In Continuum.

Alone Together

It was me on that road
But you couldn't see me
Too many lights on, but nowhere near here

With the PSY101 mid terms looming in at the beginning of next week, the usually lethargic group of friends that I have had their switches turned on. More and more of them started asking me for the address for Deuel's home, wanting to join the group of us that gathers for our weekly study sessions. I guess, with the Nazi as our lecturer, nobody wants to take any risks this time by pulling an all-nighter around the Mahjong table the night before a paper. Minutes before I left the house for Deuel's, April messaged me for Deuel's address, and I knew that we weren't going to get anything done if we remained in the same room as everybody else. Nothing against April, or any other new members joining the study group. But I figured that with new members around, I wouldn't be able to concentrate as much as I would with the normal bunch of people. I couldn't back out from the plan in the last minute, which was why I went ahead with the original plan anyway. The cab ride to his place was ten cents more expensive than usual, but still not enough to make me curse the driver for his lack of speed. The dog next door slept like a corpse at the front porch, on the edge of the shadows where the shade ended and the sun began.

The house was the same as before, with Deuel's dogs greeting me in the driveway. Mochie's wet nose brushed against the back of my hands while Tigger slapped me constantly with his strong tail. I smiled at the maid and proceeded upstairs, only to find the studying table where we would usually be at, empty. Deuel was nowhere in sight, leaving behind a laptop and a textbook flipped open to page 246. He must have went out to fetch the others here, I figured. The papers fluttered as the fan blew hot wind through the pages, and I made myself comfortable upstairs where his home entertainment system is. I was prepared to spend the rest of the day in the cozy sofa, away from the potential distractions downstairs in the study room. It was going to be a new experience, but at least I was sure to get things done that way.

It was me on that road
Still you couldn't see me
And then flashlights and explosions

They arrived a couple of minutes later, after I occupied the time counting distant barking of the dogs in the neighborhood. Jonathan emerged first, followed closely by Deuel in his usual UB t-shirt. Following behind him was Elizabeth, her radiance trailing behind her hair as usual. Then there was Travers, followed closely by...somebody. It was a face that I did not recognize, but the voice in the back of my head told me that I knew that person. It was Traver's girlfriend, the one he talked about the night before after Shen's birthday party in town. He drove his car to her's, then made a turn to Jonathan's to pick him up along the way. I've never seen her before, but from where I was she looked rather different from the kind of girlfriend that Travers would have in my head. It is a common mistake that I have with my preconceived idea of a person, but this is the farthest from the imagination that it has ever gotten.

It was strange of him to bring his girlfriend to a studying session at a friend's house, especially when she isn't even in the same school, studying the same modules. It'd make more sense if your girlfriend is from the same school, studying the same modules. Even if she isn't, it'd still make sense if she has her own examinations coming up around the corner. It wasn't even a gathering with a couple of friends with a few drinks and music in the background, but a studying session for our PSY101 paper coming up on Monday. Her presence troubled me greatly, and there I was standing on the second floor, wondering what she was going to do for the rest of the day.

Roads and getting nearer
We cover distance but not together
I am the storm and I am the wonder
And the flashlights, nightmares
And sudden explosions

There was a friend of mine who told me about his ex-girlfriend, and her insatiable craving for his company. She was the kind of girlfriend who needed to be around her boyfriend twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In the case whereby she isn't able to accompany him, she'd demand him to report his locations, his company, his activity, and his time of return back home via SMS. He was under a stringent Communist rule, all for the name of love. As do all boyfriends and girlfriends in love, we usually go through such silly matters without complaining, but as somebody sitting across from him at a coffee table with the word 'friend' tagged to my forehead, I had to intervene. It was especially so after her girlfriend erupted on the phone with him one night, which to me was just plain absurd to begin with.

Apparently, a bunch of gambling hungry friends of his decided to ask him along for a game at a friend's. It was going to be a game of Mahjong, and he made it clear to his girlfriend that it wouldn't make sense for her to come along, since she stood a better chance at beating a Japanese Sumo wrestler in a fist fight than a game of Mahjong. She insisted on tagging along, and erupted for the first time that night because he made it sound as if he didn't want to spend time with her. So the poor friend of mine had to comply, and with her eyes fixated on the boyfriend during the game like a vulture would at a dying lion in the wild, everybody started losing their concentration and money. The boyfriend felt bad for winning, not because of the amount of money he was winning but because of how he was actually winning them. The girlfriend remained next to him, staring at the white and green tiles without much comprehension, sitting there with her arms crossed and not understanding any of the technical jargons the boys were saying across the table. The boredom crept up her back and into her brain, and she got incredibly pissed off afterwards. Thus, the second eruption.

I don't know what more to ask for
I was given just one wish

They broke up swiftly after, siting the reason to the difference in interest. To her, his interests were in his friends and gambling, though that wasn't the whole truth at all. But then again, with a girlfriend like that, you can't really fault the boyfriend from placing more attention on an army of ants crossing the pavement than his partner. That was the story I kept in mind when I got into my own relationship, and prevented such awkward occasions to arise whenever possible. It worked both ways for the both of us back then, with me keeping her away from parties of people that she didn't know, and she keeping me away from parties of people that I didn't know. It wasn't because of how we were ashamed of our friends to see our partners or anything, but it was how we didn't want to feel alone while being together. It worked out for us, until we broke up for the reason we do not speak of anymore.

Bringing the situation back to Saturday afternoon, Jonathan and I retreated into the guest room in the corner of the study room and remained there for the rest of the day. With the air-conditioning turned on and my music playing quietly over the speakers, it was the perfect place to study without any other possible distractions. I suppose part of the reason why we wanted to remain in the room was to avoid any possible contact with the person that we weren't very familiar with. She looks like a great girl, and Travers obviously takes good care of her. But putting her in a situation like this one, not only made her uncomfortable but the people in the house as well. It is a sort of commitment though, the fact that the both of you promise to meet each other at least once every week over the weekends. But if I wouldn't have brought her to a studying session, that'd be weird as hell.

It's about you and the sun
A morning run
The story of my maker
What I have and what I ache for

Soon enough, Kania and Shen both retreated into the room as well, joining the both of us on the beds. We didn't really talk about it, but above the small talks that April and Elizabeth were more interested in rather than their textbooks, Kania and Shen were more distracted by her loneliness. There she was sitting at a separate table amidst a bunch of people she didn't know, watching The Devil Wears Prada silently on a laptop while her boyfriend attempted to study for the rest of the afternoon. He retreated upstairs to the entertainment floor for an afternoon nap, leaving her even more alone than she already was. It was as good as leaving your slave to guard the camel in the middle of the Arabian desert at night, while you fall asleep under the tree in the distance. We felt bad for her, but it was not like any of us had the courage to speak to her at all. After all, we were all there for the company and the studying, not to make a stranger to the group feel at home.

I could tell that we were from completely different worlds altogether, Traver's girlfriend and the rest of us. I pictured myself walking up to her at the study table, and trying to come up with conversational topic that is going to last us for more than ten lines. In my imagination, I walked up to her and introduced myself and asked her about the movie she was watching. I imagined her giving me one word answers, and the whole conversation going to hell some time between the third and the fourth exchange. It was the nightmare of all conversations, and I was struck back to reality with a giant blow of awkwardness in my face. I was back in the guest room with the textbook on my laps and the notes sprawled all over the bed. Jonathan was still bent over his book, Shen laying on his side like the statue of a Buddha, and Kania murdering the keyboards with her fingertips, making notes. I shivered at the thought I just had, and tried to get back to the readings I left aside before I conjured the courage to face the nightmare. How apt, to read about traumatic experiences in the textbook straight afterwards. How apt.

I've got a golden ear
I cut and I spear
And what else is there
Roads and getting nearer
We cover distance still not together

There was a call out for help from a friend then, a vibration in my handphone that laid on the bed next to my leg. It was a message from her, telling me about another argument that she must have had with her significant other. It was probably about the same issues all over again, and she started telling me about the perks about being single. Come to think about it, I suppose she is right about the perks about being single. After all, I wouldn't need to worry about my girlfriend feeling bored out of her wits at a studying session with a bunch of people she doesn't know, nor would I need to worry about whether or not somebody is going to be on the other side of the island, monitoring my location, my company, my activity and my estimated time or return anytime soon. Loneliness does strike me every once in a while, but at least there is a sure way of getting rid of that feeling when it tugs at my heart string: I go to school.

At least that kind of loneliness feels better than being with somebody, and a thousand miles away from each other at the same time. It'd be like chewing on a piece of gum until the taste is gone, or the body of a cat trapped in the axles of a truck as it continues to speed down the road. From where we are, the bystanders look at the relationship like a corpse dragged over the rocks, and even we feel the pain of being scratched and wounded all over. You cannot accuse anybody of anything if they are living happily with each other, which I am sure is exactly the case between the both of them. However, there is such a thing as being sadder than sad, and that is the kind of sad that pretends not to be sad. I suppose, living in an illusion of happiness is worse than living in a reality of depression.

