hello one and all!

it's been donkeynoodle timewarp light years since i last posted!

and now i'm back..
finally..

but i really don't know if it'll last. in recent days i find that, less and less, the urge to write volumes of verbose ramblings surfaces, and ergo, this place has seen no new inspiration since then.. and well maybe things will change when i move to a new environment, and take on a new identity as a student, but till you see three posts up in the space of a week, don't get your hopes up..

like seriously. don't. i don't want to break any more hearts and dash any more hopes.

bwahaha..

and please don't think it's a major life-change that has brought this on, or that i'm depressed and want to end it all, starting with this space in cyberspace that i call my own. 

raarbeesh.

i just don't see the need to update everybody (read: shout out to the whole WWW) on my comings and goings anymore, and actually, coming to think of it, it's a good thing i don't write here often.

after all, i write plenty and wax dramatic only when life is less-than-perfect and leaves much to be desired..

thus maybe it is true after all that thngs have taken a change for the better and thus i don't need to blog anymore.

having said that (ok everybody hold your socks it's clarification time)

firstly, the reason i'm writing so much now is not because i'm now depressed. it's cos i refuse to let this place just go to nothing without at the very least a final, fitting piece of prose to wind things up (not that this is that, but if Y comes to Z, then, well, it serves well enough)

and secondly, there is some thing to rant about. and it starts with an R too!

R353rv!5+

well i never thought i'd come to this, but well you know when you build your life's dreams around studying music and you finally get there after all that jazz, it is, you have to agree with me, a rather wet, soppy, soggy, and thoroughly stinky and unpleasant blankety prospect to have to, within the first two months of school, go back two and a half years ago and take up arms (oh bloody arms) again. 

it's in my words, raarbeesh. (which my class of sec 1s studying music theory under me have learned, is my favourite word to throw around.)

but thankfully, it has been pushed back (hopefully to oblivion and beyond; well nobody said I can't indulge in wishful thinking) and i no longer have to worry about it while in school.

kinda like how Harry Potter will be safe for as along as he's a student in Hogwarts, and calls the Dursley's his home. 

except, of course, that while i love school, i don't hate home; and most unfortunately, i do not have the ability to hex some people to oblivion.

lucky them.

but of course this fortuitous pushing back of said "duties" did not come about without sacrifice. and while i do not have any intention whatsoever of trivialising the death of dear Lily Potter, if we were to continue along this analogous line of thinking, i have to point out that i had to have the pleasure of wrangling with a rather friendly, keen, but unfortunately altogether inefficient administration to bring about this, well, for want of a better term (and in the interests of keeping this rant underground and my own self above blame and legal trussle) the said pushing back of said "duties".

well at least school's starting and things are looking good (goodness the new campus is just gorgeous!) and life's treating me kindly and well. 

well this about ends it all for now (or for ever, who knows) and all that's left for me is to tie up the loose ends and wait for school to open. it's jumping-butterflies-beans-in-my-stomach exciting and i really want to see what's in store!

and of course i do hope we will not start like my dear friends in another nearby varsity who have had the pleasure of seeing the school literally take shape, nuts, bolts and glass panes, right before their freshmen eyes.

but then and again, even if we do, i'm not going to complain. after all, what's going on now, was not too long ago just a fantastic dream. kinda like how Harry Potter hoped he was from another world.

but of course, this isn't fiction! 

(and i'm not some character living in pages earning elephant feeding-time buckets full of money for some writer)

gawd i wish i didn't have to admit this, but i envy that woman.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

hello world!

i'm blogging this with my latest toy............

i bought a MacBook!

one might be wise to expect more postings from me.. seeing as i can now bring my laptop around with me and blog from any wireless location..

but one might be wiser to not expect any postings at all seeing as i'll be tinkering with my latest toy the whole day long..

and thanks to my IT consultant who navigated with me that nausea-inducing crowd of people crammed into the fair..

The Two Sister-Moons

A very, very, long time ago, the Mistress Earth lived in endless space, surrounded by nothing but black emptiness and distant shimmering stars. The Mistress Earth was not as we know her today, for she was but a young woman with no cares to her years, and she lived with her two daughter-moons. These two daughter-moons, together, always shone in her skies, and thus there was always light, enough to make things grow, but never enough to make man sweat hard upon his brow when working in the fields.

The elder daughter-moon of the Mistress Earth was fair, and was handsome, and was full, and always she shone fully in the dusky skies of the Mistress Earth. The younger daughter-moon, however, was smaller, but was fairer by far, for she shone like purest silver, and thus lit up the sky like a spark of brilliant beauty. The two sisters lived together calmly for what was an age and more, and the Mistress Earth often looked at her two daughter-moons, and was happy.

