In Continuum.

Inside my chest to keep me up at night
Dream of ways
To make you understand my pain

Clouds of sulfur in the air, bombs are falling everywhere
It's heartbreak warfare.
Once you want it to begin, no one really ever wins
In heartbreak warfare.

If you want more love, why don't you say so?
If you want more love, why don't you say so?

Drop his name
Push it in and twist the knife again.
Watch my face
As I pretend to feel no pain.

Clouds of sulfur in the air, bombs are falling everywhere
It's heartbreak warfare.

Once you want it to begin, no one really ever wins
In heartbeak warfare.

If you want more love, why don't you say so?
If you want more love, why don't you say so?

Just say so.

How come the only way to know how high you get me
Is to see how far I fall?
God only knows how much I'd love you if you'd let me
But I can't break free at all.

It's heart, heartbreak.

I don't care if we don't sleep at all tonight
Let's just just fix this whole thing now.
I swear to God we're going to get it right
If you put your weapon down.

Red wine and in the end
You're talking shit again.
It's heartbreak warfare

Good to know it's all a game
Disappointment has a name:
It's heartbreak warfare.

I've never been the healthiest kid at school when I was growing up. Every single page of our report book had a category at the bottom that marks whether you are overweight, in acceptable weight, or underweight. For the most part of my primary school life, I've always been in the latter category because I was always sick. Asthma was the big issue that I had, and that is one of the big reasons why my family decided to move to Singapore in the very first place. Supposedly, the climate and the weather, amongst other things, are just not suitable for me at all. I guess I was just born in the wrong country, and my asthma problem slowly faded away over the years in Singapore. I am very thankful for that, though I don't remember how it was like to have an asthma attack back in those days. I was too young to remember, though I did get a glimpse of it two years ago when I had bronchitis. Anyway, I was the kind of kid that vomited in the classroom, fainted during the national anthem, and ran a high fever without telling anybody whatsoever. I was just generally very weak, falling sick all the time, and my mother has always been there to take care of me. That's what all mothers do I guess, or should do anyway, when their children fall sick. They look after them, take care of them, and that is what makes my mother one of the most important human being in my life.

As some of you may already know, I have been suffering from a strange brand of cold that seems to be everlasting. This fever of mine has been hanging around for the longest time, and every tip in temperature was met with a similar increase in temperature a few hours later. It got really frustrated when the medication refused to do their jobs, and the way that I shivered uncontrollably in my blankets. On the table next to my bed right now is a giant cup of water, two packets of medication for fever, a thermometer, a change of clothes if I do sweat like a pig again, and a towel for me to dry things up. It has been a difficult past couple of days for me to go through, and I am still very much humbled by these little microscopic menaces. That is also why I am not too quick to proclaim to the world that I am getting better, because we don't want to jinx anything, do we? Let's just say that from a temperature of 39.6 last night, I have managed to pull it down to a mere 37 right now as I am typing this. I still feel somewhat drowsy and weak from the medication though, but it's not going to kill me or anything. I suppose after this ordeal, I'd need a lot more rest than what I am normally getting. Note to self: I should take care of myself more.

Each time that I fall sick, it has always been my mother taking care of me and no other. She has always been the person to wake up every once in a while in the middle of the night to check up on my temperature, or the one to bring me a glass of water when I desperately needed one. She's like a really awesome nurse at a hospital, with me being the only patient while she watches over anything and everything. Just last night when the fever was soaring, she insisted on giving me a massage of sorts, and that honestly felt very good. I am grateful to have a mother like that, and thankful that she has always been there for me. The other times, though, I haven't always been so lucky. I am remember when I was still in the army, there wasn't anybody there who gave a shit about you. Sure, there were the medical officers at the medical center, but they always treat you as somebody who is trying to fake your illness or something. I understand that a lot of soldiers would try to fake their way through things, but there are genuine cases out there too! We were all treated the same way though, as suspects trying to run away from their duties. The military camp felt so cold back then, and I had to suffer through everything on my own.

For the first three months on the dreaded island, we were told that if we absent ourselves for more than a certain amount of activities, we'd be required to do our three month BMT (Basic Military Training) all over again. That's why for the most part, I kept my illnesses to myself, and didn't dare to tell anybody about it. I bet it was the chlorine filled water that we were fed with on a daily basis. At any rate, I remember it first started on the eve of Chinese New Year, and my fever shot up to more than 41 degrees. That was a horrible night for the most part, and I remember the fever never really going away throughout the three months that I was there. I'd go on route marches with a thermometer in my pocket, and walked kilometers after kilometers with a throbbing headache, a burning brain, and footsteps that I did not fully trust. It was a horrible period of time, and I was convinced by the second month that I was going to die on that island somehow. Back then, it was really every man for himself, and anybody who was sick dealt with things themselves. For many nights, I cuddled with myself to bed, trying to control coughs under the blankets and suffered through long hours of pains and fever.

Like I said, it has always been my mother who took care of me, and for that she is one of the most important human beings in my life. But I have to say this one thing about the other woman in my life who has been incredible kind and caring to my health, someone that I run to for comfort when I needed some running away. Before leaving my home for Temasek Polytechnic yesterday to pick Neptina up from school, I was feeling absolutely fine with no signs of fever or whatsoever. It was not until when we were walking out of the school did I suddenly feel the punch in my stomach all over again. The chills started creeping up my back again, and every step was suddenly so difficult to make. The long wait at the bus stop was not encouraging at all, and I found myself sitting on the staircases on a double-decker bus, since I was unable to find a seat. I needed to sit down, or lie down, and I knew that the fever was coming back all over again. I told her that I needed to get to her house soon, because I felt the wave of nausea coming over me. We got off the second bus, threaded our way carefully across the road, and the first thing that I did in her room was to sit down on her bed.

It was then when she gave my pills to take along with water, and a jacket to keep myself worn since I was shivering a little underneath the blanket. She constantly checked up on me as she placed her hand over my forehead and neck, and she'd carefully adjust the blanket just to make sure that I was fully covered and no parts of me was exposed. She took my temperature and monitor me throughout the night, then took me in her arms to keep warm - keep me safe. For a period of time, I drifted in and out of consciousness, especially with the lights turned down and the house quiet. I felt protected knowing that there was somebody there to take care of me, to watch over me and made sure I was OK. I remember the look on her face when I had to leave, the way she sat on the floor with her hair covering her face. She seemed reluctant to let me go, like she still had a lot to do to make me feel better. As tired and worn out as I was, I was indeed feeling better than a couple of hours before. Just being there, knowing that there was somebody else out there who gives a shit other than my mother - felt good.

No one other than my mother has given me such care and concern, you know. It's funny how humans work at times, especially when it comes to illnesses. Like, when it comes to taking care of others, we often do whatever we can do make the person we care about feel better. But when it comes to ourselves, we tend to find excuses and alternate explanations as to why we are feeling horrible. We tend to brush off little symptoms and pretend that they are not there when they are. Maybe that does not apply to most people out there, maybe it is just me. I am just stubborn like that, and I happen to have less care for myself and more care for others. Just like that time out in the fields when a friend of mine started shivering uncontrollably due to a fever of sorts. I remember there were only the two of us in the vehicle at that time, and I gave him some Panadol from my backpack (he didn't bring his) and gave him my jacket (he didn't bring his), and offered my thermometer (he didn't bring his). But when it comes to myself, I sometimes become reckless and careless. I pretend that I am invincible and expose myself to a bunch of different things that eventually brings me down.

It means a lot to me, to have someone there to seriously take care of you. It makes me feel guilty somewhat, when you are the person lying on the bed while the others run about the house to get you what you want and what you need. It does make me feel horrible at times, but extremely touched as well. I never in my life expected anybody other than my mother to pay such a great attention to my sickness. Neptina, however, she took care of me and made me better in every way she knew how. Of course, there is only so much anybody can do, because it is ultimately up to the medicine and everything to make the fever go away. But she did whatever that she could have done, she did whatever that was in her power to make me feel comfortable, to make me feel better, to make me feel safe and protected. I am so thankful to have a girlfriend like that who cares about me in terms of my health, seriously. Hey Neptina, you are a wonderful, wonderful human being, and I should be so lucky to have you by my side when I need you the most. Thank you for everything that you have done, even the littlest deeds went a long way. Believe me, in you, I find a home outside of mine. I love you.

I have been humbled recently, humbled by the fact that humans are so inevitably inferior to microscopic organisms. We are at the mercy of viruses and germs that surround us in every shape and form, and it doesn't take a lot for us to be down with a flu or a cold - or worse. The vulnerability of mankind has led me to realize how small we are, even after knowing the vastness of our universe through a relativity chart of planets I saw a few weeks ago. Compared to the biggest known star in the universe, our sun is not even the size of a pixel that is on our computer screen. So you can imagine how insignificant we are in the greater scheme of things, how trivial our existence really is. So we try to make up stories like the ones they preach in religions to give us a meaning, when we really are just carbon-based organisms, or the residue of a starburst a long long time ago. It makes us feel substantial, I guess, to know that we are bigger than what our bodies give us credit for. We feel superior to anything that is smaller than us, and we ignore everything that is bigger. We don't like to be smaller if we can help it, it's kinda like the race into the sky with the skyscrapers around the world. It's funny how all the skyscrapers in the world almost always look like giant concrete penises in the skylines. Oh, men - size always matters.

