The first time we met you brought along a digicam to take my pic. I hid your digicam in my lap and told you in no uncertain terms that I hated having my photo taken. I was unreasonable and couldn't properly explain why I've never liked being photographed, but somehow you knew and never tried taking my pic after that. You're still trigger happy and carry your digicam around, but you take care to take everything else but me. Bits of me are caught in snapshots. My hand scooping out tiramisu with a spoon. The top of my head in the reflection from a mirror. The animal balloons you've given me. But never the complete me head-on.

Your pics are just like the snippets of you I try to capture in my blog.

Or maybe there is one thing. I just watched the music video for Ladytron's Seventeen. In it, a bunch of girls (presumably 17-year-olds) in school uniforms and with their hair severely bunned were ushered into a room and asked to dance in front of a 2-way mirror. Behind the 2-way mirror Ladytron was performing the song dispassionately. A schoolma'am sort would then weed out the girls who didn't cut it with their dancing until only one was left. This lone remaining girl was just dancing with her eyes closed and oblivious to her surroundings until she suddenly stopped to discover she was the only one left. Incomprehension flickered on her face as she leaned into the mirror trying to see who was on the other side.

She reminded me of me.

I haven't been blogging cos I'd rather tell you everything instead. Blogging has lost its satisfaction.

Till you explained, I had no idea what a White Dwarf is.

Twice in a row I was the only person working out in my gym.

For the first time, the gym receptionist asked if it's fine that she listened to the Chinese news over the speakers rather than play the typical gym muzak. I smiled ok as she knew very well I'm always hooked up to my Discman. We were both happy.

The second time there was a minor flood in the gym. Most electrical equipment conked off, including the weighing machine, the air-con and the hair dryer. The only ones that worked were the gym equipment.. and the speakers. I would have traded the speakers for any of the former.

We have the same tendency to overwhelm strangers with unnecessary information. Even while queuing for drinks, you'd start to explain to the drink stall auntie why you were humming your old school song, and I would chime in to add my 2 cents worth. I bet a roundup of the hawkers in Singapore would piece together our life stories.

I'm now FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) but very happy now. The time for reckoning will come but I'm going to enjoy the present moment. :)

My Voice of Reason (aka da mouse) has advised that if there's no appreciable difference in misery experienced subsequently(!!) and I were going to fuck up, I might as well fuck up all the way (assuming that fucking up yields me more pleasure now). But I think it's too late for that now. I can't even fuck up properly!

Just got home from dinner with a bunch of married successful schoolmates. They're nice folks but I'm utterly traumatised by talk about family and career. If my gym was open at this hour, I'd go over and run now till my heart burst.

Strangely everyone else seems more optimistic about love than I am, and more inclined to advise the impractical.

Today seems like a rehearsal for life after you're gone. I went to the gym and ran my usual 6km, no more no less. All the while I was listening to Radiohead's A Wolf at the Door on auto-repeat, the song that never failed to start you singing while we were looping through the album. It's not the easiest song to sing to, and there're so many lines that I wondered if you were making them up as you went along. And I guess maybe you were. I'd sing softly too, but as you've laughingly teased, sometimes I was 2 semitones out of tune.

After the run, I weighed myself and found that I'm at my lightest today despite your attempts to make me eat more, and to eat proper food. So I went and binged on Mac's (more but not proper food) while reading the latest Uncut magazine. Then I wandered over to sample music at Borders, and tried an album by Captain Beefheart whose songs you love. I've not heard his music before, but once I heard it I knew why.

I've often comforted myself with the thought that everything happens for a reason, but you don't buy that. For you, the birds and the fish, reasons are for the Gods.

We don't choose whom we love, but for me I'm glad it's you.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
- Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1867)

It's only when you prompted me with "Who again is the sun?" that I remembered. That my birthday branded me as the sun. The relentless burning sun that Icarus craved to be near, yet which melted the wax off his man-made wings and cast him down to sea.

You're the better writer I hope always to be privileged to read.

When birds fly, they do not ask why they were meant to touch the sky. Fish do not ask why they cannot drown. They watch Icarus plummet pass the sun, pass the white waves shimmering with heat, pass the memory of now, and shrug fins and feathers and move on.

