My friend in Chicago said that we are basically copying short term memories to long term memories while we dream. So is that why I blog since I don't dream anymore?

I like the irc screen to scroll on as a backdrop while I blog. It makes me think I'm communicating when I'm just writing alone.

Thoughts are like ghosts that appear at the corner of the eye, but never when you try to look straight at them.
- coldfinge. Someone who surprised me by picking up on, of all things, Laurent Garnier in my blog.

What am I more concerned about: sleep deprivation or dream deprivation? Are both interlinked? Am I always short of the necessary quota of sleep hours before I can enter REM phase for dreaming? I sleep like the dead... I fall instantaneously unconscious, each strand of my eyelashes tied down by tiny anchors, blindfolded against my will. When I wake, I'm not buoyed by dreams and gently eased into reality. Instead, I'm jerked into being like a diver who's shed his weights and fighting against shooting straight for the surface.

Just realised I've not been on MC ever since I started blogging. Till now that is.

Colleague phoned me when I was at the doctor's to say the boss was looking for me to attend an important customer meeting. Shit. It completely slipped my mind. Anyway, I'm on MC now and the meeting went on without me. :(

I can't believe I'm up at this hour. Think I'm falling sick. Going to visit a doctor in the morning. Urgh.

The offhanded remarks we make sometimes have more impact than we realise. Once I crystallised things for you and now, reading what you wrote served as a wake-up call for me too.

Trying to reconcile figures in the system while listening to Laurent Garnier's The Man with the Red Face on auto-repeat (I'll call it snazzy jazz with beats).

I recall Fran Healy of Travis introducing their song Driftwood at the concert last night. He said many people have misconstrued it as a love song, but it's more a song for a good friend, along the veins like a poke in the back to tell him/ her not to waste their potential and just move on. At that point, my best friend turned and laughingly cocked a finger at me. And so somehow I've registered this song as the most memorable one at the concert.

Here it goes:

Everything is open
Nothing is set in stone
Rivers turn to oceans
Oceans tide you home
Home is where the heart is
But your heart had to roam
Drifting over bridges
Never to return
Watching bridges burn

You're driftwood floating underwater
Breaking into pieces, pieces, pieces
Just driftwood, hollow and of no use
Waterfalls will find you, bind you, grind you

Nobody is an island
Everyone had to go
Pillars turn to butter
Butterflying low
Low is where your heart is
But your heart has to grow
Drifting under bridges
Never with the flow

And you really didn't think it would happen
But it really is the end of the line
So I'm sorry that you've turned to driftwood
But you've been drifting for a long, long time

Everywhere there's trouble
Nowhere's safe to go
Pushes turn to shovels
Shovelling the snow
Frozen you have chosen
The path you wish to go
Drifting now forever
And forever more
Until you reach your shore

You're driftwood floating underwater
Breaking into pieces, pieces, pieces
Just driftwood, hollow and of no use
Waterfalls will find you, bind you, grind you

And you really didn't think it would happen
But it really is the end of the line
So I'm sorry that you've turned to driftwood
But you've been drifting for a long, long time
You've been drifting, for a long, long
Drifting for a long, long time

Sorry you missed the Coldplay/ Travis concert, it was really quite good. We didn't end up sitting where we bought our seats.. actually we weren't sitting at all. We bought the cheapest seats in the indoor stadium and ended up in the next block, while limabean and his friends who were in that block ended up in the block nearer the front. We all played musical chairs so to speak since we inherited their seats. lol.

There's so much to mention about the concert and even after the concert (the cab broke down and Yoyo and I had to walk but I won't go into that now).

Suffice to say I had fun and it was Dave's birthday :) Hope you had a nice one.

Yoyo remembered the first letter Vanna White turned in the first episode of Wheel of Fortune was the letter T. People remember the strangest things sometimes.

I slept so much today to make up for the past week. Dreamless deep sleep.

I'm in love with the world through the eyes of a girl
who's still around the morning after
we broke up a month ago and I grew up I didn't know
I'd be around the morning after
it's always been wait and see
a happy day and then you pay
and feel like shit the morning after
but now I feel changed around and instead falling down
I'm standing up the morning after
situations get fucked up and turned around sooner or later
and I could be another fool or an exception to the rule
you tell me the morning after
crooked spin can't come to rest
I'm damaged bad at best
she'll decide what she wants
I'll probably be the last to know
no one says until it shows and you see how it is
they want you or they don't
say yes
- Elliott Smith's Say Yes

After yesterday's trek, I realise I'm a mud magnet. It doesn't matter that I've got friends trekking in front of me acting as mud detectors, I still kena mud. My table-tennis junkie on the other hand is a stick magnet. lol. And the consensus is that ambient music is suitable for trekking cos as my best friend explained, the chirping grasshopper sort of sounds are similar. Hmm.

Live long and prosper!!!
\V/

More from my friend bean. Hey, you've got my Saturday space. :)
+++

"What is love?" That was the title and chorus of a really cheesy song from the late 80s, by some lame-ass singer named Haddaway. It was really a Stock Aitken Waterman-type number posing as a house track. But it asks a good question.

So what is love?

I subscribe to something I call the "grass greener" syndrome, which is that people always want what they don't have, that what they see on someone else's plate always looks tastier than what they have on their own. Sometimes, even if they know better. And so it is with love.

I wanted love. I wanted to be loved. I found someone who loved me, who loved me in a fashion and manner that surprised and shocked me with its purity and innocence. Or perhaps amounting the same thing, with its naivete. It was also that quality of purity, innocence and naivete that got to me, drove me away from that person, because it became the foundation for a defensive, self-justifying, self-aggrandising belief that that person was the only person in my life who had ever really, really loved me, that all the other people I have been involved with had treated me badly and had hurt me terribly.

That last bit is true. I think on any objective measurement, I have been mistreated and badly hurt in the past. I don't deny that. But at the same time, there are very many ways of being mistreated and hurt. And I'm not free of that right now, either.

