look at her as a "real" woman, either.

She's not bitchy enough, moody enough, or sexy enough to be seen in that light.

She's too laid-back, too easily amused by the same things your male buddies are amused by.

She's too understanding, too comfortable. She doesn't make you feel nervous or excited the way a "real" woman does.

But she's cool, and nice, and funny, and attractive enough that when you're lonely or horny and need intimate female companionship, she'll do just fine.

You don't have to wine and dine her because she knows the real you already, and you don't have any facades to keep up, no pretenses to preserve.

You're not trying to get anything of substance out of her.

She's not easy, but you know that she cares about you and is attracted to you, and that she'll give you the intimacy you need. And you know you don't have to explain yourself or the situation.

But deep down, if you really think about it (which you probably don't because to you, the situation between the two of you isn't important enough to merit any real thought), you know that it's really not fair.

You know that although she would never say it, it hurts her to know that despite all her good points and all the fun you two have, you don't think she's good enough to spend any real time with.

Sure, it's mostly her fault, because she doesn't have to give in to your needs. She could play the hard-to-get bitch like the rest of them do, if she really wanted to. But you and she both know that she probably couldn't pull it off.

Maybe she's too short, or a little overweight, or has a big birthmark on her forehead, or works at Taco Bell.

Whatever the reason, somehow life has given her a lot of really great qualities but has left out the ones that men want (or think they want).

You'll joke to her that she should be the best man at your wedding, and she'll laugh and make a joke about a smelly rental tux. She doesn't captivate you with her beauty, or open doors with her smile.

Mainly she blends in with the crowd. She's safe. She doesn't want to be the center of attention and turn the heads of everyone in the room. But she wants to turn someone's head.

She wants to be special to someone, too. We all do. She has feelings. She has a heart. In fact, she probably has a bigger and better heart than any woman you've ever known because she's had a front-row seat to The Mess That Is Your Life, and she likes you anyway.

She obviously sees something worthwhile and redeeming in you because although you've given her nothing, absolutely no reason to still be around, she is.

Anyway, yeah. I'm a Meantime Girl. Been one more times than I care to admit. I don't know the reason, really, and at this point I don't even care.

I just want to let every guy know who's ever had the good fortune to have a Meantime Girl that we may be a lot of fun, but we cry, too. A lot.

And someday we won't be around.

Drop-Shot

in sequel to 'flirting with the line', the french open offers more tennis puns and ultimately great tennis action. with the ushering out of another grand slam event (mario puerta get shot by 19yo raphael nadal), it's another wait to a less exciting grand slam tournament, in my opinion at least. grass is just boring, clay is the surface to beat. the erraticness of play, the much-varied angling and compound reflexes to tackle the capricious mood of clay makes watching all the more exciting. it's really true that the french just does things better huh?and henin-hardenne won her 2nd clay grand slam just yesterday- it seems in the end, the partnership of athleticism and impetuous strategy wins the day.

home seems emptier than usual these days, what with mum in HK and sis in the US of A. but with work creeping in (ever so slowly), it takes the heat off this rarely-encountered emptiness. yes work is creeping in at a pace, directly in contrast with that of the action seen at the french open, at wongP. it's not surprising that we interns are negligible and highly dispensible personnel but sometimes it gets so yawningly boring that reading a conflicts textbook is disneyland-joy. at least lunches are semi-fun but sometimes it just takes one person to cloud the sun. the joy-kill comes in the form of a very uncompromising, demanding, ass-shoving person who has a mean mole to top things off. lucky we're in different departments, lest my anger management classes might just be conveninently thrown out of the window. the working environment is breathable i suppose but as an intern, always only scratching the surface of things, the view of things may just be that as well- skewed and slightly more rose-tainted than most associates and partners would approve of. thus, so far, i've gained knowledge of how beautiful the skyline of Singapore is from 57th storeys above, rental prices at boutique apartment projects and the doctrine of renvoi in conflicts..haha.

i'm supposed to gear up for my french exams tomorrow and i'm here, checking out the tennis gears for the french open. it's just semantics, right?

