awareness on you.

distractions are nice. especially if clothed just so.

can't take my awareness off him!

two days spent lovely

people leaving. lovely people leaving.

one has left, two more to go. i'm staying on, nowhere else i want to be.


but these two days were spent lovely. had a ball of a time, things seem to be going on well, despite hiccups.

and i love life.

sobered

phew.

sobered already. heady distractions waved away and reality returns gently.


happiness. :)

sexy shirt

he stepped into the office today in a sexy shirt.

call me a sucker but he's the kind who possesses the kind of street-rogue charm. in a see-through shirt and jeans that, as usual, seem to oh-so-unwarily accent his butt, like it's a kind of an accident.


mmm yummy.

but ah, distractions aside...

ooh frenchie me

Your French Name is:

Jeannine Colin

What's Your French Name?

the place.

the place i had chosen out of the three possibilities has one main factor: The Lord.

When i stepped in one of the things i had seen was His visage, in the form of a painting, looking down benignly at me from a higher part of the wall. it has been good.

i really love the old-world feel of it, almost like this place hasn't been touched by time. the staircase if i remember correctly was still mosaic, and it spiraled angularly up to the second storey. there even was a bathtub! oh gosh, i had always wanted a bathtub! the old lady seemed fine, the maid can cook a decent chinese meal, given the yummy aromas that wafted from the kitchen when i was visiting.

thus. i'll be moving in come november. here's hoping i will be staying there for long, considering it is quiet and i love quietude. maybe draw up a contract that says i'll be sticking around for a year.....


hmm. The Lord will take care of me, and when it is time to move on, i will know. Amen.

place

i believe i have found the place for me. it's in bukit timah, it's a lovely lovely place with a pretty alright old aunty and her maid. rent's cheap and it looks like i'll love the weather there. lovely!


but i'm looking at this place in somerset tomorrow also.. let's all see how that goes!

there goes my baby; belated

there goes my baby, more ways than one. (just one more than one but it's still more ways than one)


-----

There Goes Ma Baby - Trisha Yearwood

He was the kind of guy who loved so unselffishly
And everyone could see what a prize he was
Everyone but me
I must be blind
I must be the kind
Who don't know what they have
'Till they're all alone and sad
There goes my baby
Like the sun falling out of the clear, blue sky
There goes my baby
And it's gonna be a cold, dark night
Now that I finally see
How I need him to be
Right here by my side
There goes my baby
Bye, bye, Baby, goodbye
How could I have a love so fine and not know what it's worth
Maybe this empty heart he left behind
Is all that I deserve
What kind of fool
Finds a perfect jewel
And can't see how it shines
'Till she's all alone and crying
There goes my baby
Like the sun falling out of the clear, blue sky
There goes my baby
And it's gonna be a cold, dark night
Now that I finally see
How I need him to be
Right here by my side
There goes my baby
Bye, bye, Baby, goodbye
How I wish I could hold him in my arms and say
"This time I'm gonna treat him right!"
But it's too late!
There goes my baby
Like the sun falling out of the clear, blue sky
There goes my baby
And it's gonna be a cold, dark night
Now that I finally see
How I need him to be
Right here by my side
There goes my baby
Bye, bye, Baby, goodbye
Bye, bye, Baby, goodbye
Bye, bye, Baby, goodbye!


----

There Goes Ma Baby - by The Drifters
(Bo-bo, doo-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo)
(There she goes) (doo-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo)
(There she goes) (doo-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo)
(Bo-bo) (doo-doot-doo-doo)
(Bo-bo) (doo-doo-doo-doo)

There goes my baby, movin' on down the line
Wonder where, wonder where, wonder where she is bound?
I broke her heart and made her cry
Now I'm alone, so all alone
What can I do, what can I do?

(There goes my baby) Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh
(There goes my baby) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
(There goes my baby) Whoa-oh-oh-oh
(There she goes) Yeah! (There she goes)

I wanna know if she loved me
Did she really love me?
Was she just playing me for a fool?

