There are people who learn when they're in a relationship. For me, the learning often takes place in the aftermath when I'm alone. I learnt to play pool without you. Travelled to places without you. Read books without you. Watched films without you. Ran without you. It's like everything else is a substitute for the space you were supposed to fill, and now I'm more or less self-sufficient. I can't tell if that's a blessing or a curse.

I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.
- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Da mouse is right. This book does read like a blog.

I was on my way home, having bought Portugeuse writer Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet from the Kinokuniya book sale, and my best friend sms'd to ask if there was a blackout in my area (there was). Then when you sms'd, I mentioned both the book and the blackout in my sms reply. I didn't expect you to phone right after to keep me company while I travelled home. So I mentioned The Book of Disquiet is the saddest diary never written and you told me about Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar, and we talked somewhat awkwardly on nothing much in particular till I hit my place.

We've just had our first phone conversation and I'm undecided about you.

The magical 4 digit number today is 9184, and cats lie on hot hoods.
No, I'm being flippant here cos I chose to surf for music rather than shower and more importantly, sleep. But I'm happy. Soon it will be done.

Dogs die in hot cars.

Behind fourteen doors a sad parade of paramours
are throwing little white rocks at sorrow's windowpane
- Jim White, Bluebird

Drill a hole in that substrate and tell me what you see.

the blueprint for sorrow is just to put off the hurt
'Til the price of tomorrow becomes more than love's worth
- Jim White, Phone Booth in Heaven

Baking analogy not about work. It's one thing to dip your finger into the cake mixture and muse over how nice the cake will be, and another thing to be in a room filled mostly with strangers eating the cake enthusiastically.

Someone eating the cake told me he'd have loved to help, but not for any menial tasks. I was quite vexed cos baking the cake is mostly about menial tasks.

Mixbag of thoughts.

A friend mentioned that he's not as blackhole as me, meaning he doesn't suck as many friends into his sphere of influence as I do. So I guess if I were a song personified, I could be Soundgarden's "Blackhole Sun"? lol.

I never take clear pictures when I'm listening to good music. Whenever I listen to a nice tune at a gig, I'll whip out my mobile phone camera to take a snapshot to remind myself of that instant. The picture invariably turns out fuzzy and dark. I can blame it on the quality of pictures taken by mobile phone cameras under bad lighting, but somehow I feel that I've got to sacrifice sight for sound in order to appreciate the sound more.

My best friend thought turning too corporate is like suffering from Alzheimer's... one keeps losing a part of oneself. I'm wondering which part I'm losing now.

And the fun has just begun. Thanks to everyone for their support!

By some strange twist of fate, I'm now working alone in my new office. Everyone else is either at the customer's or working from our old office. As a result, there are times when I'm communicating to folks on our inhouse messenger, yahoo messenger, via email, desk phone, sms and mobile phone at nearly the same time. That's modern technology for you... no one has to see you to find you.

It always ends up like this. Everyone on my chat list has gone home except for da mouse and I, and we'll message and egg each other to quit. But no, I'm not ready to quit actually. Far from it, I like my new work place. There's always something new to learn here. I have for example, an efficient colleague who can hook me up to a helpdesk personnel in the States in the 5 minutes it took for me to walk from her building back to my office. Just chatting with strangers at the gym, I've found out which department sits in which building. There's always someone here round the clock. What's there not to like?

If only I can read more, sleep more, and fall sick less often.

In the faces of men and women I see God.
- Walt Whitman

There are so many flippant remarks I can make about that but I will bite my tongue, change into my running shoes and head for a run in the next building. And hopefully life gets better after that.

And hi to the Dutch friend who's reading me. :) About those styrofoam cups, I've been shredding them to bits after I've finished drinking from them at meetings. lol.

Random thought #484: no matter how sick or tired, you don't waste a $150 ticket, especially not when music is concerned.

So I attended the Linkin Park gig with my best friend, M and another guy friend (who's only had 3 hours of sleep daily due to Euro 2004). I've never seen so many little boys (and I mean the 10 year old variety) at a gig before.. it almost felt like Michael Jackson's paradise. It was a nice change cos it's my first gig at the Padang. There's something about the short perfect grass there, no mud or bald patches. Is this grass real or fake turf? I still can't tell.