Then you have the little microscopic viruses that can bring us down with one single infection. We disregard it as a threat in our day to day lives because, well, our parents told us when we were young that if we can't see something, it can't hurt us. Of course, they were referring to the ghost underneath your bed and the monster hiding in the closet. All they were trying to do was to comfort you and put you to sleep so that they could get a bit of that themselves. They probably weren't thinking about germs and viruses when they told you that, which makes them forgivable for the most part. We can't see these viruses with own naked eyes, but they are all around us if we bother to read up on it. Humans are always so vulnerable to our environment, another evidence of how we are always at the mercy of mother nature. Compared to the deities proposed by many religions out there, I think mother nature has a greater power over mankind than all of them, simply because she has shown what she can do to us humans if she raised merely an eyebrow. Everything from natural disasters, to poverty, to pandemics, mother nature can squash us like ants if she wants to. But, she has been relatively kind to the lot of us, never a jealous or childish God who'd wipe away all the firstborn just because he felt like it. Anyway, humans are at the mercy of many things, even if we don't want to think of it that way.

Recently, I have been down with a strange case of flu that I am not quite sure of. My mother theorized it to be that one night when I went in and out of my air-conditioned bedroom, and the sudden increase and decrease of temperatures caused me to fall ill. I was plagued with a fever that refused to go away even under medication, and there was a period of time when it shot up to 40.6 degrees. My mother joked that she could have fried an egg on my forehead or something like that, but I wasn't amused. We made our way down to the nearest 24-hour clinic for a check up, and the culprit was found to be a fever medication called Prostan, a medication for fever. Funny how it backfired and caused me to have an even higher fever than before, simply because my body reacted negatively to it. It was horrible, that day, when holding a spoon became a chore because I was shaking so badly. Shivering in bed caused me to lose sleep and jumping out of a hot shower almost felt like I was streaking across the Arctic plains. It wasn't fun, but I lived through everything to be typing about it here. I haven't been a healthy kid throughout my life, something almost always happen on a year to year basis that I really should take note of the symptoms. Anyway, I still have packets of medication on my table right now, and I am sure I could start a sort of pharmacy with whatever that I have at hand.

My point is that it is so easy for humans to fall sick and die, you know. With the swine flu on the loose right now, it really drives the point home that if we do not die from a giant space meteor hitting our planet, we are going to be wiped out by little viruses in our bodies. Everything is a threat to us, and somehow we invite them into our houses all the time. We had the mad cow disease a few years ago, the bird flu, and now we have the swine flu. It just seems that the viruses are taking terms to infect different animals to just to kill us all. We have survived most of those so far, but I am pretty sure that it will mutate itself and come back with a bang in the future. Perhaps it'd infect our house pets next, like little puppies or little hamsters. Pet lovers would probably dump their pets out in the streets when the time comes, which would be a sad sight indeed. Anyway, we live in a world right now where the things we eat could kill us, the people we meet could kill us, the air we breathe could kill us, the water we drink could kill us. It doesn't take a lot to wipe out mankind really, because we are just such vulnerable creatures. I always think about such things, how easy it would be for somebody to kill large amount of people if he so wishes. If you really want to wipe out the species, all you need to do is to have a lot of money and a little patience. Then, allow nature to do its work - mission accomplished.

We have our missiles and our tanks, we have our bombs and our mines, and this illusion of defense makes us feel safe, you know. Like an imaginary fortress around you to make you feel like you are being well-protected. The truth is, though, even if you somehow manage to surround your entire national border with military defenses, you can never fully prevent viruses to slip through if they want to. When that happens, humans are going to fall sick, they are going to die. No one is going to be able to operate all the missiles and all the guns, so all those things become practically useless. Just imagine that, a whole population of people who cannot press buttons to launch missiles and no one to stand in command. That'd be a pretty easy country to invade if you want to, because humans are just so vulnerable. Think War of the Worlds and how the aliens died not because of the technology that humans used in an attempt to defeat them, but microscopic organisms that they are apparently allergic to, or something. That can be said about mankind as well, because we go on with our lives no caring too much about these things until something major happens somewhere on another side of the world. This time, it took 152 Mexicans for the rest of the world to know that this is a big deal.

Let's compare ourselves to our animal counterparts. We have our brains and we have our smarts. Humans have been creating music, poetry, making machines and sending people onto the moon. Those are great feats indeed, but there are some basic animal abilities that we definitely cannot match up to. Have you watched those documentaries on television of animals living in extreme temperatures. You know, like some species of fox, polar bears, penguins and such? You throw a human into that kind of condition and they are probably going to die within a few hours, no doubt. The hair on our body has little to no functions at all, if you think about it. Armpit hairs serve no purpose, eyebrows serve no purpose, leg hairs serve no purpose, and the patches of hair in front of our knuckles certainly serves no purpose at all. We can't live in the extreme cold and we can't really live in the extreme heat. But you see animals living happily under those circumstances, adapting and readapting if they need to. Humans die from everything - everything. It just sucks that despite all the technological advancements, a little flu virus could still kill you.

Sometimes, it is better to not recognize the threats though. Like, reading statistics about how your computer keyboard is dirtier than your toilet bowl is one of those things that you'd rather not know. But of course, if you have reached this sentence in this paragraph without skipping a word, you've known that by now - so sorry about that. But it is the truth, and you cannot deny that. The bed we sleep in, the detergents we use in the bathrooms, our keyboards, the kitchen, something we cannot see can kill us. It's so frustrating sometimes, to feel how useless you are in preventing such things from happening. Even if you have a healthy diet, exercise a lot, and do all those things that health magazines tell you to do to live a healthy life, you are still going to fall ill and probably not live past ninety years old. There are rarities of course, but people still die at the very end anyway. We die because of the things we eat, and they accumulate over the years to kill us. We are poisoning ourselves with every meal, and we are killing ourselves if we don't eat. It is a dilemma, but eating seems to be the better option. Easier to leave with a full stomach, you know.

I guess what I am trying to say is that human ignorance can sometimes reach a point that disgusts me. You know, there are times when we feel like we are invulnerable to the many elements thrown at us. We have built bridges over caverns and dams to stop rivers. We have built drills to drill deep into the seabed to abstract oil, and we have conquered the highest mountains. It gives us a strange sense of superiority I guess, it makes us feel like we are better than everybody else. Even if you don't consciously think about it every time, you probably think about it sometimes. But right now, as I am typing this entry, I suddenly feel very humbled by all the illnesses that I have been through throughout my life. They are like little post-it reminders for me, telling me that you are big, but not that big. You can accomplish a great many things, but remember to take care of yourself whenever you are, wherever you are. It's funny how thoughts like that can be spawned by having a high fever in the middle of the night. But I guess, even such an experience could mean a whole lot more than a bad start to a holiday.

Jaheem Herrera is an ordinary eleven year old boy from Atlanta, Georgia. He doesn't look very different from his peers, at least not from the picture of him that I saw on CNN's front page. In the picture, Jaheem is smiling at the camera, just a slight curve at the edge of his mouth, as if he was smirking at the cameraman, whoever he was. On April the 16th, Jaheem was reluctant to go to school, and had very little appetite for breakfast. Yet, like any other parents would do, his parents told him to go to school and get the day over and done with. So Jaheem went to school that day, just like any other day, and came home in one piece at the end of it all. He seemed normal at first glance, happy that his report card showed all As and Bs. His parents were satisfied, and Jaheem took looked like he was happy about his own grades. After a high five with his mother, Jaheem retreated into his bedroom to wait for dinner to be served. When that eventually came around the corner in the evening, his younger sister called for him to come down for the meal - no answer. That was when the family went upstairs to find that Jaheem has hung himself inside his closet with a belt around his neck.

That is the story I read about from CNN's front page the other day, and felt very strongly about. There are things in the news you see, things happening to people all around the world, and you know that half of those is due to stupidity for the most part. People making stupid decisions, people getting themselves into stupid situations, and all that stuff. One of the latent function of the news seems to be desensitizing people to news and images, the ones that'd otherwise affect us deeply if we had not been exposed to it on a daily basis. In the local context, it almost seems like the most horrific crime to dump a baby in a rubbish chute after an unplanned pregnancy. It sounds horrible, but then we've heard it all before. Every year, you hear about news like that in the evening paper, about how the body of yet another baby has been found in a rubbish dump somewhere in Singapore. It is sad, but then you flip to the next page of the evening paper and you check out what your favorite celebrity wore for an award show that happened last night. It seems to be this bite-size mentality that we have these days, when we need information to come to us quickly and summarized. As a result, our responses - the emotional ones - to these bite-size information are also relatively quick and summarized, so to speak. In short, we tend not to feel very much, anymore.

Once in a while, you come across a piece of news that makes you think about things, you know, and you become affected by it. No matter how roughened up our skin may be, there will always be a needle sharp enough to penetrate you somehow. It doesn't take a lot at times, but for me it took the death of an eleven year old boy to realize that there are some news that still matter to me, somehow. The reason why eleven year old Jaheem decided to end his life in such a horrific way is because of bullying in school, something which a lot of people his age experience. I wasn't necessarily bullied in school until a little later on, and high school was particularly unkind to me for a period of time. A lot of students would tell you that they have experienced bullying in some form when they were back in school, and it is such a common thing in truth. Bullying happens a lot, whether or not you are in the top-tier school or some neighborhood school. You are bound to hear about, or experience bullying, one way or another. It is common within the compounds of the school, but you don't really hear people speaking up about it, or openly condemning it at all. Throughout my education life, I don't think anybody from school has actually made a big deal out of students being bullied. It's one of those "it happens" things, like forgetting to bring your lunchbox or something.

