Funny, that

I hadn't the faintest thought, when he said he was coming for Chinese New Year, that it'd be the closest thing to it for me. The closest thing to Chinese in the literal sense, anyway.

I can't recall the last time there was that much chatter in Cantonese; Mandarin and Hokkien thrown in for homestyle effect. English; English was a mere filler for those words we were found lacking.

And for two whole days, that.

Sign

I saw a road sign some few days back.
It read: Steep descent.
It made me... feel, I suppose.
I can't say think, because I had no particular thought.
Although I can't say either, what I felt in specific.

I just like it, the sign from some days back.
The lonely: Steep descent.
The sign which told me: Watch!
A descent of the steep variety approaches.

Turning 25

Spent last Saturday lounging around on mats in the (very hot!) sun amidst friends and yummy munchies. And being circled ceaselessly by what I'm told is native hens. You'd think the hens did a headcount and decided we were their property. I do indeed love not doing much.

Botanical Gardens, I like.
This thing about trees...
It's the Anne of Green Gables in me, really!

Celebrating with the birthday boy.
(Who stayed awake despite 4 hours sleep
after karaoke and alcohol!)

Hanging out by the lake.
If I lived by a park with a pretty lake,
I think it'd be close to perfect.

I ask myself all the time

and I still don't have the answer.

Yikes, and Phew

It's quite impossible to grasp how I managed through my Bachelor degree other than with some amount of tears and even more grace. I'm sure I didn't know just what I was in for when I first signed up. The other day, I was turning papers over to cull, when I found some past essay questions.

I read it now, two years on, and my heart still shudders at having to choose. In one case it was between:

Toni Morrison believes that the majority of American fiction has been concerned with 'the architecture of a new white man.' Does Tender is the Night explore the historical collapse of this figure?

and

Can Tender is the Night be read as a plea for understanding made by a writer who felt he had squandered his artistic potential?

I think, by that point, I was over the moon to be given:

Write an essay on the detective as semiotician (one who studies signs) with reference to the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Thankfully, I had long been hooked on Holmes. Although impressing your tutor is a whole different thing, and a critical part in determining grade.

To be honest, I don't know if those parts of toil was worth my now being able to say I was a pupil of American Liberals and Moderns (yuk) and Victorian Crime Writing (much less yuk).

And today, I realise I'm still taking on things of which the real challenge I don't really know. Ah, well. What doesn't kill you, hey?

(maybe the correct order is more Phew, and Yikes)

Valentine Smalentine

Technically speaking, I'm a day late, but I really wasn't going to say anything about it anyway, hence why.

Not that it's a big deal, this Valentine doodah. I am far too grumpy and unHallmarkish to stop severe eye-rolling action on this commercialised day of lurrve. But it seems like every jolly person wanting to be clear about their dislike for the day has blogged about it already.

I'd agree with them as far as personal non-action goes (ok, we bought Wicked Wings and had a "picnic" in front of Two Weeks Notice [yes, I kept the incorrect punctuation], does that count?), only I think I'm not as harsh about the whole oh how unoriginal and dumb that they declare undying love on this one unoriginal and dumb day only and bleed themselves penniless in the
process.

C'mon man, give a trucker a break. Where's the love?

After all, not everyone is creative.
Or original.
Or inherently romantic.

Not everyone has all the leisure in the world to do the undying love thing every third Saturday.

Or is financially capable. (yes, everything is shockingly steep this V-time of year bla bla but for the average Joe, that once a year would still work out costing less than a whole marathon of weekly undying loves for crying out loud)

After all, isn't that what happens at say, anniversaries? Or at Christmas?

On an anniversary, we throw in a dose of extra mush (and dosh!) to celebrate what we feel, appreciate about, do for and are to each other, and that doesn't seem to cop half the bad press V Day does.

If we insist that our everyday behaviour should be a reflection of what Valentine's is all about and decide to screw the day over, then by the same reasoning, we should put Christmas on the back burner. No?

Unless being hypocritical is your thing.

Meh. And I didn't intent to talk about Valentine's at all. I just thought that a few too many people (yes, they're happily attached) were getting a tad to... cynical... clinical... cold? I don't know.

I don't know.

(Here's how some people are celebrating)

----

"She keeps talking to memories which won't come home."

But don't we all?

And then I read that...

The past reflects eternally between two mirrors--the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.

