怀念

好想念你那一夜躺在我胸怀轻唱的那温暖感觉。
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有时侯， 我想、 我想、 我想我不是我。

cny

Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what you wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.

-- Red, Ted Hughes.

it must have been some eight, ten years since i visited my paternal relatives during chinese new year, and come think of it, other than those years i was away studying, i don't know how i pulled it off not visiting them. last cny i simply avoided all visiting and phone calls and locked myself alone at home. and just like that, years and years vanished. visiting them brings back lotsa childhood memories coz when i was a kid my grandma used to bring me visiting every other week, and aunts and uncles would shower me with candies and food and teasings and i had lotsa cousins to play with. now we've all grown up and old, i'm really happy that everyone is doing very well and establishing careers and families and all. only if my grandma were still around; everyone remembers her unending supply of yakult - whenever one of us arrives, it's one bottle outta the fridge, as a welcome, a treat, a gesture of love. lately i've realised being around family softens me a little, brings me back to myself, humbles me a little, not least the quiet reminder at the back of my mind that one by one we'd one day be gone.

(but one shall not end on such a gloomy note. two more weeks and then *i* shall be gone. HOORAY.)

手心

最近交了个新朋友，就如遇到了久违的亲友， 从一开始就聊得轻松自在。 有一次他跟我说，他去算过命，那师父看了他的手文， 说他只能活到三十多岁， 而且这条路也可是孤单的。

我不知道人的命运是注定， 或是自决的。 其实，既使知道了答按， 又能怎样。 对我而言， 人生长短不重要， 一年，十年， 都是时间， 一天一秒也是时间。 更重要的是怎么去把握剩余的时间， 来活得更充分， 更开心， 把撒在地上的一分一秒捡起来好好地珍惜， 把无明时间磨成珍贵的时光与快乐。 岁月在窗外地划过， 又能怎样。岁月最后的失散， 与我们终归的成灰， 也不过是当然的。

孤单不代表孤独， 自立也是一种特权。 在这有时苦不堪言的人间上， 能平安地自力更生， 静心地流浪独自的小天堂，有可还是一种恩赐呢。 快乐真的那么难实现吗？但是， 我想人心总可是欲壑难填的吧。在着世上， 有谁不寻找爱。

in credulity

i had dinner with my dad yesterday, and i brought up my plan to migrate to Australia. It slipped my mind that I had never mentioned it to him before, though i've discussed it with almost everyone else in my family. So when his response to me was a hearty, "But Singapore is the best country in the world! What do you want to migrate for?" I don't know what got to me that very split-second when I abruptly burst forth in a hale of laughter. he must have been taken aback, and so was i, because when he looked at me in that sincere quizzical look and asked me what i was laughing about, i was stupefied i didn't know what to say. for all my rantings about my frustrations of this country and it's rude, vain, vulgar, loud, crass, stupid people, i had taken for granted that my dad knew this contrarian side of me.

and what is wrong with this country? really, with it's world class first class first world blahblahblahs; really, what can be wrong?

with our first-class propaganda and indoctrination, what can be wrong, really?

but really, what can be real?

just read the straits times daily and i'd be hard pressed not to come away convulsing in embarrassment and frothing in vomit. i hope you would too.

take one of yesterday's articles “Squeeze on Everyman's wallet: Issue tackled in subdued way” for example - a piece of drivel written by a 'senior correspondent' relaying some happenings in parliament. it provided for a fantastic read, with rich renditions of the ‘debate’; MP’s potential ‘fire-power’; madam halimah yacob being a ‘reliable, folksy heroine’; mr tharman ‘always a study in calm and lucid authority’.

these gratuitous descriptions aside, since when has debate come to reference an exercise resembling a docile press conference more than a sustained discussion and critique of differing opinions? madam halimah’s ‘probing’ question to mr tharman was whether more levels of assistance would be forthcoming. mr tharman’s reply: an iteration of the existing range of welfare avenues, did not address her question! one would have thought an inquiring and courageous madam halimah would’ve pointed this out to the minister, given that her enquiry in the first place implied a current inadequacy of assistance, or at the very least, the possibility that more might be preferable.

perhaps for a reporter to highlight this in her writing would be asking for too much. that the local media lack objectivity and are hamstrung in providing searing analyses, are quite doubtless. but they needn’t come at the expense of intelligence. partisan, pro-establishment opinions can nevertheless be formulated and conveyed with acumen. but one hopes.

