In Continuum.

Transformers



Spoilers alert!

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."

- Optimus Prime

If you are left with ten dollars this summer, and you intend to spend it on a movie that is going to be worth the money, spend it on Transformers. Because this is the ultimate summer movie there is right now, the kind that requires minimal brain activity, the kind of movie-going experience that is all about the visual impact and extravagance. Transformers is all about robots, explosions, more explosions, and more robots. This is not a movie that is going to win Academy Awards for Best Picture or whatever, but a movie that is out to satisfy the audience on a lazy Saturday afternoon such as this one. Strap yourself in, because Transformers is going to take you on a ride that will transform your cinema experience literally, at the very end.

Ever since the announcement was made for a live-action Transformer film, I had my doubts initially about the possibility of it all. However, with Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg helming the film, it was hard for it to go terribly wrong. Most of the doubts that arose were utterly shattered when the very first trailer of the movie appeared online, and the expectations all across the world and cyberspace was deafening. Everybody wanted to watch Transformers, and everybody had their hopes blowing through the roof and going sky high. Most movies fail to meet such expectations, like the hype that surrounded the released of Spider-man and Pirates earlier in the summer. When your expectations are THAT high, it is not difficult to see yourself missing the bar and falling back down to where you came from. So the pressure was on Bay and Spielberg's shoulders to deliver. And to calm down those fanatics out there, trust these two men when they say that their movie is going to be awesome. Because they kept to their word, and the movie was awesome.

As a fan of Transformers since I was a child, I collected those plastic toys that transformed from a car to a robot often. I had a whole box of Transformers, and even a set of alphabets and numbers that could transform into robots as well. It was the cartoon I watched most often when I was a child back in Taiwan, when the robots were dubbed in Chinese, which was confusing to me when I found out that they spoke English in Singapore instead. Being new to the language, I watched the English version of Transformers as a kid for its action, and not much for the storyline. It's not that I didn't want to get involved, but because I simply could not understand what they were saying. However, the explosions and the fighting got me hooked to the television every weekday afternoon, despite it being too violent for children that age. Which is probably why I lived my life remembering the robots but not their names or the storyline - which sort of disqualifies me as a fan but, I guess as long as I was a fanatic as a child, it counts.

Now, you may think that a movie adapted from Hasbro toys are going to be a movie for children. After all, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flopped at the box office because it was targeted for children, and adapted from a children cartoon. However, like I mentioned before, in the hands of Bay and Spielberg, not a lot of things can really go wrong. Even the little alterations that they did to the storyline as well as the design of the robots did not occur to me as anything significant in the course of viewing the film. Because seriously, nobody wants to see boxy robots - like the ones from the original cartoon - fighting each other on screen with laser beams that can blast through walls and rocks but not nearly as much damage as each other. And of course, nobody is going to want to see Megatron transform into a gun either. It's going to be like Darth Vader transforming into a light saber, it is simply not going to work on screen. Oh, and seriously. Stop complaining about Optimus Prime's lips. They worked. Not to mention all the classic lines from the cartoon, they are there too.

So armed with an army of technicians from Dreamworks, Bay and Spielberg crafted this film about robots beating the hell out of each other, and the end product was an excited two hour ride that proved the tag line of the film: Everything changes. Booking the tickets three weeks before the actual release of the film was a wise move, because the crowd in the morning at The Cathay stretched all the way from the box office to the escalators. Ahmad and I met up at ten in the morning, and even then the place was already rather crowded with excited crowds, all trying to get tickets to the first screening of Transformers this weekend. Sitting in the theater, I was very much surrounded by people who were obvious fans of the cartoon. So when the stars of the Paramount logo started to fly into frame with altered sound effects, there was a piercing silence in the crowd and the air was thick with anticipation.

Transformers tells of the story of - well, robots kicking each others' ass basically. In between the intense battles, we get the humans messing around each other and some making a fool out of themselves. The story begins with an US military base in Qatar being attacked by an unknown MH-53 Pave Low helicopter, which transformed itself into a robot that unleashed electromagnetic pulse that managed to wipe out the whole camp. The survivors of the attack - trailed by the deadly Scorponok of the Decepticons - tries to make contact with the Pentagon through the desert wastelands. In America, Shia LaBeouf plays a 10th grader named Sam Witwicky, an ordinary teenager who works hard at school as well as at home to buy his very first care and hopefully, earn the liking of the girl from school, Mikaela, played by Megan Fox. Sam becomes entangled between the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons due to the 'giant ice snowman' his great-great grandfather found in the arctic in the early 20th century. It was the frozen body of the Decepticon leader Megatron, who was sent to Earth to find the Allspark - an energy cube that is capable of transforming ordinary machines into robots - to create his army of robots to take over the universe. Somehow, the location of the Allspark became engraved on the glasses of Sam's great-great grandfather during the discovery of Megatron, and the heirloom was being passed down to him with the secret lost to all - save for the robots which was heading to Earth to seek out the glasses which Sam placed on eBay for sale.

That is basically what you need to know about the story, and all you need to do for the rest of the movie is to sit back and watch those robots bring each other to pieces one by one. As a child, I've always wanted to see robots tearing each other apart, and I was not allowed to do that at all with my own toys at home. So to see them do so on a giant screen was a dream come true of sorts, especially in a movie made by two masters of film-making, it made the dream even sweeter. And of course, it has Megan Fox. Oh. My. God.

Allow yourself a few minutes to imagine the kind of action you are going to expect from a movie like that, and that is probably what you will see and more in this summer blockbuster. Aside from all the punching and all the kicking, we see rockets flying everywhere and laser guns being shot with limitless ammunition at each other. Not to mention the flying tanks, the exploding buildings, the cars being thrown off expressways, the F-22 fighter jets crashing into buildings after being shot down by Starscream, and not to mention my favorite shot: Megatron - as a Cybertronian jet - crashing through an office building in slow motion with Optimus Prime. Though it echoed somewhat of the horrors during 9/11, at least the bad guys got what they deserved in the end, unlike the reality. I liked Megatron's design alteration in this film, from a handgun to a space jet of sorts. And the movie-makers paid tribute to the original design by giving Megatron a giant rocket in the movie that transforms out of his arms. THAT was the ultimate weapon in the whole movie, aside from Ironhide's duel cannons.

Just when you think Michael Bay directs the best car-chases - which he does - nothing beats a car-chase at 100 miles an hour, and having the cars transform into robots at the very same speed. Watch out for Ironhide's split second improvising as his vehicle almost gets into the way of a helpless passerby in the middle of the warfare. He totally showcases the power of his cannons and the slow motion action here was just utterly brilliant. Not to forget the other representatives of the Autobots, which include Jazz - the Pontiac Solstice, Bumblebee - the Chevrolet Camaro, which is also Sam's guardian, and Ratchet the Hummer H2.

On the side of the Decepticons, we have the already mentioned Megatron and his partners. Starscream the F-22 Raptor, Barricade the Saleen-modified Ford Mustang police car, Frenzy the twin-speaker radio which also acts as the hacker of information, Bonecrusher the Buffalo(Mine-protected vehicle), Blackout the MH-53 Pave Low, Scorpnok the mechanical scorpion and Brawl the M1 Abrams. Amongst these bad guys, they all have their moments of brilliance on screen, but Megatron is really the big boss of them all. He has the coolest weapons, the most intimidating looks, and probably the most menacing one as well. It is a shame that the directors included so many robots in one movie, because so many of them, including the ones from Autobots, had so little screen time and lines. Most of them were one-liners, and some of them didn't talk at all. I liked Bonecrusher and the way it literally forked cars out of his way on the expressway. But as soon as he appeared on screen, he also disappeared under the hands - or sword - of Optimus Prime. That was quite a disappointment, but I guess with such a huge CGI cast, it'd be hard to focus on every one of them. Besides, by killing off robots it'd also mean less CG to deal with, and more money saved.