If I am the storm if I am the wonder
Will I have flashlights, nightmares
And sudden explosions

There is no room I can go and
You've got secrets too

I don't know what more to ask for
I was given just one wish

The Eraser

Please excuse me but I got to ask
Are you only being nice
Because you want something

My fairy tale arrow pierces
Be careful how you respond
'Cause you'd not end up in this song

I never gave you an encouragement
And it's doing me in
Doing me in
Doing me in
Doing me in

The more you try to erase me
The more, the more...
The more that I appear
Oh, the more, the more...
The more you try the eraser
The more, the more
The more that you appear

You know the answer so why do you ask
I am only being nice
Because I want someone, something
You're like a kitten with a ball of yarn
And it's doing me in
Doing me in
Doing me in
Doing me in

The more you try to erase me
The more, the more
The more that I appear
Oh the more, the more
The more I try to erase you
The more, the more
The more that you appear

No, you're wrong, you're wrong
You're wrong, you're wrong
You're wrong, you're wrong
You're wrong

Giant Freezer

Imaginary Insects

The moon is not only beautiful
It is so far away
The moon is not only ice cold
It is here to stay

On the fifteenth of every eighth lunar month, it is a festival that every Chinese knows about. The mid-autumn festival is considered the second biggest event on a Chinese calendar, right under the other important date called the Chinese New Year. The Mid-autumn festival, or the Mooncake festival, has been a tradition ever since the Xia and Shang dynasty in China, more than four thousand years ago. Through time, the stories and the origins of this day has been greatly distorted and changed, but the basic practices have yet to alter despite the long period of time. There are a dozen different stories I have heard about why we have to eat mooncakes on this day, or why we have to carry lanterns on this special day of the year. But whatever it is, I guess it is a great opportunity for everybody to take life a little less seriously than usual, like what the gang did last Friday at Kerri's.

Before I reveal the details though, here is a little story about how the Mid-autumn festival came about - based completely on my vague memory of the primary school history textbook. Anyway, there was a man named Houyi, and he had a wife named Chang-er. Both of them work in a Jade Palace in Heaven, and both of them are immortals when they were born. The bunch of idiots in the Jade Palace got jealous of their immortality one day, and banished them from the Jade Palace into the human world. So the love birds arrived on Earth and no longer retained their immortality. So they started hunting for food, which was where Houyi learned his incredible skills as an archer.

When i lay me down
Will you still be around
When they put me six feet underground
Will the big bad beautiful you be around

Back in those days, the Earth had ten bloody suns surrounding us, one every ten days. Please be reminded that this is merely a folklore, told from grandmothers to grandchildren, so on and so forth until it no longer resembles anything that we learn in the science textbook these days. But anyway, let's just stretch our imaginations for a while, and pretend that there were ten bloody suns in the skies back then. Houyi found it to be incredibly hot back then, so he decided to shoot down nine suns to keep just one in the skies - he was afraid of the dark, perhaps. Anyway, so some heavenly figure was grateful of his work for mankind, and thus gave him a pill that is supposed to make him an immortal again. However, he needed to take the pill in a specific time of the year with some kind of training involved prior to consuming the pill. So before Houyi ate the pill, he hid it under his pillow and went along with the training to make himself eligible for the pill. Then of course, the woman of the story ruined everything.

The busy-bodied Chang-e danced into his room one day and found the pill under his pillow, and was probably incredibly hungry back then. After all, Houyi was training for his eligibility for the pill deep in the jungles, and probably forgot to use his awesome archery skills to hunt for some wild deer or boars. She ate the pill that was underneath the pillow, and she gained superpowers right afterwards. She floated out of the bedroom window, and Houyi chased after her on foot. Chang-e floated and floated, and she eventually floated herself onto the moon with a horde of crazed rabbits minding their own businesses in the wilderness. She choked on the sight of the crazed rabbits, and managed to cough out a part of the immortality pill, which was used as an ingredient on the rabbits' part to make the whole pill again. The rabbits are still making the damn pill for the selfish Chang-e to return to Earth just to see her husband once every year on this day, which is also why the moon is so round on this day. The Yang of the circle is the palace that Houyi built, and the Yin is the palace that Chang-e built on the moon. While they happily dance in the starry skies, the rabbits labor away on the surface of the barren moon, cursing under their breaths about Chang-e's stupidity.

Everyone says they know you
Better than you know who
Everyone says they own you
More than you do

Some may think that the above story is beautiful, while I think it has a rather sexist tone to it. After all, I have read too many Chinese literature and folklore, with the women in the stories doing incredibly stupid things. I guess it was only convenient to put women in that situation, because they didn't actually have the kind of equality they have these days. But anyway, I hardly think that the above story is in the mind of anybody these days, while they are busy trying out different flavors of the mooncakes, or playing with lanterns underneath the stars and the moon. Not to mention how the general public would unleash the arsonist in them, and start to burn the leftover lanterns and the candles, throwing them into the air like black confetti and see those ashes come raining down on ourselves like black snow. Yeah, on this day, when you are overdosed on mooncakes, people do become a little eccentric.

Kerri invited us over last Friday for a gathering at her place, with sparklers, whistling rockets, candles and a whole bunch of mooncakes jam-packed into the schedule. With the opportunity to mess around with pyrotechnics, it was a chance that I couldn't pass out on. So the decision was made to head down to her house after school last Friday to mess around with those fires and be silly children all over again. At least that is how I felt like, when I was presented with a a box choked with sparklers and other fireworks. It was a childhood dream come true, and I could see myself dancing deep into the night with sparklers in my hands, smiling like a doped idiot with leftover mooncakes in my mouth. Still, that possibility did not stop me from lighting up a bunch of those beautiful sparkling sticks and watch them burn slowly into the night, leaving a trail of smoke like the tail of an animal, so rare that it appears for as long as the fire is willing to burn, and disappears silently into a bush.

When I lay me down
Will you still be around
When they put you six feet underground
Will the big bad beautiful moon be around

It was my first time with the whistling rockets, and I was never allowed to touch those supposedly dangerous toys when I was younger. I had one of those party poppers that blew out confetti when you pull a string at the back of the cone, and that was the closest I've ever got to something that explodes - save for my sister, who erupts. So Efei was my tutor that night, the very same man that managed to set fire to the school toilet and was ultimately kicked out of the school - my school. Anyway, so he gave me a rough tutorial on how to pull the strings, and when to let go of the rockets. His specific instruction was to hold on to the stick while I pulled on the string, even when the fire begins to emerge at the back of the rocket. And when the whistling sound begins, let go of the stick and it will soar up into the sky. As the maniac that I am, I failed to follow his instructions and did everything that I wasn't supposed to do. I held on to the stick throughout the ignition process, and the rocket blasted a jet of fire into my right arm as it rocketed into the night sky. I could feel the slight pinch of pain in my arms even after the incident, but damn was it a great first experience. I wanted to shoot off another one, but Kerri's mother got upset. We stopped the rocketing, and started the attempt of burning a hole in the table.

We sat around the table then, with six candles burning before our faces and lighted them up like our own customized lanterns. We lid lanterns and hung them around the house, jabbing the sticks in between the bricks that made up the exteriors of the house. It was a peaceful sight then, to see those lanterns glowing softly in the night, with the fire flickering within the paper that surrounded it like a warm embrace. It was untouchable by the breeze that kissed our faces then, but the fuel soon burned out and all was plunged into darkness once more. But we kept burning those candles at the table, lighting up one sparkler after another until they were all burned out of shape. The leftover lanterns that were not used, became the toys between Shen, Kerri and I, as we started lighting them up one by one. We watched as the fire slowly consumed those colorful papers, seeing the ashes float up into the skies like fireflies. Like the life of one, they lasted only for such a short period of time, and was gone. But still, it was a peaceful feeling sitting there at the table with a great company, witnessing the birth and death of an imaginary insect. It was a comfortable night, a comfortable house amidst a group of comfortable people. I found a place then, and it was more than just a people I hang out with often, but also a group of people who took me in as I am - even if I make strange analogies between burning lanterns and fireflies. They accepted me, for who I am. And I was glad.

