Today is beautiful because:
1) Sight & Sound arrived miraculously (well, if a disgruntled evening courier could be considered a miracle).

2) I love "Thirty two short films about Glenn Gould". Everything from how he hummed as he played on his piano; how he likened the radio to wallpaper; how he read music before he read words; how he thought of the audience-to-artist ratio as 1:0; how I learnt a new word from watching the film (Arboretum.. a word I've never heard of before all my life); and especially! especially! especially! his lovely rendition of "The Well-Tempered Klavier" (which was also featured in the animation Belleville Rendezvous). I've never been an active listener of classical music, and I confess I am grossly ignorant in this field. But I can appreciate Glenn Gould because he too, was no good without music.

Guerilla blogging continues.

I've been carrying my mobile phone bill around but I kept forgetting to pay it.

The latest mailorder issue of Sight & Sound is still AWOL. What I'm wondering is: will any of my neighbours actually bother to steal this, of all publications?

I'm going to embark on reading a library book where the opening line reads "Steve got his dick caught in the window." And it's a local book too. Well, at least there's no mention of ghosts.

I can't decide which library DVD to watch first: Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger than Paradise" or "Thirty-two Short films about Glenn Gould".

I no longer smell like Flower. Now I'm just Summer.

And most importantly, milo is now available and order has been restored in my world.

The morning after. The most significant disaster in my life today is our office dispenser has run out of milo and everyone's suffering from withdrawal symptoms. I'm waiting for the supply to be replenished, and in the meantime I've resorted to drinking cappucino and cafe mocha in the morning as a milo substitute.

But last night was great wasn't it? :) Thank you guys.

What I can blog if I have only 5 minutes to change and dash out the door for Thievery Corporation, or:
Today is my best friend's birthday. I sms'd him to wish that he had a nice birthday, and he replied that it's the same as every other beautiful day.
So it is.

4th dream in a row. Hazy. A boy on rollerblades. My JC girlfriend. Doctors. Losing a bag. Wha?

What I learnt today.
Ask for the sky and maybe you'll get a cloud.

Courtesy of not-so-strange-K.

What Is Your Battle Cry?

Zang! Who is that, prowling out of the mountains! It is Vaya, hands clutching a studded crowbar! And with a bloodthirsty howl, her voice cometh: "This one's for you, mom! I slice through beating hearts with reckless abandon!!!"

Find out! Enter username: Are you a girl, or a guy ?

created by beatings : powered by monkeys

The power of numbers is never more evident than when we used them to speculate on the time of our dying. Sometimes I bargain with myself. Would I be willing to accept sixty-five, Genghis Khan's age on dying? Suleiman the Magnificent made it to seventy-six. That sounds all right, especially the way I feel now, but how will it sound when I'm seventy-three?
- Don DeLillo, White Noise

The 3rd consecutive dream. I dreamt that I was leading a rugby team which consisted of my colleagues. What was bizarre was we didn't have proper rugby uniforms so we wore duck costumes. The other problem is I didn't know the game rules in real life since I've never followed any rugby match, and that translated to my dream too. Oh yah, there was an annoying leeching young girl somewhere in the dream too.

I think I prefer dreamless sleep.

For 2 nights in a row I've been dreaming. Last night I dreamt that I was sitting in the left backseat of a car, and thread was unravelling from the upholstery somehow. Other people were talking in the car but I wasn't really paying attention. I couldn't help picking at the loose thread, but the more I picked the worst it got. And that was all I did in the dream.. I wouldn't let the thread go.

The mess that I made
Putting my life on parade
Now the writers can say we were right all along
You can't make someone love you with your songs
- Her Space Holiday, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend

I waited for him to go on. It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone.
- Don DeLillo, White Noise

"Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain?"
- Don DeLillo, White Noise

As of today, I've watched 169 films this year, not including films I've watched on repeated runs. Compared to the total year record last year which peaked at 182, this is definitely not a good sign. Is it too late now not to crack last year's record?

