Shakespeare Hates Your Emo Poems/ so reads the shirt.

So we reach Saturday where I sluggishly get out of bed roudabout noon, and somehow Saturday always seems to have different air about it, a certain feel, of indolence. The weekday hubbub at the construction site across the river has ceased, the dinosaur machines are all asleep, with the workers all out at Serangoon Road, Beach Road or thereabouts, and the midday breeze coaxes patterns on the large blue tarpaulin sheet spread over the hill of rubble in the centre.

It is bright and sunny, the kind of picnic sunny and I have to fight back thoughts of her and recollections of our picnic in the Botanic Gardens (Lou Reed's Perfect Day starts playing in my head), I focus my attention to my sore right foot, an affliction from yesterday, my futsal session  with the teachers at the School sports hall, Weiming came over to join us from Bartley, it was a good workout, fun and a good way to get to know my colleagues better. In Myanmar people are dying for their ideals and I should rightly be ashamed of myself for being lazily emo. 

 

John Wayne Gacy

These were taken on Tuesday - Fish Eye Lens are such fun.

I am home before 2pm as it's wednesday, classes end at 1pm and I figured I didn't want to hang around the staff room so I packed up the summary scripts to mark at home. My brother was waiting in the carpark, it's the first time he's driving by himself since he got his license and it was a pleasing feeling to have your little brother pick you up from work. Nothing really much today, I have just been going into classes and telling the girls to do their work quietly while I mark away. Time flies by, and before you know it the bell goes. I did have to tell a lecture of girls off on Monday, in typical angry teacher fashion though.

I have been looking out in the newspapers these last 2 days, in case you haven't realised, something momentous is happening in Myanmar, I just hope this doesn't turn out to be another Tiananmen. I just feel that if the US or the European countries are really serious about promoting democracy and freedom, this is the place, now is the time they should intervene. I know that Gandhi won it through non-violence but given the trend in the last 2 decades, I just don't think it will happen. The chapter will just end with tanks rolling in, and I fear for the monks and the protestors. 

This 2 kooky girls, they never give me a moment's peace, ensuring I never get a chance to slip back into emo mode.

 

Happy Birthday Gwen!! Don't mug too hard!!

Angkor Wat in 06, it was a great day we spent, wandering among the solemn ancient ruins, still magnificent after centuries of disrepair; abandoned, forgotten and overrun by forest.

  

Over dinner last night, our conversation touched on travelling and Cambodia, which prompted me to look through the photo album when I got home. 

I still miss her, it comes at times, these feelings of nostalgia bordering on melancholy, but it's not killing me anymore, I shrug it off, but I wonder how her leg is doing and I wonder what might have been.

五月天-向前走

Fans of the band will love the footage in this MV. This song is probably the chinese equivalent of U2's Where The Streets Have No Name. It's pretty inspiring. Here are the lyrics,

火车渐渐在起走 再会我的故乡的亲戚
亲爱的父母再会吧 到阵的朋友告辞啦
阮欲来去台北打拼 听人讲啥物好空的拢在那
朋友笑我是爱做瞑梦的憨子 不管如何路是自已走

OH! 再会吧 OH! 啥物拢不惊 OH!向前走

车站一站一站过去啦 风景一幕一幕亲像电影
把自已当作是男主角来扮 云游四海可比是小飞侠
不管是幼稚还是乐观 后果若安怎自已就来担
原谅不笑的子儿吧 趁还少年赶紧来打拼

OH! 再会吧 OH! 啥物 拢不惊 OH! 再会吧 OH!向前走

台北台北台北车头到啦 欲下车的旅客请赶紧下车
头前是现代的台北街头 我的理想和代希望拢在这
一栋一栋的高楼大厦 不知有住多少像我这样的憨子
卡早听人唱台北不是我的家 但是我一点拢无感觉



This one goes out especially to Silly Susan who's going off to the Land of the Rising Sun for a year. Have the time of your life!   