It is simply not true that because someone hurts you, that person does not or has never loved you. It is a cliched truth, that the line between love and hate is frighteningly thin. With one person, I have crossed and keep crossing that line with disturbing frequency. That tells me that I am either psychotic and unstable, or I really love that person.

I pick the latter.

Those who know me well, know I can have a short fuse and a volatile temper, that inter-personal relationships are not something I am instinctively good at whenever I am tired, distracted or upset. But for this person, this special person who still commands a special place in my heart, I was willing to be yelled at over the phone, unreasonably in my opinion. I was willing to be scolded and screamed at for another person's words. I was willing to stay through all that, gritting my teeth, reining in my temper. Yet, at the end of it all, I was still willing to offer unqualified advice and unlimited help. I was still willing to pull out all the stops for this person.

And to date, I have never reproached this person for treating me in that manner.

Whereas with most other people, I would simply have told them in no uncertain terms to calm down, and if that had failed (as it did with this person) I would simply have told the person to call me back when he/she was ready to listen to me and then I would have hung up. Because I have neither the desire nor the temperament to be a punching bag for another person's frustration, unless that was a person that I truly, deeply loved.

So it hurts extra-hard, when in my moment of extreme need, I was shunted aside, ignored, forgotten. Given the benefit of a few minutes of a phone call, the bare assertion that dinner would always be bad for her, and the promise of a lunch appointment that has not materialised to date and does not look like surfacing anytime soon, if at all.

Increasingly nowadays, I think to myself, maybe I am really, really "jian". "Jian" is a Mandarin word, that means "cheap" with overtones of being pathetic. A "jian" person is someone who asks, even begs, for abuse. I feel like that on certain days at certain times.

What is love?

The following is written by a good friend bean. Take care. I wish there is more I can do besides offering you blog space.
+++

One of my all-time favourite songs is "Say Yes" by Elliott Smith. It's this lyric that gets me, it just gets me every time I listen to it: "I'm in love with the world/ Through the eyes of a girl/ Who's around the morning after". It just spoke so much to me. And I thought it was all I really wanted.

But it's not.

Life can be so cruel sometimes. You labour through life, feeling sorry for yourself, spending miserably lonely weekends alone, hoping to meet someone who loves you. And then you do. You know you love that person, and you think that person, at the very least, has feelings for you. But that person, for various [very good] reasons, cannot overtly reciprocate. And then what do you do?

You start thinking. You've always thought a lot. But this time, you think maybe too much. You work yourself into a frenzy. You're like a dog chasing its own tail, thinking in circles, round and round, spiralling ever further along the downward spiral. Then one day, something changes. It just changes without warning. It's like a string, that's pulled taut, tauter, even tauter, and then all of sudden it snaps. It breaks. And once broken, it can never be the same again.

That's how it was. I thought. I looked at it this way, I looked at it that way, I looked at it every which way except the way it eventually played out. I came to certain conclusions, some of which true, some of which mistaken.

C'est la vie, eh?

But that helped. It snapped me out of the stupor of infatuation that often overlaps with the euphoria of romantic love. As I began evaluating my options and my choices again, I finally began to observe. To watch. To examine. To consider. To analyse. I used to look, but I did not see. Now I saw.

And what I saw, I did not expect. More importantly, I did not want.

For the first time in my life, I understood what it was like to break up with someone, as opposed to being broken up with. And for the first time in my life, I realised what a good, responsible, giving, caring dump-ee I had been previously. That I had made it easy for others to leave, to walk away, with as little hurt as I could engineer. Myself? Maybe this is a self-glorifying, self-serving comment, but I felt and I still feel as if I kept everything to myself, held everything in. For the sake of the other person. [Perhaps tellingly, when I wrote the first sentence in this paragraph, I unconsciously wrote "love" instead of "life". What does that say? I don't know. But I'm sure it says something.]

I discovered that it could be as difficult and painful to break up with someone, as it is to be broken up with. If the other party does not want to break up, wants to hold on, regrets choices made and paths taken and wants a second chance, it takes a whole lot of steel and determination to carry it through. Steel and determination, unfortunately, that I do not have enough of.

I used to think I could be tough if I needed to be. Now, I know that at the very least, that is simply not true if the other person is a crying human being in lots and lots of pain.

And I found myself learning about love. What love is. The nature of love. People you love. Why you love them. I realised that in my life, of all the people I have ever been involved with (and let me tell you, there have been more than a few -- many perhaps unreciprocated, but all of them sincere), there is only one that I truly, truly regret.

One person that I wish I had been nicer to, cared more for and about, been more tender to, been more understanding, patient, and sensitive.

One person that, today, I would unhesitatingly throw down everything for.

One person, that if that person came back to me and raised the issue, I would gladly start something new, see where it leads us.

One person, that I still think of now and then, even though it has been long since we parted.

One person, who has found another.

Everything hurts. Sometimes, it all blends into a blur of confused pain, a haze of conflicting emotions. Guilt. Hurt. Disappointment. Regret. Tenderness. Friendship. Compassion. Fear. But always lurking, always undergirding everything, omnipresent everywhere, there is love.

To those who are in love, I envy you. To those who are not in love, I empathise with you. And to those who are in a world of hurt, I am there with you.

Going to cut the file transfer and go meet limabean for dinner and pool. Yes!

Office laptop is grinding to a halt cos of lack of space, so now I'm copying my office files out to the server. It's been 45 minutes and the file transfer doesn't look like it's ending soon. I just want to get out of here. It's Friday night for goodness sake.

I told you maybe I need new friends and you said maybe you do too. But what are new friends going to save us from? What else is new?

You were reading my blog entries aloud while phoning with me. My words coming from your lips sounded so strange.