'Cause the moon is not only beautiful
It is so far away
The moon is not only ice cold
It is here to stay

We didn't burn a hole through the table, but we did manage to make a mess out of it. The glass surface was covered in a layer of tar, and the water from the swimming pool didn't help at all. But Kerri was cool about it, telling us that she would clean up the mess when we are gone. The rest of the night was spent mostly on the sofa, trying desperately to open my eyes just so that I'd be able to help myself onto a cab on the way home. It was getting late, and there was something about admiring imaginary fireflies and burning lanterns that was particularly exhausting. We called it a night, and promised to meet on the following Monday. Of course, that is going to be the case for a lot of Mondays in the future, and Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and a whole lot of other weekdays and weekends as well. That was a comforting thought, despite the inevitable separation that I foresee at the end of the course. It is about three years away, and it is going to go by without us knowing it at all. To capture the moments, to grab hold of an instant. That is when I realized that I had to start blogging again, start reminding myself of the emotions and feelings that ran through my head in a specific place and time. Because the comfort that I felt with this admirable group of people, may be the only time in my life when I can call a bunch of friends - my family.

Everyone says they know you
Better than you know who
Everyone says they own you
More than you do

The Agitated Girl

You meet a stranger on a bus, a train, a lift. You glance at them with the corner of your eyes, and some of them catches your attention and some of them comes and goes like the scenery outside the window. There is this man on the train that I meet every once in a while on my way to school, with his unkempt facial hair and untidy clothes. He looks like a person that has been in the office for way too long, with his straight black hair reaching his shoulders, the underside of his chin covered predominantly with unshaven facial hair. He hangs his glasses in between the second and the third button of his crumpled shirt, and he nods his head on the train whenever he takes his short naps dangerously above the shoulders of the passengers sitting next to him. The coffee cup suspended from a plastic bag would dangle from his curved fingers, always a centimeter or two away from giving in to gravity. It is a wonder how his manager accepts the way he looks at the office, but I guess not everybody is as particular about the way your employees dress as others. Of course, that is under the assumption that he works at an office in the first place.

There is that woman who falls asleep while she is standing on a train as well, always falling onto fellow passengers standing around her to cushion her fall. She arms herself with a dark brown umbrella most of the time, not to shield herself from the forces of nature but the pull of gravity. She uses it as a cane, leaning against it while she sleeps with the other hand gripping the plastic rings above. Most of the time, the train would be so crowded that she wouldn't even need to grab hold of anything. People that stands around her would be the cushion for her to fall on, and I've seen her fall on a dozen different passengers. There were times when I thought that she must have some kind of disease, the kind that shuts down your system and knocks you out without warnings. But I have come to a conclusion that she is just a very gifted commuter on the train that has the ability to fall asleep while she is standing up. The Sudoku puzzles can hardly keep her awake most of the time, and she always reminds me of a child tumbling around in bed, unwilling to crawl out of her sheets to face the music of the day.

These are the kind of people I meet on my way to school and back. You meet a stranger, you fall for a stranger, your love affair lasts as long as the bus ride lasts. Your stop comes, you pray that she gets off at the same stop as you, or stays in the same estate as you. More often than now, she is probably not living in the same vicinity as you, and is just glad that you left the seat for her to occupy for the rest of the journey. That is probably the mentality of most commuters, and even I am guilty of such a claim. However, there are times whereby I do wish to have some kind of understanding with these strangers that I meet, a little random conversation or two out of the blues. I have mentioned it before, the way I've been wanting to strike up a conversation with somebody on the train, just to keep me company on our rare meetings. This Monday was such a day, and the incident that happened may eventually translate to something so much more.

Mondays are my short days, with school ending at fifteen minutes to two. But I'd stay on in school for a while, hanging out with my friends just to make the long dreadful trip to school worthwhile. After the lunch break with my friends outside our secret hideout known as "The Temple", I was ready to head home at four in the afternoon, with none other but myself as company. I was armed with the music from Royksopp, and the heavy eyelids to provide me with the darkness I would need for the nap on the trip home. That was how it went on throughout the trip on 151 as well as 105, until I woke up with a startle as the bus pulls in slowly to the bus I was supposed to get off. Somebody followed me down the bus then that I did not notice, as I was frantically reaching into my back pocket for the wallet. Everybody was waiting for me to scan the card, and I could feel their eyes on me like a long queue of impatient shoppers outside a fitting room. The wallet was being stubborn, and the line behind me sure didn't help in trying to sooth my racing mind.

Stepping down from the bus, the doors folded and I was home. The air still smelled of wet mud and steel, with the scent of concrete in the air as well, and perhaps the last trace of the day's warmth lingering in the wind. I regained by posture at the temporary bus stop, and there I was in the middle of it all with a school girl that got off the bus with me. She must have been one of those eager passengers that lined themselves up behind me impatiently, the remnants of my embarrassing admission. She must have been thinking to herself just how clumsy that guy with the strangely styled hair was, trying to hook his wallet out of his back pocket like a complete idiot. I must have looked like a person who was trying to wipe his ass with a single piece of toilet paper then, in front of everybody on the bus with my pants on. I wanted to run home in the opposite direction then, hide my face from the rest of the world until the next set of single-serving friends and lovers come along to replace this one. But there she was in front of me, carrying her books in her arms and heading towards the same direction as I was down the edge of the dirt road and back home. I've never seen her around in my estate before, and I was sure as hell that I wanted things to remain that way from today onwards.

I remained three meters behind her, keeping my distance like a stray dog would from a stranger human. Walking in front of her wasn't an option, since that'd only increase the chance of being recognized as the guy who wiped his ass through his pants only moments ago. She minded her business most of the time, threading the narrow path along the dirt road carefully with every step. Her white shoes were stained on the edge, the books that rested on her arms seemed to weigh a hundred times heavier than usual. She was crumbling under the weight of the books and the world, and her steps were particularly heavy for some reason, oblivious to my presence behind her. I've never seen her in my estate before, but then it's not like I take note of every resident there anyway. My estate is known to be filled with only three types of living things: The Old, the Young, the Dogs. Aside from Kimberly who lives seventeen floors below me, not to mention Shuling that stays in the terrace houses acros the streets, I have never seen anybody else around my age. So to see this stranger walking before me was a pleasant surprise - at least on my part.

I fished for the key to the back gate from my back, once again resembling a person trying to wipe his ass in public. Coming to the gate, I was just about to insert the key when the girl started pounding her hands on the metal gate, trying to push it open with her bare hands. I stared wide-mouthed like a person who has just witnessed a plane crash, or a five year old boy killing a pigeon with a hammer. There she was, the quiet girl that got off the bus with me, pounding on the gates like a disturbed maniac. Her oblivion to my existence was taken to the next level when she unleashed the beast inside her, trying to tear the gates down with her hands. It took her a few times to notice that I was standing there with the keys in my hands, and she turned away embarrassed. "Hey, calm down" I said. "The key is here."

The both of us shared an awkward walk to the elevator together. On her part, there was that awkward feeling of being seen in the midst of an embarrassing act. It's like being caught by your parents while you made out in the park, or undressed in your room with half your estate staring through the windows. She was behind me when we came through the gates, but I could feel that intense sense of embarrassment, which was in turn making me feel embarrassed. On my part, I felt like what a father would feel if he catches his son masturbating or something. We shared the lift together, and she lives on the eighteenth floor while I on the nineteenth. We spoke little as the hydraulic-powered lift moved at a crawling speed up the shaft. OK, it isn't actually a hydraulic powered lift, but the time spent in the confined space with her was definitely the longest elevator ride ever. She must have felt the same as well, which was why she said the following when I took off my earphones.

Agitated Girl," Excuse me..."
Me," Oh, yeah?"
Agitated Girl," Yeah, I wasn't agitated back there or anything."
Me," Oh?"
Not-So-Agitated Girl," Yeah. If you push the gate hard enough, it will open by itself."
Me," Really?"
Not-So-Agitated Girl," Really."
Me," Well, you scared me there."
Not-So-Agitated Girl," Haha, yeah. Sorry."
Me," Better not let the construction workers find out then."

I realized my mistake, and that she wasn't really this maniac with a personal vendetta against the back gate. I guess she just had a funny way of showing off the secret to the back door. It's strange how she lives one floor below me, and I have never seen her before. Either she has been very skillfully avoiding my detection for the past sixteen years, or she must have found another secret back door somewhere. Whatever it may be, I got to ask her to show me just how you open those back gates with your bare hands the next time I meet her on the bus again. Who knows, we may open more than just one door, but a whole lot more afterwards. It's wistful thinking, but I guess I have the right to have such childish thoughts nowadays.

November 5th

Premonition

I sat in the dark tonight, stared at a blank channel in my parents' empty room for the longest time. They say that it is the best way to cure insomnia, the way the sound of static on blank channels resembles that of the rain hitting your window panes. It reminded me of the way I was rudely awoken this morning to the curtains lifted by the winds and the books on the table drenched by the invading rain. Only, sitting there in the dark, there was an immense feeling of loneliness and sadness for some reason. It didn't even make sense then, considering the fact that I was brushing my teeth as I watched those black and white particles bounce around within the plastic frames of the television. The room has been vacant for a few days now, simply because my mother went back to Taiwan to take care of my aunt, the aunt with the dog. There has been an accident this week, and things are not looking good at all.