As much as I think it is a common thing to be bullied at school, people do not realize that just because it is common, it is not necessarily right. Some people would probably tell you that being bullied at school is a part of growing up, and I guess there is some truth in that. Like, it always begins with being pushed around before you start to stand up for yourself. By doing that, you grow and you learn, and you know never to take shit from anybody, anymore. But it is like pills you get from doctors you know, you prescribe a certain medication to a certain person, and it may work differently on somebody else out there. Perhaps the other person could experience an allergic reaction because he is allergic or something. You don't throw the same brand of bullying to all the little boys and little girls from school and expect them to turn out the same way as you did. You don't expect all the children to take bullying the same way as you do, because we are all individual units that work in different ways. It could work for you, but it may not work for others who go through the same thing. You cannot assume that what worked for you in the past will work for your children, because they are ultimately still different from you.

I came out of high school being weary of bullying. It didn't last the full four years of course, but there was a period of time, like Jaheem, I didn't want to go to school. I was tired of the pranks and the 'games', the things that my classmates would say about me whenever I stepped into the class. Not everybody was like that, and we are really just talking about a few bad apples. Still, they were enough to traumatize me for the most part, and made me not want to go to school for reasons I never got around to tell the parents. It felt almost shameful, to tell you the truth, if I were to tell them about it. As if I could fend for myself, as if I needed them to deal with every problem that I had at school. So I didn't tell them for the most part, and eventually I learned to fight back. When my brand new art class pens were stolen from my pencil case, what I did was to steal from everybody else whom I suspected to have done it. I went around the class one day during recess and stole from all those people who have done me wrong before, and I made sure that I stole only the good pens, never the cheap ones from the school bookshop. That was how I fought back, seldom with fists, but always a tooth for a tooth. I stood up for myself, and eventually gained the respect of the bullies who made life horrible for me. Still, I believe that not every child can come out from it completely unscathed, not every child can learn about how to stand up for himself when it happens.

I feel very strongly about bullying at school, because I have experienced it first hand myself. I fought back, but that doesn't mean every child would. Back in those days, it was all about surviving from one day to another, and you were either the prey or the predator. When the attention on me was shifted to someone else, I stayed out from the center of attention. I never participated in the bullying, but that doesn't mean that I did anything to stop it either. Classmates of mine were badly bullied, some of them even humiliated in front of the whole class, considering the fact that I was in an all-boys school. Things were really horrible for those individuals, and I have no idea how they got out of it unscathed and unharmed. That was how the people classified others anyway: either you were with us or you were against us. I was never with them, but I was never against them either. If it gave me lesser attention, then I'd play along with the rules. Those were the rules, and everybody else that didn't abide to those rules were bullied while the teachers were away. They probably never told anybody about it, not even today, about how they were bullied. Whatever happened in the classrooms stayed in the classrooms, and they were afraid to tell anybody.

I don't remember anybody from school, the higher authorities anyway, ever making any kind of open statement to condemn such a thing. Of course, when caught bullying your peer by the discipline master, you are going to get the kind of punishment that you deserve. Yet, those minor punishments were never a cure, and they only made things worse for the victims of these bullying, you know. The bullies would want to find a way to get back at you because you got them into trouble in the first place. So the next time they come down on you, they are going to come down on you harder than before. It is a vicious cycle, because telling somebody is only going to make things worse. I don't think there is a measure in our education system to prevent such a thing from happening, you know. I don't think anybody out there has a measure as to what we should do to the school bullies and the victims. Sure, they put a school counsellor in the corner of the school and tells the students about him. Yet, how many students actually go to this school counsellor to ask for his advice on things anyway. Schools are not making it clear as to what punishments should be given to these bullies, and the kind of emotional trauma that should be addressed in the victims of such crimes.

We almost always only pay attention when somebody finally gets pushed over the edge, some kid hangs himself by a belt in his closet. We wait till somebody gets hurt before we start doing anything about it. However, if you think about it, when was the last time anything the schools did made a difference anyway. School bullies are always going to exist, and they are always going to make someone's school life a living hell. That is the reality of things in the schoolyard, though it is something that nobody wants to admit. You want your children to go to school and come back home, all safe and sound. You trust that the school environment is going to be conducive enough for educational purposes, and no child should have to go through any forms of bullying or hazing, or whatever you decide to call it. To me, it is the most horrible thing that could happen to a child at school, to be afraid and even terrified of the people around him. You never know what is going to happen, and you are always going to live in fear somehow. The schools don't do anything about it, they just wait until someone kills him or herself, then they make some kind of statement at school. At the end of the day, nothing is done, and the bullies remain scott-free.

I guess I'd just like to say that bullying is such a horrible thing to do to another human being, you know. Whether or not it is in school, or a new form of bullying called "cyber-bullying". Bullying, by itself, can be such a scarring thing to anybody. You will never know the effects until it has been accumulated so much one day that someone eventually breaks and crumbles from it. I think while you should teach your child to never take shit from anybody, you should also tell him the nature of bullies from school. The truth is that bullies bully because they are jealous or that they are afraid. Bullies bully because you are, in some ways, different from them. As a result, they put labels on you and they make fun of you because you are different, when in truth being different isn't being wrong. What you have to believe in is that you have to remain true to yourself, and never allow others to walk all over you. Violence may not always be the answer to things in life, but fight back if you must. Seek help, do something about it, because keeping quiet is never going to be the way out. Nobody is going to know if you are going to complain to yourself. Somebody out there can do something, somebody out there can help. If your fists can only reach that far, seek help - before it is too late. Don't be the next little Jaheem, because those bullies are not worth taking your life for.

Love is a symphony, now play it with me.

You'll be the rhythm and I'll be the beat.
You'll be the rhythm and I'll be the beat.
Then I'll be the rhythm and you'll be the beat
And love, the shoreline, where you and I meet

Love is the harmony, desire is the key
Love is a symphony, come sing some with me?

My favorite time of the night is probably three in the morning, when everything has settled and it is just you versus the rest of the world. Though, the word "versus" is hardly appropriate, considering the fact that there is hardly a battle involved most of the time, but a peaceful tranquility that pierces the night and its entirety. Then we have the mornings, right after we wake up, and those few minutes when we just lay there for a while, debating with ourselves when is the right time for us to swing our legs off the edge of the bed. It usually takes a while before you come up with that perfect moment, only to miss it altogether for the next one to come along. Morning debates are difficult, but it happens all the time, and we just allow ourselves to lie there motionless for the most part, unwilling to allow the day to happen. That is how it is, the minutes before you fall asleep and the minutes right after you wake. You are in the same position, or slightly varied after a night's tosses and turns, but you are most probably still in bed anyway. In these moments, while your mind is mostly free of the day's thoughts and the night's dreams, your ears perk up to listen to the sounds around you. At least that is what I do before I go to bed and right after I wake up, and here is an entry dedicated to those few short moments.

In the dead of the night, the sounds wake up and become quite alive. When you allow the inner voices quieten down for a while, you actually hear a lot more than the immediate sounds that are around you. You know, the soft humming of the air-conditioning that occasionally snaps due to a change in temperature, and then the vibrations that cause a certain calming sound throughout the room. On nights that are not too warm and humid, I turn on the fan that is next to my bed, and that gives off an unique brand of sounds as well. The wind in my ears create one sound, while the wind blowing on a magazine next to my bed creates new sounds. The vibrating motor inside the fan rumbles away into the night, always a trusty machinery that never seems to fail on me. On nights like that, there are times when the wind comes through the windows, and the curtains get blown off the walls and above the tables. The books get flipped, and you hear the flapping sound of the pages going by at high speed. The thick curtains would flutter like flags on a flagpole, and it'd create a strange suction sound when it lands on the back of the fan. You see, as the fan is trying to suck air into itself and through the front, a curtain blocking the back of the fan would cause no wind to exit from the front, thus causing that strange sucking sound wakes me up from time to time.

On calmer nights, though, I'd try to listen in deeper into the sounds of the house and beyond. The lizard in my room croaks every once in a while from behind the cupboards or air-conditioning, and it almost sounds like a little laughter from my clandestine roommate. Then there is the sound coming from the outside, the gentle sounds of water rushing over the edge of something. It is the sound of the fish tank, with the tank water falling over the back of the tank and into the filters below. It happens twenty-four hours a day, and seven days a week, a sound that the family has grown very used to over the past decade or so. The wind chime swings about from time to time, kissing each other gently when the breeze comes through the corridor, giving off soft gentle notes that sound like accidental melodies. Something drops in the kitchen all the time, only to be discovered by morning. One of the hangers would snap, or one of the buckets would fall from the hooks. It used to sound scary to me as a kid, and I'd imagine someone breaking in through the back of the house and crawling through the kitchen. Until one day I realized that it'd be foolish to rob someone's house at nineteen floors up by crawling through a window.

Night sounds are repetitive, which makes it easier on the mind to get use to and, eventually, fall asleep to. Morning sounds, though, they aren't nearly as kind to the ears and mind at all. Morning sounds attack your senses, because a lot of things tend to be happening at any one time. There are multiple layers to morning sounds, one on top of the other, and they usually are more fascinating and yet more conflicted with your morning goals - to fall back asleep. Morning sounds are generally more unforgiving, and they are like the nature - and city's - natural alarms for you to wake up to. They are not exactly the most pleasant of sounds, but they are usually interesting things to write about, especially for somebody like me. A lot could happen in the morning, because the majority of us have different times to wake up to on different days. Sometimes, our activities come in major conflicts, and these conflicts translate into sounds that travel from one point to another. When they clash, the people deep in slumber are usually the victims, and I hate to wake up in unexpected ways. Here are some of the things that I have noticed in the past couple of days in regards to morning sounds. While some are pretty to wake up to, others are just downright annoying for the most part.