Didn't really care for the Korean opening act. The crowd was less tactful and chanted for Linkin Park every chance it got. Linkin Park wasn't bad, and I decided to record some bootleg tracks on my mobile phone, especially when Linkin Park played Faint. The recording turned out bad, with lots of feedback. It couldn't even begin to capture that sensation I had of dancing on a trampoline, when you hurl your body up every which way to the music.

It was a good respite from work nonetheless.

I coughed involuntarily during sleep last night and slept sporadically. When I woke, my eyelashes were all glued together with mucus and I was still coughing. This is ridiculous. No meeting will stop me from seeing the doctor today.

The most memorable line this weekend was from a girlfriend who quipped that she needed to repaint her wall, which's now orange in colour. When I asked why, she said it got her too horny too often, and we looked at each other and laughed.

Yesterday I was watching the dragonboat race along Marina with my UK travelmate and my JC girlfriend while waiting for my US travelmate to show up. I stood behind the girls and whimsically took a picture of their backs, and at that moment, I thought: how nice, I'm with 2 of my most favourite girls in the world.

This coming week will be long but worthwhile, so hang in there Dave! :)

This throat is not mine. It is a gatekeeper who blocks violently anything I choose to grant entry, and rattles the drawbridge in angry protest. It wants me to submit, to lend voice to its disapproval.

Fuck you. I will not cough.

Courtesy of my bro, here's an article: Thousands of blogs fall silent.

I'm too complacent to begin backing up all my blog entries though.

Eating the Experience: a Warning by Rebecca Edwards

Never lend your cock to a poet, dear
she'll snap it off and scrawl it dry
next time there's no pen handy.
Never lend your thoughts to a poet, darling
she'll scatter the leavings
she won't wash up.
Never let your nervous system near a poet
she'll hotwire it
or link it to the closest satellite
and hot-line God.
Never
never get close enough
to let her flop back on your whoopie-cushion heart.
She won't unlock the door of the coldroom.
She'll plaster your dearest agonies across the lunchhour mall
sawing her blood-and-bone violin, wheedling go on, take everything.
Never go back for the furniture.
Never look back into her bricked-up eyes.
Just hit the tarmac and keep driving or
believe me
you won't know yourself.

Throat's been feeling sore lately, maybe cos I kept drinking cups of hot milo to keep warm in the new workplace. Also lacked sleep and felt woozy. After lunch yesterday, I saw a friend online and offered to elope with him (and get out of doing work). Was turned down unceremoniously before he went off for lunch, so I had to drag myself to the next meeting. The only respite is falling asleep instantly after I got home last night and sleeping 9 hours straight.

Woohoo. Weekend.

A friend I've known nearly half my life was driving me home, and along the way I flipped through a newly bought book of poetry by an Australian poetess named Rebecca Edwards. I found a poem with an unusual title and read it out loud, and somehow I thought I read well, or as he pointed out wryly, it's like how wearing a beautiful dress could make one look lovely. You try it, read it out loud won't you?

Finding My Voice, Who is Big, Bisexual and Bald, But Still Manages to Look Like Marilyn, by Rebecca Edwards

My voice and I
we don't sing each other love songs.
All the money's run out
and the words aren't so friendly anymore.
She says she needs some time
I'll hear from her solicitor.

My voice and I
we're seeing other friends.
I'm hoping something good
with wings and brazen Bassey lungs
will strip for me
on the iron branches
of the harpy tree.

Watch the way she lip-syncs
with a cutlass clenched in her teeth.
She's size eighteen, my pirate queen
and she's signed yours truly
on my abdomen.

Tell her
she can keep the money.
Tell the words I love them
blonde and fake
and burnt out as they are.

Random thought #289: I could get sentimental cos a relative stranger tugged my fingers when he asked me to dance. No smooth talk to get me on the dance floor. He just noticed me spaced out on the couch, listening to the music and smiling to myself, so he walked over and leaned down to tug my fingers gently. I shook my head with an apologetic smile, but if he only knew. But he didn't.

Some time around the end of 2001, Bob was sitting in Alex's kitchen. Alex had just been given a bass by his friend Mick, on the condition that he did 'something useful' with it.

"Do you want to learn to play the bass then, Bob?"
"No, I'm an artist, not a musician."
"It's the same thing."
"OK then."

So Bob learned the bass and they planned a band. It had to be something big. Bob wanted it to be on the level of Field Marshall Haig's tears that fell as he counted the statistics of the men he had sent over the top. Alex wanted to make music that girls could dance to.