Seems like we're going to have our annual fire drill exercise this afternoon. That's when all tenants in our office building get evacuated to wait out in the hot sun and get our names noted like school children. There's no point hiding in the meeting rooms or anywhere else because the building management personnel will seek you out wherever you are and force you to assemble with the rest. At least it's a chance for us to check out the other cute folks in the building. Or maybe it's time to run AWOL to the teh tarik place across the road. Isn't Friday nice? :)

Ask them to go fly kite. My kite bigger than theirs you know!
- more basking in our native Singlish

He speak English like he got 2 kang tang inside his mouth one.
- my colleague on explaining how powderful English can be

Have fun in Kansas next week. I had to quote the "We're not in Kansas anymore" line from Wizard of Oz to you. I don't know much else about the place... unless there's a band called Kansas? lol. There's a band called Chicago and another called Texas at any rate. And this is where I wanted to say the latter was named after the movie Paris, Texas rather than the location actually.

See what I mean about information overload?

You just emailed me about, among other things, Vitamin C. I hope you don't mind me pasting that whole chunk here, I couldn't find a better way to paraphrase it. :) You know the oddest things, did I ever tell you?

"You know perhaps one of the reasons why over-dosing in Vitamin C (actually slight laxative when over-dosed) is not as harmful or even helpful e.g. common cold-fighting / anti-oxidizing, is because Vit.C is soluable in water & the body would not retain them in body fat like Vit.A which is soluble in fat instead thus accumulative. I.e. the excess Vit.C (effervescent Vitamin C tablets in water) is just washed away through our body. (Doesn't make sense, I know.)"

Hey, it does actually.

I just watched the movie Cyclo on VCD. I wish I'd seen it before I went to Vietnam, it would have added a different perspective to how I see the place.

I tend to beat around the bush unconsciously with information overload. My colleagues highlighted this to me when we were going out for lunch. As I was standing by the window, someone asked me if it was raining. I replied "Oh, there's no one carrying umbrellas out there but the road seems to be wet..." and my colleague repeated "Yes, but is it raining?". lol. And my brother has the same problem too.

My customers are on speed today. Everyone wants to report problems. Man.

When I was younger, I used to prep myself before attending rock/ pop concerts by continuously listening to the performers' CDs first. I even memorised chunks of lyrics so I knew what to sing along. This Sunday I'm attending the Travis/ Coldplay concert but I'm not doing any prep work at all. Coldplay? I don't own their CD, but I've borrowed it from my best friend before. Travis? Own their latest CD but it's not on my playlist now. I'm busy alternating between Faithless and Fila Brazilia. I guess I'll just go and soak it in there and then. Maybe I should have done it this way all along.

The sky is victorious but here comes the rain
- Faithless

Eating one 250mg Vitamin C tablet is equivalent to eating 5 oranges. I can eat maximum 4 tablets or the equivalent of 20 oranges per day. A colleague pops effervescent Vitamin C tablets into water to drink and one tablet is already 1000mg. It sounds scary but the plus point is I haven't gotten flu in a while.. yet.

Glad to hear you've survived your wisdom teeth extraction! :)

I've just cancelled an order with Amazon which I made in mid May cos the delivery is pending till September. Crazy. I doubt if I'm ordering anything from Amazon again. Thanks to my table-tennis junkie who has kindly offered to hunt for them on his trip to UK. :) Take care and hope you have fun.

I read blogs more than I read news. I should really be horrified now.

None of this happened.
But all of it is true.
- Synopsis of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine's album A World Without Dave

Dave ran away to the circus
To get away from the clowns
And to give his life some purpose
Before he shot somebody down
- Sneak preview of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine's A World Without Dave. For Dave of cos. :)

After every conversation with you, I find that there's still a lot I've omitted to say. I want to tell you even the nitty gritty and mundane stuff, like I'm nearly finishing my first bottle of vitamin C tablets; that there's always this lull period of time at 4am when I'm half awake and can either force myself to rise or sink back to sleep; that I'm already wondering about the next conversation.

I picked up the latest issue of IS magazine and read from the ad on the last page that Zouk is featuring local DJs this weekend. I scrutinized the DJ list and saw a friend's name there, but I haven't heard from him about this event. Anyway, I sms'd him to confirm if he's spinning and he responded no. Ah well, misinformation. I would have gone to see him spin.

I must remember to turn off the cockpit lights. lol.

Blogging that first entry in the morning does for me what drinking coffee do for other folks.

Sometimes I think I’ve almost fooled myself
Sometimes I think I’ve almost fooled myself
Spreading out my wings
Above us like a tree,
Laughing now, out loud
Almost like I was free

I look at you as the thing I wanted most
You look at me and it’s like you’ve seen a ghost
I wear the face
Of all this has cost:
Everything you tried to keep away from me,
Everything I took from you and lost

Lights shine above me, they’re like your eyes above the street
Lights shine below me, they’re like stars beneath my feet
I stood on your shoulders
And I walked on my hands,
You watched me while I tried to fall
You can’t bear to watch me land

Take me away, carry me like a dove
Take me away, carry me like a dove
Love me like you’re lying
Let me feel you near,
Remember me for trying
And excuse me while I disappear
- Joe Henry's song Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation from his album Scar

I dropped by Borders for bargain hunting after reading about Dave's purchases. I bought Radiohead's Kid A (for only $6.25!) and Fila Brazilia's anotherlatenight (for only $24.99, making this the cheapest Fila Brazilia album I've ever come across). Sampled lots of new albums and felt so at home there.

I'll rather have elationship than a relationship.
- something I read somewhere, though not in those exact words.

My Japanese colleague told me that she felt her nails and hair grow faster in Singapore than when she was back in Japan. Strange. I never realise if my nails and hair grow faster or slower when I'm travelling.

There are so many nice girls out there. Why should I like you?
- a stranger was talking on his cell phone along the corridor outside my company yesterday and this is what he said. I hope the girl hung up on him right away. There is no should, love doesn't work like clockwork.