Aside from all the adrenaline pumping action, there is also a strong sense of humor in the film. The best part of the humor shines through in the first act of the movie, from the beginning till the point whereby Sam discovers his car's hidden talents. A hilarious scene includes the Autobots in the carefully tended front yard of Sam's house, trying to move around as quietly as possible without Sam's parents noticing them at all. But of course, transforming themselves into cars and parking them on the front lawn wasn't the best way to disguise, so they had to hide around the corners and under the front porch to stay out of the suspicious eyes of the parents. Ironhide's comments about the parents had me burst out in laughter - though it was obviously not shared by Optimus Prime who shot Ironhide down - figuratively. Not to mention how Bumblebee communicated with Sam and Mikaela through the songs played on the radio, because his voice box was damaged and left unfixed.

This movie is all Michael Bay, and it is an obvious one. Like everybody out there predicted, this movie does have the usual Michael Bay flaws stamped all over. We have pointless human interaction scenes that were a minute or two too long, we have scenes that are sometimes too far fetched even for a movie about robots from outer space. However, amidst the battling robots it becomes easy to forgive Michael Bay for these mistakes and move along with the storyline. Like I said before, this movie was never made to please the academy, but to please the fans and the bunch of audiences out there who have been craving for a live-action Transformers film. As long as we get to see robots being blown up, we care little if their human counterparts are well-developed or not. The movie totally blew me away, with the non-stop action towards the end of the movie, which can only be fully appreciated if the movie is watched in slow motion. Simply because the robots transform too fast and fought too swiftly at times, it is hard to take in all the imagery and information all at once. Like that speed at which Michael Bay filmed those scenes, the action comes quick and ends even quicker, leaving you in your seat and breathless.

So, like I said, if you have ten dollars right now and you have no idea how to spend it, spend it on this movie. It is going to blow your clothes off in the theater, and the grip it has on you is not going to let loose until the credits start to roll. Make sure you do stay back after the first few minutes of the credits to catch critical scenes that may lead to a sequel, despite the awful song choice - Linkin Park - in the background. Watch this movie, because whatever your pre-conceived idea may be of it, Transformers is going to transform your idea. After all, like the robots, there is more than meets the eye.

So what the hell are you waiting for?

Autobots, transform and roll out!

Vertical Descent


Perhaps I won't need a bad grade or a broken heart to activate my contingency plans after all. There are other reason why I may want to move overseas and away from this country which I have been living in for the past sixteen years. There are times when you get sick of what you see outside your window - the concrete jungle made of cement and steel - and the hills beyond in the horizon becomes the pot at the end of a rainbow everybody seeks. At least that is how I feel as I stand on my balcony sometimes, looking out into the seemingly endless columns of houses, stretching out as far as the eyes can reach until the lights resemble the distant stars and the moving headlights of cars like ants with little torches.

There is a hill just to the East of my house, far away and distant. You can hardly see it on a cloudy day, but there it is on a sunny one when the clouds clear and the sun is shining from the right direction. It rises above all others in the horizon, standing there like a stubborn king, unmoved. I've always wondered what hill that is, because it can't be one that belongs to Singapore, geographically speaking. Most of the hills are located in the central area of Singapore, which is why it becomes so puzzling to see one in the East. I flipped through maps a dozen times, trying to find out the name of the hill that I see on a sunny day, but to no avail. Perhaps it may be the last paradise, an untamed land still untouched by any civilizations known to man, save for the natives who already dwell in the hills and amongst the trees. The last utopia right in the horizon, off the shores of Singapore, just waiting for the first foot to land upon the beaches.

But of course, what are the chances of that being true? After all, if eighty percent of the island chains on the Pacific have already been discovered, named, developed and taken over by men, how is it possible for this stone giant off the shores of Singapore to not have been given the same treatment? However, you cannot blame me for such childish and naive thinking, especially when the place that you live in is getting increasingly unbearable and intolerable. The cranes bringing in more steel rods everyday, the trucks pouring out more sand for filling and more rocks for breaking. The workers still toiling under the sun until dusk, and the sound of heavy machinery overpowering everything else around the estate. As my eyes followed the trail of smoke that rise from each and every one of those machinery, I pictured the little molecules fighting against the ones that belong to the cleaner air. The black army versus the white army, wielding microscopic sword at one another to claim their share of the air. Of course, the black army's population increased with every gust of air pumped out of the exhaust pipe. And soon enough, the air was clouded with the black army, and they slowly invaded the air upwards towards the nineteenth floor where I live.

There is going to be a day in the new future, whereby everybody is going to be armed with an oxygen mask of sorts. We are going to look like that as we walk on the streets, and nobody is going to wear white because it will get dirty too easily. There will be no such thing as a sunny day or a starry night, because the skies are going to be covered in poisonous fumes and smog. Some countries are already halfway there, while others are still trailing behind. But very soon, we are all going to live in air tight boxes all day long, or maybe even transparent bubbles to prevent us from breathing in harmful gases in the air. Our environment is going to be so badly polluted that people will be paying to get to Mars, even if it may kill them in the process. It's going to be death either way, so a new planet is going to provide us with new opportunities - not to live, but a new planet to destroy once again.

Driving along Paya Lebar Road, my father tried to pronounce every road sign there was to read with his perfectly spoken broken English. It was a strange mood I was in yesterday, and I blamed it all on the weather and the pre-birthday syndrome. Anyhow, there I was in the backseat and staring out of the car window at the cars that parked next to ours at the traffic lights. We waited forever for it to turn green, and the next traffic light almost immediately turned red again about a hundred meters down the road. Road works were underway, and the roads were greatly changed in that area of the country. Everywhere were fences, blocked our construction sites, new buildings being built from scratch, cement-mixers rumbling through opened gates, foreign workers painting the walls of the new mall, just everything was pretty much in motion there. Before my eyes, I saw the country booming, growing at the speed of a five year old boy. It was astounding, almost unbelievable that such a sight was just ten minutes away from my house, but there it was - digging, drilling, building, destroying.

Driving around the corner from my old high school, the construction of the new railway line was just about completed. Still, the damages were already done to the place I used to know, the stretch of land before the old Outram Institute was dug up to make way for new roads, the trees that used to line the pavement in front of the school were also chopped down. One of them, the great big tree that used to provide shelter for me and my friends at the 158 bus stop across the road was also chopped down, and it laid there in a puddle of murky water, with a giant crane right next to its rotting branches, dying.

It is part of how they promote Singapore as a tourism spot as well. Other than calling this country a "Lion City", they also try to promote just how 'green' this place it, in relative to all the urbanization happening everywhere. And they have been doing well over the years, keeping up the good image by having parks and woods built around urbanized area. However, that hasn't been the case in towns away from tourist spots, like Paya Lebar for example. Everywhere is being urbanized there, fields being taken over by construction and trees being torn out to build more roads. The rapidity of it all becomes suffocating, even for a person who was just passing by the area in the backseat of his father's car. I was sitting there in the car amidst the traffic, feeling a knot in my throat and the air suddenly heavy. It was a tough sight to swallow, to see the greenery that once was, lying there in a puddle of murky water - the coming of a concrete future.

It might be just me, but I am saddened by the sight of dead trees on television or before my eyes. Because they almost always go through the slowest death possible on a living thing. I don't think there is a slower death than one suffered by trees all around the world, since they do not die the moment they are chopped down from their roots. These trees are merely the result of our vertical ascent and descent, into the sky and underground with our buildings and underground railway stations. We seldom stop to think if we are the lord of the lands or are we merely in intruders. Which may have been why I cheered so loud when I watched The Two Towers for the first time, when the Ents pulled down the dam and flooded Isengard. It felt good to see nature fighting back literally, and to have our filth washed away into a great cavern. After all, such things are not going to happen anytime soon in real life, so why not cheer a little bit louder when it does somewhere else?