This is Franz Ferdinand.

At the new workplace, everyone drinks their coffee from disposable styrofoam cups cos no one has time to wash their cups. Imagine that.

How to make a vaya

Ingredients: 3 parts intelligence 5 parts self-sufficiency 5 parts empathy

Method: Combine in a tall glass half filled with crushed ice. Add a little cocktail umbrella and a dash of lovability

Username:

Personality cocktail from Go-Quiz.com

Dream #421: I don't know you but this is how we met.

A much younger me in a strange land. The girls wanted a photo of themselves taken in front of a building, and I laughingly dashed across the street with the camera for a better view. You and your friends were sitting on the curb on the other side. Your friends were talking amongst themselves but you paid no attention. Instead, you looked up and our eyes locked in the count of a heartbeat. In that gaze we recognised each other in wonder. I took a tentative step in your direction but even in a dream, I hesitated. Instead, I turned away and carried on to take the photo. And the girls beckoned me to run back and I did without another backward glance.

But it wasn't the girls I saw through the camera's viewfinder. I saw only you.

If I could redream that sequence and summon you back, I would not falter. I would walk to you, sit by your side and lean my head gently on your shoulder. The two of us would heave a collective sigh of relief, and that would be the moment I whisper and tell you everything.

Friday.
I ran around 4 buildings to attend meetings, and nipped out inbetween to visit a customer as well. There was an instance where I was multi-tasking to the point of trying to eat an apple, talk on my mobile phone, carry my notes and run between locations simultaneously. It felt just like reliving my campus life in a time warp.

Get your GV Animation tickets here but also go get SHM and Substation tickets from Substation box office ok? :)
DO IT.
DO IT.
DO IT.

Reality check. Cold, exhausted, unfit, alone at work. There's a blinking red light on the phone set next to me, cos I still haven't figured out how to use the voice mail system here despite having downloaded the help instructions from the website. I've got a shitload to clear, am slowed down by admin tasks, and am tired of being thought not sympathetic enough to my bakers when I'm in a worse state than they are.

Someone told me over dinner last night that he wished he had my job.
Please, take it from me.

Random theory #231: Boo Hurrah theory.
Philosophy: Slightly disrespectful title for EMOTIVISM as a theory of ethics, because it analyses moral judgments as expressions of unfavourable or favourable emotion.

Today.
Baking analogy. I've been trying to fix a problem for over a day, and it goes something like this:
We've got an oven and we wonder if it works.
We put baking mixture in the oven, potter around and after a while we see a cake inside.
Question is: did the oven work, or did someone cheat and replace the mixture with a cake when we weren't looking?
The gist of it is I had to keep watch on the oven, and that was way too long.

I also figured out that I prefer to have KFC rather than Pizza Hut delivery for late night dinners. There's this KFC family dinner meal deal that includes cole slaw, whipped potato, buns, chicken nuggets, chicken pieces, chicken popcorn as well as pepsi! Great, not only do I have no time to work out and am eating junk, I've also memorised their delivery menu.

The cab driver who drove me home also lacked sleep. He had been driving from 6am till midnight (when he picked me up) and he hadn't slept the day before. Times are really bad.

One last thing.. I left work AFTER da mouse. That must be a cause for worry.

Totally untrue!

You're The Guns of August!
Though you're interested in war, what you really want to know is what causes war. You're out to expose imperialism, militarism, and nationalism for what they really are. Nevertheless, you're always living in the past and have a hard time dealing with what's going on today. You're also far more focused on Europe than anywhere else in the world. A fitting motto for you might be "Guns do kill, but so can diplomats."

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Animusic. Go to the Downloads section for Video Clips and check out Pipe Dreams. Amazing animation with bouncing balls richochetting off different musical instruments to make music.

Michel Gondry's music video for Polyphonic Spree's Light and Day, from the soundtrack of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Lip-synching actors and buildings, what's not to like? lol.

It's been a while since I've cruised for music. This is a fascinating stop-motion music video: Sam Bisbee's You are Here.

There's a mark on me
of love songs burning up in effigy..
I'm the same, though we've severed every courtesy we made.
- Pernice Brothers, Water Ban

To paraphrase, blog as if no one's reading. Then, it won't matter.

What I've learnt this weekend.

It's possible to miss a call from my best friend, and give him cause to believe that since I've not answered his call and hadn't blogged that day, I could have been warded in the hospital for head injury. :) Thanks to you and M though for your concern!

