Sunday.

It rained and after, the streets were wet and so I took a bus. The bus ride was slow but funnily it was also lovely. I enjoyed looking out onto the streets with my earphones plugged in. At the traffic junction, the 40 year old driver of a truck which stops next to the bus is playing imaginary drums, tapping the steering wheel, to what tune I couldn't tell, and I am a little surprised since playing imaginary drums is something you hardly expect 40 year old truck drivers to do. The bus moves. Out of the window I see the fish in the fish tanks of a restaurant, like convicts on the death row and I begin to feel sorry for them. I flip open the newspaper and there is this miraculous story of a pair of chinese twins, adopted by different families in the United States finally being reunited 4 years later and I start to think perhaps the world ain't so bad after all.

Womad. What a blast. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. As the pictures show.

My dreams were filled with you. I hate such dreams. They leave me with so much uncertainty. It's a dream and not real, and yet I cannot help but let the mood creep up on me.

Training under the new guy yesterday was a fiasco. To think I missed the last half hour of Japanese for it. I am close to saying sayonara to the nus soccer get-up, this being my last sem and all and I think if this continues, I will say goodbye sooner.

I bought the album in April. Eyes Open. But it has taken me 4 months to discover this gem.
Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol.

We'll do it all/Everything/ On our own
We don't need/Anything/Or anyone

If I lay here/If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know/How to say/How I feel

Those three words/Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told/Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time/Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me/To find my own

If I lay here/If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told/Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am/All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here/If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

We were washing our bikes today, when we were hit by the International Van Speaker Scam(click link). Hanrong and Sandeep fell for the trick and paid $360 each for speakers of dubious origin and quality. I feel kinda bad that I was the only one who did not get conned. I was tempted. But I just had a niggly feeling something was wrong and resisted all their attempts to persuade me. I guess I didn't like the story the men gave, that they were nicking the speakers off their mean Malay boss. I didn't want to purchase anything stolen. I did voice out my reservations to Hanrong, but I guess I didn't try hard enough, becos the greedy part of me felt it was a good deal. We should learn to trust our gut feelings more.

Before the fireworks went off, I promised Winnie. I am only allowed to bring one person there. I wonder if it will ever happen. The view was magnifique. Falling stars lingering, and then fading out. Their ephemerality forming part of the beauty. As the display reaches its crescendo, with the whole sky awash with colour, you catch that faint sense of loneliness. Inevitable perhaps.


"She said, you don't know me, you don't wear my chains."

In Wong Kar Wai's 2046, rooms 24/12 and 25/12 are the coldest rooms on the train, a reference to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day being the days when people need the most warmth; days you most want to spend with a special someone. The loneliest days in a year when you don't have that special someone with you. I think we can add to the list all the nights with fireworks.

National Day tonight. Fireworks. I will be in the stadium but as the explosions go off overhead, I know my thoughts will drift back to another night when fireworks lit the sky. Maybe I will wonder, and maybe I will miss her.

Handed in my surveys today. 40 of them. A process which has seen me travel by MRT to parts of Singapore I wouldn't normally go. Places like Causeway Point, Yishun, Khatib. Had lunch at Ikea with Uncle Ed, "Pinky" Winnie and "Brain" Yiling. The two girls are working in a factory at Leng Kee, presumably assembling mobile phones. Finally got the Serenaide CD back from Winnie. It's been a long time coming.

Spent some time at St Andrew's Cathedral.They are renovating it but i think age just makes it look more enduring. If those walls could talk, what would they tell us of all they have seen. It's always so peaceful inside. I love the stained glass. No tears this time. I always save a prayer for her.

I am going to watch the National Day Parade on Wed. A friend has got tickets but I can't say who she is. Everyone seems to want to go badly. Me, I am neutral about it. Should be enjoyable.

Sometimes, I think religion is just another money making venture. Especially when the preacher man, Sun Ho's husband, proudly proclaims, "we accept them all, MasterCard, Visa, Amex." "The more you give the more you will be blessed." "Businessmen who find yourselves facing bankruptcy, all you need to do is to give generously and God, the Provider will solve your problems." I walked out. Disgusted.

To me, religion is like a placebo. Take a dice and roll it. Maybe you roll one, 2 ones, 3 ones, but things don't stay bad forever, it might take you 3 tries, or 10 tries, eventually you roll a six. And you thank God for it. Sometimes you ask why it took 10 tries to roll a six and they tell you "Everything in God's time." But without religion, without faith, maybe we would have much less hope,and maybe we would have stopped at 3 ones, given up and cried, but because of our faith and trust in a God, we continue rolling and eventually we reach a six.

I left the indoor stadium, caught bus 16 and alighted 2 stops later opposite the Concourse, glowing in the night. The plump man who got down with me decides to dash across Nicoll Highway. I take the bridge.

I have just finished reading Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner. It brought a lump to my throat. Tragic and yet ultimately uplifting. I doubt I will read a better book this year. Everyone should read it.

Came across some old photos while tidying up. Primary School. A time I was truly happy. No issues. No growing pains. We knew so little about the world, perhaps thats why.