The problem with this whole vertical descent is that it is not going to stop anytime soon. Compared to the cost of blowing up old buildings to build new ones, it is indefinitely cheaper to clear trees from a green field and build houses over it. After all, you still have the problem of resettlement when it comes to clearing old houses, and it is not like we have a lot of land left in Singapore for you to build temporary flats. How far out into the ocean is the Singaporean government going to reclaim, before Indonesia or Malaysia becomes seriously offended, and decides to launch a missile into the air space of Singapore? This man-made destruction is not going to end, and more trees are probably going to be axed in the name of - urbanization. Sooner or later, humans are going to be the murderer of ourselves, and there is nothing we can do about it but regret at the very end. It may happen to my children, or the children of my children, so on and so forth. But that is going to happen for sure...

Unless I activate my contingency plans and move to Mongolia. Maybe tonight, or even tomorrow. But it may just happen some day, with my bags packed and my heart set. Instead of see my country being buried underneath thick layers of sand, I may prefer to go horse riding in the plains of Mongolia, even if it may sound ridiculous right now. Who knows, humans may turn to envy those nomads in the days to come. At least they are still going to get stars in a century's time.

Lozenge of Love

I am gone
Everybody's raging
And these fruits
They still taste of poison
I won't be around
When you really need me

I can't sleep
Why can't someone hold me
I need warmth
A restless body cracks some more
I won't have the strength
When you really need me

Torn Blue Jeans

Hey man, it's been a while
Do you remember me?
When I hit the streets I was 17
A little wild, a little green

As the last minutes of the 28th of June ticked down, I sat before the computer with a bowl of noodle made from leftover food from today's lunch and watched Munich all over again. Once again, I remained oblivious to the fact that my birthday was around the corner, my twenty-first birthday. Like all the other twenty birthdays that I've had, this particular day no longer excites me more than the other days. Maybe the fact that this year's birthday happens to be on a Friday may boost its significance somehow. Pitching the birthday tent next to the weekend one is like having a beggar set up his floor mat next to a Broadway theater. It just makes him a little more glamorous than the others who are cowering in the shady alleys.

So as the digital clock in the bottom right hand corner struck twelve, the cellphone messages and the MSN ones came flooding in one by one. It became so busy that I had to multi-task between the keyboard and the phone, which became quite a hassle at the end. However, I made a point to reply to all of them, making sure that I do not sound like I just took their messages for granted. After all, despite feeling little about my own birthday, there is a certain warm and fuzzy feeling involved in being remember by new friends and the ones of old - especially the ones whom you have not talked to for the longest time. For a moment there, it wasn't about feeling old or getting older, but rather being loved and remembered.

I've been up and down and in between
After all these years and miles of memories
I'm still chasing dreams
But I ain't looking over my shoulder

Perhaps this shut-mouthed attitude about my birthday is due to what people around you may potentially do to you on such a day. Like the marriage entry I posted a while ago, people also see birthdays as the only day they can do all sorts of humiliating things to you and you are not supposed to hold grudges about it ten years down the road. So they devise plans and come up with ridiculous things to do to you on this very special day of the year, within the time span of twenty-four hours. So you start to draw up your escape route from these humiliation-deprived vultures at school, to try to avoid them for as long as possible. If you can't avoid them completely, make sure you do not bump into them when they are in a group. The following is what happens to a birthday boy at school.

The tradition started with the rugby players, and it was well accepted by the other boys in school to do the same to the others. A horde of buffed up, muscular boys would march into the canteen at school singing on top of their lungs. A path would be cleared for them to march through, and at the end of the cleared path would be the helpless body of the birthday boy. It wouldn't matter if you struggled or not, because against the might of the whole team of rugby players, it was better if you remained still and cooperated. So the birthday boy would be lifted up from his feet and carried by the other boys down to the field where the rugby poles were and 'pole' the birthday boy. By 'pole', I mean to spread his legs open and ram his crotch against the metal pole until he screams in agony and pain. That was the birthday ritual in school, and the chief reason why I selectively forgot my own birthdays when I was back there. It wasn't something I wanted to risk anybody knowing, truth to be told.

I like the bed I'm sleeping in
It's just like me, it's broken in
It's not old - just older
Like a favorite pair of torn blue jeans
This skin I'm in it's alright with me
It's not old - just older

It wasn't any better in the army, but worse. Throwing a guy's crotch against a metal pole no longer interested anybody, because the fun usually lasts as long as the guy is able to take the excruciating pain. And to have the birthday boy fully clothed takes away half the fun that it should have been. Which was why the tradition was never brought forward into the confines of a military camp. However, with the ladies a million miles away and the birthday boy trapped within the fences of the camp, there were more things people could do to one another on their birthdays - another reason why I never told anybody about it.

I remember the times when a bunch of different platoon were involved in the birthday of one single platoon mate of mine. Let's just say that he was a very popular guy amongst the boys, and everybody just desperately wanted to see him naked. So he was pinned down to the crowd as everybody swarmed towards his half naked body to smear camouflage cream and toothpaste all over the guy's back. Then it came the flour and the bathing powder, following by a healthy dosage of ice-cold water from the freezer downstairs. Throughout the torturous process, there would be videos capturing both violence and nudity, and the constant begging of the victim are usually unheeded by the crowd around. And the end of these birthday bash aren't usually the end, as there are usually part twos and threes afterwards, and it stretches on deep into the night at times.

It's good to see your face
You ain't no worse for wear
Breathing that California air

So you see, in the course of keeping my birthday discreet, I managed to convince myself not to remember the day itself. After four years of training, I have successfully blocked out the 29th of June from both my mental calendar and the ones on my working desk and shelf. The same thing happened to me last year when I was sitting in a coffee shop at 3am, clad in my army uniform and drinking ice-milo. It didn't occur to me that it was my birthday three hours after midnight, and it was then when I sang a little birthday song to myself under my breath, afraid that someone may hear it and then remind the others. Who knows what kind of torture I could've gotten myself into for singing a decibel louder? And you think that celebrating your birthday alone is bad, celebrating with a bunch of army boys is so much worse.

The year before the last, I had my birthday spent in a ditch I dug for myself. We were supposed to be protecting an axis - or road junction - at that time, and it was probably one of the most tiring outfield I remember. Digging through the layers of soil and rocks, the spade that I was using made sparks fly in the night, as it scraped against the hard rocks embedded in the ground. I dug up so many rocks that night that I formed a circle around me when the officer came. He asked if I was trying to drive away evil spirits with the rocks placed in a strange pattern. I remember telling him that I was digging a grave for myself, and that the rocks would be up for sale in the morning. I was that aloof and lightheaded at that time, and my uniform was soaked with my own sweat. Sitting in the bottom of the pit and feeling the moist of the soil seeping through my underwear, I looked at the glittering city lights in the distance and the sparse population of stars above. It was the first birthday spent in the army then, first birthday spent in the fields. And it was a beautiful night to boot, aside from the bushes and trees with bugs crawling all over. It was a beautiful night, the first night of my nineteenth birthday back then. And I sang to myself a little tune, and made a wish as I saw a shooting star cross the sky, and disappeared into the dawning sky.

When we took on the world
When we were young and brave
We got secrets that we'll take to the grave
And we're standing here shoulder to shoulder

Two years later and sitting before the computer, I am spending yet another birthday alone. This time, for the first time in years, in the comfort of my room and the loving friends around me. Not to say that the friends that I made in camp weren't loving enough. It's just that, the friends I have now are not going to strip my down and take videos of me on my birthday for sure. I feel loved around them, and safe at the same time - but most of all loved, really.

You expect a physical change in you, to have your skin turn loose before your eyes in the mirror. To have blue veins show on your ankle and feet and your hair turn white instantaneously. Of course, none of those happened two hours ago when I was in front of the mirror, brushing my teeth. Some of my friends asked if I feel any different being twenty-one, but my answer to them is short and simple," Not old, just older". Because really, it doesn't feel very much different from being myself a day ago. It's not like humans go through the same process as a caterpillar, turning into a butterfly. Or a werewolf tearing off his human skin to reveal its true-self underneath the full moon. The change in all humans are gradual and slow, and we are probably not going to notice the change until we are freely accepted into a movie rated R21, or into a club that allows only customers above the age of 21.