When Mood and Nature Converse

a song finds its way to communicate with the dormant subconscious- Johnette Napolitano's cover of The Scientist. in the private corner of your sky, the blue silences all other colours, save the white of the clouds and the rainbow in your mind. and then u come to notice the idyllic rearrangement of the clouds according to the random rhythms of the wind and the refusal of the minority streaks rebelliously dancing to their own waltz, creating their own piece of art. the sun spares its mercy of heat and yellow, without which there would be an icicle of distance and space. the burden of your lightness keeps you earthed as you yearn to make a flight of guilty freedom. the unclear manifest of emotional standing of the song then captures your conscious attention for that temporal while, sketching the already-illumined mental postcard on a larger splash of canvas and there you stand deciding if this should be a transparently happy moment or delve into the deepest reflections of melancholy. and there i stood agaped, soothed in the science of the interaction of the conscious and subconscious and the concoction of foggy reality, seamless with this acute sense of pathetic fallacy.

take a moment to feel glad to be alive.

Feminism: The Complete Rationalization of the Demise of Chivalry

i've heard, several of late, of many complaints about how men nowadays are less chivalrous and less inclined to be of a gentleman to fellow ladies: the economising of manners on the womanfolk. and i've also heard how the situation used to be that men change after they get married, all for the worst- with the slipping on the wedding ring, comes the slipping off of romanticism and sensitivity that used to be so familiar and in abundance. i'm obviously in danger of exploding the minefields of over-generalisation but hey, i'm a mere social critic, i serve the perpetuators, am never the perpetuator.

and to that observation, to my kind and genteel womanfolk all around, i present to you a foolproof (albeit not a tonguelash-proof) and complete rationale to this supposed demise of chivalry: the advent of feminism. go stone catherine mckinnon and the likes over this but it's truly your own undoing (or doing, depending on what levels of finger-pointing you want to attribute). see a large component of this should-be-scraped school of thought is the hallmark of equality: what men can do, women can too. yes yes, all hail the woman-might and what-nots you have to prove that you can always do it better than the men can but think about footing the bill next time, holding the door for yourself, driving yourself around without the human-map guide(male of course) next to you and do all the cleaning yourself- well, the woman might can conquer all! so don't complain of chivalry not having a place in our modern times and reminiscing its once ubiquitous presence like you always had it. male chivalry is long taken for granted and for feminists to come up and proclaim that opening doors for the female species is a form of gender belittling and assumption of weakness on the male species' part, you gotta give the men a break. you simply can't be the murderer and cry murder at the same time. and u also can't have your cake and eat it. and if feminists really want to start rationalising chivalry, just strike it down as being antithetical to the propogation of feminism and gamely throw it out of the window, don't still stand around and say that that's just within a man to do it. so i give to you that feminism has itself to blame for a lot of things women want most and lost them through their 'cause'.

to think someone actually gave me a rationalization upon the rationalization of feminism by purporting that women in want of rich husbands still runs atrack with feminist thinking since one should see the woman as the queen bee and the male as the worker bee bringing her deserved honey to her. if ever i want to do that to some dudette, i'm doing it out of the goodness and love of my heart and not the recognition of any superiority of any gender, and of course the recognition that i am obviously the one with the apts of bringing in more money so live with it. all i can say to that 'theory' is, you gotta hand it to some women, man.

you really think virginia woolf was a staunch feminist? in the lunacy of her being, how could she still be able to propound her feminist ideals if not for Leonard Woolf, seriously.

Lucidity of Transcendence

i was pondering over something that spilled from a conversation that had me enthralled for a while: can u actually force someone to keep in touch with you? inane and ridiculous as it sounds it somehow kept the mills of my grey matter running for that bit. and larger issues then followed (the cursed legal train of thinking) like say if one could actually cope with a friend's way of handling matters when it directly clashes with your ideology of sorting things out?and when it does do u try reconciling or stand by your philosophy because you maintain who you are and thus trash things out? people at the bottom of it all do have different ways of dealing with things but when cosmic forces come clashing, is it time to throw out the big bang theory?