This is how it is when you ask why.
- Your answer to my eternal Why

2 questions keep popping up all the time now.
What are we doing, and why?

While waiting for you to turn up, I went rummaging through the bargain bins at HMV and saw a dance CD by Komputer. The only reason this CD caught my attention was cos track 7 is titled Singapore and really, what could this sound like? Was musing when you phoned, and I started my usual chattering over the phone while still scanning the racks. After a minute or so, you just laughed and told me to look up. And there you were, standing there all along while I was totally oblivious. You never cease to be amused by how unaware I am, that I don't seem to have any radar blips on my horizon. Well, I showed you the CDs I intended to get and you couldn't believe I was getting the Komputer CD based on track 7. You asked if I'm particularly patriotic, but we both knew that's not why.

Some time later on the way back, we were sampling my new purchases and I popped in the Komputer CD and forwarded to the track called Singapore. It was the most awful shit imaginable. An electronic voice kept slow-chanting "Sing-a-pore" monotonously to the most painful tune and no one could possibly believe this is remotely palatable or worse, danceable. We looked at each other incredulously and started to giggle. You changed to another track to check if Komputer sounds like this all the time. And they don't. The other track actually sounded pretty well done.

I guess now we at least know what one musical act thinks about our country.

Because you have a better memory than I, I'm depending on you to remember.

Wednesday was an exceptional day. I went to the gym and decided to try running 10km. The last time I ran was the day after I drank too much, and then it was only 3.6km. This time I was listening to a new song a friend sent me (Ozma's "Rain of the Golden Gorilla") on auto-repeat and I thought I could really run to this song.

To digress: I'm the sort who can't go "I like track 3 of that album" cos track 3 could just as well have been track 2 couldn't it? Who knows? I need a song title, and an intriguing one is better. "Rain of the Golden Gorilla"? Wtf does that mean? There's no rain, and no Golden Gorilla anywhere in the lyrics. A friend analysed that the Gorilla symbolises sincerity (as from the nature documentaries) and a Golden Gorilla means Mega-sincerity. And oh, rain means tears of cos. But I think this song is about Denial. Anyway, it's a real catchy tune with simple guitar chords.

Back to running. I was on such a high I was smiling and lipsynching to the song throughout. During that hour I ran, probably everyone in my row of treadmills has broken their own personal best records too while waiting for one of us to stop running first. That was fun! The thing was: the treadmill's programmed to stop after 60 minutes. I never knew that. Cos I did a minute of warm-up walking before launching myself into the run, by the time an hour's up, I only did 9.93km. This is the longest I've ever run so far though and I'm so tickled.

But today it's down to 4.6km. Running is getting erratic just like my sleeping hours.

Every poem is a prayer against loneliness. When I write, there are two people: the poem I'm writing and the poem that wants to be written. When I re-read what I've written, that makes three. If I read the poem to someone else that makes four. Poetry and prayer spell loneliness.
- Sharon Olds on Praying in Public

Mixed bag of thoughts this morning before hurtling off to work.

Blogging with the new blog editor no longer works in the office. Maybe that's a blessing in disguise.

A girlfriend explained to me that according to the day I'm born in the month, I'm a Sun. Warm blazing beaming sort around whom people gravitate. Eh. Some of the guys (actually my best friend, Dave and 3TapRiff, who happened to be born on the same day in different months) are Moons, hence they are good philosophical writers. Sun and Moon will make good friends. Ooh? Weird shit.

And I wonder how my US travelmate is doing reclaiming her life so far.

Today while housekeeping emails, I came across a email from a girlfriend I haven't seen in ages. Emailed her on impulse and got an immediate response. One thing led to another and we just met tonight for dinner. What I learnt from her? "The closer the church, the further the God." lol. Funny what kids remember from idiom books in school. I had fun pumpkin! Woohoo to you!

2 weeks ago, 3 of us at a cafe. You hid away my mobile phone cos you sensed I'm too needy of it, and decided to provoke me. I got antsy especially since prior to this, you were merrily describing how you all sent lewd sms messages from another friend's mobile phone without his knowledge. I raised an eyebrow at your friend, who patiently explained that since we've only just met, there's no way he would help me against an old friend. Finally after lots of wheedling, I got my security blanket back.

