Pagan Poetry

I went to Settlers' Cafe at Clarke Quay recently, and I totally recommend it. If you have a student's pass, it's $6 for 4 hours of non-stop gaming - board games and card games, that is. They've got really fascinating stuff, not just boring Monopoly or Scrabble. The student's package is restricted from 2-6pm but drinks are free flow and the food is pretty good too.

Quite a few of the games would have been more fun with more people, but even though it was just me and Kiat, we still had quite a lot of fun by being schizo and each playing two hands XD I bet the staff were quite irritated with us though, because we were going through games like nobody's business and we kept insisting on playing games that needed more people :P

It's really weird singing with my former conductor (at least for me), and not my best performance by far definitely, but it was quite fun... mostly because Dr Goh is mad, *LOL*

It would be nice if there were more people though. Everybody who isn't in NTU Choir anymore, come join! =P

Goh Toh Chai in Concert
21st December 2006, 8 PM
Victoria Concert Hall
tickets @ $15 for stall, $20 for circle

My first performance as part of Amadeus! I'll only be singing in second half of the concert because this concert is more of a showcase of all our conductor's compostitions (including violin and piano and pipa). Victoria Chorale will be performing with us as well, and some of his NAFA students. See Dr Goh's website for more information.

Tickets through me if interested =)

You are The Wheel of Fortune

Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of
intoxication with success

The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I'm back in Singapore early! *glee* Managed to catch a connecting flight from GuangZhou 30 mins before the gate closed after a mad dash across half the GuangZhou airport, haha.

Quite frankly, I miss the nice cold winter wind (one of the opera teachers, Jia, declared I was the most strangely dressed person on the streets because everyone was huddled in jackets and scarves and I was walking about in a T-shirt, haha). But then again I'd trade a million winters to be back home.

I'm leaving on a jetplane
Don't know when I'll be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go...

I'm leaving for Anhui, China, tomorrow morning at 6.35am. And I sure hope there are no cock-ups and I manage to get back on 15th Nov, because I have an exam on 16th Nov. *SIGH* Why is my life so damn bloody "happening"?

Now I know what to write on the evalution forms... hahahaha. (P/S: Anybody knows which lecturer this is?)

Sometimes I wonder why ST still has Ong Sor Fern doing movie reviews, because she obviously has no taste. She tends to give ratings based on fangirl-tendencies for directors like Martin Scorsese, even if the movie is complete rubbish.

Take for example 'The Departed', Hollywood's newest massacre of an asian movie, which she gave 4 stars for. Maybe if you'd never watched the original, you'd think the plot's pretty good. After you've seen the original, you'll wonder at how Hollywood managed to turn such an emotional and exciting movie into a bland fake-blood bath with loud music and the token pointless sex scene thrown in.

The only really interesting person in the movie was Jack Nicholson acting like a madman - but then again he's always acting as a madman (You might as well watch 'Anger Management' or 'Batman'). DiCaprio looks more like a prettyboy juvenile delinquent than Italian mafia. Matt Damon did quite ok with his usual too-smart-for-his-own-good face and passable acting, but just so-so. The female lead is completely negligible.

But besides adding no real value in this remake, there was also glaring evidence of shoddy research and plain stupidity. Basically, too many taunts about cock-sucking. You'd think hardened criminals would have grown up a little more so as not to resemble 12-year-old American ~~retards~~ boys at the playground. It should be easy enough to learn proper Boston ghetto speak, Matt Damon is from the area after all. (Heck, I can swear more inventively than them!) Also, Chinese is very different from Cantonese, and it probably isn't very smart of them to be stating that China's going to bomb Taiwan as if it's a fact.

In the end, like Damon, you'll want to say "Oh whatever" too.

I've never really had any respiratory problems, but the haze for the last couple of days has really been getting to me. Maybe it's the effect of prolonged and constant exposure. But at any rate, I seem to be waking up to the smell of burning things everyday and everything looks awfully white-washed outside my window.

But I guess smokers shouldn't be affected much. They're probably used to having a cloud of haze swirling around them wherever they go.

"I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist."
- Sally Kempton, journalist

Here's another reason why I'll never make a good journalist: when people I'm interviewing disrespect me and treat me like a slab of meat available for sale in the market, my first reaction is shock that people can be such monsters.

My second reaction is to want to punch the sicko's face in, then forcefeed a poison that will cause his privates to rot and fall off. Slowly. And painfully.

My Inner Hero - Wizard!