i'm often afraid to pose questions of existence or relational questions really. i'm in the belief that they are meant to rhetorical or worse yet, meant to brew nerve troubles. but more often than not when these existential queries present themselves to be that ugly reality we are so keen just to avoid, we often demand hard and fast answers, hoping they would translate themselves into workable solutions that will send these realities flying out of the door. yes, life is also more often than not, never this simple. i had a few of these practicable scenarios of my own. not pleasant of course but when it turns inwards, a self-improving individual might be glad that these things do come up. i'm not sure if it's called coming to terms with things but at least i know knots are being untied. caring too much can do heinous things too. people have different value systems, people have different methods to face up to things that come their way and they don't necessarily have to be in tuned with what you believe in. if they don't come together and say hi, i should let it fly.

i was about to say relationships should be easy, but i stop and thought that blood baths were started just because two individuals in power didn't get along: bush-saddam; mary of scots-elizabeth I, etc. and it's worse when things are so lucid i'm beginning to stop thinking about it. when that happens, indifference is born and degeneration is almost bound to mutate out of that. see, wherever i move is a plunge downwards.

on a much lighter note (or not cos the food consumed is quite the tonnage), i brought mummy dearest on 'her day' (Mother's Day) to Jade@Fullerton. Let's just say we had little piece of heaven on a large piece of my wallet. but all in good stride.

but to end this, questions of life are better left neigh-answered, ain't that the saner route out?

Revived from the almost dead

and now the slaughter is done, the roast is ready.

pretty much sums up my papers, the later one at least. had to end with such a bang, the ugliest form of a bang.

and now i'm skitting off to a glorious start of a vacation which would culminase in my setting off to Edinburgh and the greener pastures of Europe (literally huh? Hansel and Gretel prancing around mental image). i'll try endeavouring to this this little piece of virtuality to update all while i'm not around so make sure to check back of course. gee, i sound like i'm already gone.

like i said, happiness doesn't inspire, one must just live it out and stretch it too all ends of the world and i shall leave with this- the shortest entry ever, perhaps.

Of Fungibility and Helpless Hiatus

it's with deepest regret that this hiatus had to occur. academic slaughter can be quite that pain in the arse, especially when stretched over a protracted period of time. together with ground-breaking results over past assignments, this noxious mix is proving to be the lingering bad medicine in the mouth. i'm suspecting my next update of this virtual journal is likely to occur when the examinations are wiped clean-slated.

but it's not without excitement, this hiatus is happening. a lot of peculiar and excitable events did occur, however small they might come. take for example this book i'm just done with (well not quite, was done with it end last month): Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong. it details the idiosyncracies and misunderstood quirks of the French people, rationalizing it with history, embedded beliefs of their land and cultural backlog, complete with lurid examples of their habits and inherent beliefs. it makes for an interesting read and informative at that, just makes u wanna land yourself in France and test the hypotheses provided by the authors. one thing stuck firmly in my mind surfaced from this quote: don't make your lending of money sound like a matter of principle. the french rationalizes their huge public lending and skewed fiscal policies with that and compounded with the infamous French pride, it is easy to see the nuance of the quote.

then there is this episode in the gym which i would kindly label it as 'colonial hangover masked in fake politeness'. well to spare everyone the intricacies of the exact factual matrix of the incident, i was rather cheesed off when some caucasian-expats come around and give you attitude like they are the supreme race, still imprinted with the impression that S'pore is a British colony thereby justifying their faux pas imperialistic overtones. i mean i was just resting b/w sets and this overriped ang moh comes by and says r u fiddling with ur ipod or exercising. oh well until they understand that us Chinese will be assuredly taking over the world in less than 10 yrs' time, they'll forever be in their compromised state. careful we make the United States of America become the United Provinces of Greater China.

oh cinematically wise, Spanglish was quite an unexpected treat. it was more than i prima facie cut it out to be. it was sweet, heartening and the comedy of cultural errors was simple and audience-friendly. characteristically 'mind your language' humour but with more heart and romance. and quotes like 'lately your low self-esteem is good common sense' and saccharine-sweetness things like 'they should name a gender after you' makes you just wanna hug the actors..ha. the drunked mother was the best supporting cast in the show.

meanwhile it's back to my academic progeny- notes materialised from forced discipline and an intrinsic fear of faring poorly. so until then, luck to all under the mercy of this invitation to a beheading.