I like the bed I'm sleeping in
It's just like me, it's broken in
It's not old - just older
Like a favorite pair of torn blue jeans
This skin I'm in it's alright with me
It's not old - just older

I didn't have a cake today, or candles to celebrate my birthday. In fact, I am the only person awake right now, with the rest of the family somewhere between the reality and their own individual dreamland. All I had today was a mentioning of my birthday over dinner, and the cups filled with water and tea were raised over our heads. A plate of crab was served, and that was as far as the celebration went for me today over dinner. The crab didn't taste particularly good, or the other dishes that were brought on one by one. However, this is the kind of birthday celebration I am used to, the kind that I am more familiar with. After all, I am a man of simplicity, a modern minimalist. So a mentioning would be more than enough, and anything else would be considered a party of sorts.

Speaking of party, I have yet to regret my decision of not throwing one. I still retain the idea that it is better to celebrate it with small groups of friends over a period of a week or so. I get more dinner treats, I get more exclusive one on one meeting with friends, and I am not going to have to worry if they enjoyed themselves during the party or not. Besides, the clearing up at the end is going to be such a troublesome process, and that is not to mention the invitations and all the prior preparations.

I'm not old enough to sing the blues
But I wore the holes in the soles of these shoes
You can roll the dice 'til they call your bluff
But you can't win until you're not afraid to lose

In retrospect, my twenty years on this good earth has been a good one - good, but not great. At least not yet. I've wanted to do a lot of things in the past, a lot of things before I turn twenty. But time after time, ideas were being placed aside or swept under the rug, or simply postponed till a date nobody knows when. Plans were scrapped and forgotten, and I was left at the end of many dreams and hopes - in regrets and disappointments. I can't say that I have fulfilled everything that I have set out to do in the past twenty years, nor can I say that I am satisfied with whom I have become. However, the new beginning of my life is already looking so much better than the twenty years that I've had.

I guess, what I want to say on my birthday speech - since I haven't got a party to announce my thoughts - is that I treasure my family and friends more than anything else. Friends who have come into my life in the past twenty years, and friends who have left - they all became a part of me one way or another. I cannot say that all of them were friendly people, or if they were in any way grateful of my existence. However, all of them - all of you - helped to shape me into who I am and what I am. It could not have been possible to live alone without the company of you, admirable people standing by me throughout the obstacles. I know less than half of you half as well as I should like, but I love all of you more than what you all truly deserve. I've been a very blessed person, to have you guys in my life. And to the ones who have been sticking with me, thank you. Thank you for being...whoever you are - you. It couldn't have been possible, and I am truly - grateful.

To another beautiful year ahead, till my twenty-second birthday.

Cheers.

Well, I look in the mirror
I don't hate what I see
There's a few more lines staring back at me
Now the nights has grown a little colder

Hey man, I gotta run
Now you take care
If you see coach T. Tell him I've cut my hair
I've kept my faith
I still belive I'm just...

A Contingency Plan

You bring an umbrella when the clouds gather overhead, you bring a plastic bag just in case you get motion sickness on the bus. You backup your pictures in different drives in the computer in case the computer crashes, and you wear a condom when having sex with your girlfriend. You have an extra EZ-link card in your wallet just in case the one you normally uses runs out of credits, and you keep quiet in an argument with your boyfriend just in case you say the wrong thing that may cause the two of you to wage a cold war. No matter what kind of precautions we have in life, we almost always have a contingency plan one way or another. Even when we are talking about studies, there's ought to be a Plan B in almost anything you do, especially when schools are capable of shutting down without prior notice like UNSW. You never know when you are going to need that contingency plan of yours.

Jonathan - the SIM one - and I were talking about contingency plans of life just last night. I know, I know too many Jonathans for my own good, and they are all confusing the living daylight out of me. They really should make it a crime for babies after 2007 to be named Jonathan, because I feel so rude calling them by their full names. Let's see, I know the following Jonathans: Jonathan Lim, Jonathan Yap, Jonathan Teo, Jonathan Chia, Jonathan Yang, Jonathan Leong, Jonathan the Sergeant to name a few out of the top of my head. Yeah, you get my point. I'm not even going to start on my list of Benjamins.

Anyway, the two of us were just messing around with the ideas when he was telling me about his plans with Kevin. In the case of a school shutdown, or if their grades are going to be flushed down the toilet, their plan is to hike to a random mountainous area with a lot of caves, then scale the walls inside to find bird nest and guanos - or bat shit - to make into rare herbs for sale. In Singapore, it is not so much about how you can achieve, but what you can achieve. The proverb of "I think, therefore I am" doesn't exist here, but replaced by "I score As, therefore I am". It is a rough world out there, and going out there with straight Fs on your certificate is not going to land you in any job with a pay more than three digits. That is how cruel our society is, but then that is also the nature of a competitive market. If you are not good enough, there are a bunch of other better, more hardworking people than you waiting to be hired. And if you are going to land yourself in that kind of situation without a contingency plan, you are going to find yourself standing at the front entrance of your previous office building with a paper box of items from your desk fifty-floors up - lost.

My contingency plan is as follows. By the end of my three years in University, if I don't land myself in a proper job of some kind, or a job that satisfy me completely, I am going to activate my Plan B immediately. It involves myself going to a random mountain range in China with enough food and water to sustain me for about three to four weeks in the mountains. Then, bang on the doors of the first monastery I find and ask to become a monk there. Of course, they are going to have more than enough apprentices there, more than enough monks running around sweeping the same piece of ground all day long, and the main hall with the altar just isn't big enough to contain every random man who wants to be a monk. So I am going to offer him a place in the kitchen and make vegetables and tofu all day long.

In the morning, I will wake up at five to prepare food for the whole temple. That is followed by my morning trainings, which is ensued by my private moments in the piece of land in the woods. A little greenhouse to plant mushrooms, operated and managed all by myself and on my own fundings. Then in the afternoons, prepare more tofu for my bald-comrades and at night, go to sleep with a good book in my hands, skipping the midnight prayers. It is probably the best way to live if you are going to have the life you know now crumble into ruins. To have a bunch of monks surround you everyday with nothing but happiness and content in their eyes is probably second to the most beautiful woman in the world as your wife. I like the Zen way of life, and I'm sure there is no harm in cooking tofu all day - if I can cook tofu at all.

However, this contingency plan is not going to work with my everlasting craving for meat. I expect myself to be kicked out of the front doors of the monastery after being spotted in the corner of the kitchen, munching on smuggled Subway sandwiches and beef lasagnas. If you are going to eat beef in a monastery, you might as well bring a pig to a Muslim country and slaughter it in front of them. They are going to have me removed from the compounds of the monastery in no time, that's for sure.

So the monk plan is out, now comes Plan C. I plan to head upwards to the lands of Mongolia. I am going to be part of the nomads, wandering the fields of Mongolia with my pack of sheep and horses, and watch them graze upon the seamless fields until dusk. At night, the stars above our heads are going to look like pepper strayed upon the surface of a clear soup, and we are going to count the stars over and over again until our eyes feel tired and we are sick and tired of mathematics. We are going to ride on horses all day long until our crotches feel like rocks, and take pictures of wild horses on the way back to our huts at night. Not to mention the bonfire we are going to light up every night and the songs sung around the fire.

However, like the monastery plan, the Mongolia plan is not going to work out as well. It's not that they are going to mind if I eat Subway sandwiches, or the fact that they are distant relatives of the Muslims in the West as well. It's just that I am probably going to grow lethargic and then miss the times when I get to blog about contingency plans on my computer whenever I want. Besides, though most nomads there have their own television sets, I am not a fan of Chinese television. I am probably going to hang myself from a pole two weeks into this lifestyle, and then regret ever having such a wild and ridiculous dream in mind. As my life go flashing by before my eyes, I will see those bad grades repeated over and over like the song on a broken gramophone, over and over until I am dead twice over.

No, they are not going to work. I better come up with better plans for my bad grades - though it's not like I am doing all that badly in school at all. The new set of plans are going to be more realistic, and probably involves something along the lines of cow-riding in New Zealand - if they ride cows at all. Or even if they don't ride cows, I don't mind milking cows at all. So who knows, you may see me in a random advertisement in the future, milking cows in New Zealand and getting a kick out of it.