Let's begin with the pleasant sounds, shall we. There are mornings when I wake up to the beautiful sound of my mother in the kitchen, with the pots banging gently against one another and the sound of cabinets being opened. I like to imagine what she is cooking in the morning, or sometimes what she is doing behind that apron of hers. Outside of the window, you hear the sound of the morning birds chirping away, always to the same song, and the echos traveling far and wide. You can literally hear the sound of the cars being heavier than usual though, and it is probably the sound of those commuters trying to get to work as soon as possible, not wanting to be late. The sound of tires scratching over the road almost sounds like the rain coming at times if you listen properly, and that can be a wonderful thing to fall back asleep on. That is the list of pleasant morning sounds that I have observed, and it is a pity how the unpleasant ones outrank the pleasant ones by a mile. Truthfully, I have no love for everything morning, because it hasn't really done anything for me that is worth remembering. I feel like staying up at night to experience the night in its entirety, but not mornings. The only thing I want to do is to skip mornings and go straight to the day - yeah, I feel that way at times.

First of all, you get the hysterical laughter of my sister from time to time. She'd be commenting loudly about something, and that comment would probably wake me up very efficiently. To add horror to the mix, sometimes my father joins in the fun. My father has a naturally loud voice, and it is worse when he uses an ounce of his strength to raise his voice. When he is negotiating on the phone, telling a joke to my mother, or making fun of my sister's weight, he raises his voice despite the fact that it is seven in the morning on a day when I don't have to wake at all. Then there's the habit of turning the volume of the television all the way up at seven in the morning, and don't think the voices of commentators during a golf game are quite tamed even with the volume up. Try that next time, and you'd want to swing a golf club at someone's face. Speaking of voices, I was woken up a few days ago by my sister's hysterical laughing, and that was due to the sound of my neighbor from the opposite block, a Korean neighbor apparently, yelling at each other on top of their voices. Everybody could hear them, though we didn't necessarily knew what they were arguing about. Nonetheless, their argument did keep me up for a while before I could go back to bed.

Then there's the neighbor upstairs who happen to have zero appreciate of timing at all. Every once in a while, you wear furniture being pushed or pulled around, and marbles throw all around by the children upstairs. On top of that, you hear them talking about their everyday lives every once in a while, and the frequent scolding of the children can be heard from my bedroom. All of this is possible because, for some reason, the neighbor upstairs refuse to install curtains to their windows. I am not sure how they withstand the Singaporean sun, but apparently they are coping. Anyway, the scolding of the children can be annoying, but sometimes hilarious as well. You hear the parents scolding their children for the dumbest things, and the most often one I know would be how the youngest child would wet the bed all the time. The mother would be pissed off and give the girl a scolding, which is usually followed by the bed sheet hanging from the edge of their balcony and draping down into ours. There was this other time when the mother called the father to be crazy because he was, apparently, on the verge of beating the kids into unconsciousness. Maybe she was exaggerating, but the father does have strange habits.

He seems to like to do things all by himself, and renovation seems to be his hobby. While they don't usually last very long, it is not impossible to wake up on a weekend morning to drilling. You know, those drilling that I lived through a few months ago before they moved in. He does upgrades here and there I guess, and does them all by himself. The man wields a heavy machinery and goes around drilling at nine o'clock in the morning. They don't last very long most of the time, but they certainly start my day off on a bad note - literally. I come up with murderous thoughts for those idiots upstairs, and most of them involve electric drills to their foreheads and then tubes of acid poured into those holes... OK this is becoming a creepy entry isn't it. Anyway, the neighbors upstairs are pretty vocal most of the time, and it is not difficult to hear everything that they are doing. We can hear their bathroom habits, their children crying, their children screaming hysterically, their children playing around violently in their bedrooms, and then a lot of yelling from the parents. It is fun when you are there to listen in for yourself. For the other times, especially when you are trying to sleep, it becomes a nuisance you want to stop.

Anyway, that is pretty much all the sounds that I can come up with, both in the day and in the night. Perhaps next time, it'd be rewarding even for you to listen in to what the environment around you has to offer. They could be the sound of nature, the sound of the city, or the sound of your father farting down the corridor. Whatever it may be, it is still something interesting to take note of every once in a while, a little gem of writing inspiration that we take for granted all the time. Little things, you know, always the little things that make life so much more memorable and exciting. As of now, I shall retire to bed and listen in to the sounds of the night, to see if there are anything worth noting down for the next similar entry. Until then, pay attention - listen in.

So, there is one word to describe today's last COM125 paper: epic. When you have five questions to write on with twenty marks each, you know you are not going to stop writing for the next two hours. The last time I did something as wild as that was in high school when we had to do the pure geography paper, and the papers for that subject usually lasted for two and half hours. Yet, it was not all about writing back then, and we had some time in between to rest our fingers and to get our thoughts together. This time, though, we had two hours of straight writing from the beginning right till the end. I hardly had any time to take a break and say to myself "This is crazy", though I thought the same thing many times over. It was just writing, writing, and writing, and I hardly had the time to care if the word "communication" ended up looking like "commmmiatio" because of my handwriting. When you have an already atrocious handwriting, you don't hurry yourself to write a lot. The end result is an answer booklet full of words that you can't even read yourself, and spaced so far apart that one line probably has about, like, five words. That is kind of what happens anyway when you are writing long essays. The spaces in between the words get bigger and bigger, with the words becoming more and more indecipherable.

The first ten-mark question, I wrote about two pages of materials. The last ten-mark question, I wrote about three quarter of a page. Yes, as I progressed further and further into the paper, I realized the need to write to-the-point stuff instead of the longwinded writing style that I usually prefer. The end result is that my ten-mark answers got shorter and shorter, with the contents becoming more and more precise. I was amazed at how some people were able to finish under an hour. There was this girl who sat behind me, whose name I don't know, finished it at eleven and marched out of the venue. Either she did a fantastic job or she royally bombed her paper from every which direction. Either way, I think the majority of the crowd shared the same sentiments in the sense that it was probably the most writing that we've ever done in recent memory. I still have a red mark on the side of my ring finger at this point where the pen pressed down on my finger though, and I was just glad for everything to be over at the very end. I didn't even feel especially elated by the end of it though, I just collected some documents from the office and made my way home because, well, I wasn't feeling very well. I haven't been, but I am getting better.

So let's see, the verdict. Well, the lecturer of the semester goes to Mr. Armstrong. Here we have a man who can teach, and has a passion to teach, and he infects the class with the same amount of passion to work for something too. He may not necessarily be in my top five of all-time, but he is definitely close though. He gives you the kind of grades that you deserve, nothing more and nothing less, with solid reasons to back up the numbers as well. He doesn't just give you a grade because he feels that your overall performance hasn't been "to his liking". Nothing is graded "to his liking", but what he deems as being a good or a bad material. He is one of those lecturers that give you a grade and you feel good if it is a good one, and understands if it is a bad one. By that, I mean, he gives you constructive criticisms to help you along the way, and he takes the time to try to mark every single assignment. Of course, this semester, he was kinda swarmed with stuff. Taking three modules and so many classes is no joke, but I suppose you must applaud him for the dedication to work. I mean, he came to work after not sleeping for the whole night due to a sprain in the back, think about it. The award goes to him, so good on the man.

Then we have Abby, the guy that everybody is on the fence with. Here is the thing, people are going to agree that he is cute, he is funny in a very lame way, and he loves his teaching job - facts. Yet, you cannot deny that on the other side of the spectrum, we have a man who doesn't really know how to teach, or what he is supposed to be teaching about in the first place. Aside from all his silly banters and jokes (which aren't very funny to me, but appeals to a few), he took on this module without really knowing what to teach about. You know the incompetence of a lecturer when you have nothing from him to study about before the papers. You don't really know where to start, and you are just for the most part confused about where to begin. It's funny how the name of the module is called "Introduction to the Internet", and yet he spent a good portion of the class teaching about learning skills. We are not even talking about internet tools to help us in our education at this point. He started going on and on about how we shouldn't look at the results but the process of our studying, how it is all apart of the growing mindset and whatever. Wait, how does that pertain to the internet? Well, probably because he got everything off the internet, but then I can also find out about Jessica Alba's bust size through that, should we also study that?

That class didn't make any sense, but at least the rest more or less did. Still, his classes were always about him talking and then the class returning him with this silent stare. The same class goes to Bob's as well, and I don't really see a problem there for the most part. It isn't an exciting module to begin with, but he doesn't really make much effort to make it interesting. As much as he has knowledge over the subject itself, I don't feel that he translates his knowledge to the students in a very effective manner. It is an irony to me, when you speak of the learning mindset, and then have us go through an exam that is the basis of how we'd be judged - grades. You talk about how we should have a flexible learning method when it comes to the act of learning, and yet you have articles and notes for us to memorize. Everything comes in contradiction when you observe it in proper, and you see less and less logic as you go along. You can appreciate his lame jokes (about Firewall being a wall on fire), but we paid good money for more than these pointless talks in class. We paid for substance and quality, and those things weren't necessarily what I found in that class.

Finally, we have everybody's favorite lecturer. I think the Bee tried very hard at the very beginning, but gave up halfway through the semester. You could see that she was trying to be nice, but then her marking methods and the way she taught completely caused the students to go against her. I must give her credit for the ability to draw out very clearly what she wanted for the research paper. As much as people complain about how she has double standards when it comes to grading, at least she has a guideline for you to follow, you know. Like, part one she wants this, part two she wants this, and part three she wants that. There were no such guidelines for all the other modules, and I found myself being terribly disorientated for the most part. Still, her bad attitude really turned off a lot of students, not really because she yelled at us a lot, but the high horse that she sits on and the aura of superiority she thinks she has over everybody else. A lot of people compared her to Rosemary, and some even think that she is much worse. While I think Rosemary is a worse lecturer (at least the Bee lectures), the Bee is obviously the worse human being. It'd probably be easy for me to pick who I'd rather have a lunch with though, because one of them is going to be more engaging and, let's admit it, have less drool at the edge of the mouth.