I know you'll survive your wisdom teeth extraction so nuff said. :) Take care and save something for the tooth fairy ok?

Seems like someone stumbled onto my blog from Chan Brothers Travel but I have no idea what the link is. Was it my entries on my Hong Kong trip? Somebody else in Sweden got to this site looking for a random seed generator. I guess I'm intrigued by what other people are searching for, and more importantly, why.

My team members have noted that whenever I'm not in the office, our customers strangely refrain from forwarding queries to us too. I bring tranquility to everyone when I'm not around, but unfortunately I'll never be able to see this for myself. So today's another chaos-reigning, somersaulting and head-rolling sort of day at work.

It's like I've cruised into an unchartered air zone and just trying to establish radio contact with anyone. Miraculously, I managed to locate another plane, destination unknown. We started conversing sporadically in the blind and I switched to auto-pilot mode. You didn't or rather, couldn't give me any directions and I realised that maybe I'm going to crash and burn after all. In the meantime though, I'm still up in the air and enjoying the view.

I wondered how long I can stay on auto-pilot and you said "You've got air bags right?".

Thanks for adding me to your blog link. :) Don't worry, your private blog is still safe with me.

My tennis partner received a blank sms once when I was with her. When I didn't get it, she said this meant the other party was speechless. Well this is in no way connected, but I'm just checking out the Webby Award winners and Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries award-winning site under the Art category left me speechless too.

Just watched the movie Requiem for a Dream. Even the website is amazing. No wonder it won the Webby and People's Voice awards under the Film category.

I had a pic taken with a german colleague yesterday during his pre-birthday celebration in the office. Our height discrepancy was so great I looked like what limabean had jokingly called me before... an arm-rest girl. Sigh.

I'm going to neglect sports this weekend. No jogging, gym, tennis or whatever. Just vege out reading or watching VCDs when I'm not out with friends. *bliss*

I think the rest of your blog entries are in italics cos you might not have ended italics mode in a previous entry. Hey, no way to email you but I do read you. :)

My german colleagues had never heard of the expression "fat hope". When told that it means "no way", they commented that (a) it should be "thin hope" cos that means little hope, and (b) this has to be Singlish (!). The mix-up over languages never ceases to surprise me. :)

I read from your blog that you abstained from buying a PDA and got your Paw Pilot instead. I know it's hard to fight the temptation cos I can hardly survive without my Palm V, but I respect you for doing without. I don't jog down notes for blog entries on my Palm V, nor do I play games or read e-books from it. Mainly I use the basic functions like address book, expenses and calendar, but my favourite application is a simple database to track every single movie I've watched, every CD I own and every book I've read. Oh, and the random decisions generated by the worldly-wise Daria too.

Strangely, my Palm V is also a means by which I bond with people. I started my geeky brother on Palm and he's even more of a fan than I am. He bought one of those foldable Palm keyboards which he used to type notes during meetings. lol. I remember swopping Palm applications with friends while waiting our turn at pool, trying to test how far apart we could place our Palms before the infra-red beaming failed. There are also the times spent chatting with strangers at Palm events on the latest developments.. it's amazing how animated people get talking about what they love. :) This is the reason why my Palm V is important to me.

Got an email in French when I can't even handle German. The English translation from Babelfish didn't make sense. lol.

Read Dave's entry about the Webby Awards and realised Blogger didn't win. You've got my vote though. :)

My mum woke me up this morning to answer the phone but it turned out to be a wrong number. The strange thing is that the girl on the line sounded so curt and upset when I should have been the one who's pissed. I told her nicely though that I'm not the one she's looking for. After I hung up on her, she auto-redialled and called me again, then realised her mistake and hung up before I could answer. What's your story morning glory?

And what I hear in the dark, I shall say aloud in daylight, and what is whispered in my ear, I will declare aloud from the rooftops.
- Matthew 10:27

Of all people, I didn't expect a religious quote from you. :)

Could you have pictured this when you called? My forefingers tied together entangled in floss, trying to hold my cell phone with my remaining fingers and laughing into the phone that I couldn't talk now.

Enough. I'm going home now folks.

Another german idiom. My ex-boss used to say "take the cow from the ice", meaning to solve the most critical problem first. Picture a cow standing on a lake covered with thin ice and you'll get it. He once declared that we needed to take the cow from the ice during a meeting with non-germans and everyone was mystified. :) I really enjoyed working for him.

Still in the office. My german colleague just taught me a german idiom. lol.

"Von einem schoenen Teller isst man selten allein."
[Translation: You don't eat from a nice plate alone. Meaning a cute girl has lots of suitors.]

Those who know Yoyo (our boy Samuel!) and will like to celebrate his birthday in advance this Saturday (dinner and drinks), please email/ sms/ phone me and arrange to meet up ok? Sorry I'm a bit tied up to get to y'all individually. :) No dinner yet but my colleague gave me some cookies. Work beckons again. Woohoo.

A colleague emailed me an Excel spreadsheet which can calculate if a certain phone number combination is auspicious or not. According to this, my home phone number is very auspicious while my cell phone number is very inauspicious. Great, 6 levels of luck and I'm on both extremes. Ok ok, back to work.

Just returned to the office from visiting a customer and will be working late tonight to draft a proposal. Still I've got a pile of emails to wade through first. *deathwail*

I was reading 8 Days while commuting to work this morning and came across this interview with comedians Mark Lee and Gurmit Singh. Mark's struggle with English is well-known (and actually quite endearing) and this particular bit tickled me. I'm surrounded by heavy breathers then. lol.

Mark: It's okay. I learn a lot of things. Like must listen out for the vowel sound. Also, my teacher is teaching me breathing. When you speak English, you must do the breathing.
Gurmit: What, when you speak Chinese, you don't need to breathe?
Mark: Must breathe also, but speak English must breath more.