How did the reporter come to conclude that the GIC and Temasek Holdings are independent, are a powerful symbol of Singapore financial and economic decision-making at its best, are strategic, responsible and generally masterful in profiteering? Because the minister said so.

one does hope too, that one day our parliamentary sessions can be rightful, respectable houses of lively, genuine debates of the highest intellectual rigour, rather than this embarrassing soiree of puerile antics and vacuous Q&A. We do not expect any less from our illustrious cavalcade of scholar-mandarins, do we?

until then, when national policies can be earnestly and substantively debated – perhaps about adequacy and type of government assistance, perhaps about the ostensible prudence behind our global investments, or perhaps even about the wisdom of engineering a naïve, gullible citizenry via a cloying, fawning press – I reckon singapore’s aims to true development and maturity would remain a fantasy, in fact rather like that reporter's unbelievable piece of composition. and what an insult and a shame.

when our beloved LKY declaimed that singapore will never be a gracious society in his lifetime, everyone agreed, naturally, including myself. and predictably, out came the straits times' craven parrot (see “Singaporeans’ lack of social graces a social disgrace” ST 14 Jan 08), pretending to analyse our boorish problems and to sound the death knell (these grave peals of bells somewhat a regular recurrence in our country innit?).

but rather than cite a few instances of anti-social behaviour, as the reporter did, many of which have been well-washed in the daily press, even well-understood among the culpable themselves, (it would be interesting to ask why they do not do the right thing) it would have been more useful to examine the root causes, and galvanise thereupon, for positive change. perhaps, for all our vaunting of a ‘world class’ society, education, infrastructure, they indeed do not effectuate genuine manners and refinement. perhaps our ‘world class-ness’ is a myth we have blindly purchased.

i wonder if it's correct to establish distinctions of politeness, civility, and graciousness. (can I be one without being another? more importantly, can I consciously choose to be one without being another?)

that reporter then concluded that singapore amidst increased inward migration would well find in its 'best interests' to be civil or gracious, ignores the point that civility and graciousness are virtues in themselves. in coercing them toward utilitarian ends - as one is wont to in Singapore for almost any other endeavour - i wonder if our penchant for pragmatism isn't a major cause of our sad little predicament.

prelapsarian days

For those who dare to defy the given models of defiance.

- Ashis Nandy, Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias
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another one and a half months, and i'd be departing this country, this old life, and start another life at another place. it's a wonder how much things have changed in the last five years, how much i've changed, so that what came before seem like prelapsarian days. i wouldn't be able to recognise my past self, and i don't think i want to either. is it really that there's only the present, and nothing to remember? some moments are best forgotten, but how much really can I will? there is much to leave behind, and much less to bring along. my newfound lightness feels heavy, maybe i'm not yet used to the light. i hope the gravity that has accumulated and accompanied me the last few years would eventually slip away.

and i hope i'd be happy.

when i turn to look back a few years on, what will i see? in a country where hearts are given to money, minds to shallowness, and heads buried into sands, what will i see? heartless mindless headless corpses, the faceless throngs on orchard road, how did this little island come to be so powerful? how did its indoctrination come to be so omnipresent, its propaganda so subliminal? when i come to that crossroad of nostalgia, will it be one silent cry, or one more lyric on my manuscript?

is it nostalgia, or is it pinings for a never-existed world?

but to be able to look back in time, in time to come, i have to leave this place. to carry on here would be to duel with it, the mindlessness of it all, for my sanity my voice my self. to carry on here would be to sing its cadaveric songs.
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Susan Sontag, Fascinating Fascism -

The color is black, the material is leather, the seduction is beauty, the justification is honesty, the aim is ecstacy, the fantasy is death.

tomorrow's memento

i've been going back to my family home to pack up my things. having moved house four times, many things, especially those from my childhood, have been thrown away, lost, or passed somewhere on. while ploughing through my belongings, as one would do for a loved one deceased, i was glad to have held on to some things and not thrown them away. like the locked drawer choked with letters and cards, some dating back to my early teens, from pen-pals, past loves, future loves, friends, loved ones all.