There are many types of magic, but all require a sharp mind and a cool head. There is no puzzle I can't solve, no problem I can't think my way out of. When you feel confused or uncertain, you can always rely on me to untangle the knots and put everything back in order for you.
How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

The only problem I have with this quiz is the part where I have to register, because what's the point of registering for a guild when I probably won't have the time to participate anyway?

"They deem me mad for I will not sell my days for gold; I deem them mad for they think my days have a price."

- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

It's only the third week of school!

How can I possibly be so behind in my readings?!

Ulysses by the Merlion
by Edwin Thumboo

I have sailed many waters,
Skirted islands of fire,
Contended with Circe
Who loved the squeal of pigs;
Passed Scylla and Charybdis
To seven years with Calypso,
Heaved in battle against the gods.
Beneath it all

I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled,
Travelled and travelled,
Suffering much, enjoying a little;
Met strange people singing
New myths; made myths myself.

But this lion of the sea
Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail,
Touched with power, insistent
On this brief promontory...
Puzzles.

Nothing, nothing in my days,
Foreshadowed this
Half-beast, half-fish,
This powerful creature of land and sea.

Peoples settled here,
Brought to this island
The bounty of these seas,
Built towers topless as Ilium's.

They make, they serve
They buy, they sell.

Despite unequal ways,
Together they mutate,
Explore the edges of harmony,
Search for a centre;
Have changed their gods,
Kept some memory of their race
In prayer, laughter, the way
Their women dress and greet.
They hold the bright, the beautiful,
Good ancestral dreams
Within new visions,
So shining, urgent,
Full of what is now.

Perhaps having dealt in things,
Surfeited on them,
Their spirits yearn again for images,
Adding to the dragon, phoenix,
Garuda, naga, those horses of the sun,
This lion of the sea,
This image of themselves.

Radix malorum est spam.

I just spent goodness how long helping Kiat clear his comments function of spam comments and the spammers are back in less than half a day! And they've spammed the choir forum as well, GRRRRRR.

DIE, SPAMMERS. Just. drop. dead.

Why do these idiots even think spamming is a feasible advertising option? They're just annoying the hell out of everyone, and most of the time they don't even reach the desired audience. I mean, like, yes I'm sure I'm in need of some penis enlargement meds -_-#

I've written on pieces of paper with higher IQ!

Back from Xiamen!

We got 2 silvers, and by the time we were done with the singing and actually had time to go out and play, we got grounded by a typhoon warning -_-;; But we did get to sing the Singapore national anthem twice and they rose the Singapore flag twice because AJC and Vic Chorale topped their respective categories, so all's good =) I swear I've never felt more patriotic in my life than when we started waving the Singapore flag around everytime a Singaporean choir won something, haha.

I'm not good at sports and never will be, so training for the Choir Olympics is the closest I'll ever get to the kind of mental and physical challenge athletes go through prepping themselves for competition.

But I think we all got a very good idea of the kind of discipline that is required of us in the past week. If we'd been athletes training for Olympics, our coaches would have kicked our lazy asses to Hell and back for our lack of fighting spirit and pathetic lack of mental tenacity. (Actually, I think our conductors tried to do just that.)

The thing about choir though, is that even if you've got a couple of strong and good singers in the mix, it's not good enough. A choir is only as good as its weakest member.

The solution? Drill the weakest members to death *cue evil laughter*

Imagine a child of about 5 or 6, curled up in his bed and snuggling up to his mother. His mother is humming a lullaby, and she smells of warm comforting things, and he dozes off.

He wakes up with a start in the middle of the night to find his mother gone. He's alone in the dark, and suddenly every shadow in the corner is a boogeyman; every noise in the darkness is a monster under the bed.

Summoning up his courage, he calls out fearfully into the darkness, "Who's there?" He thinks he hears something in the dark, a sound he doesn't recognise, and he imagines he sees someone hiding behind the trees outside the window.

But he's a young child, and even though he is frightened, somehow he drifts off to sleep. And as he sleeps he dreams of hope and pleasant things, and the sun starts to rise, unfurling and blooming like a flower to cast light and warmth upon the child.

It is a sunrise like any other; and yet, it is also magical and miraculous, and the composer celebrates the dawning of a new day as if it was the first sunrise.

...
That is what "Yoru" by Matsushita Kou is supposed to sound like. Unfortunately, when NTU choir sings it, we often sound more like Ah Bengs and Ah Lians going to pia zui. Off-key Ah Bengs and Ah Lians some more. -_-;;

It's nice when it rains... all cooling and not-sunny.

In fact, because of the rain, I witnessed a spectacular natural phenomenon - The Great Cockroach Crossing.