Whatever it is, I guess what I am trying to say is that however smooth the road beneath my feet may be at this very moment, I am sure the novelty is going to wear off like the tracks on a car tire. Like the life as a monk or the life as a nomad, even those kind of life can get tiresome and boring. Which is why I am not counting on my current optimism to last me through the months and years ahead. To say that I have a contingency plan for myself would be a flat out lie, because I don't have any right now. THIS, is my contingency plan, and if this fails I am going to be falling off the edge of a cliff with nothing to hold on to. Just waiting for the jagged rocks below and the crashing waves to break my head and wash my blood away.

It'd be nice to say that in the days to come, I am not going to need an emergency plan to fall back on. It's like the dark clouds that gather above your head as you head out of your house, dressed up and smelling like roses. It'd be good if you can say for certain that you are not going to need the umbrella for the day at all. But who knows? How long is this novelty of mine going to last? This drive to make myself better, to score better grades even when I am already scoring straight As. How long is this perfectionist going to work before he gives up? What if he gives up too late, and he ends up in front of his office building with a box as well? It'd be too late by then, but it's not like the monastery plan is going to work out anytime soon.

Maybe I should join Jonathan and Kevin in their bird nest and guano quest. It may just turn out to be a successful business enterprise of sorts. Go, entrepreneurship!

To Frank And You

Same Time Last Year

You know those days before I met you
Well good 'cause I don't either
It's almost like they were meant to
Make the whole thing sweeter

There is something about the air in the canteen that sticks to your shirt, hours after you left it behind. With the new birds cramming into the already crammed up school compound, it was almost suffocating to share the tiny canteen with the juniors as well as the seniors. And I was just thinking to myself how great it felt to step off the platform of the bus and away from the peak hour crowd in the morning. It was merely a leap from the fire into the pot, and the smell sure wasn't helping much with the easing at all. There isn't anything wrong with the food there actually, in fact I think they taste great with the amount we pay. However, I have a thing with body odor, and I prefer to smell like myself, more than anything else.

Sitting in the bustling canteen at 1.30pm today, the smoke from the bowl of noodles I was eating attacked my face. The smell tickled my nostrils and there was yet another round of rumbling in my stomach. Surviving on a single roll of bread all morning was not an encouraging thing at all, and diving deep into the soup and the noodles, I had my hasty lunch before the next lecture started half an hour later. Jeremy was there with me, swallowing up his Japanese food at light speed, and in the midst of all the fleeting images around me, I thought about something almost too frightful for me to face up to.

You think I'm just a boy who's
Consumed by all his fears
The fact that you should have seen me
Same time last year

"This year has been passing really fast", I said after swallowing a mouthful of noodles, blowing air out between my lips because it was too hot. Jeremy agreed, and I thought I saw more than just an agreement in his eyes when I told him my observation. Because really, I'm sure everybody feels it somehow, that the Earth must have rotated around the sun a tad bit faster. How else do you explain the vivid memories that we still have of the events that happened same time last year? The words we said, the way the sun felt upon my skin, the way the sand felt between my toes as I made dives after dives at soaring Frisbees.

I do remember the event from a year ago after consulting my blog's archive. On the 27th of June last year, I was at Sentosa with the company and playing games under the baking hot sun. The entry marked the day of the company cohesion day, and I remember that day well. The lot of us were gathered at Sentosa in our beach wear, feeling the sand between our toes and the sun above. We were like sliced salmon in an oven, and the sound of our shoes scraping over the sand-covered pavement sounded like sizzling fishes on the grill. Or perhaps it might have been our skin burning up under the heat, we were not too sure. However, it was a great day on hindsight, a day when the lot of us really bonded and had a lot of fun - despite the heat and the lack of pretty girls to look at. You start to wonder if it really has been that long since that fateful day at the beach, if somebody fast-forwarded the time and filled in those blog entries in between for you to achieve this illusion. But the disconcerting fact is probably how I remember typing each and every one of those entries, which means that my conspiracy theory has been utterly shattered.

Same time last year
Oh, the same time last year

In our age with fast technological advancement, we no longer see the world the same way as we do. As the microscopes continue to look deeper into our human cells, as the telescopes continue to reach deeper into space, humans then start to wonder the reason for our existence, the significance of ourselves in contrast to the rest of the world and beyond. Such questions have been in existence for the longest time, but I think it is more relevant and more intriguing in our age of discovery. We start to examine our lives a little differently, and every occurrences from a different angle. With file transfers and downloads happening a million times every minute, it is not difficult to equate the tool bar of these transfers to the time span of our lives.

Fascinated and at the same time fearful of death, I looked for solace in the face of the calculator. Assuming that I'd live to the age of eighty, I calculated the number of days I get in this life before moving on to the afterlife. That is if, there is an afterlife at all. After much mathematical calculations, I derived at the answer of 29200 days. That sounded like a whole lot of days, until I wanted to find out more. So I multiplied that number by 24 - giving me the hours - then by 60 - giving me the minutes - then multiplying that answer by another 60 - to give me the seconds. Long story short, if you live till the age of eighty - if you are as optimistic as I am - you are going to be on this earth for merely 2522880000 seconds. And the clock has been in operation for the past twenty-one years for me, and it is counting down one second at a time. How daunting, to have our life flashed out before our eyes on the screen of a calculator.

Living fifteen over
Shortly over the nick of time
I'm sad like a boy, but I smile like a man
Its the best way that I never understand

Sending a picture over to a friend, or a song you just heard on the radio. The way the green task bar fills up the white spaces in the box. You start to see your life in that green task bar, as the percentage slowly adds up to a hundred at the very end. Being at twenty-one, it may seem like a long way to go till the day you die, provided that you do not get yourself involved in some horrible road accident, or get yourself stabbed in the back alley of some random club. However, if we see ourselves in those task bars, twenty-one years old would mean a quarter of our life gone, the quarter that you are never getting back. 25% always looks good on any Bit Torrent task progress, when you are trying to download a TV show or song, because everybody likes the sound of "It's a quarter done!", because it is - a quarter. But what about our lives? What about our time? What about - me?

Things are moving so quickly now, you feel like screaming at people, asking them to slow down. They all seem to be rushing for something, all wanting a certain intangible thing to happen, an invisible absolution. The pedestrians on the streets walking so fast, bumping into one another and seldom looking back at all. Or the way the vendors sold their food in the canteen, serving their customers one after another, making bowls after dishes, dishes after bowls. We all forget a little thing called "Human Interaction", and time slips by like that so fast. We all become victims of ourselves, as we look back at the things we have done same time last year, like the things we have done only same time last night.

I wish I would have made it
I hate the view from here
I didn't think I'd think I'd saw my wife that summer
That same time last year

I cannot help but hum to the tune of John Mayer's Stop This Train at times, especially on the eve of my twenty-first birthday. XinYu messaged me online just the other night to ask if I have any plans for my birthday - if I REALLY don't have anything planned at all. It is too late now to do anything anyway, and it's not like I am the kind of person who likes party in the first place. Especially now, when I am thinking back on my life a year ago, and feeling a sense of loss all of a sudden. It feels like being on the eve of a major exam with nothing prepared and the books untouched. The way you feel so helpless and frantic, and you just want time to slow down for a second, or a minute for you to take a breath. As children, we all took time for granted. A day turned into night and a night turned into day without us caring much about tomorrow. Perhaps this is a sort of retribution, to have our life flying by like that.

So much happened in between then and now, so much has happened. The worst outfield, the wettest outfield, the last outfield, the last book out, the first sense of freedom in two years, the first day of the rest of my life, the first love, the first kiss, the first woman, the first heartbreak, the first true hate, the emptiness that ensued in the days before school, the first orientation - the first in a long time, a new life, Stanley's accident, Stanley's war, Stanley's death...Where were you the same time last year? Lying in a random grassy field with your loved one? Made love to him or her for the very first time? Picking your nose while nobody was watching? Or rotting away before the television? Where were you the same time last year?