To me, picking shoes and clothes to wear in the morning is simple. I go by LIFO. Last In First Out.

I hope you're feeling better. I really mean it.

I can't sleep so decided to fiddle round with my blog layout again. Thanks to Dave, I found out there are new Blogger templates to choose from and I've changed my look yet again.

No idea. Where did you get that dress? :)

7am?! How is it possible to wake up and go for tennis on Saturday morning at 7am? :) My tennis partner's attempt to avoid getting more tanned is quite funny actually.

During lunchtime, my female colleagues and I went shopping.. between us, we bought 2 pairs of shoes, toiletries and junk food. The shoe boutique near my office sells yummy pretty shoes. This attracts lots of women yuppies out to get instant gratification to tide over their frustrations at work. I've done this before too, but somehow I don't know why most guys don't derive the same level of comfort from buying shoes.

That was a nice blue background you switched to in your blog, glad the Webmonkey colour chart helped you. :) Saw your pics, you look great in that blue dress. I've never seen your best friend look so feminine either, my regards to her too.

I wanted to make sure it's midnight when I phoned you but the times on my watches, cell phone and CPU clock were all unsynchronized. I called you anyway and you said it was only 11.55pm. I wondered aloud as to why typing on my keyboard sounded louder than yours. You said you prefer playing snooker to pool, and I replied that I've never played snooker. You told me you like Dune cos it's so political. It's also why you like Romance of the Three Kingdoms (the English translation of cos). I mentioned about Machiavelli's The Prince, and told you to read it. He wrote this thin volume in 1513 and filled it with advice like... if someone helped you overthrow the previous ruler, get rid of them cos you don't know when they'll do the same to you. Hmm.

I mentioned I saw the music video for Chicane's No Ordinary Morning in Hong Kong but you had never seen it. I tried to explain. In it, a couple quarrelled, and in the next scene the girl was driving her car in a multi-storey carpark and trying to ram down the guy while he was trying to ride his motorbike. And she tried to ram him again the next time while he was hitching a ride from someone else. The music video ended with both of them toppling off the roof of a tall building and flailing wildly for a long while... before landing on a huge mattress. Then you realise it was a film crew shooting a scene, but then the girl and the guy looked strangely at one another, and you wonder if that's all there is to it? It was not what I would have expected from the lyrics of this song at any rate.

We went on rambling about nothing in particular. My ear was burning but I didn't tell you this time. It was nice to have just another conversation with you.

My table-tennis guru was listening to a tape he dubbed from a Ken Ishii album. I asked if it's the one with Ken Ishii floating on the cover. He said no. My best friend asked if it's the one with the sunglasses on the cover, and he said not that one either. Then, my best friend made a remark like at least you have friends who can list you albums when you mention Ken Ishii. And this is how it is with my music group of friends. We don't need to justify to one another why we listen to what we do, and we have a genuine interest in what one another listen to. We don't need any common histories.

I'm blessed with great friends. I know this when they let me indulge in my idiosyncracies, like letting me play table-tennis with both hands holding a table-tennis racket each, so I can see which feels better. And when they try to hit easy shots to me cos I'm new at racket games, so I can practise and learn. I love them for enjoying my company like I do theirs, and for being sociable folks who can interact with one another in my different cliques. I learn so much from you all. Thanks for being there.

Been squinting at Webmonkey's colour chart and finally decided on a pale green background. For now. My best friend commented that the pink background isn't very nice cos it looks sexually repressed. lol.

What colour is it now? Hey, I think it's pink. Wow. I really hate pink. Going to condition myself to like pink by leaving it on for a while. Wonder how long I'll last before caving in.

Then I tried a green background, then a yellow one. Rejected the purple and decided to go with oh, orange for a while. Yes I know, it's starting to look like a freakshow here but well, change is good isn't it? If I can't change my skin tone, at least there's something else I can change. Muahahaha. I feel powerful.

On second thoughts, a white background is kinder to my eyes.

Well, I removed the uppercase for my blog title and changed the background to black. Is that enough differentiation? :)

Finally the friend in Chicago has coughed up his recipe for red bean soup (he says almonds add a little bitterness but the smell blends in well). I was posting his recipe when I realised something.. the measurements are not metric. Well, use your own judgement ok? :)

ingredients:
1. a bowl of red beans (about .5lb)
2. sago (about .125lb)
3. almonds (about .25lb)
4. sugar to taste

a. soak red beans over night
b. boil about 3 quarts of water
c. add red beans and simmer
d. when the red beans "open" (takes about 2-3h), add sago and simmer until sago turns translucent (takes about 30min). stir occasionally.
e. add almonds and sugar to taste (about 4T per quart or so)
f. simmer for another 15-30min and its done.

How do I explain why hearing a purr twitches the corners of my lips into a smile?

When I got back from Hong Kong, the mobile bookfair resurfaced too and I dropped by to buy a hardcover book on psychotherapy (portraits in fiction). I don't know when I will get to read this, or the copy of Lord of the Rings which I bought last Saturday. Oh well. This compulsion to buy books used to extend to blank journal notebooks as well, but I would start writing bits and pieces in different journals and it got all too confusing. The only thing I can't do is read e-books on my Palm V. That just doesn't feel right to me.

During lunch, I scrutinised 4 other female colleagues and realised I am the most tanned of the lot, though not in the whole company. Oh man. And I'm planning to go nature trekking this Saturday as well.

According to Wire, Norway is the best place in the world for geeks to live due to their large number of internet users as well as the advanced science education level in schools there. When I was there, I didn't remember thinking it was geek heaven, just that there was a wonderful figurine park in Oslo.

There was a boy,
A very strange enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far,
Over land and sea.
A little shy and sad of eye,
But very wise was he.

And then one day,
One magic day he passed my way.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings,
This he said to me,
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return"
- Nature Boy written by Eden Ahbez, sung by Nat King Cole (1947)

Revelation for today: friends told me I looked better when I was fairer. Awwww.