I have early classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. On such days, my mother would fetch me to the MRT station to catch the earlier trains to school. It is a short drive from my home to the station, anywhere in the vicinity of five to seven minutes at the most. Not a lot can be said during the trip, but this is usually when the two of us would talk about the happenings in each others' lives, despite living under the same roof most of the time. We would talk about the dreams we had last night, when my father is finally coming back from his overseas trip, or about my sister's exchange program to England at the end of November. By the time we reach the station, I would've had my bag prepared and my iPod plugged into my ears, ready to travel to school all on my own. But the last Thursday was a little different from all the rest, when a phone call came just as we were about to reach the station. My mother reached for the phone under the hand brake, with the other hand trying to bring the vehicle to a halt at the curb. We both thought that it must have been my sister, calling because there was yet another tremor that must have shook her awake. We laughed about it, and that was when the car came to a stop and I jumped out of the side door. That is when it struck me, that is when it happened.

No, when I speak of Premonition, I am not speaking of the horrendous Sandra Bullocks movie in the theaters right now. I am talking about this vision of something bad happening, a gut feeling that something bad must have happened. Something about the way the phone rang that just sounded wrong and out of place that fateful Thursday morning, something that I couldn't put my finger on. It sounded like any other phone call, with the same ringtone that my mother has been using for the longest time. However, as I took the escalator down to the basement level of the station, the feeling grew stronger in my throat, like a ball of fur trapped in the windpipe of a cat. I tried to cough the feeling away, like a patient with pneumonia in the middle of the platform. When I finally managed to sweep the feeling under the rug, the train arrived at the station and that was the beginning of the day for me, squeezing in between completely strangers as the train traveled down the long dark tunnels. The feeling never returned for the rest of the day, and I realized that I have swept it away as a paranoia of mine, the way I would worry about the building collapsing whenever there is a tremor felt in Singapore. I am usually wrong about such things of course, because you don't hear about buildings collapsing in Singapore - at least not yet. But that day at the train station, the feeling that came to my throat, it was real. For once, it sucked to be right.

Sticking her head through the gap in the door, my mother's head popped into the room. She told me that the call in the morning wasn't from my sister, but from my uncle in Taiwan. Apparently, there has been an accident in the night while my aunt was bathing, an accident that involved her slipping in the bathtub and slamming her face into the side. It was a frantic call from my uncle all the way from Taiwan, telling my mother about the accident. She told me to take care of the house over the weekend, because she already booked a ticket at that time to fly back on Friday morning just to check up on her. Things are uncertain now, and she is in the good hands of my uncle. But still, my mother wanted to go back as soon as possible, though my aunt is refusing every visitor at the moment.

In the bathroom that day, my aunt was overcome by a wave of nausea all of a sudden, and she lost her balance in the middle of the bathtub. My mother said that women have that problem when they are experiencing their menopause, and it seems to have struck my aunt at the wrongest of times. She slipped and her face slammed right into the side of the bathtub, breaking her lips, her nose and her forehead. You know how it is when you get into an accident, the brain pumps adrenaline to the rest of your body and you fail to feel the pain for a few short moments. She tried to wash the wound at that time, because there wasn't a mirror in the bathroom for her to see. But the more she tried, more blood came flooding down her face. The pain became excruciating, and she passed out in the bathroom soon afterwards.

I've been in that bathroom before, used the same shower head and stood at the very same spot where she fell. I am picturing the naked body of my aunt in the tub, with blood all over her body and her face, draining away as the shower head continued to spurt out water. My uncle came into the bathroom and found her body there in the night, and sent her to the closest hospital as soon as possible. It seems like she was lucky enough to have escaped broken teeth and a raptured eyeball, but the nose may need plastic surgery to be restored. The trauma in the forehead is causing her to feel like vomiting every now and then, and she is already at home resting as I type this entry. She refused to have anybody visit her at home, telling people that she looks like a rotten pig. She can't speak or eat now, but she did manage to stop relatives from visiting by speaking in vowels through her swollen lips. Whatever it is, she seems to be doing OK right now, and my mother is back more as a mental support than anything else. They've been through so much together, the sisters. I love that woman.

Once again, like any other accidents that have been happening around me, it has been hard to stomach just how vulnerable and fragile humans are. A nausea in the bathroom could cause such a thing to happen, not to mention something far worse than this. It is hard to picture the same aunt that has been like a second mother to me, lying there in the hospital bed with bandages all over her face. It must be some kind of courage on the part of my mother's, to have the courage to go back at this time to take care of her. Personally, like my father, the fear of death runs in our blood. Neither of us can handle that idea very well, not even when a person took a U-turn at the gates of death like my aunt. I guess the vulnerability of humans scare us sometimes, and it makes us wonder what it would be like for us to be involved in such accidents ourselves. I guess for me, the more important question would be, who would care if I do slip in the bathtub one day and break my face as a result. Who would visit me at home, send a 'Get Well' card, or call me even if I cannot speak? I guess those answers can only be realized when it does happen - though I am not saying that I'd like it to happen. Still, what my mother did touched me even if it wasn't me who had my nose smashed. My mother is the greatest woman alive without realizing it.

My parents will be coming back home together tomorrow afternoon, and I dearly hope that I will hear good news from them about my aunt. I hope that by the time I return to Taiwan at the end of this year, I will be able to see my aunt recovered completely from this ordeal. I'd treat it as if nothing has happened, though I had to be pretentious like that. But that is how I deal with human vulnerabilities, very much like my own vulnerabilities in the field of love and relationships. I pretend that nothing happened and nothing occurred. I guess it just becomes easier to deal with the problems at hand by avoiding sometimes, and I am the kind of person to run away too. I am not as strong as I'd like to be, not as strong as people may assume myself to be. I pretend, and I do it well. I sit in front of a blank channel in a dark room and hope for the sound to drown out all other emotions and thoughts. Amidst the prayers and the hopes, there is that fear that lingers about in my thoughts, that loneliness that cannot be explained. If only I had premonitions of what to come in the past, to know how my vulnerabilities would haunt me in the future. But I guess, like the blood that drained out of her body and into the sewage, it is a drop of blood lost that we are never going to get back.

An Urge

A Saturday night in the Hougang neighborhoods, a place with a thousand different memories. There is the one with myself running along the private housing estate, shunning away from ferocious guard dogs and the low hanging trees from houses with lazy occupants that never bothered to trim their plants. I remember dodging those trees while on those long morning runs, with the voice of the P.E. teacher ringing in the back of my head like an army sergeant of sorts, pushing us on without a pair of hands on our backs and the authority without a hard cold stare. That was the route that we took in the past during the first few months of my Junior College days. Every Wednesday was the day that the students would be forced to run a whooping 4.8 kilometers in the neighborhood around the school, and I remember this estate very well indeed. But it all looked different at night, at midnight to be exact. The streets were darker with more sinister looking shadows, with my footsteps bouncing off the walls of empty porches and driveways. Dogs would come running up to the gates, threatening to tear our faces off if we step within the biting distance of its fangs. But we always stayed at a safe distance, with the dogs baring their teeth mercilessly, always through the bars of the front door. Even the dogs haven't changed over the years, still hating every stranger that passes their domain without a piece of steak. Everything was still the same.

There is this other memory, a rather vague one, of the band walking up the streets and to the driveway. A day before the performance three years ago, a random Monday afternoon in July. Woodstock is what they called it then, a very distant cousin from the actual Woodstock concerts. Organized by the school, bands would come together for an one-night-only performance at the atrium of the school, and our band was one of them. Dragging our guitars and equipments, we arrived at Rachel's who had all the other missing pieces of the puzzle. The electronic drum set, the electric guitar with the amplifiers, everything. She was a cool girl, and still is - only if I can truly testify to that. It's been a while since I really saw her, aside from the brief encounter with her through the windows of the cab I was in two weeks ago. It was in the same estate then, while I was heading to Deuel's house with my spanking new Mac. She was in a hurry to go somewhere, messaging on her cellphone while heading in the opposite direction of the vehicle. I tried to wave then, but she didn't notice the excited shadow in the car that was passing by. But still, she still looked pretty much the same as she did from the last time I saw her in January. She lost the pink in her hair, replacing it was a slight dye of brown. She still looked famished somehow, but at the same time still strong enough to survive anything. Like the dogs of the streets, like the shadows in the night, everything still looked the same - even the occupants.