there was this aerogramme my uncle sent when he was studying abroad, exhorting his thirteen year-old nephew - me - to be more responsible and be more concerned about his parents now that i was a young adult. he left when i was in primary one, and i remember the huge turn-out at the airport, with my aunts and uncles hugging him and tearing and all. then there would be the monthly aerogrammes, sometimes he wrote to me, which i would reply, possibly in my kiddy-scrawl and spelling errors. whenever he called home everyone in the family would get very excited and hushing everyone up and rushing to speak to him. when he finally returned after some seven or eight years, i was already mid-teens, gradually segueing back into the 'typical quiet and conservative asian family' relationship he wrote about in that aerogramme. along the way he's also slipped back into the normalcy of singaporean life, gotten married, lost his american accent and ponytail, and when we celebrated his forty-ninth birthday during a recent christmas gathering, i wished i had kept those early letters.

then there were my old photographs, marking time over the years, recording changes, the different and increasing circle of friends, as well as the ones i'd always known and who'd always been by my side. having seen one another since the we were kids, in our innocence, in our exuberant, if reckless youth, it's difficult to see that year after year, years have passed, just by, just like that.

I had lunch with my dad a few weeks ago in the city, and dinner with him yesterday. when he was my age, at twenty-eight, his eldest child - me - had just celebrated his first birthday. now he's fifty-five, not old by standards of old-age, but soon, i suppose. the crows-feet and worry-lines are appearing, the softening of the skin and his irises glacial. he's always been a very quiet man, and i've inherited this reticent trait. i remember how when i was three, he used to carry me on his shoulders and run along the beach at changi, his favourite haunt since his teenage days. i remember the rides on his scooter along the expressway where i would stand in front, bracing the wind. there're the smurf toys he used to bring home after work, and there was this huge, sudden slap across my face because i was running late for school and still dilly-dallying. then there were the movies where he would ask me, after it had ended and we were walking out of the theatre, "how was it?" and there were the many meals together. he was a good dad, but there were always the silence, not of animosity or awkwardness or indifference, but a comfortable kind of silence, quite easy, quite warm. as i grew older, the conversations began to flow more easily. maybe there're more things to talk about - work, money matters, family matters, me, him. it was an indication of my maturity. talking to my own father as if he were a friend makes me feel like a father myself, makes me feel i've really grown up, and that he's grown old, and that one day he'd be gone, and then me along.

what would happen to these things then - these old letters and cards and photographs, faded receipts and movie ticket stubs, my first bottle of cologne, printed-out emails, letters of acceptance from the various universities, school essays, expired membership cards for assorted establishments and institutions, magazine cut-outs and faye wong memorabilia of those crazed days - all these in a big cardboard box with my name on top, what would happen to these precious things, these mementos of and from my youth, once upon a time?

i don't know. they would most likely be buried or cremated along with me, immolating a lifetime of memories. perhaps a loved one would hold on to, if not all, then some of it, creating from it new stories. or some such. i cant really dictate terms from my grave. but i do know that in the intervening years should i re-open this box to reminisce over these accoutrements, trying to relive old - and young - days, i would invariably chide myself for not keeping enough.
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Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

Sonnet 19, Shakespeare

in a year like this

What gave them this joy?
What made cold and hungry people so sure that another year could only be better?

- Jeanette Winterson, The Passion
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in a year like this that unfolded so placidly, almost inevitably, it's hard to pinpoint defining moments. it's probably the first time in my life that i feel my age, and by that i mean i am beginning to feel aged. more than once i'd pressed my fingers into my cheeks to try to remember how quite taut it still feels, though i'm sure to forget as i live on. i'm not afraid of growing old; i welcome it; i look forward to being in my 50s, 60s, 70s, maybe even my 80s, and peering back at how this life has turned out, for better or not. but i'm at this prime age of twenty-eight, my imminent physical disintegration should be the stuff of fantasy.

when i was twenty-two and diagnosed with cancer, i didn't have much an idea what it really meant - not the illness, but the nature and the consequences of being such afflicted. one is at the mercy of nature's unpredictable nature, so to speak, and medical science can only know and do so much. i was in the operating theatre for nine hours, and i often wondered if death was like the moment before the general anesthetic kicked in through the oxygen mask, when then, all consciousness stopped, like one had stepped off a cliff and lay suspended mid-air, and simply time-stopped-suspended, unconsciousness and darkness and nothingness, and nothingness, until one hears a faraway voice repeating gently, 'jack, your operation's over.' what had gone on in the time between? do i now know what death feels like? maybe.

the following year my younger sister was involved in a car accident. she and her friend was crossing the road when a van beat the red light. her friend survived and my sister did not. what had she been thinking in the seconds, minutes, hours, days before her final moment? probably just as how everyone else bumps through life in a sorta auto-pilot way, with thoughts of life and death far away on far opposite ends. but she did laugh a lot and was a cheerful, kindhearted kid who brought joy to people around her. do i know how death feels like? maybe. when someone you love dies, there can be hundreds and thousands of words to describe that feeling and all of them combined would still be inaccurate and inadequate.