So, comes the end of the semester. I am glad that everything is over, and that I get a short break of sorts before the summer semester begins all over again. I am happy with the classes that I have picked, and that everybody is more or less together yet again. In between now and then, I have two major gatherings, and I will be looking forward greatly to those. In the mean time, time will be dedicated to myself, the significant other, doing nothing, and anybody who wants to hang out with me. I am free, so make your appointments! See you when the summer comes around the corner. Oh wait, speaking of which, what's wrong with the damn weather these days? Everywhere outside my house feels like the damn furnace. It is pulling on my nerves quite I bit, if I do say so myself.

I like movies. No, I love movies. No, I have a passion for movies. I respect the medium a lot, perhaps a lot more than the other mediums, because of how it combines all forms of art into one single motion picture. Of course, every once in a while, you get a "17 Again" or "Knowing". However, you cannot deny that you also get the likes of "The Wrestler" and "Doubt". Good movies do come by, though not very often, and they usually have an impact on me that is just different from the other mediums. I enjoy my movies, and I respect the people behind the cameras (as well as the ones in front of) that make it all happen. I like my movies with a combination of the following: a comfortable seat, a comfortable leg resting position, dimmed lights, the absence of physical movements and other distractions, and the entirety of the film itself, with popcorns and drinks being completely optional. Yes, I included the part about the entirety of the film because it is especially so in a country such as Singapore, where people tend to freak out at the sight of a bare butt. It really is just two pieces of meat, what is with the violent reaction? Most often than not, the films that reach your theater and television, they've all been cut one way or another. Oh, not cut - edit. They prefer to call it that anyway.

This is the entry about these editors, the people with the scissors, the ones that tell you what you can or cannot watch. Of course, there is a higher authority who tell you what they can and cannot show, but that is for another entry altogether. Meet Dinesh Pasrasurum, a man whose job is about watching a movie everyday and to cut - I mean edit - shots away from a movie to make it more socially acceptable. I read about him in yesterday's TODAY paper, and he just looks like a random chap you'd run into on the road. You know, smartly dressed, no tie, normal good looking guy. The problem is that he has one of my most hated professions out there, and I wonder how many of my favorite movies has he edited in his career. Just imagine dating a guy who looks like Jude Law turning out to be some bank robber or a pimp - kinda sucks, doesn't it. But anyway, I have this thing against the censorship board in Singapore and the people who work in it. More so for the people who run it though, but these are the people who are actually cutting things out for real. I have no hate for this man of course, but it still pisses me off when it comes to the job. I mean, it is a cool job to have, but you'd never take up a job like that if you are a movie lover. Entirety, after all, is one of the most important aspects of a movie.

It's funny how the article takes about half of it to blame everybody else for all the edits though. For example, the article brought up Lust Caution, a film with a couple of racy sex scenes that received a lot of heavy editing when it first reached the shores of Singapore. The editor brought up a point about how, sometimes, you can't just blame everything on the Board of Film Censorship. There are times when the distributor feel that they want to earn more money with a more "friendly" film rating, so to speak. So, what the distributor does is that they'd edit the film down to have just the friendly scenes left, with everything else left out. This will warrant a much lower rating and, as a result, more people watching it at the theaters. Of course, the full raw and uncut version was released in Singapore later on, but that was slapped with a R21 rating and was released on a later date. Then the article goes on to blame the society - us - saying that what is edited out of a film is, ultimately, a reflection of what is socially acceptable. It is trying to say that their decisions are based upon what we deem as being acceptable, or what we can stomach in a movie theater. But seriously, if you think about it, it's all really stupid.

I was watching one of my favorite films of all time the other day and almost tore a hole in my table. Adaptation is one of the most brilliant movies ever, and you will not believe how much editing went into that film alone. The film does not feature gay sex or full frontal male and female nudity. It has a few nude scenes of women (one in a computer monitor) and a masturbation scene in which we don't get to see anything. All of those were abruptly edited out from the DVD version in a way that could have been mistaken for the work of a seven year old with a pair of scissors. The editing was so rough and unprofessional that you cannot help but be amazed at how little they care about the flow and continuity of a scene! The least they could do was to stitch up the scene and try to give it a continuity, perhaps giving it a less abrupt soundtrack of just carrying it forward. But no, you can tell when there is an edit, because everything ends abruptly and you have to actually guess what happened back there in the scene. I was infuriated with my copy of the DVD, and even more pissed off because I bought it with my own wallet. Even when it comes to DVDs, they have to put a hand on it and ruin everything for me. I want to put my hands around BFC and choke it.

I remember watching The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on channel 5, and it was hailed as the movie event of the year or something along the lines of that. I have watched that movie about thirty times or something, and I know every single line in that movie. I know what music comes up in which scene and in which shot, I know which scene follows which scene, and I can do all of that with the sound turned off. That is how familiar I am with the movie, which is also why it was so easy for me to spot the scenes that were abruptly edited out from the movie for no apparent reasons! Think about it, in Adaptation, masturbation scenes were edited out even though it was on a DVD and it didn't show anything more than moving blankets - fine. What is there to cut in The Lord of the Rings? It's not like they showed elf breasts? Anyway, so I was watching the last part of the Battle at the Black Gates, and it was right after the speech Aragorn gave about shattered shields and men of the West. Then there is a part where Aragorn turns around to look at his friends, and then he goes "For Frodo" before he rushes out to meet the orcs. That part is pivotal because it shows that Aragorn was not expecting them to win, but doing it to avenge Frodo (thinking that he was dead) and die in the course of doing so.

But guess what, THAT SHOT WAS CUT OFF. I was mouthing the words myself when it did not come up, and I was there in the couch, shocked. Unless Aragorn was masturbating while he said those words, I see no reason why anybody would want to cut away such a pivotal moment in the movie. That is like cutting away the last line by Rhett Butler from Gone With the Wind! Or Darth Vader not telling Luke that he is his father! It was incredibly stupid that they decided to do away with that line, and my only explanation was because it is a three-hour long movie and they needed time for advertisements. As if it wasn't bad enough that they split the movie into two and showed it over two days, they interrupted both parts of the movies with advertisements that lasted forever. To make way for even more ads, they probably thought that it'd be smart to cut away little lines here and there from the movie, thinking that nobody would ever notice. Well, I NOTICED IT! And it wasn't even a particularly sensitive line to a bloody religion or race or anything. "For Frodo" certainly is not provocative in racial harmony, and it perhaps encourages racial harmony because we see a fellowship of different races fighting for a little Hobbit! That edit was completely and absolutely retarded.

So, here in Singapore, when it comes to editing films for the general audience, there aren't any rules. No, nudity and all those kinda stuff are not rules, because every rule can be bent, and anything can be edited out for no apparent reasons. More advertisements to make even more money seems like a good reason, but it is not. You are destroying the entirety of the film, and some shots were put into a movie for a reason. You blame us, you say that it is our fault, you say that you edit shots out of a film because we cannot stomach it - seriously? What we cannot stomach is what you haven't been feeding us all along. Nothing against you Dinesh, but more about the organization that you work for that rubs me in the wrong way. I detest the excuses that they give all the time, about how the censorship board censors the things that may be, quote unquote, touchy when it comes to race, religion, sex, homosexuality and vicious violence. OK, that's acceptable, but all you really have to do is to through a tag on the movie poster, or paste a sticker on the DVD cover. Go ahead and have ratings, prevent people under a certain age to watch a certain movie, or buy a certain DVD. You go ahead and do that. Don't rate a movie M18 and then STILL cut things from the movie, because that is just outrageous, and vulgar, if you ask of me.

Here is what they should be doing. If you are going to show a movie on television, then show the whole entire movie. I don't mind if you are going to put advertisements in between scenes, just don't cut my crucial scenes away just because you feel like nobody would notice it - somebody would. If you think a movie is too racy for the general public - DON'T SHOW IT. It's that easy really, just don't show it. On one hand, you respect the social tolerance of certain sensitive materials, and on the other you respect the entirety of the film. It is a win-win situation which I don't understand why they don't get it yet. When it comes to DVDs, sell it to the people who are above a certain age limit, like at the movies, don't edit anything out from my damn DVDs. If you are afraid that the children may pick it up at home, then it is the problem of the parents and not really yours. If you have labels and clearly stated reasons why a film is rated in a certain way, then people going into the theater would be prepared. If you are going to watch into a film called Lust Caution and not expect sex, something is very bloody wrong with you. If you are offended, blame yourself for paying for a movie and then walking right into it. That's like complaining that a Haunted House in a theme park is too scary even though you bought the tickets yourself and walked in. COME ON.

I bet you didn't know about this one, you haven't seen it coming at all. This is the curve ball I am going to throw at you guys, the twist at the end of the movie that you've never saw coming. This is the part of the blog entry where I tell you about something unusual that you've never heard of before, something which is going to make you think about for the rest of the day. I shall begin with a question: Have you heard of a medical condition called the Exploding Head Syndrome? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is a real medical condition in science, a well-documented medical condition that plagues a small population around the world. You remember that kid from kindergarten whom nobody sat with because he twitched a lot? You know, that kid whose mother was always outside the classroom to look out for him, and the teacher also gave extra care and concern to him. We all had such a classmate before, or a schoolmate of sorts, someone with some kind of unusual ailment that is uncommon. It's different from a sniffle or a cold, but some kind of genetic disease that he or she was born with, and it's not like they could help it. You cannot deny that despite their disabilities, they were special in class somehow, and that leads me to the second major twist of this blog entry - I have Exploding Head Syndrome.

