The next big thing in the brit indie scene, supposedly the next arctic monkeys. well, I like this one, and I trust u wont find it a strain on your ears.

Here is where I live.

I finally caught The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last night at Vivo with Audrey. It was a nice break after a tiring week of maths revision. We had settled for first row seats, because I didn't have Visa required for internet bookings with GV, but for this movie, shot through the eyes of John Dominique Bauby, the French editor of Elle struck down in the prime of his life, by 'Locked-in' Syndrome, it worked, the craning of our necks upwards, adding to the disorienting perspective.

Bauby is completely paralyzed, able only to move his left eye and blink, otherwise very rational and full of imagination, By blinking his eye, one blink for Yes, two blinks for No, he is able to communicate, forming words, letter by letter, through a painstaking process whereby the letters of the alphabet are read out slowly and he signals his choice by blinking. Blink by blink, word by word, through the summer, he fills the book on which the movie is based. This movie will make you appreciate what we normally take for granted. It will uplift you with the resilience of the human spirit, and the power of imagination. It will probably also move you to tears.

My favourite photo this week.

A little something from Ah Shin, keeps me from forgetting my chinese. Good Morning, the air is so fresh.

年假結束了。
大家一陣互道新年快樂之後，
我們也兩腳一跨，
踩進了新年的日子裡。

有幾個人真的能記得，
每年這段日子裡，那些充滿希望的閃亮的許諾？

有些人，
總是言必稱「昨天」，
話必說「當年」。
總是過去的日子最美好，流逝的時光忘不掉。

有些人，
只想要抓緊進行中的每一天，
在看似平凡而無味的生活中，
創造自己的經典。

人生只有一次，
很公平的，不管你是誰，在世界的哪一個角落活著。
每個人都只有一次的機會，
在生命的單行道上，
創造自己的美好。

昨天很好，
但是我只想抓住這一刻，讓它更美好。
昨天今天明天，
都要一直一直很好。

在我閉上眼睛的那一天，
我希望我可以很滿足的說，
這是我用生命中的每個日子創作出來的最好成就：
「我的一生」。

也許你說，有很多事情，
不是渺小的自己可以控制與掌握的。
但是至少，我可以決定，
怎麼看待自己的今天。

你，
是怎麼看你自己的呢？

新年，一定要快樂噢！

Ok, I think I went a little crazy over the weekend. Running into technical limitations for the first time with my D40X trying to follow a Kingfisher's dash across the river, I plonked down 1k for a new D200 body. The interface is so much more complicated than what I have been used to. To justify my purchase I rang up Liangting and KenC last night and told them I'd be very happy to photograph their weddings.



I feel as poor as field mouse now.

I finally shook myself out of Saturday stasis, heading first to Burong's open house for the customary spot of CNY gambling and then down to St Wilfred's for 90 minutes of soccer. Like I told Estelle earlier, I overslept and missed out on the insect survey at Sungei Buloh. And then it seemed like the inertia could not be overcome, with the hours slipping away as I alternated between the computer, my bed, my grammar book, and the kitchen.

As my tired aching legs carried me away from the Sports Complex, the breeze against my face made me feel alive, and I wondered why I wasted so much time during the day trapped in that meaningless cycle. The blue of the evening sky, the patterned facade of the shop houses along the way, everything seemed so beautiful, and I was wishing I had brought a camera along.

Photography has opened me up to a whole new way of seeing the world. Too often, we rush through life, through everydays filled with routine, our viewpoints are narrowed, we cease to me amazed. It is part of the photographer's job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveller who enters a strange new country.

'To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.'
Henri Cartier-Bresson

I have recently rediscovered bowling. Didn't manage to break the 100 point barrier although 88 points is an auspicious number. Grammar test on Monday so I'd better get back to 'A Visual Grammar of English'. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I will be watching A Diving Bell and A Butterfly next week, if you know what I mean ; )

'a drop is proof there's an ocean somewhere as you hold the drop in your hand, wondering how you can fish yourself small enough to fit in that world, the ocean taps you on the shoulder and you realize you've somehow evolved.'


Ordinary people making extraordinary music - Margot & the Nuclear So & Sos.

If you like what you hear, do buy their album, the Dust of Retreat.

Reluctantly we move into the last day of the Chinese New Year holidays- doors slamming, wind howling, 'huff puff I will blow your house down' Sunday. Over Margot & the Nuclear So & Sos (Thanks Mary - I dig them! ) I make a vain attempt to finish up all the leftover CNY goodies for breakfast. Assignments are piling up, time to pull up my socks, February is here. My handphone sounds and it's Davidof reminding me that my library books are due today. Senor Vivo and The Coca Lord, I didn't think it was as good as the first book in De Berniere's south american trilogy, The War of Don Emmanuel Nether Parts but a delightful read nonetheless.

Lazaro passed in his canoe through a shanty town where the destitute migrant workers , the dispossessed , the greedy optimists were mining for gold. In this tropical inferno, there were no trees.

Lazaro missed the trees. He walked with his hideousness in a landscape made hideous by excavation and denudation. In the great pits men were working like termites, carrying their pails of mud up the sliding, glistening faces of these arbitrary holes in the earth. They were burrowing amid the heaps of spoil, slaving by the river, poisoning both it and themselves with the mercury of the separation process.