I wonder why she left me
Why did she leave me so all alone
So all alone

I was gonna tell her that I loved her
And that I need her
Beside my side to be my guide

I wanna know where is my (doo-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo)
Where is my baby (doo-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo) ?
I want my baby
I need my baby

Yeah, whoa-oh-oh

FADE
(There goes my baby)
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh

wonderment

i've always wondered how the things are the way they are.

the hits and misses, the good times, the bad. did i just carve these all out by myself??

club

been to a club today and witnessed the most interesting incident.

guy dances with girl with hot dance moves. girl shares a delicate snog on the dance floor, a while later guy was seen necking another guy and there was just too many group hugs and hugs all around.

guy ignores girl for necked buddy's attention (poor thing. ugly but i'm sure she's got a winning personality) and soon girl complain to necked friend and guy soon gets the shit. guy leaves club, girl follows later.

necked guy upset at the bar counter with another guy buddy who consoles him, somehow. girl and guy later seen outside of club, with the guy sitting in one corner, head between his knees and the girl's consoling him. it's interesting what we see in places as such. looks don't matter because 'personality' shines when lights are low.

and when you have air for brains chancey lights help if you have loads of foundation and mascara. either way, it works.


hahaha, what a funny world this is!

self-professed cold-faced person

i wonder, if i am overtly un-smiley sometimes. a smile makes me easier to approach, i suppose.

-chuckle- i suddenly remember a remark a certain simony had made about me: you're rather unapproachable.


maybe. maybe that's it. the lack of a smile and having a pokerface that tends towards Your High-Grouchy-Ness. i really should smile more. all bright-eyes but no smile - what a waste.

i should make an effort.

unedited

On Mosquitos

I had been here for two days and already I had counted the days I had been here.

Yes I know it’s only been two days and gully dwarves could count up to that number as well but I’m telling you, losing sleep for two nights running after a period of over-working is not funny.

Especially when the cause was mainly heat and mosquitoes. Heat I can hardly take already; heat coupled with mosquitoes warrants a surefire way to wake me and have me stay that way. Not that I’m ungrateful for the invitation to be about when the wedding takes place – I am, very much so in fact.

But being invited to witness the ceremonies during the day does not take away any of the itches that were bestowed upon me by these persistent six-legged little things during the night. Wearing painstakingly-crafted lacy garments helped, though, for I seemed to be wearing a fine, pretty net that allowed air to circulate and no mosquitoes. I was thankfully bite-free for the entire day. The downside was the weather was still as warm and humid as ever.

I had thought of a – principle, if you will – this morning when I was still bleary-eyed. If the reason why mosquitoes are this hungrily persistent is due to the ‘need’ for variety – does that mean hedonism is a bad bad thing indeed?

What I mean by variety is that these insects can survive on nectar, plant fluids and dew, not just human blood (or any blood, for that matter). And these insects chose human over plant, and me over the rest of the people. I have often wondered how they differentiated between the tastes, if there were tastes to us all. Surprisingly and for fear of sounding ever-so-slightly racist, my Malay roommates were left alone, so much so that when I had awoken from the pain (yes, literal pain) from the bites in the middle of the night to harass a slumbering roommate – her response was an exasperating ‘Really? There were mosquitoes?’

So… does that mean in a country and area that primarily houses Malays – I as a Chinese gets special treatment? Hmm. Maybe it was the difference in scent. But that cannot be, for I made sure I used whatever soap there was in the common bathroom. Maybe I give our more heat than the rest due to my higher metabolic rate and that therefore marks me as a beacon for those heat-sensing irritations? Or do people of different racial descent taste different to them? This is more possible than the ‘new-blood’ argument, considering I was bunking with three other people who were also visitors.

The reason why I ponder this much about mosquitoes is because goodness knows I react badly to mosquito bites, one bite can easily swell up to one and a half of the diameter of a fifty-cent coin. And God forbid that the bite should be on my face. It will look like a pimple and I cannot touch it. No amount of Oxy will help, the swelling will just have to go down by itself, which will take quite a few days indeed.
But through these two days, I had mastered mind over matter again. Funny, it happens each time I encounter mosquito problems as such which incidentally coincides with my trips to Indonesia.

Once the pain was over it was pretty much fine. It was the fifteen seconds after the bite that is quite unbearable. The itch that you can locate but cannot see; the itch you can locate and can see, then the stage wherein the itch heightens and the part that has been bitten starts swelling stupendously in irregular shapes and freak the hell out of you on top of being both itchy and painful at the same time.

If this is not poison I don’t know what is.


But then, mind over matter works. That or some soap and cold, cold water.

Hmm. Looks like I’ve said quite a bit about something as small as mosquitoes. I suppose I should get some sleep now and probably charge my laptop. The kids here seem to like me a lot, for some reason.