I kid you not when I make such a claim, because I am serious about it. I was reading up on some facts about the human body when I read about this rare medical condition that explained the phenomenon that happened to me a few months ago. Mind you, Exploding Head Syndrome does not literally mean that your head explodes like a watermelon strapped to a bunch of C-4s. I think I wouldn't be sitting here and blogging about that if that is true, and I don't think such a serious condition would have such a laughable name. It'd probably be in league with Spontaneous Body Combustion, only more intense and more visual arousing. So, Exploding Head Syndrome is not like that, it isn't half as fanciful at all. In fact, it is probably not going to be featured in a lot of news articles or documentaries, because it isn't exactly life-threatening. You know that Discovery Channel girl who cannot be exposed to sunlight? I watched that documentary and felt extremely sorry for the girl by the end of it. After all the surgeries, she still passed away at the end of it, not being able to see her face being constructed to resemble a normal little girl. I am not like that little girl, and thus I am less news-worthy. In a way, I am fortunate, depending on how you see it.

Let me tell you about Exploding Head Syndrome. A couple of months ago, I was studying for my exams, my head buried in my books when I heard this soft sound in the back of my head. It sounded like waves at the beach, coming and subsiding every once in a while. Initially, I thought it was the sound of rain falling outside, and I remember turning to the window to check a couple of times. It wasn't raining at that time, and I remember putting my pinky into my ears to check if I was hearing things - I wasn't. The sound of waves started getting louder and louder, and then it became like white noise from your radio or television set when you turn to a blank channel. You know, that sound that sounds like water crashing into rocks, something like that. From there, the volume would gradually increase, and then it'd dissolve into voices that sounded like people talking, but not really. It was really loud, and it got louder and louder, though never painful to the ears, and it got so loud that I started cupping my ears at one point. Like I said, it didn't pain my ears, but I couldn't force my own thoughts through - it was rather scary.

By the end of the ordeal, the sound just stopped and faded away. I was left in my seat, shaken, and wondering what in the world just happened to me. It was scary, let me tell you that, because it felt like some paranormal experience that you'd read about on internet websites. Those first-person encounters or testimonials about connecting and communicating with the dead. I've never believed in such things, which was why I brushed that thought aside quickly. However, extra-terrestrials, that was another territory altogether. It sounded like aliens trying to communicate with me, it was as if they were trying to tell me something with their unique language. That is also why they have gave it a strange medical term, it is so that nobody would ever really find out about how they are communicating with mankind. OK, now I am sounding like one of those crazy people who claim that they have been kidnapped by aliens to have sex with them, right? I have seen a video about this woman who claim to be the queen of this distant planet, and she had a hybrid alien child with an alien while she was abducted, or something. Are these people serious? Anyway, I don't think it was E.T. trying to phone home, or phone me rather. Then again, I never found out what it was.

I think if it was a close encounter of the third kind, then the aliens would probably insert a better radio with a better reception quality in my head. I mean, think about it for one second here. If aliens are so smart to fly a thousand million light years to our planet without detection, abduct me in the middle of the night without me remembering it, slice open my head to put some sort of chip in it (without me knowing it), sew it back up again (still without me knowing it) and send me back to my bed in the same position (without me knowing it), then they'd probably also have the technology to implant a better radio, right. I mean, perhaps they'd rely less on radio waves and more on, I don't know, strange alien wave X or something like that. I think that is what they'd do, or what they'd rationally do if they do want to communicate. Then again, if they do want to communicate, why pick a college student who hasn't even graduated with a degree yet. Pick a Harvard graduated lawyer or something like that, or put a chip in Obama's head. I think that'd make more sense, because he really only needs to press a button to start a war if he wants to (though, I am sure he is cool enough to not do such a stupid thing). It is not going to be me, it's just not.

So, the Exploding Head Syndrome, I only found out about it today. Apparently, it is triggered by stress and fatigue in sufferers, like me, and it seems to be true for the most part. It has happened to me a few times already, and I can finally put a name to that symptom. I don't think it causes harm to my health or anything, but it certainly causes discomfort and inconvenience every once in a while. Like, if I am tired, I am not going to be able to hear anything from anyone because of someone else in my head yelling through a loud hailer, or something. It'd be difficult, but that has happened before. Naz and I were just talking about the possibility of turning this strange medical condition of mine into an advantage. Coming from a man who is excused from most military-related activities, he told me to go to a doctor and tell him about the symptom. Of course, the first time he hears such a thing, he is probably going to think that I am crazy, or that I am stupid. Either way, he is not going to take me very seriously. I think I should bring some kind of textbook with me, or a file full of newspaper articles on the subject. You know, to show a little bit of authority and lend a little credibility. It'd persuade, everybody is influential, and everybody buys in to a little bit of something.

So that'd be great, to get downgraded for a rare symptom like that. And, I am not lying about it either, because I do have it. However, I have no idea how it can be diagnosed, or clinically proven at all. It is a very real problem, but I have no idea how to prove it. I suppose it isn't necessarily a medical emergency, but I will fill out the necessary forms when, well, necessary. Anyway, we started talking about a bunch of other symptoms that could become a hindrance in the army. Like, if you have a perpetually erected penis, that is going to be a big problem (if it is big in the first place). You know, you cannot leopard-crawl, and you cannot back-crawl either. Well, you can back-crawl, but it is really at your own risk of having your penis caught in the razor-sharp barbwires above. If you have seen pictures of what happens to human flesh on blade, you don't want that to happen to you. Any kind of prone position would be out, and a walk through the showers is going to provoke a lot of stares. I mean, in a all-boy community, why are you having a hard-on in the first place? Oh, and you are probably going to be excuse from parades and stuff as well too. Imagine the Commanding Officer inspecting the ranks and then getting poked in the side. That, would be amazing.

So anyway, I'd like to try it one day. I'd tell my officer this. Sir, I cannot participate in today's rigorous training exercise because I have been diagnosed with a rare and incurable disease called the Head Exploding Syndrome. And no sir, I shit you not. I think he is going to give me a few extras, which I'd welcome because I'd get, in return, to sue his ass off. I have a legitimate reason to skip your exercise! Don't you dare tell me that my medical condition is fake! Anyway, Head Exploding Syndrome, it could actually save my life after all. It is one of those rare diseases to have, but it is good that it is not going to affect my health in any way, you know? I am just going to be that cool guy with that weird syndrome in school or something like that. You know, the guy with the Head Exploding Syndrome? Well, maybe not, but it'd still be interesting to note nonetheless. Anyhow, I am going to bed now, and hopefully this syndrome does not suddenly become a literal interpretation overnight. I mean, think about the laundry that I'd have to do afterwards! The mess! Oh wait, I am missing the point.

I think I managed to fall asleep for a while, but not for long. The rain at five in the morning woke me up again, and I had to close the window in my bedroom. By this time, though, standing up already was a problem, and I went straight back to bed, curled up in the same ball once more. I couldn't sleep afterwards, with the dull pain in my stomach still very much present, and the horrific images of my stomach exploding started to come up in my head. There was this particular episode when this patient's testicles exploded or something, and I started thinking about stuff like that. It wasn't helping, but I am convinced at this point that when it comes to health, I am scared as hell. I just laid there in bed for the rest of the night, and I remember the clock being six-thirty when I had to go to the bathroom one more time. No, nothing came out yet, and I was falling asleep on the toilet bowl, being all frustrated at the same time. I waited till seven in the morning to do anything about it, and asked my mother for some laxatives. I downed two tubes of those supposedly "wonder dust", and waited for something to happen. Then, of course, things got worse by seven thirty in the morning.

A gust of wind from the window sent chills down my body. You know, the kind that pulls up all the goosebumps and makes your teeth chatter. I don't think it was a particularly strong wind, but it could only mean one thing at that point in time - I was having a fever. I didn't know why, and it just came out of the blues. I tried to fall asleep at that time, but the cold kept me awake once again as I shivered myself silly in the sheets. My teeth started chattering, and that was when I told my mother about the rising temperature. It soared pretty quick in the morning, and I took even more pills on top of what I was already taking. A load of medicine, a load of vitamin Cs, and a load of vitamin Bs. By that time, my head was weighing a ton, and I couldn't help myself but lie on the edge of my bed and moan. It was a horrible feeling, because even the slightest movement caused my brain - or at least it felt that way - to slosh around in the skull. It was as if my brain shrunk, and the skull was too big for it. So I bounced from side to side in my head and caused quite a racket. The only position that made me feel a little better was me lying on the bed with my hoodie and the blanket wrapped all around me. I was still freezing there, but at least I knew I was getting better - or hoped, anyway.

I am not sure about you, but one of my mortal fears is to slip in a bathroom. I remember squatting on the edge of the bathtub once and then falling backwards into it. The excruciating pain caused tears to shoot out from my eyes, and I still remember what happened until this day. Some time last year, my aunt was also the victim of wet floors in the bathroom, where she blanked out and slammed her face into the tap. So, you see, I am very wary about showering when I am having a heavy head, literally. I have to grab at a lot of things when I am inside, or I'd just choose to sit down in the bathtub and just let the water run down my back. I remember when I was young and sick, my mother would bathe me like that, and it was the best feeling ever. Now, of course, such a thing is impossible, and I'd much rather keep my nudity to myself. Yet, I was sitting there in my bathtub today, thinking about how great it would be if I could just sit there forever, you know? Hot showers and fevers go very well together, provided you have enough handles in the bathroom for you to hold on to. I buried my face in between my knees and allowed my hair to be soaked, and for a moment there I slept.