when mortality wages it's war so near it's difficult to be jolly and jaunty. events like these turned me taciturn and circumspect, and it's not an entirely bad outcome, though sometimes i admire how people could smile so readily, party so hard, their souls not a crack of worry. sometimes i admire how people have it so easy. sometimes i remind myself not to be too cynical. and sometimes i am thankful for what i have, and look forward to another morning.

a placid, uneventful 2007 has in itself been a blessed one - i had an immensely rewarding time teaching, and there've been my friends, family, loved ones all. there is another year that has come, hopefully it would be a good one too.

have a merriest new year.

wireless souls for sale

i sold off my 3 year-old thinkpad to a secondhand shop this afternoon. it's as if a dear friend had died, and it's all a little saddening. i bought it while in uni and it wrote my thesis (where would footnotes be without this humble gadget?); and then and after, the myriad of trials and computations i've subjected it to, it has come to be closer than a friend (it even talks to and smiles at my friends).

but a macbook has come along (though i'd intended to get an Xseries thinkpad), and while i'm still getting used to host of new functions and meanderings, i'm beginning to like it. it's such a loaded concession, an acquired taste of sorts on the one hand, and i-don't-actually-know-why-i-like-it-but-i-seem-to-do on the other. i hope i'll continue to like it, and most importantly, i hope there'll be no problem!

i don't understand technology. it's meant to convenience our lives, it's meant to relieve us of our daily and physical drudgeries by making everything smaller, quicker, easier, and cheaper. yet, we spend more time with it solving and resolving problems - much of which created by itself no less, we spend more money buying the various electronica and spend even more money upgrading and buying even more of them. we amass these cheaper and faster gadgets more and more, at faster and faster rates, and end up with lesser money and even lesser time. handwritten letters, arguably personal histories and amateur artworks are near-extinct, even though everyone i know delights immensely and ineffably in receiving such scrolls. now our emails live as long as we remember our passwords - that is, not very long.

sometime ago i contemplated cutting myself off from this frenzied, technological conspiracy - cancel my phone and internet lines, use no more computers, and just get by with pen and paper. perhaps one day...

and till then, i fear for the things i love - poring through the morning papers, it's sounds like the sounds of rustling leaves; books thick with creamy pages and pages of wonderful prose and another world; letters lovingly-crafted, folded and sealed, received two weeks late and kept forever. what would the world be like when a heartbreak is nothing more but a harddisk crash, reformattable, disposable?
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Across the gate, your face. You can't come any further. I have to go through. The latch is light. Yes, open it. It was not difficult.

Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was.

- Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods.

love letter for myself

early december night, and cars and people no longer haunt the streets. the streets glint with after-rain, the dark wraps round me like an overcoat. i walk through the quiet and the cold, past one streetlamp after another, midsky aureoles of orange glow through my restless gaze, reluming the darkness in-between. i feel tender. silence rises and falls, footpaces slow, heartbeats soften, i feel all tender. has it been a year already. innocent nights like this tarry between endless possibilities and one rejection. has it been a year already. that one rejection breaks into a million coloured pieces, the pieces pierce and sear, the night broken. what is one year amidst eternal time, when one time, it all will end? i walk on. in such light, what is the cold when you can watch the rain fall? i walk on. what are teardrops when there are books of laughter?

i walk on my wound.

what is one love when you can love another stranger.

hello from chiang mai

it's not that i don't wanna update but for the past 2 weeks each time i remember and try and update the blogger website doesnt budge from the sign-in page.

and for the last 2 weeks i've been in the northern part of thailand, either hanging around or going places. lazy languid days that i've love-hate sentiments toward; and i kinda miss the books in my room.

it's hard to be by myself here, which was the main reason why i came here - it's almost impossible to have some peace and quiet in singapore. but chiang mai's afflicted with the bane of almost every developing (if not developed) city - chaotic traffic and its generous fumes and noise. it's the exceptional hospitality and friendliness and politeness of the thai people that's making my stay here bearable, and traffic smog notwithstanding, still a less frustrating affair than being in singapore.

p.s. i'll post pics of my US and thailand trips when i get back. i know i know, i promised the aussie trip pics way back in june and they're still nowhere posted. been very busy in school but that's over now.

welcome back o slacker me.