Sometimes, you are just so shocked by the suddenness of life. I was just invigilating a paper with her in the hall on Monday, and yesterday morning I entered into the staff room to be told the sad news that she had passed away due to complications at childbirth. Most of the older female teachers were red-eyed and some were openly sobbing, while I felt completely out of place, I was saddened, as anyone naturally would at a tragedy, but I had not been working there long enough for her to mean anything to me, on a personal level, it was akin to me reading about a plane crash in the papers. I couldn't empathise with the distraught person in the next cubicle. And it felt callous. So I fled to the library and locked myself up in the backroom.  

My name is Eva, which means "Life" according to the book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the black room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory. My father, an Indian with yellow eyes, came from the place where the hundred rivers meet; he smelled of lush growing things and he never looked directly at the sky, because he had grown up beneath a canopy of trees, and light seemed indecent to him. Consuelo, my mother, spent her childhood in an enchanted region where for centuries adventurers have searched for the city of pure gold the conquistadors saw when they peered into the abyss of their own ambitions. She was marked forever by that landscape, and in some way she managed to pass that sign on to me.

So begins Isabel Allende's Eva Luna, as I take a break from marking in the dry air of the staff room. Through magical tales from authors like Allende, Marquez, and Coelho, I have developed a fascination for South America, a continent usually forgotten.

Recently I overheard a mother and daughter in their last moments together at the airport. Standing near the security gate, they hugged and the mother said, "I love you and I wish you enough". The daughter replied, "Mom, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Mom". They kissed and the daughter left. The mother walked over to the window where I was seated. Standing there I could see she wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on her privacy but she welcomed me in by asking, "Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?".

Yes, I have," I replied. "Forgive me for asking,but why is this a forever good-bye?".
"I am old and she lives so far away. I have challenges ahead and the reality is - the next trip back will be for my funeral," she said.

"When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, 'I wish you enough'. May I ask what that means?"

She began to smile. "That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone". She paused a moment and looked up as if trying to remember it in detail and she smiled even more. "When we said , 'I wish you enough', we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them". Then turning toward me, she shared the following as if she were reciting it from memory.

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.
I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.

She then began to cry and walked away.
They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to
appreciate them, a day to love them but then an entire life to forget
them.

To all my friends and loved ones,I wish you enough.

The Colbar has become my new favorite lunch place. Over the weekend, I was there on Saturday with Winnie the Terrible and then this afternoon with Lulu and Gwen. It's just so charming with its retro rustic 'kampung' feel.

It's just that everywhere I go, all the places I have been to with her, they just remind me; but not the Colbar, I was never there with her, and I guess that's one of the reasons for its attraction.

When you have read all the books a writer has written(enjoying all of them), you can pretty much say the bloke's your favorite author. Between all the marking and invigilation, I managed to finish "About A Boy" by Nick Hornby and it was an immensely enjoyable read, witty and real, a keen observation of the human condition. As Hornby points out, age has nothing to do with an arbitrary date, some of us just never grow up until presented with the occasion to.

I am so afraid I will fall into the mould and turn into the typical, prim and proper, follow- the- rules, nice and boring teacher. 

Boomerang

Coming up in the lift after supper with Dongting at Yong He, I lapsed into reminiscing. I thought about the time we had dim sum by the road at Geylang. We were truly happy then; I remembered the way she looked at me then, the same way she looked at him that night I saw them at the void deck, when I knew I had lost her.  Like I was telling Cali the other day, it's like a boomerang. There really is little point looking back, for all the happy images replayed in your mind, during those brief moments in which you are seemingly transported back into time; then it all comes spinning back, reality and what has come to pass, it comes back and it hits you.  Like a boomerang.  

Out of my window, the sun is setting, the sky behind the skeletal cranes painted a flush of pink, which lingers ever so briefly before the darkness sweeps in.  So ends the two day Teacher Preparatory Programme, conducted by the excellent Mr Harold Mathieu, who turned what was potentially a dry and draggy affair into an enjoyable and enriching one. 

It's back to school again tomorrow, this time in a new capacity, as a Teacher. There are so many things I need to learn in order to be a good teacher, and from the 2 days , here are three tenets I will try to keep in mind as i start out.