When you are sick, you are rather immobile for the most part. With a head like that, all I wanted to do was to sit on the sofa for a while and stare at things. So I turned on the television to watch Sunday morning TV shows, and boy do they suck. There's Whacked Out Sports, where they show amateur videos of things going awfully wrong in sports. It was kind of weird to hear the narrator speak of the accidents in a humorous tone when the accident itself is pretty damn serious. Then again, I found myself cheering on for the bull during a bull riding competition, where it downed about ten clowns and crew, all accounted. I have no respect for people who ride bulls, and I always like to see one of their butts being jabbed by the horns. Humans really do deserve it at times, I feel, doing stupid things like that. I also realized that Americans like the strangest sports ever. Like bull riding and drag races, what is the point of drag races? A race that ends in eight seconds, not exactly something I am very excited about. Anyway, I made my way back to my room where I drank something hot, and decided that I'd sleep the rest of the day away.

And so I did, the whole day away, while I changed t-shirts for all the perspiration that accumulated along the way. I was sticky, uncomfortable, and most of all I wanted to rest my head on the bed permanently. But the laxatives worked, and I found myself feeling better in the abdomen area by mid-afternoon. And as for the head, the fever has already gone away, leaving behind the giddiness that was, for the most part, unbearable. I am not sure if it was the fever or the fact that I stayed up all night feeling miserable. One thing is for sure though, and it is the fact that I made a lot of people worried, especially Neptina. She was on her way to church when I told her about it, and I really wasn't in the right frame of mind to make sense of my words. I appreciated her little medical advices over the phone, which is yet another reason why I love my girlfriend - she is awesome, because she is willing to hug you even when you are drenched in your own sweat. Anyway, I am much better now, though I haven't eaten anything for the whole day. I really should eat something more than shredded chicken, ginger, and pills though. Perhaps one more tube of laxatives first, yes. Damn this head is heavy.

This is what went on in my head during the process of procrastination today.

Oh, it's eleven thirty already, I have to wake myself up, I have to. I cannot sleep so much again, I really shouldn't sleep till one o'clock like that other day when I had an insomnia. I have to start working again, start studying again, go through all the chapters again. OK, we have two modules to study for in this finals, it's not too bad right? It's better than most people out there, good that Bob doesn't see the need for a finals paper for the public speaking module. So that's one down, I have one down, but I still have two more to go. Why am I stuck with the two that I despise the most, OK I have to start with that one today - start with it now. But I am hungry, I am still sleepy, I should take a shower first. A shower will wake me up, that sounds like a good plan, an excellent plan. I should take a good long shower in the morning before I start to do my work. Besides, it is a hot day right now, a really hot morning. Whatever happened to those rainy days anyway, I'm beginning to hate the weather as well. This is no weather to study at all, perhaps I need to turn on the air-conditioning before I start to study. OK, I will do that right now and let the room cool down while I go take a good long shower. That sounds like a plan, I am going to do that now.

Oh, that felt good, I am all refreshed! OK, let's take on the challenges of today, I shall take on them one by one and finish chapters after chapters! Yes, this is how you start a day, refreshed and energized! I should write a book on it, or maybe I should just post a Twitter message to save time. Yes, I should do that right now, turning on my iMac right now. I will do the studying later though, I will do it after I post this quick one, it shouldn't take long. There is a beauty in the fact that Twitter only allows 140 characters anyway, so you don't dwell on the website for too long. Yes, I shall do that and then I will start studying, It's not even noon yet anyway, I have a lot of time. Oh, a new Harry Potter trailer, it actually looks pretty good if I do say so myself. Let's go to other websites to watch more trailers. Wait, before that, I need to visit the forums again, see if there are new movies posted in the battle threads. The Pianist lost in the Battle of the Oscar Losers thread to Traffic! Well I haven't seen Traffic, but it must be pretty damn good. I should take note, maybe I should rent it next time. Oh, Tornado's concert tickets are pretty awesome. Wow, that's a lot of concerts. Maybe I should post my Rachael Yamagata ones too, or maybe my Coldplay ones. Damn, I should do it right now... but I am hungry. Damn.

OK, I will do that after my lunch. But wait, I haven't eaten my breakfast yet, so I suppose it will be called my brunch. But that's good, because a brunch is two meals in one! I am saving time, I will use the saved up time to study, to study, and to study some more. Yes, I will wait for the brunch to be prepared, and in the meantime surf around the internet first. It's not even noon anyway - wait, it's already five minutes past noon. Damn, I am hungry, I cannot possibly study when I have an empty stomach. That is not how I work anyway, I need energy to study. My brain cannot function well when I am hungry, or starving, I just can't. I will start to study after my brunch then, I really should start studying after that. But before that, let's surf around a little bit. Oh, new features in iPhone 3.0 software, that's looking pretty nifty. What is this application called Scribbles, looks like fun. Damn, it's on trial, that sucks. I should try to hack it. Let me go and download Serial Box from Mininova. OK, let's see, I have nine minutes left. Let's do something else in the mean time, let's go to Fail Blog. Wow, this guy is an idiot, he just jumped off a ledge and landed on his face. I have a thing for face-plant videos, this is hilarious. I love stupidity! I love food - damn, I am hungry.

Brunch was great, and now I am energized. Let's start to study now! But wait, I still have that Serial Box download, I really should go check it out. Yes! The download is done! Now I can start to hack this Scribbles application and see what happens. Entering serial number, going through the steps, done! I am a pirate! Yes! OK, maybe I should do the same with Corel's Painter, let's see if I can find the trial for the latest version. Wow, Corel Painter 11, that sounds pretty new, let me try if there is a trial version for Mac. Oh yes, there it is, let me download this monster right here. Oh, nice and fast server, I like that. I should try to find the serial number through Serial Box again, see what happens. Damn, they don't have the serial number for this version, guess I'd just have to hack it through a different backdoor this time. OK, that's it, open this. Click that. Click that. Click that. Find this, and this, delete them. Clear the trash, restart the application, launch. Open. It works! I am a pirate! I feel good about myself, I am good at this thing. OK, let's start studying now, since I feel accomplished at something, I shouldn't lose this momentum. But, isn't it strange to hack into an application and not try to use it? I mean, I've already went through all the trouble. Some a taste of it maybe, just let me try it a little while.

OK, that was confusing, I have no idea how to work this thing, maybe I need a tablet. Maybe I need more than a tablet, but then I suck at drawing. I can't even draw a crocodile properly, what makes me think that I'd do better on a tablet. Maybe I should just throw this into my external hard drive, maybe Neptina can do a better job. No, she will do a better job than me. I should stick to what I do, to study. Yes, I really should start studying at this point, I really don't want to continue confusing myself any longer, like last night when I downloaded Sim City onto my iPod Touch. Oh yes, what happened last night? Yes, my city was knee deep in debt eight years into the game and I failed as the mayor! It was my first game in years, and perhaps I got rusty trying. I should brush up my skills again, I should pull through and learn all there is to learn about this game! Let's start by searching for strategy guides, I wonder if anybody have strategy guides online. This guy has the same problem as me, I can't seem to earn any money as a mayor. This is horrible, maybe I cannot manage a small town, at least I can still manage my studying. Like, managing the time around, changing it a little bit. I will start studying after this, yes, I will.

First off, we need to build the power plant right here, a distance away from the commercial and the industrial area. Yes, okay, now build this long stretch of road to connect the two areas. Now we need water supplies, power cables to connect the areas. Oh, we need pipes underground to connect everything together, then we need an area as landfill. OK, let's build a water tower here to provide water for people here, here and here. OK, I think that'd do, now let's fast forward the time a bit to see if anybody starts to move into my city. Oh, here we go! Little people moving in! OK, now I need to build a school right around this corner, and then a police station right next to it because my virtual advisor thinks that we need one. Yes, we need to build one, and maybe we also need a hospital to take care of the people's health! But, we need more money first, let's build more commercial areas so that we can have money coming in. Before that, let's build more residential area so that there'd be people to work in the commercial areas! That'd work, that'd be perfect. I hope it works this time, I hope I am a good mayor. I should fast forward everything so that I can get my metropolis done in no time. I need to start studying anyway, this will not do. This will not do!

Five thousand dollars in debt and going, I suck at this game. Hell, I suck at all games! I can never play games more advanced than Rolando. This sucks, I feel like smashing something. I used to smash things when I was a kid, when I lost a game. I never got past the first stage in Sonic the Hedgehog, it was just too difficult for me. I hate games, why can't it be a skill that I am decent at? I need to cheer myself up, maybe I should go for a nap first, or drink something that I like. Yeah, maybe I should do that before I start studying, boost my self-esteem up a little bit you know? Maybe that'd work me up, study better, have more motivation to go all the way. That sounds like a plan, sounds like a great plan. I am feeling it now, getting all worked up for myself. I need to do this, and I think I can do it! But let me go wash my face first, and while I am at it I really should clean my electric shaver. Yeah, it's been a while since I did that, I can only imagine the amount of stuff trapped in there. What do you even call those things anyway, residues? I have no idea, but I am going to clean them out in the bathroom anyway, with that little brush at the back and water. I will brush them out first, clean my face, then start to work. It's too hot right now to work anyway.