There I was, sitting at the bus-stop minding my own business while the heavens emptied swimming pools of rain all around me - then I noticed something scrambling to get across the road. A lot of brown crawling somethings.

Now, being someone who's deathly afraid of cockroaches, it didn't take me long to recognise what they were. There were dozens of them coming out of the drains and the grass on the opposite side of the flooded road, struggling in a kind of cockroach crawl-swim to get across the road - towards me. Luckily for me, there was a pretty deep "moat" in front of the bus-stop because the drains were all clogged up, and it didn't seem like many of those roaches were going to make it. Happily, some also got squashed by a passing motorbike.

And then a car came, splashing water from the moat to the front of the bus-stop, and then I saw a couple of cockroaches ride the wave and surf onto the (relatively) dry safety of the ground in front of me.

I'm just lucky the bus came soon enough, so I lived to tell the tale. If I'd stayed there any longer, I might have been bludgeoned to death by people in my hall trying to catch a nice nap in the cool rainy weather because I was making such a ruckus shrieking like a girl.

Damn those cockroaches and their uncanny ability to survive. Some times I really admire their tenacity and hardiness... then I do my darnest to squish them with my shoe.

Been blog surfing, and found lots of blogs of people I kinda know but don't know very well. Hm. The interesting but private things you can infer from reading a few weeks' worth of blog entries.

...and so I wasted about 2 hours, when I was supposed to be writing my stupid PI report. Sigh.

My dad has just brought to my attention that a link in my archives (part of the template/skin so I can't change it now) that used to link to Auntie Allen's blog now directs the user to a porn site. O_o

User be ware.

Just saw the second telecast of Superband and was reminded to add a link to Jing Bao Yue Tuan's blog. It's on friendster so I don't know if you can read it if you don't have an account.

Objectively speaking, I thought their second performance - the first time in the studio - was certainly not their best, but I've heard them do much better and I'm sure they're capable of going far in this competition. (And I'm not just saying that because because the lead singer is my cousin, I'm very particular about musicality.) The third performance was much better, but the drums were still overpowering the lead vocals and diction was a bit garbled. And the bass... haha, there was something strange going on there.

But anyway, good luck guys... go sing your hearts out. =)

One of the perks of this job is that your boss is actually an international-award winning photographer. Which means he knows lots of people and takes lots of nice photos which you can use for your MSN display pic... XD

Anyway, he was speaking at a digital photography seminar yesterday with Eric Cheng. I got to see some of their work, and I also got to see Stephen Wong and Takako Uno, two pretty well-known photographers. Their book "An Ocean Odyssey" has got a really surreal and poetic cover, so I went looking for their work and found this image:

And that is the sad reality of what happens to sharks for that bowl of sharks' fin soup you eat at weddings. Some fishing communities will use every single part of the shark, but most just cut off the fins and throw the poor creature back into the water to drown. All that for a bowl of soup that really tastes more of the sea cucumber and crab broth than the sharks' fin.

After these 4 months ~~fighting for a place to stand~~ squeezing with the rest of the working population on the train, I find people who lean their entire body on the holding bars my absolute pet peeve. Some of these invertebrates will even lean on the bar when you're already holding it, squashing your fingers under their weight. Even worse - some of them will attempt to read the papers while leaning on the bar, and they will spread the newspapers wide, as if they were right in the comfort of their own home, waving newsprint under your nose.

Why is it that when I see videos of Japanese people on trains reading the newspaper or generally squeezing around in their very packed shinkansens, I never see this problem? Ok, so they've got other problems like molesters, but there are molesters on Singapore trains too. Maybe it's just the grass looking greener on the other side... or as a certain someone in my office would say, "Back in Japan, things were better." XDDDDDD

Still figuring out the comments function of the new blog, so have removed the link to it for now.

NTU = world class university? Dream on. Especially when they (or the corp comms, at any rate) just displayed shocking ignorance by misusing the phrase "I think, therefore I am" in its recent advertisements. I think Rene Descartes just turned in his grave (again!).

Dream A Little Dream

Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"
Birds singin' in the sycamore trees
Dream a little dream of me

Say nighty-night and kiss me
Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me
While I'm alone and blue as can be
Dream a little dream of me

Stars fading but I linger on dear
Still craving your kiss
I'm longin' to linger till dawn dear
Just saying this

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me

Just walked home from Bugis... next time I'll try that when I'm not wearing heels ^^; Interesting to realise that Singapore is rather small after all. Took only a little more than 3 hours.