Today, while searching through my mobile phone outbox messages for a reminder sms, I came across the message you've left behind. Thanks for being a friend.

Drank way too much last night at a friend's housewarming but didn't puke though. Woke up in the wee hours this morning with my heart pounding fast, so much that I felt my fingertips tingle with my heartbeat. And I don't get this way even when I run. No hangover but today's running in the gym got screwed up by the drinking, and yesterday I was even thinking of progressing to running 10km in an hour.

I need to know my limits.

For a few months, a pack of 50 flower seeds have been lying on my office table. They're Rose Sunray [or Helipterum roseum (Acroclinium roseum)] seeds, sent to me by a charity organisation I've previously donated to. The picture of the flowers on the pack depicts huge gorgeous sunflowers in red, pink and white. All this while I've not opened the pack; instead I just pressed delicately on it to feel the outlines of the seeds. These seeds would never reach their potential in my hands: they would never live and become those magnificent flowers they were meant to be. But they would never die too, as if that could afford some comfort.

The seeds and I make strange company.

Today at work I laid my head on the conference room table in defeat and wondered why I'm still doing what I do. And went on doing it anyway.

Today I had an impromptu lunch with my UK travelmate, and she turned up in a blouse I nearly wore this morning (we owned identical pieces). I was almost wistful that I didn't, cos though it would have been awkward, we would have had something to giggle over wouldn't we?

Today I'm still listening to Damien Rice's debut album O, and in love with a track entitled Volcano. Dave Gahan's Paper Monsters is next on my playlist, but I think I still prefer him singing with Depeche Mode.

Today a friend and I were supposed to watch the music documentary for 1 Giant Leap but he got bogged down by work (as usual). So da mouse, this is what you missed:
a music critic who sat in front of me and slept throughout the screening, even snoring at one point.
a documentary which wasn't joint, but DVD segments. Random snippets are:
- Little curious children pushing their laughing faces into the camera.
- One of the filmmakers keep trying to slow down the drum playing by the Indian musicians, cos the beats are wonderful but way too fast for them to cope with.
- Another filmmaker getting a huge Maori tattoo.
- The ironic jokes by a puppet in the guise of Gandhi, proclaiming that he's wearing the loincloth of a very famous Indian called Ben Kingsley.
- Kurt Vonnegut saying how writers probably wish they were musicians instead, cos when they're performing they can tell instinctively how right it feels. Instant gratification.

Today I came home to find mum watching The Bachelorette on tv, which was unusual since there were no subtitles and mum couldn't understand English. I asked her why she's watching it, and typically she didn't answer me but asked instead, why all these good looking people need to go on tv to find true love.

Today I read a blog and stumbled upon a website for Things Found and fell in love.

Today an online friend sent me a song, and casually remarked "i find u strange, but in a good way".

Today I blogged.

Just watched the movie The Hulk. Most memorable scene to me was when the Hulk started running in huge leaps and bounds all over the place in exhilaration. It's like when I was running on the treadmill listening to my Discman, and the music's beat was out of sync with my running. Then I playfully wondered if I could experiment by running to the music's beat instead, and the result was I had to do a funny little leap every so often to keep pace with the treadmill. And since no one else could hear the music, I looked absolutely strange with this little antic. But it felt so right. Right there and then I would have had a laughing fit if I had air to spare, but since I didn't all I did was beam.

It was drizzling when I left the office, and I spotted a young indian girl standing without shelter at the traffic junction. Went up and offered to share my umbrella with her. She smiled and said thanks, and out of the blue asked if there's any vacancy at my company for new-hires. I was surprised and then I realised she's in earnest. Times must be really bad.

Ran 8km intentionally on the treadmill while I dreamt of running people leaving a trail of musical notes in their wake. Realised I may never be able to separate the idea of music from running (though the effect is not vice versa). One dashing figure is all it takes to trigger an accompanying soundtrack in my head. Lucky me.

And so it is just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
most of the time
And so it is the shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky
- Damien Rice, The Blower's Daughter