OK, so everything is cleaned up now, I can start to study! Feeling good, this is good, I can do this. OK, let's download the articles and the notes! Let's download the powerpoint presentations, let's do this thing! OK, I already have this set of notes about Internet Tools. OK, let's go on to the next article and see what we have. Oh, Internet and Politics, that sounds like fun. OK, wait, it's really not that fun, let's go to an easier chapter first. Let's see. This looks fair enough, Internet and Journalism, let's go to that one first. Journalism, definition, accuracy, authority, currency, this is boring as hell. I should go to the next chapter first. Or maybe I should do another module altogether. But I am hungry, maybe I should eat a chocolate bar. OK, I am not really hungry, I just feel like eating something. The pizza I ate yesterday was wonderful, maybe I should order that again. But the amount of cheese, how sinful. Maybe I should stick to studying first, enjoy myself later. I should get a muffin, yeah I should eat a muffin first. And while I am at it, I should watch an episode of The Office again. They ate a whole bunch of cheese puffs in the last episode, how hilarious! Studying can wait, studying can wait till later in the evening. I know I am procrastinating, this is not good. This is not good, I should stop procrastinating and start doing work, start working on something. Maybe another new city in Sim City. But I don't know, I suck as a mayor. Maybe I should take a nap first, I am pretty good at that.

Truth.

So, I just came back from the Rachael Yamagata concert. Like any other concerts that I have ever been to, I suppose I should write this entry before it all fades away with my nightly dreams. So, I think the concert was great! Not on the same level as Coldplay of course, that'd be pretty hard to beat in the short term. Hell, let's say that it'd be pretty hard to beat in the long term, because they were that good. Still, for somebody like Rachael Yamagata, I thought she pulled off a wonderful job at Esplanade today, ten times better than when she came to Singapore the last time for the Mosaic Music Festival. She bounced onto the stage with a flu and a very bad jet lag, but she pulled the show off anyway - this time, completely flawless. I have an inkling that she messed up so often last time because she wasn't exactly on tour when she came down to Singapore. You know how it is, even the professionals get somewhat rusty after you've been resting for too long. Anyway, this time around, Rachael came down to Singapore on her own, along with her band, and she has had enough rehearsals to pull off a beautiful show for the lot of us who have been craving for her return.

I must admit that I was somewhat underwhelmed by her last visit. The short set list was one thing, the off-pitches and the forgotten lyrics were another. This time around, aside from the fact that she did not mess up at all, she amped up the already very beautiful songs that she has by stripping some of them down to the bare minimum. Anyway, before we get into that with more detail, let's just say that I almost didn't remember the concert at all. I was reminded by Vanessa only last night, and that was how I remembered. I was looking forward of course, but I haven't been jumping up and down for the concert like I did with Coldplay. Then again, understandably, it was Coldplay. Anyway, so Vanessa and I got to Esplanade an hour earlier, and decided to hang around the foyer first before going into the concert hall. I hate the fact that the nicer merchandizes, like the t-shirts, were only available in female sizes. The only t-shirt that I really wanted only had female cutting, which was the same as the Coldplay concert - what's up with that? And for some reason, the hoodies were five dollars cheaper than the t-shirts. I wonder why. I didn't buy anything in the end, not liking the designs on all the other t-shirts. So, Vanessa and I decided that it'd make more sense to go into the venue first to get our cameras ready.

It failed me last time at the Coldplay concert, so I was determined to make it work this time at the Esplanade. The Psapp and Battles pictures turned out really well, which got me thinking if the camera really works better with Esplanade. Maybe it is the artsy vibe of the place, who knows. Anyway, for some reason, the "new" batteries that I brought were actually empty ones. Those were the ones I stole from the school lecture hall, so shame on those technical maintenance people! Anyway, I had to work with just half of whatever that was left with the batteries, and that made me a little nervous at first. A few test shots of the opening band and I was set for the concert. The opening band was a local band called Jack & Rai, a rather prominent band that plays at Timbre from time to time. I must say that they were pretty good, and it is sad to know that the only famous local bands are the ones filled with teenage angst - what about bands like Jack & Rai who really have something going for them? Of course, Jack should really sticking to the guitar, because Rai is about ten folds better than Jack in that department. Still, I think they did a wonderful job, and I applaud them with all my heart. Good job, guys.

There was a brief intermission when the lights came up again, and it wasn't long before the band came up onto the stage - with the lights still turned on. A note to whoever that controls the lights in the Esplanade concert hall - you suck. Seriously, you have zero coordination with the crew working in the backstage, and it takes forever for you to turn down the lights - what's up with you? Have a little professionalism! Anyway, Rachael came onto a stage in a bright yellow dress, and this time they brought along a cellist, which was really cool. You can't go wrong when you throw cello into your music, and I suppose it was a part of why the last concert really wasn't that great. It felt that it was missing something, and this time they managed to grab a cellist, which was awesome. Anyway, the band opened with a soft ballad, with Rachael on the piano with Elephants. From there, she dived straight into the second song, a crowd favorite, Be Be Your Love. By this time, I could already tell that the concert was better than the previous, and the cellist really added life and depth to the live versions of the songs. Kudos!

I mentioned in the album review that the faster songs in her first album really didn't work for me very well, except maybe 1963. However, the faster songs in her second album (or second part of her second album) are actually pretty damn good if you ask me. I love the nails-on-the-back feel to them, a little edgy and raw side of Rachael that we don't get to see a lot. The live version of Faster really brought a lot of punch, and I really enjoyed the live renditions, perhaps even more so than the studio version anyway. She never ever plays the version of Worn Me Down that I have and love, and that irritates me a bit. The version that I have is a little more mellowed down, a little more eased out on the edges, and definitely easier on my ears. That is not to say the rock-out version isn't nice though, but I just kinda prefer the one that I have in my iPod Touch. Anyway, another crowd pleaser right there, followed by Letter Read. Not exactly a song that I am very fond of, but you really cannot say anything bad about Rachael for the most part. She goes out there as herself, uncensored and uncut, and you can tell that who she is on stage is who she is offstage. It's hard to criticize someone like that, and you got to give credit to her banters about loving CATS the musical as well as losing her guitar pick in her bra.

Oh, we have to give this a mention. She played my favorite song! I have been wanting her to play Even So since the last time she came here, since she didn't play that one. I was hoping for either Even So, or Ode To, or both. I don't ask for a lot, so Even So was enough for my modest appetite. I swear, the live version of Even So was freakin' awesome, and I have to say that the stripped down version with just the piano and her vocal was definitely better even than the studio version. I am glad that she picked that song and threw it into the set list, because it is a song that means a lot to me, in many ways. And, it is always interesting to hear how songs came about during concerts, something which you don't really get unless you pay to get into one. Over And Over was apparently inspired by a haunting of the studio that they were recording at. Well, not really a studio, but more like a giant mansion in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, she plagiarized off the "Trumpet Ghost" which she heard playing a tune one night - how creepy. I'm not bought by the story, but who cares - it's a good song.

Then we have two more fast tracks back to back, punch punch punch. I am glad that she picked the fast songs that she picked this time, and decided to do away with the faster materials from her Happenstance album. However, I would have traded some of those tracks with some materials from the EP (like Parade) or Ode To, or Quiet, or something. Anyway, it was still a great arrangement, with the main set list ending with Sunday Afternoon. We have the original version, the studio version, and the live version. My favorite is the latter, really because of the way the guitar really rips into the melody of the song. The guitarist is also the guy who used to play for John Mayer during his Room for Squares days, and his skills really shone through during this song. I loved how the guitar really added to the pain and anguish that is already embedded within the lyrics, and the song was made even more painful to listen - in a good way - with Rachael's signature smokey voice. Seriously, Rachael probably has one of my favorite voices in music of all time. The way that she sings almost feels like a blunt razor blade through your flesh. I love it.

As some of the fans left the concert hall to grab a place in line outside for the autograph session, Rachael came back onto stage for the encore. Two songs she played, and she still didn't played Ode To (damn). Still, she played Duet and The Reason Why (expectedly), and I thought she pulled it off beautifully despite the fact that Ray Lamontagne wasn't around. It'd be SO COOL if he was though, because I'd seriously kill for his concert. Anyway, he wasn't there, and it was cute to hear Rachael fill in his parts with a much deeper voice. Oh, side tracking a little, I enjoyed her banter about the drunk fan that met her in the backstage and told her about how she had sex with her record playing in the background - classic Rachael, very awesome. I love how natural she is on stage, you know, the way she treats the venue as a little coffee place, and she just goes with her stories and her jokes. Even though she may not pull off the best concerts, she certainly makes up for a lot with her interacts. I love it.

So, post concert, we got in line for the autographs and caught a glimpse of Mwen and Harrison in the queue as well. Like she did the last time, Rachael took her time to sign and chat with every single fan that came along. She's just that nice, though the management was really on their toes because she usually takes a long time. The last time she came, the autograph session that happened afterwards is, apparently, the longest autograph session ever. So I was really glad to be at the front of the line this time, because the sign outside the venue said that it'd only go on for thirty minutes, max. Harrison was all the way at the back, and he kept checking with me how the situation was. Molasses was what I told him, and he worried for his autographs. Personally, I got my notebook and ticket signed, and I am going to give the ticket to Pao who didn't make it for the concert. Rachael also kindly added her name to the ticket, how nice! Anyway, a very good concert indeed, and nice pictures to remember it by! E-mail me, or drop me a message if any one of you wants the pictures, whoever you are.

Set list:

1. Elephants

2. Be Be Your Love

3. What If I Leave?

4. Little Life

5. Faster

6. Worn Me Down

7. Letter Read

8. Elephants (Instrumental)

9. Even So

10. Meet Me By The Water

11. The Only Fault

12. Over And Over

13. Sidedish Friend

14. Accident

15. Sunday Afternoon

Encore:

16. Duet

17. The Reason Why

*

E-Mail me at nazgul4eva@gmail.com for the pictures.