It was a night after our Saturday studying gathering, something which I've been looking forward to every week. It's not so much about the studying - which is never fun - but the company that I get every Saturday that makes the gathering extra special. There is Deuel, who is the owner of the house, the dogs, the great entertainment system and the target of amusement most of the time. There is Hooey, the wild child with an innocent heart, the blur queen of the group, the absent-minded girl. There is Jonathan, the brain of the group, the main dude, the homicidal maniac. There is Kania, the Indonesian, the girl who likes to hump light poles, and the one with the good taste in movies - like me. Five of us would gather every Saturday for studying sessions such as the ones we've been having for the past three or four weeks or so. Amidst all the studying, there is also that sense of belonging, the way you would feel as you become associated with a group automatically. It's like Nick Carter being associated with the Backstreet Boys wherever he goes for now, however much he'd like to leave that name behind. We don't have a name for ourselves, unless you consider "The Studying Group" as one. We work as a whole, but as individuals as well. We come together for a common purpose, and at times in different directions too. We were there, because the distance between each other feels warm and cozy, at least for me.

There was a group of similar friends sitting in the porch last night, the main smoking on his cigarettes while the ladies talked around the table. Kania, Jonno and I were going home at 1.30am, after watching Fight Club and getting a kick out of it. I wondered if we would be doing the same thing ten years down the road, still hanging in the same neighborhood like the way the barking of the dogs never seem to have changed over the years. We will be drinking, smoking, and talking at the same time about our own lives as they flash by before our eyes. I didn't want to expect anything to happen in ten years, because expectations lead to disappointments. And being a pessimist makes you a winner all the time. You are either proven right all the time, or pleasantly surprising all the time. It sounds like a good deal, a chance that I jumped upon without much questioning.

Like all similar nights for the past few weeks, it usually ends with a short cab ride home that costs in the vicinity of three or four dollars. The problem with that estate is that it is probably the most inaccessible area in the whole Singapore, despite all the urbanization around the corners. Getting off the cab, the new security guards stared at me with curiosity, not recognizing me as a long-time resident of the estate. They've been changed in the past week, to a new and a batch of younger security guards from Cisco. The man at the guard house set up in his chair, not expecting a person to walk in through the entrance at that hour of the night. Still, I gave him a glance and was on my own in no time, walking pass the barber shop that is soon to be up and running in a few weeks, and the empty restaurant downstairs with a tricycle parked in the corner. I pictured the noisy scene in front of the cafe, he it would've been like if the residents were still hanging around at that hour, with their cold beers and the high glasses with condensations dripping down the sits, making wet circles on the tables. The bustling on Saturday nights were not there anymore, moving ahead without me while I was in a place that hardly changed at all. Strange to think that something so close to me changed so much, as oppose to the same old estate I've been visiting over the past few years without noticing it.

As I crossed the road that night, I suddenly had the urge to tell somebody whatever I wanted to say then. I tried calling a few numbers on my cellphone, but it was a bad hour for somebody to pick up their phones and hear you talk about some trivial changes in your own neighborhood. Let's face it, nobody cares about your little bickering about these things, at least not at that hour. The phone rang a dozen times and stopped, directed me to the droning voice of a voice mail. I turned my cellphone off then, standing alone in the void deck as the urge grew and grew.

I thought to myself, that I had somebody to talk to at that hour about anything I wanted to. I was possible then, to pick up the phone and dial a number, and somebody would pick up on the other side to make you feel better about yourself by the end of the call. At least that comfort never changed then, amidst all the changing around me. It was a constant of my life, a refuge for my random thoughts. That person is gone now, and the only other place that I can do the same without much guilt is the same place that I've left behind to gather dust for the past two weeks. Guilt struck me last night, and the urge seeped into the empty room of guilt through a tiny hole in the door. It was time for me to blog again, the end of the break was neigh. I probably lost a lot of directions in the past, thinking that it was an obligation of sorts to blog for others rather than myself. In truth, the love for blogging was never meant for anybody else, but myself. It started with an urge to talk about my feelings, and the reason why I did it on the internet was because I was too lazy to write my thoughts down instead. And I am still so damn lazy as I was, four years ago when I first began.

So here I am, blogging for the first time in a long time. So much has happened within this period of time, and I can't wait to peel this onion off layer by layer to reveal the core that lies within. I'm not too sure what happened in the post two entries ago, nor can I promise that such a rash decision is not going happen anytime soon. However, we all try to make the best in times of change, especially when change is the only constant in this world. We try to adapt, we try to change with the change. Life doesn't stop even for your childish bickering. Let's move on, and here's my life all over again.

Rejoice.

Coming Soon

Breather

I think I am taking a break from blogging.

I'm tired about telling the world about me.

Because it doesn't matter.

There, I've said it.

Inspector Az

In Hollywood, the job of a police officer is to look good on the cameras while speeding at a hundred miles per hour in a high-speed pursuit. In America, the job of a police officer is to keep their Body-Mass Ratio checked every month before their weight goes over the scale. In Singapore, the job of a police officer – like Azhar – is to scoop up the remains of the deceased, and this is his story.

When asked about the image of a police officer to a five-year old boy, he is going to tell you that being a police officer is what he wants to do when he grows up, after being inspired by Batman or Superman, or the other similar crime-fighting superheroes. After all, to be able to wipe out a whole army of villains with a single nine-millimeter pistol amidst all the explosions does indeed appeal to a child at that age. When asked about the image of a police officer to a teenager, he is going to tell you that they are nothing more than a bunch of people riding around the neighborhood on their bicycles with doughnut crumbs all over their mouths. A middle-aged man like my father calls them the “Pests in Uniforms” because he receives an average of four speeding tickets every year from our guardians of the road, and he claims all of those incidents to be “Justified Speeding”, if that thing exists at all.

The truth is, we have all taken the police officers in Singapore for granted one way or another. I cannot say that I am innocent from that claim, because that was the kind of mentality I had before I met my friend Azhar. Azhar appeared in the doorway of the chalet that we were at a few months ago during the orientation, and the horror stories that he weaved that night chilled us to our bones. Amidst the horror stories, there was a sense of admiration and respect for the man that was sitting on the mattress, with his legs crossed and his hair carefully trimmed. It was hard to imagine that the job of a police officer encompasses the kind of things that he went through for his national service. Since that night, my pre-conception of the profession was utterly shattered – here’s why.

Sitting in front of my friend Azhar – or Inspector Az as he prefers to be known as – there was an air of pride in his work despite his complaints about the job. The reason he believes that there is a misconception in the profession is because of how easy the job may seem under the public’s scrutiny. We see them sitting in the neighborhood police posts, or in the front seat of their patrol cars doing nothing much at all. To Azhar, the boredom involved in the job itself not only wore some of the officers down over time, but also the kind of image the job has to the public.

“Singaporeans are taking police officers for granted because of how long they have been living in peace and harmony”, Azhar said. “ They think that being a police officer during the national service is the easiest way of going through the two years.” It is not uncommon for the daily routines of a police officer to involve settling family disputes, vandalisms from loan-sharks, as well as wild snakes crawling out of toilet bowls. The misconception is rooted in the fact that Singaporeans have been treating the Singapore Police Forces as a family hotline of sorts, calling in just because somebody’s son refused to behave at home. According to Azhar, if he was not out patrolling the streets for gangsters or pickpockets, he’d be sitting in the police post, receiving reports of lost items, dogs, or identification cards.

It is true that Singapore has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. However, Singapore also has one of the highest percentage of suicide rates in the world. Whenever somebody decides to end their lives by throwing themselves off a roof, or hanging themselves in their HDB apartment, it is not going to be up to the people from the hospital morgues to clean up the mess. Believe it or not, it is the police officers who arrive at the scene first to clean up the mess. Here is one of the horror stories that Azhar told me in our interview.

Due to a thing called OSA – or the Official Secrets Act – Azhar declined to let me in on the details of the crime scenes, simply because the victims died from unnatural deaths. In this case, Azhar received an urgent call from a neighborhood in the central area, complaining about strong odor of decaying flesh coming from a unit. Along with his superiors, Azhar arrived at the scene and was thrown off by the smell that attacked their nostrils. The unit was located on the thirteenth storey of the HDB block, but the smell could be sensed halfway up the elevators, and Azhar described to me – though however unwillingly – the smell of dead people.

“ There is something about decaying human flesh that’s just different from other rotting animals.” He said. “ It is nothing compared to a piece of rotting pork or a dead pig. Imagine the worst smell you can imagine in this world, it is probably a hundred times worse.”

I could only imagine how Azhar survived the ordeal that day, banging down the front door to reveal the owner of the house hanging from a belt that was tied to the fan fixated on the ceiling. “The thing about hanging yourself,” Azhar said as he interrupted himself to give me a tutorial on how to hang myself, “is that you want the fall to break your neck when you kick away the chair or the stool. You need a proper knot to do that, and it doesn’t work if you hang yourself with a belt or a phone cable.” Due to the lack of knowledge in that field, the man hanging by his belt clearly did not use the proper knot. Because of that, his tongue stuck out from his mouth like a ruler, and his eyeballs were protruding out of his sockets like ping-pong balls.