However, in her heart, beneath her silvery smile, the younger daughter-moon was sad. Although fairer, she was jealous of her elder sister's fullness and roundness, and she wanted the sky to be for her alone, and for all the other children in the embrace of the Mistress Earth to look upon her and her alone. A very, very, long time ago, the Mistress Earth lived in endless space, surrounded by nothing but black emptiness and distant shimmering stars. The Mistress Earth was not as we know her today, for she was but a young woman with no cares to her years, and she lived with her two daughter-moons. These two daughter-moons, together, always shone in her skies, and thus there was always light, enough to make things grow, but never enough to make man sweat hard upon his brow when working in the fields. And so, all was good.

The elder daughter-moon of the Mistress Earth was fair, and was handsome, and was full, and always she shone fully in the dusky skies of the Mistress Earth. The younger daughter-moon, however, was smaller, but was fairer by far, for she shone like purest silver, and thus lit up the sky like a spark of brilliant beauty. The two sisters lived together calmly for what was an age and more, and the Mistress often looked at her two daughter-moons, and was happy.

However, in her heart, beneath her silvery smile, the younger daughter-moon was sad. Although fairer, she was jealous of her elder sister's fullness and roundness, and she wanted the sky to be for her alone, and for all the other children in the embrace of the Mistress Earth to look upon her and her alone. So one day, when everyone was fast asleep, she roused and stole to her sister's side, and watched as that fair, full face slept, the breath like wind and cloud rising and falling. Watching as that fair face slept, she knew in her heart what she had to do.

When day came again, and the sisters roused, and the Mistress Earth looked upon her two daughter-moons, a great cry was heard by all the land. For in the dark of night the younger of the two daughter-moons had sullied her sister's face, and caused it to be muddy and brown. Men and Mistress alike looked in horror at the once-beautiful face of the daughter-moon, and wept at the loss of such a fair face in the sky. The Mistress Earth turned her most barren deserts to face her scarred daughter, lest she catch sight of her own terrible reflection in a drop of water, and when she faced her younger daughter, she could only shed tears at the atrocity of her act.

The scarred daughter-moon turned her face to the stars and wishing upon that beauty of theirs that once she too shared, wished that she would no longer have to bear the burden of that sullied face. The stars, hearing her plea, brought together the brightest thousand amongst themselves, and turned their light into endless strings of glowing thread, and together they formed a veil, so that the scarred daughter-moon would never have to face all of creation with her once-perfect face.

And this is why, to this day, the two sisters never inhabit the same skies. The Mistress Earth faces her elder daughter-moon with the same unchanging love, but no man on earth may ever face her directly, for the brilliance of the stars masks her true, scarred face. The younger daughter-moon, however, only brings tears to her mother's eyes, and that is why the tides brim with the salt of the Mistress Earth's tears only when the younger daughter-moon's face shines full in the dusky skies. And that is why we have the Sun and the Moon, who were once sister-moons, but now cannot be together, for one is consumed by guilt, the other by sadness.

depressing story aside, life has been truly a bed of roses these weeks...
haha...

the story (see below) rose out of simply being inspired by the creaitve genius of Neil Gaiman and thus trying to very secondary-schoolboy-ishly emulate his writing in a work of unbased, contrived myth.

I say this so none of my very concerned (as they would be after reading the story) friends out there think i'm going through some major sibling rivalry drama in the family... haha..

The family's still all well and boring thank you very much..

now on to real life... it's been great, the company, the nights out late, the singing...
simply beautiful...

well just last night i've released my place at NUS so that some other person can have a go at it..
i just hope that it'll be as huge a gift to whoever gets it as the place i have now is to me..

hahaha..

ah life seems to be going extremely well now.. and i'm really happy for everything that's going right..

i'm headed exactly where i want go, i've got a good job that's neither boring nor a waste of my time, and financially, it works out pretty well too..

and well.. this line is intentionally cryptic, but the people i meet while on the job are so far, the best perks.
haha..

somehow, somewhere, deep inside me i'm afraid to say it out loud that life is great cos it might alert whatever forces that are conspiring to make life difficult for us all that there's this little bugger who they might have forgotten about..

haha but who cares?
life's great!!


i'd wanted to end the post there and then, but then i remembered something whiny i wrote a while back..

and it seems that when i wasn't expecting anyone to be listening out there, someone was.. cos i think it's just been proven to me that things can be as good as i want them to be, it just takes tremendous guts to dream big.