I wish I had recorded my dad's voice when he was still alive. There is a specific conversation I remember, when I was visiting him in hospital. I sat next to his bed, and he was relating to me the delicious food he had when he was in China, especially Peking Duck. He was so skinny and ill that he couldn't have eaten Peking Duck even if it had materialised before us right that moment. But his eyes shone and there was laughter in his voice, and somehow this conversation registered in my memory more than any other I've had with him.

I want to hear the laughter in his voice again.

Last night I dreamt I nearly heard your voice again. In my dream, I was wandering round a flea market and rummaging through odds and ends, when I came to a stall where the owner looked vaguely familiar. She saw me and her face lit up, and she picked up an old retro-looking phone to dial. Then she passed the phone receiver to me and indicated that the call was for me. "Hello.. hello.. hello?" I repeated myself like an idiot. There was silence on the other end. I returned the phone receiver to the stall owner with a confused look, and she told me she tried to call you the instant she saw me. At that moment I realised that this was one of your friends whom I've met before, and that this has to be a dream.

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
-Giorgos Seferis, writer, diplomat, Nobel laureate (1900-1971)

Mum just asked me if I wanted to eat mooncake with bread for breakfast, somewhat like a mooncake sandwich. This is the same quirky parent who enthusiastically suggested ice-cream sandwich for breakfast too. I'm starting to think that anything + bread will be approved by mum, as if bread makes everything else ok.

Random thought #946: I don't remember working life before yahoo messenger.

If you are asking me to a film screening, to which I've replied that a girlfriend has helped me to get my ticket already, you DO NOT ask me to help you get your ticket
- when you know how packed my schedule is
- when ticket sales are readily available online
- by assuming that every movie you watch with me is free

You DO NOT watch a film to keep me company.
I DO NOT watch films for company.
This is NOT why I watch films.

Last thought before sleeping last night and first thought upon awaking this morning:

America, you are not the world. You do not expect people to wake up for a teleconference at 5.30am their local time, especially if one of the parties involved is your customer. Snap out of it and see beyond your toes.

Contrary to my US travelmate's advice, I did it. I chose to wake at 6am for a quick 4km run before work. lol.

I'm having convoluted thoughts about micro-time slicing. Like since I don't have time to run after work, if I can manage to wake at 5.45am, will I be able to run at 6am and get home to shower with enough time to hit the customer's by 8.30am? Or if I don't wake in time, I can leave home by 7.45am and walk a few bus stops down and catch the bus there instead, and still hit the customer's by 8.30am? (But do I really want to walk half an hour in heels while carrying my laptop?) Or I can try to hit the gym after work but how much work must I bring home then? And with the laptop in tow? And which gym? The office one or the one in town?

Do you see now why I've not been running?

Baking analogy at work today.
I'm feeling nostalgic about my old bakery. Life's so much simpler there. Now I not only have to worry about baking, I have to worry that bakers are assigned aprons; that there's laundry service if their aprons get dirty; that they are allocated enough time with the oven. I feel overwhelmed and so bloody tired.

I woke up distinctly remembering that I was dreaming of spaceships. People leaving on spaceships though they were warned of impending danger. Futuristic beings conversing in English. Strangely everything in the dream felt decidedly American.

Random thought #215: What determines the country of origin for a film? Is it the nationality of the director, or the country in which the film is set in? Though Bertolucci is italian, his latest film The Dreamers is set in France and the entire script is in french. Does that make this an italian or a french film? What then about futuristic films like Star Wars? Surely that is an entire new universe of origin?

Random fact #337: In a discussion over tea, I realised that cutting nails (on fingers as well as toes) with scissors isn't something everyone does. I'm more amused at my ambidexterity in handling scissors with both hands to cut nails than bothered about the maintenance of my nails, and I guess that probably gives you a clue about me.

In the Vietnamese film The Vertical Ray of the Sun, there is a scene of siblings waking up in the morning. An alarm goes off but it's not insistent or rude. A brother and sister wake up languidly and their rooms are bathed with light. They walk slowly round and stretch in a dreamy state while Lou Reed sings in the background. They look contented like they have all the time in the world, and the most urgent question on their mind is probably what they should eat for breakfast.