The first thing you do when you reach the scene of a suicide is to first check if a person is alive, no matter how dead he looks – “It’s routine.” He explained – then followed by taking the body down from the belt. Due to the fact that the body has been hanging there for days, swarms of maggots came wriggling out of the wound around the man’s throat inflicted by the belt. At this point, Azhar interrupted himself once again to explain to me about the concept of the “Last Breath” as I drew a mental picture of the route I’d take from where we were to the nearest restroom, just in case I needed to vomit my lunch out.

“Because of the belt around the neck, the final breath that the man took could not escape his body through his nose or mouth. Also, the dead body produces methane that becomes trapped in the body when a person dies. So when I tried to carry the dead body down from the ceiling fan, the last breath that was trapped inside his body escaped through his mouth, causing the dead body to groan like a man waking up from his slumber.” The foul smell that lingered with the last breath was probably worse than the smell described earlier, and you wouldn’t want to me standing in front of the dead body when the last breath escapes. “That is why we carry the man down from the back. You don’t want to know what happens when you do it the wrong way round.” He joked. Yes, he joked.

It was hard for me to stomach the facts that have been thrown on me like a tidal wave. It was like a twist in a typical M. Night Shyamalan movie, only much worse and more real. It was harder for me to imagine how Azhar managed to live through his vocation without being traumatized by the images that he saw. “It was the discovery of the vulnerability of humans that appealed to me,” he explained. “It made me treasure my life even more.”

It is hard to appreciate the job of a police officer. After all, they are the same people who prevent us from doing whatever we want in the society. However, there are laws that need to be kept in check, and there are unsung heroes out there who are doing the dirty work nobody knows about. Police officers are more than the keepers of law, but the guardians, the cleaners, and the reason why we sleep safe and sound at night. It may sound cliché to most, but it’s true - it really is.

Hail To The Mac

Dexter's Laboratory rocks. It is probably one of the most original cartoon of our era, the point in time when Cartoon Network was at its peak. It was the cartoon I'd catch every single day at six in the evening, with my steaming hot plate of dinner blurring my view of the television. I mean, who would've thought that the third grader would have a secret science laboratory hidden behind his closet? I especially liked how Dee Dee almost always reminded me of my inquisitive sister, whose mannerisms and antics never failed to blow up the laboratory by the pressing of a button - or in my case, the sanity of my mind. Something else that appealed to me was probably Dexter's accent, something I've been trying to imitate ever since the first time I saw the cartoon, but fails every single time. I love the way he pronounces "At last" as" Ader-lasss" every time he finishes a brand new invention. That is of course, until Dee Dee hops into his laboratory to destroy everything. At least the invention would last for some time in his hands, and that is the kind of feeling I have right now with my brand new Mac. As I run my fingers over the smooth white surface of the computer, and surfing my way through the awesome interface without any glitches, I am thinking to myself," Ader-lasss...Ader-lasss!"

It was quite an impulsive act when I decided to get myself a Mac. I mean, there is something about my parents and the way they try to convince you to have things their way. To them, a laptop is pretty much a necessity in a student's life, and having not bought the laptop in May is sort of like a sucker punch in the guts. They've been pressing me to get a laptop ever since the idea of a laptop invaded their minds, and I didn't have much of a choice but to succumb to their will. In truth, there are a lot of ways I can work around school life without a laptop. Everything can be pushed back to the moment I reach home, since I do already have this personal computer of my own. But I guess, there is just something in the presentation Steve Jobs gave for the brand new iMacs the other day that seduced me - literally. It is the simplicity in the way they work, and the attention they give to the little details that makes their craft one of a kind. I mean, who would have thought that changing the power plug to a magnetic plug is going to prevent your computer from flying off the desk when somebody trips over it? Little things like that are the deciding factor for me when I buy computers, another reason is definitely because of how screwed up Vista is. I swear, I used it for my homework on my father's laptop, and swore off it for the rest of my life. It felt like driving a car with three wheels and ten pedals, and you have your children screaming in the backseat. Oh, add a blindfold to your eyes too.

I've been a PC user all my life, sticking to PC because I didn't want to start getting used to another operating system all over again. I remember that first computer that my family bought, and it was a Windows 3.1 model, which was bigger than my television at home. Everything worked so slowly, and I even had a time limit back then as to how long I can use the computer every day. We didn't have internet back then, so the computer was strictly for heavily pixelated games and to print posters with standard pictures in the background. I'm sure everybody remembers that template with a bunch of cartoon characters in the foreground, and this really tall guy at the corner with both his hands reaching high up into the air. I was allowed to use the computer for fifteen minutes everyday, and I used those times to play Duke Nukem 3D in secret - mainly because if you press F3 on your keyboards, the girls would strip in the game for you. Anyway, so that was the first computer that arrived in the family, and more computers began to show up over the years - all with Windows operating system.

It's just like getting used to a certain brand of car and sticking to it for a long time. Once you are used to the way it steers or the way it works, you are probably not going to change to another car unless you find some major problems in the car itself in relative to another better alternative. The truth is, there is a part of the human brain that controls our likes and dislikes depending on the level of novelty one has on the object. It is quite a critical factor for some, because people tend to think that the ergonomics drop once you switch from one brand to the next. At least that was the mentality that I had in the past, which must have been why I never want to change to anything else. Besides, Windows was the widely used operating system back in the school days, despite the fact that my high school had a lab full of Mac computers. They were no more than pretty electronic accessories to me back then simply because of how difficult it was for me to use back then. Everything was different in the context of a Mac, and I was just not motivated to make any changes to what I was already used to.

But over the years, you know how Apple has changed the way we listen to music, or use our laptops. iPod is probably one of the most important invention by mankind, the way the Wright brothers made the first plane fly. I recall the days when I actually have to bring my CD pouch out every time I want to be traveling with music in my ears. The pain you have whenever you want to change from one band to another was agonizing, not to mention the trouble in changing batteries in the middle of a crowded bus. Those were the days that are long gone, simply because Apple started the revolution of iPods that allowed us to put thousands of songs in our pockets. iPod was also the first Apple product that I ever owned, and I stuck with it ever since I first bought it a few years ago. Let's face it, Creative is quite a successful company here in Singapore. But to call them "Creative" is really an understatement, because they are anything but. There are people in the market who are still very much in denial that Apple is taking over the world, some people who are still stubbornly living in their own illusion that PC still owns the world, and that Bill Gates is the master of the universe.

My sister is one of those people, even though she uses her iPod Nano almost as frequently as I drink coffee. She is the kind of person who works on the minimal of everything really. She is very calculative of the things she buy, and to her she doesn't need an operating system that is the fastest, or a computer with the greatest capacity. At least, she is the kind of user that goes for the best system at the cheapest price possible. To her, Sony Vaio was the answer a few months back, and that pink laptop has been sitting in her bedroom ever since then. The worst part about her attitude is that once she likes the operating system, everything else pretty much are junks. I was asking her about internet connection on my computer, and the following was the conversation that ensued - or rather, the argument.

Me," Hey sister, what is the difference between a Mac and a PC when I am setting up a wireless internet connection?"
[Without looking at me]
Sister," How would I know? Why do you ask?"
Me," I'm getting a computer today."
[Finally takes notice of my existence]
Sister," What for!?"
Me," I need it for school."
Sister," What are you getting!?"
Me," A Mac."
Sister," BUT IT SUCKS!!!"

The word 'sucks' resonated in my head for the longest time. After she said it, I turned around and left the room, and swore never to ask her anything about computers ever again. I swear, I have never met anybody with a worse attitude than my sister, and if it is possible to deal with her, it is possible to deal with people in any shape and form all around the world. Seriously, the reason why she dislikes Mac is probably because of the following reasons: 1) She tried using it once when she was working for a designing firm in Taiwan, and failed to get a grasp of it. 2) Her friends told her so. 3) She loves her Vaio. She is the kind of person that believes in everything people pour into her mind, and it was just interesting how she claims that ALL of her friends prefer PC over a Mac, while it is the other way round in my circle of friends. Either I was lying, or she was just being incredibly jealous. Despite those, I thought it was just being plain insensitive to have that kind of attitude 24/7. Seriously, the family are working around her moods every time, and the lot of us are sick of it. So I vowed to flaunt my Mac as often as possible in front of her, and see how it is going to overshadow her pathetic little Vaio. It's one of those cheap thrills that I get, but it's not like I need to show any forms of courtesy in front of her fucked up attitude towards people.