Ok ok, the last statement in the previous entry was added by my best friend while I was taking my turn at pool. I didn't think to remove it. :)

I'm blogging this in my table-tennis guru's office cafeteria while a couple of us were in the midst of playing a game of pool. We just caught Final Fantasy. I simply suck at pool because I keep wanting to blog.

Other evidence has shown
That you and I are still alone
We skirt around the danger zone
And don't talk about it later
- Suzanne Vega's Marlene on the Wall

All that I want to blog I've already told to friends I spoke with yesterday. A brief recap won't do any justice so I guess I won't try. The only thing I haven't mentioned was that I enjoyed watching Moulin Rouge cos it was filled with alter-ego songs (songs masquerading in new representations). I love the way Madonna's Like A Virgin was sung complete with cheesy OTT dancing waiters, and how the Police's Roxanne became a tango. And my favourite love song made a tiny appearance in the movie though not in the soundtrack.

If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here with you
- Lamb's Gorecki

During pool tonight, limabean commented that he preferred studying to working. He looked so tired and he's burning his weekend again. I think Dave is working tomorrow too despite his flu. Take care guys.

More jargon from WhatIs.com. Send-side silly window syndrome is what happens when an application generates data one byte at a time, causing the network to be overloaded with packets. Cute.

You would not be less real when you could not be more Tweety Bird.
- my table tennis guru. I'll take that as a vote of confidence :)

I read your blog and was pleasantly surprised to read the welcome home message for me. Thanks. Hope you have a good time helping out at your friend's wedding. :) Will deviate off to paraphrase and answer your ever-present question... when was the first time I encountered snow?

I think it's in '98, but I won't count Frankfurt cos it was a trickling mud slush there, not snow at all in my opinion. Rather, it's Norway on a 10-hour cross-country drive with fjords and snowy mountains all round. I remember distinctly sitting in the front passenger's seat, navigating for my friend who's driving and marvelling in sensory overload of snow, snow and more snow. When the friend asked if I had ever eaten snow before, I said no, and he just pulled over and forced all of us out to cup snow off the ground and eat it. That friend will probably never get to read this blog at all, but I want to say thank you. For making me taste snow.

If I were a plane, I would say I'm flying on auto-pilot now. I'm not really thinking but somehow I wonder if my guidance system would haywire without intervention. For a control freak, I'm really performing stunts.

Should I sms God? There's an ad in 8 days telling me I can receive sms messages from God if I sms a certain number, or visit His website. Great, the Almighty has gone online and uses flash to boot. I think I'll pass.

Just read an email quiz which Pupi sent me to find out which cartoon character I am. It turns out I'm Tweety Bird but it sounds too perfect to be true..

"You are cute and everyone loves you. You are a best friend that no one takes the chance of losing. You never hurt feelings and seldom have your own feelings hurt. Life is a breeze. You are witty and calm most of the time. Just keep clear of backstabbers and you are worry free."

I don't know why I've blogged so much today and yet it seems like there's still so much left to write. If only I had the time. I want to write about seeing an older sister coach her younger brother on what steps to play on his Gameboy to win, instead of letting him play for himself and have fun. I want to write about being happy for a Uni friend who is going to be a mum. I realise though that I'm not the sort to blog what I have already written down by hand, even if it's in anticipation for blogging. And well, it's time to go visit my customer now.

I don't know how many times or to how many people I have said this, but here I go again. People are stronger than they seem.

Dave (I still can't get used to this name even now) wrote about seeing accidents around him. I saw the aftermath of one too during lunchtime while I was out with my colleagues. A car collided with a motorcycle and the impact ripped the car fender half off. The motorcyclist was lying in the middle of the road while the car driver was sheltering him with an umbrella from the drizzling rain. Someone phoned for an ambulance while the rest were gawking on. It was surreal.

Tomorrow is Friday the 13th. Woohoo.

You told me before that I ask people to tell me things I don't know, cos I'm interested in what a person is. On the other hand, you're interested in who a person is and there's no need to ask for more info. Knowing who they are will suffice.

When I said that I didn't see it coming, maybe it's cos I was wearing blinkers.

3 days of absence generated 134 unread office emails. And they are still unread as I blog this and look forward to lunch. It's good to be home.

I always need to unpack my luggage upon arriving home. No matter how tired I am, nothing can wait till tomorrow. My mum ensures that. This control streak I inherited from her to a lesser degree, but still.

I asked for Ribena on the plane but the air stewardess said they don't serve that, so I asked for milk instead. My colleague turned to ask me, why all these baby drinks? This is the same guy who pretends to but doesn't fasten his seat belt during landings and take-offs. We all have our own quirky ways.

It was my turn to call you from the airport before I flew back. I came straight from an IT exhibition and was dressed formally and in heels. I hated it, especially cos I was carrying a packed sling bag and another bag of goodies as well. Never boarded a plane this way before and don't intend to again. Snapped some pics of the runway from the huge glass windows but the interior lights were bouncing off them. I asked you if I should buy the Aussie edition of Cosmopolitan cos I bought the UK edition already and you said why not? But I didn't. I wasn't up to reading the Chinese edition either. I told you my call would end any moment cos my cell phone battery was draining and just as I said that, it did. I guess the call is like coming full circle.

I saw the music video for Cousteau's Last Good Day of the Year on MTV when I was in Hong Kong. I couldn't believe they featured it but there you go. I've wondered about the song, like if someone can tell when the last good day of that year will be for them. And then I realise that we do know. The Last Good Day of the Year is the Last Day of the Year cos everyday is a good day, just being alive.

All this time
All these words
Still I'm going round
A thousand miles out
- Ben & Jason's What I meant to Say

Surprisingly, I can't seem to locate the lyrics for this song online. I guess I will have to do a bungled job of transcribing by ear.