haha i'll just leave it at this for now..

well well well...

after 21 years of experience and life, i suppose this is so far the happiest dilemma i've ever had to face...

should i do my BA (Hons) Music in performance, or composition???

yay!

well hello it's been a rather long time now hasn't it.

the verbal drought here so far has been brought on, not only by work, but also because in recent weeks that have just passed i've found little reason to write. some things i don't see the need to tell everyone yet, and others are just, well, plain mundane.

well that's just another way of saying my life is boring...

so some time after coming back from a week long holiday in Krabi, Thailand, i received a letter that had in huge letter emblazoned across the top: ON GOVERNTMENT SERVICE. and so i thought to myself, ah what is it now... and when i flip it over i saw the stamp that said Division of Recruitment, Ministry of Education.

and i was like ohmyshitthebooboo. (thank you very much my dear friend at SMU from who i picked up this phase)

well it was a very poiltely worded letter saying that i was not chosen for the music teacher course.

so after that very impassioned post dealing with the whatnots about music and passion and shtuff like that this was a rather big shock, and also, well, slightly embarrassing. so for a good week or so, everytime i surfed round to my own blog and saw that huge long post i cringed, and then after a while the rhythm of blogging and its smooth, clicking cartharsis was forgotten.

until now, at least.

the other big happening in my life was, well, turning 21.

haha no big fanfares there, nothing much doing. i just spoilt myself with a ring and went out for dinner with the folks. i had been wondering for a rather long time what it would feel like to turn 21, and along the way expecting all manner of emotion ranging from nostalgia and depression to euphoria and a whole new sense of zomgtheworld'satmyfeet. but well reality, as i've fortunately (or not) learnt over these past 21 years, sucks.

it was boring. plain and simple boring.

and i don't mean this in a negative way, i don't feel any letdown or anything like that because my 21st was quite uneventful. i planned it to be that way and that's the way it turned out. i'm just surprised that after worrying that my mind and heart would go through some inner turmoil upon becoming of age nothing happened.

well.

maybe a piscean can be in control of those wild emotions after all.

but this very sedate coming of age has done one thing for me. i now have an acute fear of living a life of boredom and mediocrity. before, i always thought that admitting to this would be rather arrogant, but now i see that it's just the way things should be.

every post in recent memory has been one that ends on a positive note, and i fully intend to make this trend continue, and hopefully each positive note gets more and more, well, err, positive.

gawd it's too early in the morning to think.

to put it all briefly, this is the belated birthday post, and i'm so fully looking forward to what adult life has to offer...... (drumroll please...)

yay!

hello one and all this is the long overdue post.

which I'm afraid is a rather emo one..
but maybe the length of the post makes up for the length of time i've been absent from these pages...
oopsie haha..

and this is rather odd but i've just finished reading the completed post posted on my blog and i'm rather happy with it!

Work has become now a regular part of life, waking me at the proper times, and lulling me to sleep when time is up at the end of the day. Between charming young, power-house executives and middle(to old)-aged socialites to part with their hard-earned (or not) money, and taking stock and maintaining the display and doing all the tiddly things that come with making a living as a salesperson, however, lies puh-lenty of time for the mind to wander and wonder, at the meaning of the universe, and humanity, and the mysteries of life.

Yar right.

Actually all I selfishly think about are the mysteries of my life. Like if I'll be able to live life the way I want to, if I'll ever fall in love and walk off into the sunset, and if I'll get through the next week and keep the pounds off.

I've very recently (Tuesday this week, to be precise) applied to a course that will see me through four years of education in music education, and another five years as a music teacher in secondary schools. While previously it seemed so pretentious and premature to tell anyone but those closest of this grand masterplan (oh hear hear the dramatic tones are coming on even now) except in bits and pieces, as the days go by more and more the anxiety builds up and the irrational part of me says "hey, if so many people know and root for you, then maybe it'll come true after all!" and I think, "hmm, maybe the letdown of not getting it (ohdon'tsayitoutloudyou'lljinxit) and the embarrassment of everyone knowing that you tried so desperately may be reasonable risks to bear if in exchange some mystical force of the goodwill of friends would help your chances."

And of course, Leonard, ever the best friend, knows exactly, and intimately, what the hell I'm going on about.