Shantaram, G D Roberts

Lucky for me that, even if a sign, I'm disinclined to act on it. And even, perhaps, if it were only because I knew there is nothing I can do. Or that the path is already inextricably carved.

And another part of me hates to resist, and that part of me dies, again.

Quiet flood

The rain, never expected and which never lasts, still did make the roads glisten.

There's something in the rain, some wispy, vaporous quality, that makes the world surreal and that demands attention, though in its unassuming and so not immediately recognisable way, on the things it falls upon. It is like a trance a trance a trance. It's the same elusive something, lulling and marvelous, from which grows stuff in the air. Stuff about things unspoken, the stuff that I want to say to you but cannot. Stuff that carries that potent invisible current into the atmosphere, up, around and in between us, the stuff that, even if I did say, would not change a thing.

I cannot stop this unsaid tide, nor the root from which it stems, nor feeling those things unspoken, nor the dark knowledge that things will always stay the same.

And the rain, ah, I wished rain never stopped.

----

She said: Don't wanna lose ya, don't even own ya...

Hello World

This little doll is (to me, by Chinese standards) all eyes. And I'm more convinced than ever that the blur look is a family trademark. Which, when worn as kids, is adorable as hell. In a ticklish sort of way. Guess it's no surprise my two favourite things to do with bubs is to make 'em look silly and photograph them looking so. Hence my liking this photo:

Not that I was the one who wrapped her up all snug as a bug. But I look at it and I think: Popiah! All bundled up, haha. Does that mean babies are not claustrophobic? I know I would go completely insane trying to sleep all tucked up like that. Freshly made hotel beds? Pah! Pull pull pull out the sheets! :D

Hehehe... I'm not evil ok. Like I said, I wasn't the one who did that. And it's not my fault she looks cute all scrunched up, is it?

Poor thing is as if she were on parade. Who asked them to make cute little baby clothes and toys and mats and a whole lot of other useless, money-making, sucker-inducing baby stuff?

Ok, baby OD.

PS: Her name's Elisha, by the way. She makes T uncle third time round.
PPS: Her dad's pet name for her is Buffy.

Ok, now cute OD, too.

Growing Faith

Tiny fingers to coo over


Everyone's new favourite cuddle!

Shameless self-invites over to date: 3 this week

Boys are Gross (with a capital G)

I know cleanliness is not up there with fulfilling the desires of their stomachs or whatever, but there is a point where damn disgusting becomes plain unexceptable. If you know me at all, you'll know I'm more a Nazi for perfection than for utter spick-and-speck-ness, though of course I like clean. I'm not paranoid about germs - hell, some germs are good for you - and if you want to pick some dropped morsel off some table or floor and pop it in your mouth, I won't blink twice. I'll even tolerate the crummy messes boys thrive in.

Sometimes, though, I think I'm too relaxed.

It becomes plain unexceptable when my foot put down, is ignored. It's probably my own fault because I don't throw a fit when said ignored, but to then have my put down foot backfire at me, is way out of line. It just ain't right when you are completely incorrigible, then make me feel bad for telling you off for being absolute filth.

Seriously. Where do you get off?

All right, I'll admit I know a few who are not completely without some sense of hygiene. But knowing so only makes me embarrassed about knowing those who are not.

I am stuck

feeling sentimental about a life I once lived.

Day-old Faith

already has us eating out of her teeny lil' hand. That's a photo of her all squishy from just being born, in the background, by the way. You guessed it - she's the newest excuse we've got to go a-snappin' away! Quah Quarters is now installed with a family of three, hooray!

If only it were simple

I told somebody about something I've wished for for a while now.
And I said I guessed some things stay unfulfilled so I can keep dreaming.

If only I preferred fantasy to reality.

I suppose though, that that's no beautiful revolution.

Just what am I supposed to do?

As we descend, the sky is stained a brilliant hue.
A continuous smudge of orange in steps of pale gold, mandarin, burnt copper lead to the charcoal land, made matt-murky only by the blue in the background.

In another background, the live Home track plays timely.

I cannot help but inhale you.
And the exhale, involuntary.

Making easy difficult

You make leaving easy,
Inevitably, you always do.
You make things hard for me,
Hell, you make things hard for you.

You make the easy harder,
The already hard worse still.
The only thing left that's easy,
Is for me to easily leave you.

I was feeling all sad and sentimental about going.
Then you reminded me why I never did before.