Went on a major shopping spree today. Retail therapy! (And the best thing is it was all free because I was using vouchers my dad got from somewhere =P)

The next thing I plan to do is get down to some major spring-cleaning. That includes everything from clothes to the friendlist on the sidebar of this blog... been letting things wallow and build-up for too long. I need to throw away the old and useless stuff to make way for new and better things! =D

Don't know why I suddenly feel this urge to "resume control of my life" (although those of you who know me well enough would probably realise that I'm plenty anal retentive and probably really don't need to be more of a control-freak =P)

I guess it's the realisation that I'm coming to an end of a phase in my life. Next sem I begin my last year in university, and I will be graduating (hopefully) in mid-2007... no longer a student. I sincerely hope I won't end up trapped in some dull work routine, but at any rate things are going to change.

No, it's not the end of the world. But it's the end of a big part of what used to be my world.

Good Lord. I've just heard that Hollywood is remaking 'Infernal Affairs' (wu jian dao) as 'The Departed'. (Damned stupid Americans, can't they just watch the original like everybody else instead of wanting everything remade with Caucasian faces and the USA as the backdrop?) Yes, I hear cries of "Sacriledge!" from the people who really liked the movie.

I don't know, the title sounds crappy already. And they've casted Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon ^^; I'm cringing even though I actually like Matt Damon. They're going to turn it into some Irish Mafia thing set in Boston, which means Matt Damon, since he's good at doing the Southie accent and hung out at Boston for a while, is going to have to be the Mafia guy? Or maybe he'll have to be the cop... it's hard to tell, come to think of it. Haha...

It's amazing they haven't tried to make 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' angmoh-nised yet.

Tonight, I can write...
(by Pablo Neruda)

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight;
Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
And I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her; To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verses fall to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her?
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.

My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true; but how much I loved her.
My voice searches the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's.
When she once belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true; but maybe I love her?
Love is so short and forgetting so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is now lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

It's over, but I what fills me is not a sense of relief, but a terrible unrest.

Meditate on one word only, and all troubles will cease.
How do I begin when I am still searching for that word?

("Ghazal of Equanimity" by Alfian bin Sa'at)

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to those who are unbridled, untrammeled, and free.

In love, you feel the most alive when everything is uncertain, one moment heaven... the next moment hell.

You'd like to your lover to think you are stylish and alluring.

You would be forced to break up with someone who was ruthless, cold-blooded, and sarcastic.

Your ideal relationship is open. Both of you can talk about everything... no secrets.

Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment.

You think of marriage as something precious. You'll treasure marriage and treat it as sacred.

In this moment, you think of love as commitment. Love only works when both people are totally devoted.

What Are The Keys To Your Heart?

Filled with a horrible feeling of lethargy. There's so much to be done, but things still aren't going as fast as I'd like them to be.

I think I can finally empathise with Miss Lim when she's trying to get the choir to move but we drag her down. It's a rather helpless feeling when you see the urgency and you see the potential to succeed - if only they would just freaking get off their arses and get moving.

If I die early of stress-induced health problems, I don't know whether I should blame other people for being nuah, or blame myself for caring too much... probably the latter?

Sonnet XLIV
by Pablo Neruda

You must know that I do not love and that I love you,
because everything alive has its two sides;
a word is one wing of silence,
fire has its cold half.

I love you in order to begin to love you,
to start infinity again
and never to stop loving you:
that's why I do not love you yet.

I love you, and I do not love you, as if I held
keys in my hand: to a future of joy-
a wretched, muddled fate-

My love has two lives, in order to love you:
that's why I love you when I do not love you,
and also why I love you when I do.

Been meaning to do a new layout for ages, but just never had the time. Now, I still don't have the time, so I just did some minimal changes and cleaned up the coding, haha... Will probably improve on this when I have the time (and a better computer screen to work with... -_-)

Yes, so I haven't posted in a while.

Basically, between work and choir, I'm thankful that I have time to sleep. Things aren't going to let up for a long long time either - and one of the reasons is this:

CANTEMUS 2006

~NTU Choir Annual Concert~

25th February - 8PM
Victoria Concert Hall
Tickets at $15 (free seating)

Please support! And because we're going for the Choir Olympics this year, this year's concert is also a preview of our competition repetoire. =)

Email/SMS/Call me to book tickets! Hurry, before they run out!

mood

Translation:
Nemo nisi mors.

the subject

utopist. dreamer. cynic. poet. a contradiction. eccentric. cartesian. a starlight in the gloom.

The patient, born in 1984, suffers from a history of idealism of unknown onset and duration.

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links

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:: Jan
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fanfic

:: Destiny Trilogy Part 1: The War
:: Destiny Trilogy Part 2: The Children of Lughnasadh
:: The Gates Just Opened