This is what I long for. This careless disregard for time.

I still lack sleep. Still haven't read those library books or watched the library DVDs. Still haven't gone to the gym. Still haven't run. Still haven't checked office email this weekend. Still haven't drunk enough water. Still haven't learnt how to knot a tie. Still listening to Fridge's Ark on auto-repeat in an attempt to understand what it is about the song that makes me want to listen to it again and again. Still need more time.

If music is my lover, then you are just a tease.

What I woke up to this morning. It's a song by Fridge called Ark.

Ok, blogging is on the backburner considering the other things I've got to juggle. In the midst of all this, I just want to ask this:

WHERE ARE YOU YOYO? IF YOU ARE ALIVE, RESPOND TO SMS/ PHONE CALL/ EMAIL, WON'T YOU?

Yes well, I thought that might get the boy's attention.

Yes yes yes bone-weary tired not-enough-sleep tired work-till-you-drop tired.

Today I discovered that I'm actually prayed for. A friend told me he's got an exam coming up, so I wished him good luck. He said, "better pray for me" and I replied, "I can't pray but I hope someone prays for you." That was when he answered that he says a prayer every night to Guan Yin for all his friends (including me), and sometimes he can even list out the names. I think my jc girlfriend prays to God for me on occasions too, so I guess I'm covered under 2 religions.

No, I'm not being flippant. I'm just glad people pray for me.

"..We need gestures today. People's stomachs are shrinking with fear. We need to wear each other's underwear. I issue this edict. Wear each other's underwear. It's a gesture of faith in each other. It's the end of fear.. This is my vision. Everybody in the whole world wearing each other's underwear. Whole nations exchanging underwear. China doing Egypt's laundry. Big strong Turks wearing panties from Scarsdale. A people thing. I'm pro-people all the way. It would help us so much. I see it in my mind's eye. Special fourth-class rates for underwear. Cargo ships full of underwear plying the trade routes. This is my vision. Underwear chain letters. World peace through underwear."
- Don DeLillo, great jones street

The zero-story zero-dialogue film that I'm currently in love with: Koyaanisqatsi, or Life Out of Balance. If only I can find the 2 sequels now.

Woke up and worked from home before I went to the customer's, and then I got home and carried on with work again. And still there are colleagues disgruntled that I can't give them more time slices for other assignments. Urgh.

Slept 4 hours. Rode 3 times on a Segway Human Transporter. Found out that: a) b12 wished there were formal adult dress shoe versions of Heelys, and b) b12 owns a handkerchief which has the Tokyo subway map printed on it (he brings this handkerchief on every trip to Tokyo cos he doesn't carry a map). Am way too tired now, and there's still work tomorrow. Woohoo.

Music is the final hypnotic. Music puts me just so out of everything. I get taken beyond every reference that indicates who I am or how I behave. Just so out of it. Music is dangerous in so many ways. It's the most dangerous thing in the world.
- Don DeLillo, great jones street

It was a brilliant birthday where everything was so perfectly optimised it seemed too good to be true. I'm going to brain dump and document this down today so I can recall it next year! It'll be boring though, so this is probably where you can stop reading. You've been warned.

Had a nice chat with the guys over breakfast. No carrot cake available though, dammit.

Went to the book sale where I bumped into HP's girlfriend, the only other person whom I know has the exact birthday as me. If that wasn't amazing enough, I found a copy of Who is That?, a book featured on last night's screening of Cinemania. In the film, a film buff recommended this book for listing obscure old actors and actresses, and I've never even heard of it prior to that. I can't even begin to explain how impossible it is to actually find this book the very next day. Needless to say I bought the book.

As the book sale was located near my hair stylist, I dropped by to trim my fringe. Got a discount cos it's my birthday, woohoo!

Went down to the Orchard Library next to return DVDs and borrowed 3 Don DeLillo books. Lugged the books over to a newly opened cafe in Wisma with huge floor to ceiling glass windows, and had a lovely time reading there.