And then slowly I find myself letting more and more out to the fanciful, flamboyant characters who patronise my stall. These nameless but never faceless ladies, some of which I'll never see again have become the first people who hear of my plans as if they were reality and not some hope I'm clinging to, and who know me as the jewellery salesman who's going to be a music teacher. They all wish me well, not to say that I'll charm the socks off the interview panel and pass the auditions with panache, but to say that I'll make a fine teacher, as if it were unavoidable as destiny. And as kitschy and Hallmarkesque as it may sound, the kindness of strangers surprises me.

So all that's left now is to very childishly proclaim and request: one and all, please please pretty please wish me luck!

Some nights are delirious with pleasure and anticipation, imagining I'm already where I want to be, and that's how I drift off to sleep, pretending to be teaching kids the mysteries of Do, Re, and Mi. Yet, sometimes, during harsh day the thought sometimes comes a-creeping, that perhaps even something as positive as this may be bound to the eternal rules of economics. What happens, then, if there's an opportunity cost to pursuing passion?

Now keep in mind that this year has Valentine's Day with all the hand-holding couples clutching bouquets walking right pass me every darn second (yes, commercial as that may be, eternal, hopeless, romantic that I am I succumb to that). And this year also has Lunar New Year where every single uncle, aunt and distant relative at the dinner table count off the girls to be married off and count off the guys that will one day bring a girl to the table and "hey," they say, "when all's good and done we'll be left with the same number of seats at the reunion dinner table!" and then they go on to very happily count off who's expected to be the next usher of good tidings for the family.

And, of course, at some point or another my name comes up and all I can do is smile the most politically correct smile I can muster and hope that those people won't notice, and a thousand thoughts (all of which completely unknowable and inconceivable to them) run through my mind.

So sometimes I wonder if life has enough goodness in it for me to pursue both my passion and fall hopelessly in love (yes I know it seems I'm going round in circles but it's all going to fall into place very soon, I promise) and of course, when that thought occurs to me at one of those moments when I'm thinking about whether I'm going to be called up for interviews and auditions for the teaching course I go ohmygodofcourseI'llchoosemusicoverlovehandsdown but then I catch myself, because I know how we weak humans have the propensity for making unwise wishes and promises, then I swing this way, then that, and then all of a sudden, I'm left lost and confused.

Leaving the restaurant tonight, for example, meant a drive past Clarke Quay, and glimpsing a sight of a long, quiet stretch of the river, and sudden and unbidden, a twinge twinged itself in my heart as I subconsciously told myself to remember that spot for a long, romantic, hand-holding, bouquet-clutching walk. Then I wonder if that future I just saw in my mind's eye means that the other future I see in my dreams must be forgotten. But the other passion then retaliates and I think, what if finding love (or even, God forbid, thinking about it) means I lose a small bit of hope for that future?

And then remember, that all of that is going on in my life while global warming and climate change and carbon emissions (which on a positive note has been acknowledged and for which plans for its rectification and amelioration have been put on top priority) and all of that that sounds like the end of the world goes on in the background, adding to my list of things to think about.

Yes, unbeknownst to most of you out there I'm quite a save-the-environment kinda guy. So recently I've decided to watch less TV, spend less time on the computer and not use the air-conditioner in my room; basically, cut fuel consumption. And, because I know, perhaps more than some, what it feels like to have someone else's convictions forced onto you, all I'm going to say is: think about it. Don't use your computer for a day, and when the people around you ask you why you make their lives difficult by shutting yourself off from the world, tell them exactly why. It sounds terribly like something we all cringe at when we read it in the National Geographic or hear it on the Discovery Channel, but I can't find another way of saying it without getting the message succinctly across (believe me, because at the dear cost of guzzling more electricity, I've tried).

Well that was a rather long and ponderous aside but it's something I've wanted to say for a long time now, and since I'm at it now I might as well get it out of me.

Well then, back to where I left off, things are never that perfect and defined, but for the sake of completion all I can say is that for now, at this point in time, at least, music still has the upper hand. After all, in all my (very limited) experience it's all that's left with me when I'm left nursing a broken heart. So that means that either, the optimist in me still has some way to go, or that I should prepare for a fulfilling life immersed in passion, and hopefully the music that sates the appetite of the ear can do as well in filling the stomach of the heart. But since I'm somewhat almost an optimist (see above) I refuse to believe in the latter choice that seems to mean living half a life.

So I tell myself, well maybe just not today, or tomorrow, or next week, or this year; but definitely one day you'll have your kitschy, Hallmarkesque, long and romantic, hand-holding, bouquet-clutching, riverside-strolling walk into the shielded-by-perfect-levels-of-carbon-in-the-air sunset.

And more often than not, that satisfies me.



(that, and because i'll be spending next week on a beach somewhere in Thailand)