Life's a Player and All of Us a Mere Stage

Life imitating art imitating life. This concept has been pounded over and over since time memorial and yet there still remains this streak of fascination in the audience at large. So starts my discourse on 'Stage Beauty' which i caught earlier at a preview event thingy. And to pun the title, it was staged rather beautifully.

claire danes and billy crudup at the helm. it's once a self-discovery of the male lead and once a menage a plusieurs of the characters that gives such refined taste and essence to the movie. rupert everett as king is a blast with a finicky sort of humour and a presence that is both imposing and comedically-heavy. he seems to be the fulcrum by which the see-saw of the whole plot rotates since afterall he did affect legislation to the extent that the makeup of the characters revolve around these changes. Claire Danes had this period-beauty that keeps one enchanted throughout the course of the film and is unwavering to the point of being captivating. Her formidable capture of the English accent keeps her credible and her tour de force of acting lands the audience its respect and prolonged interest. it's just that i still can't see how her character of 'Mrs. Margaret Hughes' can be so indulged in kynaston, who is so sexually confused and psychologically screwed-up that when asked who he really is in the end, he slaughters the climax by saying 'i don't know'. twice, no less. Billy Crudup has this clash of ego and insecurity in his acting that i adore. His obsession of being a woman, whom he thinks does all things beautiful (what a crime to think that), does not sit well with a lot of ultra right wing-sexual purists, but his inner turmoil of being compelled to rediscover who he is, is truly applauble and to a certain extent heart-wrenchingly deserving of our sympathy. 'What is life without beauty' rang in my head for a long time after he said it in the film and i guess that's probably one of his downfall, thinking how exhausting it can be, always looking for beauty in life where there's so much ugliness around and that one must encompass or at least recognise this sense of shantiness to realise that beauty does not come easy and relativity makes this aphorisitc pill all the more harder to swallow. and i would have thought that if he tried to recreate this mirage of beauty always or attempts to see beauty in all the things that he does, he could be doubly disappointed when (literally) the ugly head of reality starts rearing its head and refuses to retract itself. rather, over-optimism could be the bitch of life.

one more noteworthy point was i can't quite recall when was the last time i was literally holding my breath in utter anticipation in a movie. it was almost as real an experience as watching the actual Othello right in front of me, as a real theatrical play. it was the death scene and Desdemona was to be suffocated by Iago and it was almost like Iago (Crudup) had simultaneously taken away the breaths of the audience and Desdemona. the theatrics of it was so convincing that it's amazing to watch. and i had to remind myself to breathe again when the resolution finally reveals itself to be otherwise, that Claire Danes remains alive. that was one hell of a movie-moment.

drama aside, today's equity tutorial was much better. much less suffocating than the less, resulting in the much-bleak post. maybe preparedness if the only key to locking the insecurity beast deep in the dungeons of academia-uncertainty. and then again, the culmination of this semester is coming up and i had persist in this preparedness spirit and drive on, light speed ahead.

but all in all, for a film this good, it can, ironically, hardly be only mere theatrics.

The Unculpable Murder of Ego

so it's proven: that academia can be that unculpable murder of ego and self-faith. the slaughterhouse of the seminar room is the crime scene. unculpable because you attract your murderer, you are the sole provoker. this culmination of allegories stem from a very trying seminar i had earlier this evening, accentuated by the fact that the crime date is a friday evening, a very non-inspiring time of the week to get your grey matter cracking. subject matter: resulting trust. and it was very resulting indeed- that never be unprepared for a tutorial that has so much ambiguities and debate over even the core underpinnings. the rattling didn't help and the bull's eye-questions by more knowing coursemates proved that fact even more audibly. so next up i shall be more constructive (dedna: get the deadly pun?) with the next seminar. just for general accessibility to the private joke-pun: the next seminar is on constructive trust. ok now, don't glare.