Dropped by Esplanade. Borrowed 3 more DVDs. Had honey crunch cake, earl grey tea and lychee ice-cream. Bought a ticket to watch Trocks (the all male NY comedy ballet) alone, but bumped into my US travelmate and her family there. The performance was hilarious!

Received lovely sms and phone birthday greetings from folks throughout the day. There weren't any work-related calls at all.

Came home to find that it's possible to try out a Segway Human Transporter in Singapore.

It's been a long while since I've had so much time alone. Blissed out. :)

There was a time when you and I were the first persons each other saw as the day crossed over into our birthdays. This year, the first person I saw was a stranger wearing a striped peak cap, T-shirt and faded jeans, lounged lazily across the aisle in the last MRT tonight. Oh well.

My favourite character in the documentary movie Cinemania is a movie fan named Harvey. He memorised running times of movies and would protest if theatres published the wrong times. I found the scene where he was read a list of movies, with which he promptly replied their running times hilarious.

Anarchy asked me why I carry my book around in a book bag. I told him it's to protect the book, especially the spine, from creasing. But why is that, since I've no qualms about acquiring second-hand books, most of which already are creased? I gave him this analogy: it's like loving kids, whether they're handicapped or not. Kids can come into my care with broken limbs and I'll still love them. But I won't be the one to break them.

"I'm perfectly willing to watch a sunset," Dean once said, "but I also want to know why it's orange and why it looks bigger when it touches the horizon. People think science is dry," he added, "but it's as emotionally charged as looking at a beautiful woman. The most shallow bunch of pinheads I know are arts people. I ask them, "So you're cultured and well read? Tell me one differential equation you know, one piece of elegant physics."
- Quote from Dean Kamen, founding inventor of Segway Human Transporter

You know sometimes when you watch a film and in it there's a snippet of another film being played, sort of like one director paying homage to another? I don't know how it happened, but I think I've become the sort of person who can identify the film within a film.

Listen. When you start thinking you're afraid to lose someone, you've already lost them but you don't know it yet. You yearn to constantly stay in touch with them but you don't want to seem too eager. An email is too slow, and a phone call is too direct. The alternative is to sms them, but you want to send a brilliant message that will reel them in to continue the sms exchange with you. So much hinges on that first sms you send, but somehow you can already sense their indifference.

I want to tell you that this is everyone's story at one point or other.

Baking analogy today, in which I had a conversation with my colleague and learnt a new management term.

Him: Are you free next week? I need someone to go examine cake crumbs.
Me: Are you joking? The oven has been delivered late and we're behind baking schedule!
Him: Yes.
Pause.
Him: But a high-level handshake has taken place.
Me: A WHAT?
Him: One of our boss' bosses has spoken to someone else's boss' boss.

I've read a short story once, where a young man bought an antique table in which he discovered 3 secret drawers. He opened up the first one and read a long letter left there by a young woman, who was the previous owner of the table. On a whim, he decided to write her a reply which he placed back in the drawer. Some time later, he opened up the second drawer and found her reply to his letter. Somehow there was a time displacement and their letters travelled through time. So they fell in love and of course it was doomed. What I never understood was: why didn't he open up all 3 drawers at once? Wouldn't that have been logical?

The awful thing about life is this: Everyone has their reasons.
- from Jean Renoir's film The Rules of the Game

I'm in love with Alain Resnais' "Hiroshima mon amour".

The story is this: a french actress visits Hiroshima to make a film about peace, and there she meets a Japanese architect on her second last day and they fall in love.
Except they are both happily married to other people.
We don't know how they meet or even their names.
The first scene is of their naked entwined bodies with ash raining down on them, like in the aftermath of the A-bomb.
She remembers her first love 14 years ago, also an impossible love.
She says she will start to forget him, as with her first love, and there will be other encounters after him.
They walk aimlessly round Hiroshima till the day breaks on her last day there. They part company and still she wanders back to find him. But when she finds him, she leaves him and he trails her again.
He asks her to stay, even just a few days more, and she says there is no point.
And yet they can't part.
Or do they?