To me, shopping alone is like a dream sequence. I will plug into my Discman and float in and out of shops.. not really focused, but with a half-smile to reassure approaching sales personnel I'm fine even though I can't tell what they're mouthing to me. And somehow I still manage to buy things. Amazing.

There was no typhoon when I got here. In fact, it's clear skies and I didn't even need to shelter from rain. My colleague said we brought the good weather with us. So it's not just the mobile bookfair heh? :) I read in a local magazine that some pubs here have parties when typhoons strike, and if the typhoon reaches no. 10, all drinks will be on the house. Having fun in the midst of disaster, that sounds wonderful.

Received a couple of phone calls from friends on the weekend I got here... it's like I never left home. I missed the 1 year anniversary of my favourite pool joint but my best friend was there. Located an obscure music store my table tennis guru recommended me and wondered if such an establishment can survive in Singapore. Don't think so. Am glad to have brought my electronic gadgets along this trip (cell phone, Palm V, digital camera and Discman) cept I drained my Palm V accidentally by piling luggage on top of it. Luckily I managed to charge it in my HK office. I'm now blogging this in my HK office while my colleagues are busy preparing for a forum all around me. I think I should go help out now. I couldn't resist logging in to read blogs, to find out how my friends were doing.

Heading home late tomorrow night. Will miss this place. :)

Ok, I was wrong, this is my last entry before leaving for Hong Kong. I woke up and remembered I forgot to stop forwarding emails from my personal email account to my office email address and just logged on to do that. I don't have my plane ticket on me yet, but I'm on my way out to the airport. :) I suddenly thought of this song Stormy Weather but I guess there's no time now to quote it.

Later.

I went home for my family dinner and my brother (not a Smug Married, but a Contented one) proclaimed merrily that he hasn't eaten instant noodles for a month. lol. I'm happy for you too. :)

This is probably my last entry before leaving for Hong Kong. I hope I don't suffer from internet withdrawal symptoms cos I plan to go cold turkey for the next 5 days. Take care and stay well. I'll be back. :)

Latest update: Typhoon status in Hong Kong has dropped to No. 3. Hmm. I wonder who names typhoons anyway? Do you name a typhoon after yourself since it's a natural disaster? The logical deduction is to name it after a foe isn't it? So what's the story with Typhoon Utor? I thought most typhoons are named after women, unless Utor is a woman's name. Is it? Strange, until 2 days ago, I've never ever thought about typhoons.

Let's say we work at a bakery. There are folks who bake cakes and those who bake brownies. They don't switch roles cos there's not enough time for them to learn one another's roles. Then one day, an order comes in for a brownie and lands in the lap of a cake-baker accidentally. The cake-baker got so intrigued he forgot about baking cakes and started reading up (not even trying hands-on) to bake brownies. Now the cake orders pile up and overflow to the brownie-bakers. Unfortunately, brownie-bakers aren't able to handle cakes. Confusion ensues and unhappy customers wait. No cake, no brownie.

There you have it... a summary of my team meeting.

We are so smart but we do not know what to do with ourselves.
- a friend known as B12. Why B12? Cos he likes Bananas in Pyjamas and they're B1 and B2. lol.

My nemesis has a name. It's Typhoon Utor.

Just wanna say, don't be mad. It's not you. I'll play pool next time, I've got too much on my mind to play tonight. Thanks for allowing me to read your blog.

I've located a site to explain about typhoons in Hong Kong. Read up on Typhoon Signal Number Eight: it means batten down the hatches. Oh boy. I called up M1 to auto-roam my cell phone cos I decided to bring it along just in case. I can't believe a typhoon changed my mind.

I suddenly thought it should be I Blog Because You Do. Aphex Twin will gag.

Hey, I don't order Coke Light since they have this cute Japanese drink called Qoo. :) White Grape flavour rules! Wish I have a can now.

I woke up disoriented at 4+ am and decided to log on. Received your email with the subject title u need a bon voyage. You wrote that 3 typhoons threatened Hong Kong in the last 13 days. I wasn't aware actually, thanks for telling me. Before last night, I was so busy with work I didn't know anything about the weather there. Can planes land during typhoons? It seems too calm here to think about it. Were you ever in one?

You asked if I watched Memento.. well I did, I blogged about it in Chronoscape. :) Yes, I'm afraid you need to read another site to catch up on me too.

You said my best friend commented excellently on blogging like virus spreading like a plague or a nuclear chain reaction beyond the threshold. I got stumped cos I don't think those were his words. So I opened another browser window to read his .plan again and confirmed... those were your words. You mentioned again about being tempted to blog and made me smile when you interjected that with your thought on how the right lobe and limpic brain intuit feelings, and how emotion can ever be captured by the linguistic left brain. Somehow, I expected that scientific twist from you. lol. So I'll say it again.. the way you write, you should blog. Really. Much much worse writers than you have blogged, we need to tip the scale back. :)

Perversely, I decided to reply your email here to demonstrate the power of the word YOU. There have been a few YOUs in this blog and now YOU're one of them. If you wondered about the YOU in the airport, someone will be wondering about the YOU in this post. Do YOU see now? :) Just this once to experiment, a public email. After all, I started blogging to sorta replace emailing. Thank YOU. For reading all this while. And yes, I figured YOU have Music for Airports.

Start as you mean to go on.
- a track from Aphex Twins' I Care Because You Do

Right this moment, I feel like Suzanne Vega's Queen in this song.

I realise those friends of mine who blog have bare minimum no-frills blogs. lol.

My colleague just told me there's a typhoon No. 8 heading for Hong Kong so they declared Friday a holiday. And I just packed light clothing. I've never been in the same area as a typhoon. Wonder what it feels like?

The only 2 places I know I'm sure to visit in Hong Kong are our office there and one of the Hard Rock Cafes (colleagues have placed their orders already). Just finished packing for the trip and I realised every article of clothing I'm bringing there is either black or grey. lol.