1. Always be mindful about the need to avoid hurting the self-esteem or self-worth of the student.

2.In a classroom, learning must take place.

3.Teach Less, Learn More. 

7:15 am , my reporting time tomorrow, no more late nights.

Friday night at Timbre, my last night as a bum.  I start working again; teaching, on Monday. There was a blackout and then fireworks, meaningful conversations, funny conversations, emo conversations, catching up, and then lame jokes by Winnie. I took Abel's new Vespa on a spin; We celebrated 2 fake birthdays to get our request played. Calista didn't find the screws in her drink; We were a little too far away from the band, but I think most of us had fun. 

It felt like an indie movie - the gentle whisper of the waves reaching the shore; the blinking red lights from the lighthouse on the rocks, silently "beep beep", unsleeping brights lights from the line of buildings in the distance across the water, Sengkang, Punggol, Yishun, Yishun ; the whirl of the fishing line cast out to sea; lightning flashes randomly illuminating the sky; Winnie, arms outstretched, attempting to balance herself between two planks of the boardwalk, looking like a drunk ballarina and yet at the same time there was a certain sense of fragile grace to her movements, exuding sadness, , reminding me of my own.  

My Escape from Emo-Land

I start work next Monday, she flies off to Japan for a year on the 27th. Today was probably the last adventure Weird Wayne and Silly Susan are going to have for a long while.

I know it's a little clichéd, but I love this MV! The lyrics are written by Ah Shin, Monster stars in it, there's a bike, a retro volkswagen van, ice cream by the sea, it's a tragic love story, what's not to like? Alot of films are a reflection of reality albeit romanticised versions, and I am sure you will be able to find alot of real life stories in a similar vein to this, the MV does a good job depicting the growing up process, the moment reality bites, and I can't help but wonder what is so wrong about running a small business selling ice cream? Why do the number of zeros in your bank account determine whether or not you are a good-for-nothing? Why does the guy riding the bike always get knocked down? These are just rhetoric expressions btw. I know exactly why money is so important, in a society like ours; the MV only presents the happy side of things, just that sometimes I just wish it wasn't so.

Mayonaise is probably the most beautiful Smashing Pumpkins song ever, that is how I have been coping this last idle week, filling up my time reading and listening to music. If all their songs were as good as this, I'd be over her, by the end of the CD. Here, take a listen for yourself.

                                                                    Disenchanted.

So we left our mark on the tiles at the lobby of the old hotel which will soon be gone, to make way for multi-million dollar developments and as I dropped her off at Fort Canning, it seemed the sunshine had only been temporary as I rode into the drenching rain at Kallang, premonition of what was to come, back home to the bad news. Even if it was expected, it's just way too fast and it struck me like a bullet, not fatally through the heart because I have had time to brace myself but through the shoulder because I could not duck out of the way in time. 

It's just way too fast and I wonder whether perhaps my cousin  Xinlei is right, She is an in-and-out girl. And through the spectrum of emotions, I just can't shrug it off that I threw it all away. It's just too fast, but I can only blame myself. 

"So you said Good Night, but you meant Goodbye"

Went to Comex today with Dongting and there were ust so many attractive offers! Like the 37 " Samsung LCD TV for $1399 or $50 a month(that would make me invite everyone over to my place for soccer on saturdays) or Nelly's SLR, the Canon Eos 350D going at just $999, damn I wished I had started work a month ago. 3 mths of unemployment plus that ill-fated holiday down under has just drained my finances. Well at least I stuffed myself with 3 donuts from Donut Factory. I came home and used the scanner my brother had bought from the last Comex, for the first time, creating digital copies of my childhood photos. 

The National Stadium, my favorite place, oh I miss those magical Malaysia Cup nights.

December birthday parties, how everyone has grown.

.

Playing catching during recess on the rocky little field behind the canteen, little buddies all of us, and finally my favorite photo in the album, Simian, I bet it will bring a smile to your face,

Me and Kozmus, the Painless Man.

I wish I could stop thinking of where she and him must be, on this Friday night.