Downstream, the indians were dying from eating fish poisoned with the metal, and the fish themselves were dying of it also. The once black waters were turning light brown, and the rains were washing the deforested banks into the riverbed. Nowadays the cablocos further downstream found that when the floods receded they were left not with virgin forest floor but with an ocean of sucking clay that set hard and then cracked.

In the town at night the skeletal and rachitic workforce took their recreation amongst the corrugated iron and the middens. Indian girls with drooping breasts and malnourished stomachs , with dead eyes and the assurance of an early grave, gave away their favours to drunks in return for home-made rum and a few centavos. As they died of syphilis and influenza, their babies abandoned by the river to what wild animals were left, and new girls arrived who had been rounded up by armed canoes or bribed with promises of beads and powerful husbands wearing cloaks made out of pelts of pure black jaguars. After many rapes and beatings the girls would learn that they could suffer the present and forget the past with a bottle to their lips and a man with glassy eyes and a tubercular cough heaving between their thighs.

On the 2nd day of the Lunar New Year, on our way out for visiting, here's what we found strewn on the grass patch beside the car.


A sign for this saturday maybe?

Gong Xi Fa Cai to all my friends!
I finally met up with Audrey for Pacific Coffee at the Red Dot Museum yesterday. I really enjoyed talking to her :)

Today we talk about tenses. I am sure most people are familiar with the humble Present and Past tenses. Things get a little more complicated when you get into present continuous and past continuous tenses. Present continuous tenses are used for actions happening now and continuing, for example 'I am blogging about something really dry right now', maybe after you have read this you will think, if thats present continuous, how is it different from simple present tense? Simple present tense is used for repeated events, timeless truths, and the instantaneous present which does not continue, e.g I blog. Or Singapore is small. Beckham kisses Posh Spice. Beckham is kissing Posh, that would be present continuous.

Past Tense, pretty much in a similar vein. I blogged yesterday - simple past tense. I was blogging last night - simple continuous. The perfect tenses - present perfect or present past, now thats where most people start scratching their heads. I have absolutely no idea why they are called 'perfect' tense but basically you can tell its perfect tense when there are -ed participle forms or when 'been' is in the sentence. Past perfect - She had queued outside the stall for 3 hours. Present perfect - He has been told to dye his hair black.

Therefore, Past perfect continuous - It was already afternoon and he had been asleep for the last 12 hours. Present perfect continuous - I have been studying for the last 12 years of my life. Present perfect continuous tense is used to describe an action in the past that continues into the present or is just finishing.

Yawn. My eyes are closing now, but I know if I move on to something else, say DOTA, I will immediately perk up.

I really like this photo from the reunion dinner btw.

I hate Grammar.

Do you want to know about Verbs? There are predominantly 3 types of Verbs. Full verbs, Primary verbs and Modal Auxiliary verbs. Full verbs are defined as verbs with a clear state-able meaning, like run, sleep, fear, feel, suppose, own, kick, love. What about the other 2 less-full types of verbs? Primary verbs are split into 3 subgroups - 'Verbs to be' comprising of be, been, being, is, was, were, am, are. 'Verbs to do', do, did, done,doing, does; 'Verbs to have', have, has, had, having.
Modal Auxiliary Verbs are used to achieve a moderating force and reflect our attitude to what we are saying, for example to express permission, obligation, possibility, necessity, prediction, etc. The 9 modal auxiliaries are 'will, would, shall, should, can, could, must, may, might' For example. You can take the train to the airport reflects possibilty, I must finish the assignment today reflects obligation. Shall we visit her parents? reflects tentativeness/politeness.

I am so sick of it now, are you? It was such a pain typing it all out.

I am swamped with assignments!!! Help! Someone relieve me of my powers of procrastination.

The Concert of Raindrops.

A Life Without Music, Is Life Marred A Shade Of Grey.

I lost all the music on my hard disk, 5 gigs of mp3s! I was feeling so distressed and frustrated yesterday(so frustrated I cut my hand and the blood flowed gloriously) when my hard disk died. Everything else I had backups for, photos, word documents, programs, but not my music. Luckily, I still have my ipod and my CD collection, which saved me from the depression a total loss of music would surely bring. So all you kind souls out there, whom I have shared my music with, a plea to all of you please help me restore my collection!

As I get older and my CD collection expands, I have gotten into the habit of reading what has been written inside the accompanying cover leaflet, and most of the time what is written is very interesting. This, to me adds to the enjoyment of the CD, not just for the songs alone, but the whole experience, from the peeling off of the clear wrapper, to opening the jewel case for the first time and admiring the design on the disc, the photography on the leaflet.

In the OST of My Blueberry Nights, Wong Kar Wai has left an insightful short note :

MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, my first English-language film, is the story of a young woman taking the long way to cross the street to true love. In order to understand how she might travel from one ocean to another, I took that long journey myself, not once but three times - three different routes from New York to Santa Monica. Each trip lasted 10 days. Together with my DP, location manager, and line producer, we drove at least fifteen hours a day. The experience was intense but memorable. Sometimes I wondered if MBN was only my excuse to take the road trip of a lifetime.
Mile after mile, the view outside my window and the music from the car stereo synched in unexpected ways to give me my first glimpse into the landscape of Elizabeth's heart.
These trips not only shaped the story of MBN, but the soundtrack as well.