Do I smell nice to them too, that they like me this much?

men and women

i was having lunch today, as per usual, when there was a subtle shift in my perception.

the people i saw suddenly became acutely gendered.

not in the physical oh-i-got-big-boobies sense but rather their faces. the people about me are beautiful, but there is something about them that makes me want to back up a bit. i wonder if i give people that kinda feel.

and suddenly i got scared. i get the feeling that i'm swimming with sharks. me, this minnow, swimming with the fish who seem not to notice that i'm a minnow.

...i'd probably be dead if they did. the probably did, they probably are pretending that they don't notice so i can grow a little bigger so i can do more than just get stuck between their teeth.


the world is a big bad place!

marriage

my two dear friends are getting married! oh how lovely lovely lovely is that!

wow!

the longest day

it's one of those.

fortunately it's only ONE of those. if there were more i'd've killed myself as many times as THOSE times happened.


i was having the most wonderful dreams this morning when my eyes popped open due to biological tuning. needless to say, i closed them right again and spent the next hour swimming between quasi-wakefulness and a light doze, which meant that my delicious dreams were somehow intermitten.

when i finally had no choice but to get up off from bed i had thought it would be a good day today. then i proceeded to brush my teeth and get ready - the usual. everything was fine until i got on the bus, found myself a seat and tried to read my papers.

the papers refused to stay gripped. they were not that heavy though i'll admit that they are a little too wide to handle in a one-seater. the ride went on well, with no weird people sitting beside, in front of, nor behind me. it was alright. then i got off the bus - tapped my card and stepped off the bus, only to leave my slipper behind when my foot touched the ground.

my thong's (the footwear, not the lacy delicate) snapped!


i had to hurry to retrieve it lest the bus doors snap on my hand. it was, upon examination, fixable (thankfully). thus i half-trotted, half-hopped to the nearby coffee stall to get a rubberband. i frequent that place for their yummy toast and ice-blended horlicks and thus am at least familiar with the person running the show. i had therefore asked for a rubberband.

upon hearing my cheerful request and brief explanation, the chap gave me a sidelong look then ambled to retrieve one red rubberband for me, then proceeded to ask me for ten cents.


i looked at him in amused disbelief and, taking it as a joke, laughed and hopped to a seat and began to fix my slipper. once done i tested it and thanked the rather-curious shop-keeper whom i had gotten the thong-saver from. he then asked for ten cents again, then when i goofily stuck out my arm and told him, 'pluck it yourself' in chinese (ten cents sounds like '1 hair' in Chinese) he sauntered off elsewhere, mumbling to himself.

it was not until five happy self-congratulating five meters later that i realised i might just have mistaken that dry tone for something more humourous......


ho boy did i walk faster! i mean, ten cents wasn't much and i would've given it gladly but THAT was just embarrassing!






..and so i brisk-walked to my students' place and art class took place. the kids were up but we started late as usual for they took their time with their breakfast and by the time we started we were forty minutes behind time. it didn't help that the youngest had to sluuuuuurp her milo as loudly as a polite Japanese man would to praise an able cook.

she was, thankfully, cute. it helped with tolerating her for half a nanosecond more.


then i smacked her.

and lest you think i'm a bully, it was a literal slap on the wrist followed by gentle admonition.


the kids took more time than was needed to draw today, for some reason and by the time they were near done two hours had passed which left us all only one hour to paint, which sure as plums are diahorrhea-causing will not be enough to complete the paintings. and throughout the struggle it had to rain... the aircon was on, the rain was there, i had been ill, hadn't very much sleep and had to contend with these little rascals........

the final straw for that lesson was when one of them tried to be smart with me.


needless to say, i left that place (nearly an hour) later when i've scheduled to meet someone an hour after my planned lesson-end time.

it did not help at all, that the rain was still coming down onto the pavement in a suicidal fashion; nothing like the whimsical-hesitant-frivolous kind of rain that we get sometimes. having gotten my paycheck for that month for these, i was able to take a quick ride down to the meeting-place without getting too wet. i was not late, which was good.


what wasn't was that the bloke had asked to meet up after nearly a year and a half so i could meet HIS friend - it would be so much more interesting if he were gay - so i may have the chance to be 'introduced' to 'health products' and 'make money' at the same time.