Thanks to Jonathan who gave me a crash course of how to use a Mac last night, and now I am getting a hang of how to use things around the Mac OS. It only takes a person who knows how to use a Mac to guide you through, and it takes less than a day to know how things work around here. That was the kind of patience that she never had, and brushed it aside simply because she couldn't get used to it. For me, Mac just works. It really does. It's a pity that my sister cannot see further than that bubble of hers that wraps her in her own self-illusion. But it is a choice that she made, and I don't intend to change that. The grass is greener on this side of her fence, and I shall enjoy this pasture with other fellow Mac users out there. I like how it still has lesser market shares now, it sort of makes us the elitists in the world of computers. It is the same mentality as liking Indie music. There is something about it being underground that is so alluring, isn't it?

Ader-lasss...Ader-lasss...

I

Just a random little something I came up with. Forgive the idiocy.

I find
that I have nothing left
to offer.
I find
that opening up my hands to the world
will reveal a pile of dust
and sand
in the center.

I feel
that there is something
more to life than this.
I feel
that there is something
less to love than we claim there is.
Because if love doesn't hurt,
then why is it that I'm falling into pieces

I hear
a sound; a note; a melody
a memory
I hear
a familiar song; a familiar tune
playing, teasing, haunting.
It is reminding me of the part of me
that peers over the edge while thinking of dying.

And it scares me.
It scares me to death.
Like the way we kissed,
it steals my breath.

The 8th Core Value

Every morning in the army at exactly five thirty in the morning, the young recruits would be ushered down into the parade square for their water parade. A water parade is basically an act by the army to cover their butts. You see, the military hates to deal with the death of soldiers in the course of their service simply because of the amount of paper work they have to do, not to mention the media coverage that ensues soon afterwards. So every morning before breakfast, the recruits would be forced to bring a bottle of water down, so that the superiors can make sure that they are properly hydrated for the rest of the day.

During the water parade itself, the superiors will take advantage of the opportunity and remind the recruits about the core values of the army - or at least that is what they call them in the army. They are basically the values that they army tries to instill, written all over every army-issued notebooks all across the country. Written in big block letters are the following words: Loyalty to country, leadership, discipline, professionalism, fighting spirit, ethics, care for solders. The recruits would be asked to say these words at the top of their voices in unison, and that is all done with their arms forming a ninety-degrees angle to their bodies, with a bottle of water in their hands. Those are the seven core values that we are supposed to know throughout our army days, or at least what they intend to do anyway. There is however - an eighth core value that the lot of us live by in secret: You can do anything you want, just don't get caught.

I was on the bus home when I saw the news on the television mounted to the side. It was a piece of news about Corporal running away from his camp a month before the end of his service with a SAR21 rifle after his guard duty. He disappeared from camp halfway through his duties, and nobody could find him anywhere in the compounds. So apparently, there was an island-wide manhunt that involved two hundred men, all trying to find this crazed twenty-year-old armed with a rifle and bullets. I can only imagine the panic that must have struck the officers in camp that morning, finding a rifle and a soldier missing from the camp. A lot of orders must have been shouted and a lot of questions must have been asked while the guy is out in the public with intentions nobody knew about. He could have robbed a bank, hijacked a plane, or sold it to some terrorist organizations from the Middle East - who knows? Anything could have happened between the time he left the camp and the time he is found - if he is found at all.

Imagine yourself being that Corporal who stole the rifle in the middle of the night and ran away from your camp with bullets to kill people. You'd want to be discreet about whatever you are doing, because having a rifle in the middle of a shopping mall is probably not going to be the smartest thing to do. You'd want to strip your rifle down into parts so it'd be easier for you to carry around, because you don't want people to be suspicious of your actions. You'd want to stay away from places with many people, because people have eyes to look out for such oddities in strangers. You know that the people from the army will look for you at home or in the houses of your relatives, so it'd be smarter if you hide somewhere else where they are not going to find you. Of course, a place with lesser people would be the most optimal. However, this little Corporal was caught in broad daylight - in the middle of Orchard Road.

As condemned as it is to smuggle a rifle out of camp just to rob a bank, it is quite a brave thing to do - let's be honest. It sure takes a lot of guts to do something like that, and it inevitably involves a lot of planning beforehand. One may argue that it is a stupid thing to risk the rest of your life for some quick cash, but I guess it is more justified than why the Corporal decided to run away with the rifle. He was caught in the middle of Cineleisure, where teenagers go to for karaoke, food, movies and just some brainless fun. I'm not sure if he was brandishing the weapon out in the public, but I'm sure he had the intentions of using it. Here's why.

Our Corporal - Dave - broke up with his girlfriend five months ago after a three year relationship. Dave was upset about the fact, and decided to head down to Cineleisure where his ex-girlfriend usually hangs out to gun her down. Of course, the word 'gun her down' did not officially escape the lips of his mouth, but what else can a man do with a rifle in the middle of a place where his ex-girlfriend hangs out? Oh yeah, that's right. Gun her current beau down. The situation is made a little more complicated by the fact that her current beau is actually a girl, and that she has officially turned to that side of the sexual spectrum. I guess it must have been quite a trauma to Dave to have lost his girlfriend to a woman - imagine the kind of emotional trauma he must have went through to accept that for a fact. Anyway, I'm sure he had the intentions of using the gun on somebody - or maybe even himself, it doesn't matter. You start to wonder just how idiotic a human can get before he wakes up and tells himself," Wow, I AM an idiot". Because really, what he probably qualifies him for the dumbest Singaporean in the last decade or so.

Throughout his military life, he probably never heard of the 8th core value that the most of us live by in our own military life. We've broke all the rules possible in camp, and we are where we are because we were never caught doing those illegal things. We smuggled contraband items like iPod, camera cellphones, Malaysian cigarettes, porn, and even women into camp before. There was the other time when the boys smuggled a full Mahjong set into the camp and nobody knew about it at all. There were the other rules that we broke, like the one about smoking in the bathroom or bringing food out into the fields. Technically speaking, you cannot bring food other than the combat rations provided out into the fields. But of course, under those metal benches in our vehicles, we stuffed all kinds of food imaginable. We even bought an ice box for canned drinks, bought ice to keep the drinks cool, and even have buffets out in the middle of nowhere. All of those were done with some eyes closed and under a lot of discreet actions, all because we lived strictly by the code of the eighth core value. That was obviously not instill in the mind of our good friend Dave.

In the name of love, Dave was probably attempting to do something stupid and radical. He might have watched a tad bit too many Hollywood movies, because they usually have the main character dumped in the beginning of the film, then the woman is won back because he fought back evil monsters with two MGs. Most movies aren't nearly as cheesy and cliche, but you know what I mean. If Dave was thinking at all, he must have been thinking about confetti raining down upon himself as well as his reclaimed prize, standing before a sunset as they embrace and kiss. That'd be a heroic shot, and it was probably the image that was on repeat in his mind as he must have ran through the gates of his camp. Because truly, nobody in the right mind is going to throw his life away, knowing that he is going to get into a lot of troubles afterwards.

Let's mentally break down the charges that he will be facing. Running away from his duties is going to be one offense, along with going AWOL from an army camp. That is not to mention the fact that he stole a rifle as well as the magazine of bullets as well. Being in possession of firearms in public is going to be a charge as well, and I am not even a law student here. I am basing my judgment upon common sense, and those are just some of the things that he is going to get himself into trouble with. Losing a gun alone in camp is enough to get you a seven year sentence, but stealing a gun is probably going to get you seven more years on top of that. That is about fourteen years in prison for that one charge, and giving the best case scenario for every other charges he will be facing in the days to come, he is probably going to spend the rest of his life in prison. All because his girl ran away with another girl, boo-hoo.

There are levels to a person's stupidity, and to do such things for love is probably one of the dumbest things you can do. There are girls running about everywhere on the street, it is possible to pick somebody up and start a relationship whenever you want. It is not about losing your girl to another girl, but about how you pick yourself up after a break up every time. At least that is what I have learned through my own experiences, and it is never about how you get back to your old love and how to make her feel bad about the break up. Of course, even if you are one of those people who gets a kick out of making others feel like shit, stealing a rifle from your camp is probably not the brightest thing to do. Besides, Dave was a month away to the end of his service, but I guess he just couldn't wait for another month to execute his utter stupidity.

There are people on internet forums pleading for his case, saying that he sounds like a nice guy who got together with a wrong girl, or how sad it is to be an orphan living with his grandparents as well as his relatives. There are reasons to have sympathy on this crazed Corporal indeed. After all, there are always two sides to a coin in every story, and I am sure Dave has his own story to tell, if you would just sit down with him and have a nice cup of tea. However, I don't suppose being a nice guy and an orphan justifies your stupidity for stealing a rifle. After all, this is the rest of your life we are talking about, and you are barely a quarter into it. Your relatives are not commenting about it, probably because they are too ashamed to be associated with an idiot like you. It doesn't matter that part of the public sympathizes with your actions, I for one thinks that you deserve whatever you are going to get in court.