I just spent a lovely night with wonderful friends. Thank you all for the thoughtful gifts.. the sports wear, the spell book, the chocolates, the cakes, the candle, the DVDs, the CDs, the Be@rbricks, the soft toy dog, the huge smiling sunflower.. But most of all, thank you for your company and laughter all this while. I can't remember having laughed so much in ages, especially not over a sexually-charged kitchen.

If I've not mentioned it often enough, I'll just like to say it here... I'm glad to have all your friendship. I hope to keep every one of you close :)

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a
stone.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Musical find today: I love you but I've chosen Darkness' song entitled Your Worst is the Best.

The band name is so catchy I smiled as I recited it softly to myself again and again.

Little red riding hood. Go see this painting for yourself at the Arts House at the Old Parliament. I just fell in love with it.

After work I ran, met up with friends, came home to an icq message which said "Wish you were here", and wished this wasn't wished.

I'm not in love. Haven't been in love for the longest time. And I don't really give a damn.

The art of buying cigarette cases. I bought a friend a cigarette case the other day, and he lost it a few hours later together with his bag in the back of a cab. (Taxi driver wisdom: "If someone steals your cab, it is not meant to be your cab.") So I bought him a different case to cheer him up. This time round, he held it up to scrutinise and I asked why. He said he wondered if it's air-tight. If not, the cigarettes will go stale. And that struck me as amusing, cos since I'm not a smoker, I didn't know enough to factor that in when selecting a cigarette case. I simply went with the one that looked best.

Perhaps a non air-tight cigarette case will be a better smoking deterent than nicotine patches?

Today, my best friend and I discussed about project meltdowns. In bake speak, this means the cake mixture is in the oven but somehow hasn't risen though it's past the time allocated for baking. So do you open up the oven to check what's wrong with the mixture, set the timer for an extended period of time, or pull the cake mixture out of the oven completely? We hadn't a clue.

I listened to the Free Design's rendition of "California Dreaming" on auto-repeat. It sounds remarkably like the original by the Mamas and the Papas, 'cept a little jazzier. And I've still never gone to California. Why?

I gave up borrowing a library DVD of the Coen brothers' "The Man Who wasn't There" in favour of Alain Renais' "Hiroshima mon Amour". Yes, I admit to being a Criterion Collection snob.

And a friend dreamt of me as an air stewardess, but then he realised it couldn't have been me cos I was too tall in the dream. Riiight. Remember you're not any safer in first class either.

Going to shower and sleep soon, but can someone please tell me what Zoroastrianism really means?

On starting a relationship: New shoes always hurt.
- Taxi driver wisdom

I was given a book of wisdom today. To be precise, it's a book of quotes gleaned from conversations with taxi drivers in New York. The book describes it aptly this way: "New York cab drivers are the world's most accessible source of truth and wisdom. Where else can you have intimate conversations with someone from Tibet, Bangladesh, Liberia, India, Zaire, Pakistan, Vietnam, Iran, Russia, Haiti, Peru, Lithuania, Poland, the Ivory Coast? Where else can you hear the wisdom of Taoism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Islam, Santeria, Scientology, Zogqen, Zoroastrianism,and Howard Stern?"

There was a ribbon placeholder in the book spine, and it marked the page entitled On being fickle. The quote there was: "The things you love are as stupid as the things you hate and are easily interchangeable." I asked if this page was highlighted deliberately for me, but there was no reply. Anyway, I finished reading the book on my commute home and it was the first time I've completed a book in ages.

If I were a taxi driver, I would probably stun passengers with random nuggets of useless information. Like did you know that Jon Bon Jovi's parents were a hairdresser and a Playboy Bunny? No wonder he had all that big hair! Or wouldn't it be much easier to fall in love if people were books, songs, movies or such? And on top of that, the passengers would realise with dismay my atrocious sense of direction.

Hmm. Maybe it's not time to consider a career change yet.

A colleague said something amusing today. His work involves wrapping up the project after everyone is done, so when asked to describe his work, he said that he feels like the driver of a getaway car at a robbery. He's nervously waiting for everyone else to finish robbing and run back to the car so he can drive off. But till then, he's fidgeting in his seat while police cars cruise by.