(that's right. mlm. KILL ME SOMEBODY!)


so The Friend spent two hours talking to me, introducing to me the various perks and products i have heard of (just another brand) and the kind of money i can make and the places i can go to, the kind of bonding that is the culture -

it wasn't easy to appear to listen when your head hurts and your eyes feel like someone's squeezed some lemon juice into it and the weather is just so nice and cooling..... i prayed for a chance to get out of the place.

and He, my dear, sweet God, answered!


a customer from two centuries back called and i had to disrupt The Friend's speech and presentation with suitable apologies. to handle the call.

...but if He had answered my prayers then i had foolishly let it slip through my fingers. i had not harboured thoughts of citing that call as an excuse to bail. i harboured thoughts of that only after two minutes of sitting down, which was already too late for me to say 'hey, stop, i've to go back to the office...' (yes i kicked myself for that, only later)


thankfully though, He had noted this foolish mistake of mine and i received ANOTHER call from a different customer! never in my life was i so happy to hear an unfamiliar voice that mispronounces my name as 'lawrence' in a disgruntled manner.

this time, i took that chance. thanking The Friend for his efforts and time and THAT Friend for wanting to share, i fled.


if any one of you were to think i were an ingrate for spurning those two's efforts - trust me i feel bad about it. they may have done it for money, they may have done it 'to spread the goodwill' but if i were to be in their shoes i would appreciate the courtesy to listen. it IS hard to do sales, i fully appreciate that.


...but i kicked myself for not taking the first chance to run anyway.


once in the office things were alright; the customer left happy (until monday comes, anyway) and i was able to get a semblance of a peace of mind for a while. then i headed down to town in the late afternoon, to look for a particular book i had been lusting after since this morning.

so i spent more hours than necessary in that bookstore commonly known as borders - the sky darkened without my noticing and my hunger tugged at my unresponsive being - until nine-odd, when i finally eliminated enough books for me to pay without breaking the bank. i have the squinty-eyed latina thing going on for me by that time. still i managed to totter my way to the bistro behind the said bookstore and had dinner. juice and spaghetti, who would've thought they tasted so good?

i'll wake up to regret this in the morning, i know, but now's not morning and morning can wait.


once satisfied i started walking towards my bus station - and, beat this - when i was waiting for the man to turn green a chinese national (male) crossed the street and asked if i may spare him some money to eat. then, upon my handing over a ten, asked if he may have more, so he may put up somewhere.

he even asked my name and my number so he can return me the money. i'd provided him my name and a fake number - which is just as well for i noticed that he only took his mobile phone out when i prompted him to (why ask for phone numbers when you can't remember it?) and hadn't even copied my entire string of eight numbers, much less save it.


make no mistake, this fella hand-carries a leather (faux or otherwise i do not know) case and looks like your everyday exec on a friday evening. the only thing giving his origins away is his accent.

i mean, do i have 'loaded; ask for money here' scrawled across my forehead? i was in torn jeans and zipped-up cardigan with a beaten-up canvas slingbag WITH a bag of books and he asks if i may spare him monies for food AND lodging??

but then again, it was only ten bucks. if he had asked for it and didn't dare save my number he probably needs it more than i do.


and so i continue on my way to the bus station, and took that bus home.



what a day it's been, this! it's another day in this urban jungle. who says you don't have to fight for survival here? i know i have to, and i know others have to, too. what makes a difference is graciousness; in speech and in actions. i'm glad i did not put too many people on the defensive today. and yes, i have lived this day, quite to the fullest.

what about you, though?

flatmate.

i got a new flatmate
i saw him when i was sick, yesterday

then i didn't see him today
probably not again tomorrow

maybe never ever
until i move away

but who cares
i don't know him anyway

random

men are like that, you know. they're the weirdest things on earth. then again, i don't know women very well, neither. the entire race confounds me. they say one thing to mean another. it's either that or they mean it.

then there's this thing about expressing oneself. i mean, is it necessary? what does it matter, if one didn't speak, nor write, nor drew, nor...?


heh. i don't understand. then again, maybe i do.

writing about nothing at all

i try to write but nothing comes out
i try and try and leaves start to sprout
i wave them away in ridicule
but they entangle me in the slow-mo duel

two thousand years passed and still i write
around me little beings lived and died
i watched them grow i watched them fight
i even watched them discover light

then i knew what i'd to pen
why hadn't i thought of it then
it's this frenzy this lust for strife
this poison that accompanies life

but then i noticed that if i moved
their houses would fall and they'd be food
for nature's creatures; ants to - something tall
and i'd be writing about nothing at all