Too much work, too little time. Freaking out like a headless chicken.

Another friend has jumped onto the blog bandwagon. Do check out Pupi and see what she has to say. :)

Until I find peace in this world, I'll sing a song...
Everywhere
- Tim Buckley

I am astonished by people who are starting to blog. It's like the year that punk broke.
- my best friend the trend-spotter :)

I guess I associated people with music starting from my first boyfriend a long time back. Now, I can't remember his birthday, when exactly we became a couple or broke up, but I can remember the last time we were happy together. We were probably returning from somewhere, and he stepped out of the MRT train at his stop. I stayed on, started playing Red Hot Chilli Peppers' Blood Sex Sugar Magik on my Walkman (yeah, I had a lot of cassettes in the old days) and smiled. And I remember willing him to turn around so I could wave. But he didn't. After that, our relationship nosedived inexplicably. I never told him about linking him with Red Hot Chilli Peppers.. he probably wouldn't have understood. I don't much get it either. But that's really how it started.

No matter what other movies I've watched with my best friend, he seems to remember best the ones where he couldn't believe I cried in (I sniff easily, even at the last scene in action flick Heat where Al Pacino and Robert de Niro had a showdown) or which I said was acclaimed (there was this Spanish movie called Red Squirrel which won lots of Goya awards but was, err, kinda morbid). A few years ago, a bunch of us used to have regular movie outings on Sunday mornings when it's easy to get tickets (cos presumably other folks are still sleeping or attending church). We've discontinued that for quite some time now though. Hmm, why am I remembering this all of a sudden?

It just turned 6 years since the most important man in my life passed away. You'll be proud of me, I'm starting to take pics in earnest now, even though they're idiot-proof. I should have learnt from you though. I miss you dad. I don't need to be reminded of how much you love me.

U have a stalker bookfair.
- comment from the friend in Chicago upon reading yet another mobile bookfair post from me

I bought Magnetophone's album i guess sometimes i need to be reminded of how much you love me. I took a double-take when I first saw the title, laughed and decided to buy it without knowing what it sounds like. How can anyone resist such a whimsical title? lol. The music is totally without lyrics, full of beeps, whirls and little jarring discords so the music doesn't become too melodic and pretty. Fantastic.

During lunchtime today, I dropped by the ever-present mobile bookfair and bought another 19 comics. Out of these are 5 issues of Strangers in Paradise and 9 issues of Sandman. Snowed under by work but we need our small pleasures in life don't we? :)

I saw the doctor yesterday and she told me that I should stop jogging for a month. She also mentioned that I should switch to brisk walking after that instead, or if I insist, I can try running with a knee guard. Her advice is: women should not jog, only brisk walk or swim. She did some tests on my knee and we could hear the cracking of the joints when she did them. We winced together. But she could tell that's not going to stop me.

In late 1977 I was waiting for a plane in Cologne airport. It was early on a sunny, clear morning, the place was nearly empty, and the space of the building (designed, I believe, by the father of one of the founders of Kraftwerk) was very attractive. I started to wonder what kind of music would sound good in a building like that. I thought, it has to be interruptible (because there would be announcements), it has to work outside the frequencies at which people speak, and at different speeds from speech patterns (so as not to confuse communication), and it has to be able to accomodate all the noises that airports produce. And, most importantly for me, it has to have something to do with where you are and what you're there for - flying, floating and secretly, flirting with death. I thought, I want to make a kind of music that prepares you for dying - that doesn't get all bright and cheerful and pretend you're not a little apprehensive, but which makes you say to yourself, 'Actually, it's not that big a deal if I die.'
- Brian Eno on Music for Airports

You called from the airport while I was on my way out to catch a movie. You know sometimes I would listen to my cell phone with my left ear and still be plugged into music from my Discman on my right ear, sort of like a soundtrack for the conversation... but I wasn't listening to any music yesterday. I thought an appropriate album to have listened to then would be Brian Eno's Music for Airports. I wrote something about that album before, remind me to dig it up. But I think I told you before, I don't really like airports.

I was holding my cell phone in my left hand and snapping pics out the window with my new digicam in my right one, while you were walking aimlessly round the airport, wondering if you should buy a magazine to read. I said yes but you said the collection is dismal. You read out 4 magazine titles to me and I picked Cosmopolitan which of cos you didn't buy. I took an uninspired pic of the sky, but I kept it anyway. I don't remember exactly when you said it but you told me "Guys are jerks" (yourself included). I'll bear that in mind. lol. You saw a little child crawling around and contemplated taking her pic, but decided against it cos her dad was around. Chicken. :)

In less than a week it would be me at the airport but I wouldn't be bringing my cell phone along. I'm glad you brought yours though. I'll remember this phone conversation.

I can fly, but I want his wings
I can shine even in the darkness
But I crave the light that he brings
Ravel in the songs that he sings
- Lamb's Gabriel

It would have been so wonderful to be the namesake of this blissful song.

Dave, you should have danced. :) I don't think those circles on your new shirt looked like nipples at all. They're rather more like doughnuts. lol.

I think jogging yesterday morning has brought back the problem with my right knee. No amount of rest, changing to new running shoes or warmup seems to stop my right knee from giving way. But I love to run, so maybe it's something I have to endure.

I've gotten myself a Kodak DC3800 digital camera (I think this is the same as Electrin's). I was considering a Canon ixus which Quest has, but decided to go for the cheaper, lighter, more user friendly and more accessorized deal. I can't wait to lug it around to take pics! Now I know why Quest is always so happy with his new toys.

What's Eno's first name?
- the strangest sms I got this weekend and it's from limabean. lol. BRIAN! King of ambient music and don't forget it! :)

Welcome home Yoyo. It's about time, we all missed you. You're still a flamboyant dancer and adept at creating elbow room on the dancefloor.