we cannot change the cards we are dealt,
just how we play the hand.
Monday, January 30, 2006
10:22 PM
Lunar
the thing about lunar new years, we get to sit down prim and proper around a round wooden table of a certain eve and look each other long and hard across dishes upon dishes of the most grandmotherish delicious food. happens once in a very blue moon, and more so these days when one relative of mine creeps off to new zealand, another brisking away to the states, a forgotten soul whisking itself in taiwan, its a relief such festive seasons exist to facilitate the fusion of families in troubled times.
but of course, each lunar new year is a tad different from the previous. these lunar new years, three boys scuttle around my knees and drumsticks skid across the round wooden table and fishballs bounce beneath. i wonder if i had been like these cousins once upon a time, but come think! it had been a mere yesteryear that these cute cousins of mine were tucked in my arms but they now walk the same stairways of the same nanyang primary school of mine and gifted stream too oh my. time does fly and it gives me the little shudder to know that in no time they would sprout a height of mine and have twenty year dicks between their legs, and a far deeper shudder to realise that in that exact prime moment i would have perhaps gone bankrupt on my fifth business venture amidst my early 30s.
this lunar new year, i visited a family friend of mine. by friend of course i managed to summarise an inextricably web of relationships that is so often found on my paternal's. she is the youngest of 3 sisters of a great family friend and neighbour, whose eldest is bestowed godmotherhood of my dad's eldest brother, and this same woman carried my dad upon his birth a great half century back. a grand 95 she is, and she stayed humbly in a little one-room in outram, pictures plastered everywhere. pictures of my late paternal grandmother in a dinner and dance of goodness knows when, pictures of my dad with sunglasses half his face, pictures of my dad's sole sister her hair half a metre into the air.
admittedly i was a tag-along, a meagre beansprout in the presence of a wealth of history memory and experience, and all i keep hearing a good woman she is, so says he and she, and i wonder what my children and grandchildren would speak of me come 95.
it ain't that far, really. you hear a woman of 95 speak of the 1950s like a shadow glimpse of yesterday and you know, it really ain't that far.
95 year old. 95 day old. we're just a flicker in the time line of creation ain't we all. time indeed is a constant, yet ever so paradoxically, the constant's never constant.
the voices in my head-
Sunday, January 22, 2006
11:32 AM
On 21st
today i went to a dear friend's birthday party, a little shortfark whom i've known since he was a minishortfark back in the ages of tight khaki pants in the january of `98. still the same, his bushy sideburns hugging his otherwise perfectly round face, and that familiar swagger despite his much lowered centre of gravity.
happy birthday kevin short lee fark.
the third. its been three 21st birthdays and its only been 22 days into the new year. goodness, everyone's turning into old eggs and boobs are sagging and balls are drooping.
i have no idea whether to smile or frown this coming june.
the voices in my head-
Friday, January 20, 2006
11:58 PM
Flogging a Long-dead Cow
i realise with a little jolt how horribly demanding i am.
you know not, but girl. i admire you from the depths of my heart.
the voices in my head-
Thursday, January 12, 2006
11:56 PM
Ends
it was 4am in the morning, and i was hidden within a little vehicle with cute radios beeping away and two three-storey antenna masts erect from its rear. a little flickering of the flame across the road with my garang sergeant heating up his combat ration, and a browngreen toad grunting in the distant savouring what heat there garnered. time was passing so slowly i could have counted the raindrops that were pelting upon the musky canopy over my head and even the happy thoughts of this and that had run through my mind forth and back and forth ever more.
and all the while i was wondering, what the fuck am i doing in the middle of a jungle.
patience, only 4 more months my man.
the voices in my head-
Saturday, January 07, 2006
11:03 PM
Jobs
lawyers earn 500 bucks an hour while doctors earn 50 bucks an MC. well of course an MC takes 5 minutes to diagnose and 5 minutes to dispense, so that makes 300 bucks an hour. yet i scratch my head and wonder still why more people prefer facing blood and needles to white wigs and wooden hammers.
because everyone loves a doctor damnit. either you get medicine for a blazing fever, or you get a day off for a little less liquidity.
we all want to be loved as we work don't we.
i witnessed a little accident off bukit timah in (yet another) rainy day of january. it was a motorcyclist, skidded off the filter lane, and there was quite a commendable umbrellaless crowd around him, fussing over him and one even whipping out his quite sleek phone amidst pelting rain to phone an ambulance.
aha, and i spy that red squared macdonalds piggybag lying by the side. everyone loves a deliveryboy.
and that is when i wonder if any crowd, umbrellaless or not, would even bother to glance at a certain fatimah who melts out summon coupons if she were to skid on a little rainy morn.
the voices in my head-
Sunday, January 01, 2006
11:27 PM
2005
what a year. like that sensitive old fark i am, i could have gone on and on about the january of alpha wing, the feburary of musty jungles and the land of oil, the march of captains and signals, the april of a little competition, the may of a 72km long march amidst the misty mountains of taiwan, the june of twenties, the july of a sword long awaited, the august of a fresh chocolate bar, the september of a license and a convertible, the october of tuition and insurance, the november of swees and a potent basketball team, the december of it all.
but no, its 2006 and twenty one's hitting me and i shall peer to the future, not dwell in the past. its going to be an exciting year ahead, i can feel it. quoting chermain, a new year's a new beginning all over again. it's time to re-evaluate what matters and what doesn't. always a time of renewed faith. words from 10000 miles away, tucked between a roundy fluffy of snow and a quarter pound of a coin, your words make no sense yet at the same time all the sense in the world.
2005. 2006. times change. things change. people change. but there are, always, the little things that remain still in the test of time. of which i hold dear most, a tall fellowship of tall ones, a sexy camaraderie of 69, a little love of a little one.
2006 turns us old, aged, like a wrinkled prune. and big things are going to happen, big decisions are going to be made, but change not my friends, my dear.
as i said last year, and as i shall say to myself every year to come, these days i've appreciated my hidden tendency to compare every celebration calamity coincidence conjuncture ceremony to a similar circumstance a year back. and i do realise that things are changing with each passing minute as our balls drop and boobs droop, and for better change it heads. there is this consensual understanding in nature, that life is wasted on the living, but i'm not going to sit and muddle in the web of complexity. rather, i am going to unweave the mix up of lyrics in my days, and await a beautiful melody.
bring it on 06.
the voices in my head-
i love my girl. a love so beautiful, symmetrical, tangible
God loves me. a love so great, unconditional, real.
my life in a nutshell. working towards loves of sorts. beautiful, symmetrical, tangible, great, unconditional and real.
a page, deliberately left blank.
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
I Corinthians 13:4-8
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