There, another second gone.

And there's another.

And another.

And another.

And another.

Death, one second at a time.

And another.

Oh, the same time last year
Oh, the same time last year
Oh, the same time last year

Porcelain

We've got the afternoon
You've got this room for two
One thing I'm left to do
Discover me, discovering you

If the haunting music of Emilie Simon's album "March of the Empress" and Sigur Ros' "()" album represents the winter, then "Quiet is the New Loud" and "Riot on an Empty Street" by Kings of Convenience are representations of spring. It takes away much of the chill that the winter brings, but at the same time hints of the warmth that is to come in summer. Albums like that are especially comforting on lonely bus rides to school on Monday mornings, fresh from the excitements of the weekends and the looming dark clouds of the rest of the week ahead. I cleared my thoughts in the corner of the bus, dominated the last row and stretched out my legs and thoughts. It was an empty bus and an empty morning, if the latter makes any sense to you. But that was how I felt like, a sense of emptiness somehow, as if something was missing on the five lane road that morning.

Nodding my head to the mellow sounds of guitars, I mouthed the words quietly under my breath as the bus rolled on. The train from Malaysia crossed the road overhead along the bridge that got so close to the top of the bus that I almost ducked my head when we went under. The black iron railings on the side of the bridge made bright triangular lights on the sides of the train, as if passed by with invisible passengers inside. Seeing a train gets me excited, and I was reminded of the time when my parents used to bring me to the airport to see airplanes. As the train rumbled pass overhead, the bus screeched to a sudden halt at the next stop, allowing passengers to alight and board.

One mile to every inch of
You skin like porcelain
One pair of candy lips and
Your bubble gum tongue

My father and I were talking about art the other day - however improbable the last sentence may have sounded. My father is perhaps the last person you would expect me to talk about art with, but there we were sitting next to each other in his car talking about the art of driving a car. To some, there may not be a lot of artistry involved in crying a four-wheel car, but that is the case for him - he claims. He likes the feeling of being in control of where he is going, which lane to take and which care to overtake. He likes the sensation of the car swerving in the direction that he dictates, or the choice of music over the radio although he seldom listens to them at all. That is the kind of art he is talking about, the kind that involves a certain freedom or liberty in life. However, I suggested a different sort of art, one that involves a vehicle that is out of your control.

Bus drivers dictate the route that he takes, and you are probably not going to find a driver being persuaded by somebody else to take a different route because it saves more time or avoids heavy traffic. That alone is bad, I agree. However, there is a certain satisfaction involved in bus-taking that is not found in driving your own car. To me, though driving your own car is indefinitely more satisfying, it becomes a very selfish act when compared to sharing a space with a total stranger on the bus. That is because of how we are when we are the drivers of our own car, and how we live and breathe in the space within the vehicle that is not shared by anybody else. I like to watch people do things when they think that you are not watching, and those are the things you cannot see if you are in control of your own four-wheel drive. From the looks of my father, I think he lost my point somewhere after the first line, but I blabbered on anyway.

And if you want love, we'll make it
Swim in the deep sea of blankets
Take all your big plans and break them
'Cause it's bound to be a while

You see, that was the kind of thing that happened on Monday morning yesterday, while I was on my way to school, feeling turquoise but not quite blue. As the doors opened and the people boarded the bus, there was a girl in a brown sleeveless top that occupied the seat before me. Her hair was let down, and they covered the most part of her neck. With the hair band that was wrapped around her wrist, she raised both her arms to the back of her head and attempted to tie her hair into a bun as the bus jerked off to an unstable start from the bus bay. I watched from behind, forgetting how she looked like when I took a glimpse of her as she took her seat.

Her slender arms were raised above her head, her fingers wrapped around the bun like a web would over an insect. The light from the outside shone through the windows, casting a faint line on the outer edge of her lower arm, and from there I saw the tiny hair that covered the skin like a million needles. With a swift move, the hair bun was tied up. Like the curtain that hangs before a stage, it was drawn as the play began and the set revealed. Her neck was radiant in the morning light, exposed to other passengers' scrutiny, naked and bare. Her hair line on the back of her neck trailed off as they grew shorter and softer, almost like the musical notes at the end of a song. It was, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen - on a bus, that is.

Your body is a wonderland
Your body is no wonder I'll use my hands
Your body is a wonderland

Her head was bowed forward, falling quietly asleep to the gentle vibrations on the bus. Oblivious to the scenery outside, her eyelids remained close throughout the journey, holding her cellphone close to her stomach and her bag in her laps. The maroon colored hair band shimmered the way her lower arm did in the sun, and the light became a sort of outline of her neck. As if somebody drew an outline of her neck with a glow-in-the-dark pen, the right side of it was lighted up to reveal the beautiful curvature of it all. It started under her ears, flowing down her neck like a cold spoon spreading over soft butter, then sloping down towards her shoulders until her skin ended and the fabric of her top began. In the hollow of her neck, the gentle pulsation of her heart, so subtle and fragile somehow. Anything could have broken the continuum, or at least that is how it seemed like from where I was. And with the music stilling playing with my ears, I turned it off to take it it. To take it all in.

Her sleeveless top was like a wrapper of some kind, concealing the prize underneath. But she wasn't a prize, not for me anyway. She was merely a person - a stranger - sitting on the bus in front of me, on her way to school. Yet, there was a sense of artificiality to her, almost as if somebody molded her. Her skin was almost like porcelain, yet not nearly as fragile or brittle. The slopes of her neck were like the sides of a snow-capped mountain, smoothened out by wind and preserved by winter's chill. Reaching upwards to adjust the air-conditioning, the goosebumps on her skin interrupted the beauty, and revealed her frailty, her dainty.

Something about the way the hair falls in your face
I love the shape you take when crawling towards the pillow case
You tell me where to go though I might leave to find it
I'll never let your head hit the bed without my hand behind it

It must have been merely five minutes or so when her stop arrived. It was a stop before my own, and the doors were almost closed when she woke up from her slumber and pressed the bell all over again. As she stood up to alight from the bus, her cellphone flew off her thighs and clattered to the ground violently. However, she seemed to care little for her phone, nor the fact that the bun on her hair was falling out. She shifted away from the reach of the lights from the windows, and disappeared around the corner as the bus sped away down Clementi Road and towards myself.

To say that the above was an 'Observation' would be too crude. After all, I don't think you observe a person such as herself, so delicate and beautiful at the same time. The way the hair was raised to reveal the neck underneath, you start to wonder why it is a tradition for Japanese Geisha to have their hair tied up. Japanese men felt that - more than a woman's breasts - the neck and back area of a woman is the most attractive. From the encounter on the bus, I began to understand and agree with that claim. It was so ordinary and special at the same time, and it took a while to come up with the correct words to describe the mental image that I still have. The porcelain skin like a terrain of snow, that was how it felt like to me in the corner of it all, admiring.

Your body is a wonderland
Your body is no wonder I'll use my hands
Your body is a wonderland

There are times when you want to reach out, while other times when you pull back, reserved. For you are afraid to taint the innocence, to spoil the beauty. As if the slightest touch of your presence could break the porcelain. Like water to paper, like a gust of wind to a dead leaf, everything could be changed in the slightest touch. So we sit back and we watch, we have our hands tucked into our pockets and we hold back. Because there are things never meant for your hands, things that are meant for others.

The touch of you may burn your skin, may have the pain penetrate too far and too deep. It may be an act of self-defense, like rolling up a newspaper as you witness the crossing of a cockroach. But that is how I am now, always too far to reach and too close for comfort. The distortion in physical distance, a close proximity from a million miles away.

Damn, baby
You frustrate me
I know you're mine, all mine, all mine
But you look so good it hurts sometimes

New Found Glory

Using the Guardian as a shield,
To cover my thighs against the rain,
I didn't mind about my hair.