actually i never did really talk about my bangkok trip did i? i think the climax is enough to talk about really. this climax truly lives up to its name: it's almost orgasmic. bed supperclub- one of a kind. if you haven't heard me raving incessantly about it already, it's this club-cum-restaurant designed by Orbitz Lab. the surprise don't end there, the crust of the club and the 'wow's of the interior were simply foreplay. then there was the dinner. c'est magnifique absolutement. french to suit the avant garde french cuisine we were served. it was a four course surprise dinner. i don't quite recall the last time i was being culinarily surprised really but this was more than just a pleasant one. i only managed to talk down three of the courses:

1. Antipasto: Chilled melon broth with spiced apple bits and crabmeat.

2. Entree: Garlic and lemon thyme roasted snowfish on yellow lentil pumpkin salsa, cherry tomatoes and whipped corn broth.

3. Dessert (you're allowed to hyperventilate): seasonal berries over white chocolate polenta cake with vanilla whipped cream.

so get why it's all so orgasmic? plus we get to enjoy the food right in bed, what more can a fussy patron of chi-chi restaurants ask for?and service was near impeccable. with the whole experience going on for us, we were more than just feeling climaxy about it..haha. and of course there is the company, without which, the experience could not be brought to such refreshing levels. dedna was dead after one coffee liquer, so that doesn't quite count (haha). YS was being himself, 'nuff said. and with dedna (when she was still sober-alive) as the buffer of our humour, or the subject matter of which, it has got to be fun. and dedna was resurrected once we stepped back into our hotel room. talk about untimely. but we love you all the same Ms. D!..hiak.

then to list unexcitingly, we also went for tea at shangri-la, spa session at Banyan Tree, seafood dinner at this semi-dingy restaurant we found by the road in Chinatown and miscellaneous shopping trips in malls and definitely-dingy streets. i guess we had a whale of a time and a reoccurence of it would be just fine.

and now back to reality, the bleakness of equity shall fade away as i consciously abound on a trip of self-improvement and self-realisation that i can achieve more. idealisms get you the high, actual action is an entire thing by itself altogether. let's see about that.

Two-three: The Roomful of Love

yes it's that time of the year again, the crossing of age, the transcendence of time or a minor crossroad reached. i always believed that something within you changes everytime you cross a birthday line. it might be a perspective of something, some weird part of your psychosis or just a maturing or dematuring of some necessary facet that's required for you to move on with life. i think that might just be what's happening with me now, two days before the dawning of my big two-three.

may i first add that twenty three is a rather daunting number. hsien, just know that it applies to men too so stop the whine for that tad. it's the mid age between twenty and mid twenties, an unwelcome march towards ancientdom.ha.ok being dramatic doesn't help but everyone goes through it, might as well deal with it.

it was literally a roomful of good friends. everyone that i wanted to see, who are here in singapore, were there in that room. thinking back it's quite the luck and gratitude of my life. i need moments like these to remind myself that i should never fucking complain about how lonely i am. some people literally dropped what they had to do to be in that room and i'm here sulking how lonely i am. i'm too much theatrics and bullshit sometimes. i have, in this lifetime, the right to say that i have a roomful of friends, who are not simply hi-bye or friends that i need beside me for some higher perpetuatory purposes, they are all friends i keenly wanted to see. it was a very deep sense of joy and gratitude that i'm swimming in right now. it's overwhelming and tithering on the fringes of being emotional especially with ek's card. i have no idea what i have done to deserve such friends to exist in my life. and the best thing is, i'm feeling this at the aftermath of one of the most sober parties i ever had at my place or otherwise. it's a very entrenching feeling and it's more than just feeling warm all over or merely being thankful for what you have. it's a true understanding (albeit i need to learn to embrace it more steadfastly) that i have no cause to complain what i'm lacking in the romantic realm of my life. i always claim that it's always different, that special someone, but i think it's a lot of fluff and overhyped propagandized material that is inflating this feeling. to come down to it all, i have to learn to be content, to always think so many other people can never truly say that they have a roomful of love. ok u can take it the Freudian way but i don't serve to tease here.

so at this juncture, it's this deep understanding and bare feel of this love that i leave all you people tonight. thanks for all who came and made this happen. and it's apologies out if it's like a wussy piece of writing. but looking at the photos, the presents, the cards and the conversations, you would die to be in my position. take that.