The thing about the 8th core value is that it doesn't just work in the army, but in the context of our everyday lives as well. It works in the office, in school, and every part of our society. As long as you are good enough to run away from punishment or detection, you are free to do anything you want - and that's the truth. There will be risks taken of course, but risks are merely part of the decision making for a wise man. You won't need the brain of a rocket scientist to know that Dave is going to spend a significant amount of time in the prison, so let's just hope that he remembers the 8th core value while he is behind bars. At least in that way, he might save himself a few visits to the hole.

Origins II

Nouvelle Vague

Nouvelle Vague is a French band that I came upon while surfing through random videos on Youtube. It was a clip from a French movie Bande à Part by director Jean Luc Godard. It was a clip of three person dancing to a song in the film, but that song was replaced by the song called Dance With Me by Nouvelle Vague. Dance With Me is actually a cover of the original by The Lords of New Church, and that is the tradition of the band. They'd take an original song and spin it into a Bossa Nova song, which what attracted me to the band initially. There is this thing about Melanie's voice that attracted me to the video initially, because there really isn't anything special about it at all. You can do a search of it on Youtube, and you will know what I mean. However, the fact that they used the Nouvelle Vague version just made everything different. Check it out if you do have the time, and their brilliant albums as well.



The Postal Service

As mentioned before, there was a great hunt on the internet by yours truly, to find out about Let Go by Frou Frou after watching the Garden State trailer. Checking out the soundtrack, I discovered another song called Such Great Heights by Iron and Wine. Initially, I thought Iron and Wine was the original singer of the song. It turned out that it was actually a song written by Ben Gibbard, the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie. Which must have been why the lyrics had Ben's signature written all over, because it was just the kind of poetry that you'd find him writing in the back of a touring trailer. Anyway, Ben Gibbard had a project other than Death Cab for Cutie, which was the band called The Postal Service. They are an electronic band that does music with mainly their computers, but the lifeless beats come to life with Ben's amazing lyrical skills almost every time. I found my way to their album, and their own rendition of the song Such Great Heights - which I absolutely adore. Anyway, the album wasn't an instant hit on my playlist, but it sure grew on me over the years and eventually took over a lot of other songs to rule the world of electronica for me.



Rachael Yamagata

I think I was searching for Norah Jones on Amazon.com one day, when the picture of her album popped up in the corner of the page. I remember looking at the picture and thought how beautiful the picture was, with her hair falling all over her face in a black and white picture. The way her eyes were looking downwards towards the floor, as if to contemplate the next delicate word to say - it was just beautiful. That was the first time I met Rachael Yamagata, and it was love at first listening the moment I downloaded a couple of her songs off the internet. I remember listening to her songs in the middle of Babina India, and all the way back home from there as well. I guess in this case, there isn't a fanciful story behind the singer nor were there any programs used in the process. It was just the case of an attractive album cover, and that is the end of the story. But still, I guess there are times when the cover of the book does reflect the contents of it, and Rachael Yamagata sure as hell proved that we her elegant and delicate lyrics.



Ray Lamontagne

Unlike Rachael Yamagata, whose beauty stole my breath away at first sight, Ray didn't have a pretty album cover to boast. His first album has a picture of a devil dancing with a blindfolded woman. His second album has a single torch lighted in the dark - that's it. The album covers pretty much summed up a part of the his personality, the kind of person who is mysterious and elusive at the same time. I remember looking through John Mayer's album page on Amazon.com when I saw Ray Lamontagne being recommended by the users. I clicked on him not because he has a pretty face, but because he has a strange name that I didn't know how to pronounce. But this man has some of the best guitar-driven music I have ever heard - not to mention the kind of raw beauty his lyrics possess that is unique to himself. There is something about the way his songs brings you to a different twilight almost every time, and I bet it is thanks to the fact that he looks - not to be blasphemous - like Jesus Christ. He worked as a carpenter for a part of his life - how's that?



Sia

Death intrigues me, it always has - despite the hint of fear that comes along with my curiosity. Whenever there is a book or a film about death, you'd probably find me reading or watching it in the comfort of my room or in the theaters. It is interesting to see the different perspectives of people, on the way they view death as the inevitable. I remember watching Six Feet Under once - yes, death - and it was the season finale of the season. There was a piece of music played in the background, with a simple piano and the voice of a girl with a broken voice. The word 'broken' hardly justifies Sia's voice, but that is how I felt when I first heard her. There was a kind of vulnerability in her song "Breathe Me", the way you would see a friend in the corner of a dark room with blood all over her slitted wrist. That song remained on repeat for a long time on my computer, and it is a song that I dare not touch unless I really need to. Because in the song, I find more than just melodies and words, but the part of me that peers over the edge every once in a while. And it scares me - it scares me to death.



Sigur Ros

Sigur Ros was introduced to me by a person, but I have never met that person ever before in my life. Song recommendations usually come from friends, or television shows. But this band was introduced to me by a person whom I have never met, or talked to before. The person is Evangeline Lily, also known as Kate from Lost. For a period of time, I was head over heels for her, browsing through the internet for related pictures and videos. And yes, I do have such boyish hobbies every once in a while, and I don't suppose there is anything shameful about telling the world about my admiration for Evangeline Lily. She is an astounding woman after all. Anyway, so there I was watching her interview on MTV's TRL when the host asked what kind of music she has been listening to these days. She replied a band whose name sounded like "Cigar Rose", which turned out to be "Sigur Ros" in the end, as she so kindly spelled out for the audience. Nobody in the audience, including myself, knew who she was talking about, and it was brushed aside faster than you can say the word "What?".

A few months went by, and the release of the film Children of Men drew closer and closer. The trailer of the film was uploaded onto Apple.com, and there was a piece of music that was probably the main reason why I wanted to watch the film. It was the part of the trailer when you see Clive Owen on a boat, pulling his way through a narrow drainage system and out into the open sea. The piano piece in the background was simply uplifting, and I used Soundtrack.net to find the name of the song this time around. It turned out that the song was Hoppipolla by the band Sigur Ros, and that immediately rang a bell in my head. Evangeline Lily's face popped up in my head again, and there was a boyish grin on my face for the rest of the day.



Wolfmother

There aren't a lot of bands coming out of Australia that makes it big around the world. That is if you don't count Silverchair and Crowded House of course, every band or singer that came out of the country after those two bands sank in the middle of the Pacific on their way to America. Then of course, came Wolfmother. Wolfmother's music was first used in an iPod advertisement, with the likes of The Fratellis and The Vines. These bands all made it somewhere in the music industry simply because Steve Jobs liked the idea of having their songs in his iPod advertisements. The song "Love Train" was as catchy as every other song that Apple ever used, and I found out about the rock band that sounded much like a drunken Led Zeppelin. Besides, the lead singer has a crazy afro to boot, and their music is even bigger than his afro. Do check them out, they will blow your clothes off.



Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Unlike a lot of other bands whom I checked out because they have cool names, I checked out the Yeah Yeah Yeahs because they have a stupid name. OK, 'stupid' is perhaps not the right word to use, but the band name just sounded incredibly sloppy the first time I heard it. It was like the band members never bothered to come up with a more creative name - which in retrospect, makes it even more creative. I saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the sidebar of the iTunes Store, and checked out the album reviews tagged with the page when I clicked on it. Surprisingly, their album "Show Your Bones" were receiving raving reviews from every critic possible. It was definitely an album worth checking out, and I remember the first time I tried out their songs. Karen O's vocals blew me away and right out of the window with her spit exploding through the speakers and onto my face. That was the kind of force I felt with the band, because that is the kind of garage rock they make. I fell in love with the way Karen O screamed, moaned, groaned, growled in all her songs, and it defined the band from everything else that I have heard - and probably everything else that I am going to hear, too.



Zero 7

Arguably, Zero 7 had the best song on the Garden State soundtrack. Let's face it, if you are in a room full of half naked girls, and you guys are stoned at the same time, "In the Waiting Line" is the song you want to play to make the atmosphere even higher. That song has this hypnotic element to it, and it makes your head spin while listening to it - very much like what drugs would do to you in a club. But amidst the melody, the song weaves through strange realms that I have never been to before, and it was the best song on the soundtrack the first time I heard it - no questions asked. That was when I was first introduced to their music, and was blown away by how comfortable and sleek their music is at the same time. It felt like putting on a bathing gown made of suit after a hot bath, and that is how well it fit into my ears the first time I heard it. Besides, if Jonathan - the avid fan of smooth jazz - approves of it, it has to be good stuff.