Sitting in the back of the class, the palms began to turn moist and the sweat came pouring down my face. It might have been the weather, or the fact that the fans above my head weren't operating at normal speeds. There was a wall before me, an invisible one, filtering every images that got into my eyes. For everything was blurry, and I remembered little about the minutes leading up to the entering of the teacher with her stack of test papers. Everybody was excited, chattering ceaselessly under their breaths, some of them with eyes beaming with confidence while others - like mine - with fear.

It was a random summer three years ago, sitting in the classroom on the fourth floor of my school, some time after the last series of exams before the dreaded A levels. It was the paper that acted as a final gauge of progress, a final chance to redeem and prove yourself before the A levels begun. Like all the other papers, I remember trying my very best to catch up with everybody else, staying back late in school everyday just to pour my attention over the notes and the homeworks. But it was more like an attempt to find Kryptonite, or an attempt to turn a rock into a needle. Because nothing worked then, and every thing that I read went out of my ears. There was a surge of desperation inside, picturing myself with a cork in each ear during the papers. The image didn't help with the studying at all, and I remember entering the classroom during the exam itself and feeling ill-prepared and utterly stupid and hopeless.

Your jacket may be waterproof,
But knowing the moment you get home
You're gonna get your trousers changed.

Back to three years ago, I was still sitting at my desk and trembling all over. My mouth felt dry, the way it would if you breathe through your mouth for too long in an air-conditioned room. I spoke little that afternoon, and around me was an aura of dread and depression that few classmates dared to venture. That was how much I dreaded the results of the paper, the ones she was going to release in the classroom that day. It was Mathematics I remember, and I started thinking back to the days when I used to be good at it, or at least remotely interested. Those days were gone the moment she started walking down the rows of desks, giving back the papers according to the grades so that the best student got the papers first while the worst had them last.

Reading out each grade, her smile soon turned into a expressionless face and then a frown. There was a bit of hope inside, that the last one wouldn't be mine, that I'd be the second last, or the third last, a fool's hope. However, as the stack of papers in her arms slowly decreased in volume and the names were read, she gave up towards the end and stopped saying the grades altogether. As if the class next door could hear the grades and laugh at her for not giving her students the good grades, as if she was ashamed of the results to even say them out loud. Because that is how I felt like when she gave out those papers, all stapled up and stacked on top of one another. It wasn't an encouraging sight when she walked towards me with just a single script in her hands. It was my script, and she was nice enough to have the grades face downwards when given to me. She handed the papers to me, and there was an imaginary wave of heat coming from the bottom of the paper where the grades were, a wave of nausea coming over me and breaking the wall.

Failure is always the best way to learn,
Retracing your steps 'til you know,
Have no fear your wounds will heal.

I took a peek at the grades in front, and that took about one second before I closed the paper again. The bricks of the imaginary wall laid before me, but all I wanted was to have them materialized and rebuilt before my eyes. Because that was what I wanted to do then, to run away from it all and not care a thing about school. The grades were horrendous, probably the worst in the school - that I had full confidence in. Confidence crumbled inside, thoughts swirled and I weighed my options. Thoughts of razor knives running over the surface of my skin appeared, and the sight of myself smiling to the white-tiled walls in the bathroom as the blood dripped appeared too.

My head felt heavy against the back of my arm, which was sandwiched between the forehead and the table. The ball of dust in the corner of the table where the legs were, rolled about with the wind above making little cyclones below. But the coolness wasn't getting to me, and like the dust rolling about underneath my table, I saw myself in the ball of dust. The way a house would look like after everybody has left the house and abandoned it for years. The way it would be covered in a thick layer of dust, choking anybody who decides to enter the house. Like the remnants of the past, the ball of dust lingered around, like me, as I watched the rest of the class take an express train away from where I was, leaving me behind to lick my own wounds and eventually, rot.

I wish I could travel overground
To where all you hear is water sounds,
Lush as the wind upon a tree.

To me, life ended in Secondary School and restarted again in the military. There is a gap in my life for two years, a piece of land that fell through a hole into an infinite abyss. A piece of my life that I chose to forget, almost every detail of my two years there. When asked about my Junior College life by Jonathan from school, I told him that it wasn't the greatest part of my life, nor was it the worst. However, it merely felt like the lectures of our Communications teacher, Ms. Hui's class. The way the students would enter her class and be caught adrift in her flow of random and incoherent thoughts like a leaf in the wind, then spat out into the sea at the end of the class. That is how we generally feel like during her classes, and perhaps the closest analogy I could come up with when it comes to telling people about those two years that I selectively forgot.

So you see, getting good grades never seemed to be my forte. Passing made me feel good about myself back in those days, and getting an A was as good as making it around the world on foot. It was a miracle back in those days, to have anybody get an A in anything. You are practically worshiped if you could attain such results, and people saw you as some divined being of sorts, a godly figure. That was my perception of those top-scoring students in school, the way they always carried around a sort of light around them, emitting from their backs and illuminating the crowds. We all stared and we all looked. We all glared in envy and hope, but none of us ever came close to touching them at all. Because in the heat of their light, we got too close and we all burned out. At least I did, as I died trying.

I wish I could travel overground
To where all you hear is water sounds,
To capture and keep inside of me.

The college life was a new beginning for me, like the sunrise on the last day of outfield in the past. By celebrating the sunrise of the last day of outfield, the boys would fish out the last of the remaining food in the vehicles and have a feast of sorts. We usually try to ration our food and have them evenly spread out over the total duration of the outfield. However, we never really followed that rule very well, always eating more than we should on the first few days. So whatever that we ate on the last day as the celebration really were just leftovers of the previous days, but it's not like any of us minded at all. It was the last day of the worst days, and it was the beginning of a new and better one.

Let's just say that I have been doing very well in terms of my grades. My brain is still on the process of trying to register my new found glory, still trying to take in the fact and truth that I have proved myself worthy of praises and good grades. The part of me that lost hope, the part of me that lost faith, they call came into a giant convention inside my head and felt honored to be - even for a day - me. It feels good to read my grades off the list on the white board and have a smile on my face at the end. It feels good to hand to your ESL teacher your essay and have her smile at the end of it, saying that you need little editing to the piece because it's 'Perfecto'. It feels good to be needed when my friends and I are sitting in a group, studying for a test or a paper. It feels good to be me, the new me, and my new found glory.

Failure is always the best way to learn,
Retracing your steps 'til you know,
Have no fear your wounds will heal.

It felt like the time when my parents and I were in a random shop selling suits in Taiwan. Facing the daunting rows of suits, it was difficult to know where to start looking at all. It was as good as putting somebody oblivious to the varieties of coffee beans in a coffee brewery, and have him pick out a kind that is the most expensive. We were lost in the rows for a while, as we fingered our ways through the suits and touched the surfaces to see if they felt comfortable to our bare hands. I pretended to know what I was looking for, but I was in fact very clueless about my expedition into the shop. It was like venturing through the Amazonian forest with a compass that doesn't work and a map of Singapore. I was lost, but at least I found my way through it all.

Wearing a suit for the first time that day, I felt good about myself - for a moment - in front of the mirror. In the merciless honesty of the mirror, I often felt depressed, felt beaten. The scrutiny of myself through my reflection often told me to give up, to shut my eyes and to leave the room as soon as possible. Not because of the physical attributes, but rather what laid beneath my skin and bones. I didn't like myself at all, hated that I was screwing up every exam in school and letting everybody down. It was a kind of failure that was self imposed, and I didn't have anybody else to blame but myself. That is the worst kind of failure, the kind which you have no rights to point fingers. That was the kind I was faced with, the kind that I triumphed over and broke out of.

Still trying to fit into this new suit, still trying to fit into this new skin. It may be because of the fact that it is the first semester, which is why everything is feeling like a warm breeze. However, I cannot deny that this is a good start, a great start. I cannot say that "Oh, it was pure luck", because it was not. Like the way Jeremy so confidently puts it whenever somebody wishes him luck, he'd eagerly tell the person that he needs more skills rather than luck in a paper. Which is true, and that is exactly what I proved to the world, but mostly myself. It's not the end of the world at the end of the world. Because one end is merely the other's beginning, and my life - my real life- has only just started. Thanks to all the new friends and the old ones who came so far with me, guiding me, loving me, embracing me. Thank you, really, and so much more.