It's also possible to walk into a hair salon and spend nearly $150 just to come out looking nearly the same; and bring a girlfriend along to do her hair and she'd come out looking nearly the same too.

On top of that, I've had my hair cut on Saturday, hesitated about telling mum that I've cut my hair since it looked the same, but gave in and pretended I've got it cut on Sunday, and for mum to think that's why my hair looked better on Sunday.

I've bought the first pair of jeans that I could wear without any alterations made to its length. Another testimony to my mum's oblivion is that I managed to wear a skirt out the house and came back wearing the pair of newly bought jeans without her noticing it either.

Despite lots of quality time spent with friends, the best moment this weekend is a quiet reading session at Mac's, where I found out nuggets of useless information, like how Miramax is named after Mira and Max, the names of the parents of the Weinstein brothers who run the company.

I've learnt that my friends might not like one another, and some friends were more sincere than others.

I could remain locked in a casual clothes-buying pattern like I were still studying though it's been years since I've left Uni. And though my UK travelmate and I bought the same halterneck top, she could fill it much better than I could. lol.

And quarrels over blogs are really really not worth the effort. There are bigger things folks! :)

Today's conversations with taxi drivers.
One is holding a day job at a factory while driving the night shift on his taxi, in order to support a family of five on an income just over $2K. On top of normal household expenditures, he still has to pay the tuition teacher $15 an hour for tuition classes for one of his children. Luckily his children are quite understanding and are trying to save up now, but he thinks it'll be at least another 10 years till he can see any hope of retiring.

The other is nearly 50 years old and learning to play the saxophone. He told me he was inspired to learn the saxophone cos he wanted to play Careless Whispers on it. Now he can play that, as well as My Heart will Go on. Eh. He mentioned that he paid only $200 for his saxophone, while God paid the remaining $250. It seemed that he picked up $250 one day on the streets, just five $50 bills rolled into a thin cigarette. He thought this was a blessing for him to purchase that saxophone so he did.

You're Egypt!
Curator of ancient mystical secrets, your life on the surface is fairly typical these days. Though you are in denial about more things than most people. Nevertheless, you're trying to convince people that you're safe despite your more volatile and unstable times that seem to be behind you.  You like cats a whole lot. You'd probably really appreciate The Blue Pyramid.

Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

I've slept so much yesterday it's like I've slept my quota hours for the week. And still I wake up woozy and eager to duck back in bed. But onwards, problems are waiting for me.

I threw up porridge and kept down raisin bread. So far.

Something out of the whack happened this morning. I woke up with constant ringing in my right ear, and things in my vision took on a merry-go-round effect. I thought it was temporary, logged on as usual, and started messaging with Dave online. Strangely, I actually blacked out and found myself a couple of seconds later lying on the floor. Apparently I've hit my head and caused a huge bruise on my left knee in the process. While I was still clutching my phone and talking to a colleague. But I didn't remember fainting. I just got up in cold sweat and confused that I've got a bump on my head. I scared mum witless, we ended up at the clinic, where I threw up in front of the doctor (but into a plastic bag). Hohoho. So now I've been diagnosed with an inner ear viral infection, and possible head injury (depending on how much more I vomit).

Today isn't a good day to be sick actually, cos I've got lots of work to do. Shit.

Attending Faye Wong's concert tonight has made my day. She sang my second favourite song, and later my favourite one. Hearing her live is much better than running round the tracks listening to her on auto-repeat. Much better to see her quirky hop-and-dance, and hear her laugh as she forgot the lyrics to someone else's song. Her voice is the shiniest thing. It stands out divided from the accompanying music, much like the way Moses parted the Red Sea. The other instruments serve to pad the gaps where her voice isn't.

Faye is a reluctant singer because she doesn't like to entertain. She said that if she stopped singing, she would also stop all promotional activities and fade away so people would forget her. She didn't say much, she simply thanked the audience at the end of her songs.

No. Thank YOU.

Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set.
- Raymond Chandler

My UK travelmate told me I should schedule sleep in as an appointment, just to make sure I have enough time. I guess this is one appointment I'm always late for and excuse myself early from.

Today I stumbled across a photo I took on 13 Oct 2001, and decided to post it. Then I went to my archives to find out what I did on that day. Lots of blog posts that day but still I can't remember the circumstances under which I snapped this picture.