Failure is always the best way to learn,
Retracing your steps 'til you know,
Have no fear your wounds will heal.

Only Life

Is there anyone who
Ever remembers
Changing their mind from
The paint on a sign

The road from my bed to the front door of my house takes about ten steps, or maybe a little more than that. I've never counted, but it never felt longer than twenty anyway. That is the road I take every morning, if I have to wake up early for school. It starts with the bed, and the first journey of the day begins. The destination is the front gate, or rather what lies beyond the front gate. Opening the wooden door and too lazy to find the correct key from the glass tray, I reach through the metal railings to obtain my prize. The newspapers, lying on the red door mat in a small untidy pile, left there by the hardworking paper boys - or men - that rides around on their overloaded motorbikes in the wee-hours of the morning. They usually arrive by the time I wake up, and that is where I get my daily source of information from around the world.

They say that being a Communications Studies student, you have to have a very wide grasp of what is happening in the world today. It's important to have the latest statistics and information at your fingertips, and it always makes it that much easier to write an essay about anything in the world. Sometimes, you won't even need to wonder if the numbers are completely accurate. Just come up with a number that is close enough, and people are going to believe whatever information that you provide. At least that is the kind of homework we have to do every morning, despite not being told what to do at all. Or it might be a kind of personal hobby of mine, to be updated once in a while about this world I am living in. However, there is something I do every morning that may not work for me if revealed to my teachers at school. I skip every section of the newspaper, and put my full attention only in LIFE!. Here's why.

Is there anyone who
Really recalls
Ever breaking rank at all,
For something someone yelled real loud one time

The title of the section says it all. The LIFE! section is - life. It is about our lives and how we are going to live it. Food reviews, movie reviews, music reviews, and everything you find in a Life section. That is the kind of information we get from there, and the kind of information that interests people. I used to be interested in the other sections too, simply because of the kind of news you get overseas and how informative they get. However, it has become a kind of norm to report only the negativity of the world, and seldom do you see news of a brave soldier in Iraq, the news of a heroic act or the likes. Everything is about war, is about politics, is about money, is about murders. Everything in our society that has got to do with anything but harmony and peace. Whatever goes on outside LIFE, have successfully put me off, totally.

I was reading an article online a few years ago, and I remember the man talking about the same kind of negativity we observe in other sections. First, the business section. It is about money, it is about finance. It is about what makes the world go round, and it is about what we call the "Root of Evil". It stirs the superficiality inside of us all, and sometimes you wonder if it really is that important to live in a mansion and own a yacht, when living as in the countryside with a small farm can be equally gratifying. The sports section is recreation, or what he called "A fluff". I've never been a very big sports fan, so that section is naturally skipped by myself. Next is the front page. The front page is the front page, it is what the publishers use to sell papers. Everything on the front page is in bold, highlighted, underlined and repeated over a dozen times with the most colorful pictures you can get in the highest resolution. That is the front page, and that is what goes against the heart of life - LIFE.

Oh, everyone believes
In how they think it ought to be
Oh, everyone believes
And they're not going easily

There are too many things featured in the other sections, that there are times when you start to wonder if you even want to know about these things. LIFE section isn't the greatest section of the newspaper in terms of its quality. I mean, nobody can read comic strips and celebrity quotes, and run a country successfully at the same time. That is also why the presidents of different countries are given newspapers every morning instead of comic books and graphic novels. LIFE section provides entertainment, and that is as far as it goes to tell you the truth. However, that is the only place in the newspaper that is not tainted by the filth of reality, or at least it is the more edible apple out of the basket of rotten ones.

It gets depressing in the other sections really, especially what happens after the front page. You read about some crazed militants in South Thailand bombing cars and buses, then you see trains in Taiwan colliding with each other. Days after days with depressing news like that, you start to wonder why they'd want to include such news in the morning paper, and expect people to start work or school with a smile on their faces. We see all those motivating posters stuck to the walls in offices and school corridors, encouraging people to start the day afresh and be energized. But then you walk down the corridors some more, and you find a stack of newspapers for you to read, with a bunch of people protesting on the streets, burning flags and flipping over cars. And it is only eight in the morning, with eight more hours to go till the end of the day. As if the morning dosage of depression isn't enough, the media feeds you at night with the evening news. This time, with moving pictures and sound.

Belief is a beautiful armor
That makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching underwater
You never can hit who you're trying for

I have an American friend whom I met over this internet movie forum. He is 22 years old, and he works part-time at this child-care home in America. The child-care home consists of children from single-parent families, and orphans as well. The single-parent would have their kids left in the child-care home when they go to work, and then pick them up after work at the end of the day. My friend got to know a girl named Alex, and she is a nine year old girl who made an impression on him. She was different from the other children running about, always being very composed and reserved - though never boastful.

One fine day, this friend of mine was talking to the people over at the forums once when he told us about it. He only just found out about the news, and he found out through the newspaper headlines that he read in the morning. Apparently, Alex was raped behind the school one day, and the culprit was caught. His neighbor, who is also his colleague at the child-care center, is actually the culprit's sister. The worst part is not even the fact that a nine year old girl was raped behind the school, or the fast that the news was plastered all over the papers and the evening news. The disturbing part really was the fact that the boy who raped the girl, wasn't even a middle-aged pervert who masturbates to internet porn all day long and spends his time behind bars, but a twelve year old child. That's, the disturbing part.

Some need the exhibition and
Some have to know they tried
It's the chemical weapon for the war
That's raging on inside

The media has lost its track a long time ago. There was a time when the media was the source of life and hope for people. In the World War II, the radio was the only source of information, because the factories were all shut down and newspapers were not being published anymore. So the people depended a lot on the media then, praying for a sign that may lead to the end of war, or instructions that were sent over the air waves to instruct the citizens on when to take shelter or move out of the city. The media was also the only source of hope for some families, who had their sons or fathers at war in some distant lands. Knowing the situation far away gives them that tad bit of hope, even if their loved ones might have already died in the battle. It gives them courage to move on, to survive. But when was the last time we turned on our radio to have our life depend on it?

The radio spurts out bad music almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Sandwiched between bad songs are advertisements encouraging you to purchase this or buy that, splurge your money this weekend and unleash the superficial and materialistic side of you. Half the news revolves around Paris Hilton, how her life is like inside the prison, when she will be released, how much she is going to be paid for the very first interview, so on and so forth. You start to wonder, what happened to the hope, what happened to the faith. What happened to those times when we tuned into the radio and smiled because they are playing "Wrapped Around the Finger". When?

Oh, everyone believes
From emptiness to everything
Oh, everyone believes
No one's going quietly

So, LIFE it is going to be. Reading through people's comments about movies and music, and that is as far as I go in the LIFE section anyway. Of course, there is the obituaries. But if reading about nine year old kids being raped is depressing, would you want to look at those black and white pictures of the old and dead? It's the colors that matter, and it has got to be the LIFE section. However narrow minded it may be, however self-constrained I may be, this is the protest from me to the media, that you guys have lost your innocence that you once possessed.

Of course, blood sells. Violence sells. Sex sells. Money is the root of everything these days, and people are not going to buy magazines or newspapers if they do not have any of the above. Radio frequencies with hope and faith have little of those, and are thus not marketable at all. I'd like to have a day with zero newspaper publishing, zero television broadcasting, and zero activities in the world. Just a day of peace, when people just sit around and talk about life all day long. Without the sound of the media blaring over the speakers, or the words that describe horrid crimes overseas stinging your eyes. Just that silence around the world, those soft murmurs you hear from the other side of the wall. It'd be nice, to have that once in a while.

Because things are too noisy, and we have all lost the heart of life - for ever.

What takes a hundred thousand
Children in the sand
Belief can
Belief can

What puts the folded flag
Inside his mothers hand
Belief can
Belief can

Ms. Watermelon's Big Night