Tuesday, January 31, 2006

who says Singapore beaches are ugly?

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so while the majority of the singaporean population triapsed around the island trading (at times) mouldy citrus fruits and collectively bemoaning the torturous activity that is visiting relatives you hardly know AND don't quite wish to know, I spent the monday "camping" at east coast.

I've said this to people many times, but only because it's true: on holidays where malays are generally excluded (i.e. christmas and CNY), the beach becomes this happy refugee camp! half the malay population comes to congregate along the shoreline with their respective families and if people say that the kampong days are gone - well, they're mistaken. all that's missing is a couple of running chickens and the fact that instead of attap houses, you have nylon tents that sprout suddenly like garish mushrooms. it's our malay blood answering the call of our orang laut roots!

anyhow, it was quite nice i suppose despite having to constantly worry about rain since the sky was dangerously grey and dim. food was good - think i undercooked prawns though, had a stomachache the next morning.

but yes, back to beach scenery!

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what might the retreating wave reveal?

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a washed-up cottony bra, of course!

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or a rubber sandal.

but seriously though, as gross as the bra is, the beach does have some merits depending what kind of perspective you decide to take. sure, it's not brilliantly pretty, but what it lacks in sparkling marine wildlife, it makes up for..interesting litter. i say this with no sarcasm.

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a massive entanglement of junk.
from the perspective of an art student, it's brilliant texture - wish i had got a sharper shot, but was pre-occupied with not getting camera wet, so!

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I get annoyed by people sometimes who say with vehemence that Singapore is ugly. evidently, i disagree - there's a lot of beauty around here, you just need to be more open to the other definitions that it can take. not everything has to be sprawling pastoral lands or neo-classical architecture (hah i don't even know what neo-classical means!); our old and slightly mouldy hdb estates are beautiful in their own dank way, just like how the vines growing over construction boardings are beautiful as well.

like how there are actually TREES (ok, saplings) growing in the underground drains of matthew's hdb estate and that they peep through the metal gratings, or that the dandelions and small weeds growing by janice's estate cheer me up a lot more than the trimmed lawns of her neighbours. today while waiting for her, i was plucking the dandelions to uh, blow when i noticed a yellow stain on my fingers. turned out to be (i think) aphids! so queer - but they were brilliantly yellow with black spots.

there is beauty.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

because we're camwhores.

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really funny sticker. see this is what good street art/vandalism should be about!


It seemed that today was destined to be Hazri's Funny Face Day!

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Guest starring our favourite kiwi(half)import - matthew crawshaw!

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who can be perfectly normal, i swear.

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quite an suggestive picture, if not for the camera in his hands. (darn!)

and because i really am quite inept when placed in front of the camera - when lacking in subtlety, blind them with dramatics!
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would have gone all the way to the top if i knew i was already half way up - another time then!

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not that you didn't know already, but just in case you need reminding...

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it was quite funny, how skate-punk-mat went up to slightly gawky/geeky tourist and started an earnest conversation. hullo mat-skater who finally managed an ollie that night!

contrary to popular belief, our primary intention was not to camwhore (gasp!), but to see my cousin Dhaniah's band, My Writes, open for Mocca's gig at the Arts House.

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Dhaniah and guitarist, uh, sean/shawn?

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and the other guitarist, Zul!

#As seen in matthew's lj, but with some fiddling:
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"It's a rock."
"I know."

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LOVE THIS PHOTO MATTHEW CRAWSHAW. like, best ever, you with shaky hands.

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*hugs hazri for taking such a nice photo of me*




What a lovely weekend.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

i think i should mention that a few days ago, somebody returned My Lost Library Book.













singaporeans are lovely people!


i think it's odd and even silly of us people to be constantly oscillating from feeling fine, then being hit with an onslaught of loneliness. the crazy thing is that people feel this way, even when they circulate among enough social spheres to make up the solar system. you would think that we would have figured out by now that humans are inevitably quite alone as individuals and be okay with that - but of course the biggest joke in the universe is that we were made social creatures.

on another random note, unconditional love may be the highest form of love simply because it's the most difficult. not to obtain, since that is oddly, relatively quite accessible - but that unconditional love will stand, enduring all the resentment, anger and guilt that now and then surfaces, things that co-exist with love. it is crazy how we associate pain with greatness.

i think we're nuts.

and sometimes, sometimes, i found myself saying this on new year's eve to myself, i just want to be happy. not that i find currently find myself in torrid anguish and DESPAIR (haha, inside joke!), but i would like to be happy, in the simplest way. and maybe, because this would be nice for once, not have to think of other's happiness first. i am quite tired, rather.

Friday, January 06, 2006

i feel awful.

i've been reading this brilliant book called The Buddha-tree by Fumio Niwa and the author's observations and portrayal of human weakness, hypocrisy and religion is so deftly handled and if i do manage to get that lit S paper, this book would definitely be a book i'd critique.

except that i've lost it.

and it's a library book.

IT'S SO HORRID, I WAS (rather) UPSET THE WHOLE DAY. first of all, because it's a library book and it's going to cost so much to pay for it, and i will be paying for it cos i borrowed it on my brother's card. secondly, i haven't finished reading it! now i feel so incomplete and well, dangling. usually i wouldn't be so affected, save for the monetary aspect, but augh i want to know how it ends! the characters are formed so poignantly, i really love the japanese sense of aesthetics where everything is handled in a stoic manner, so quiet and dignified which only makes it more beautiful.

so much heart pain! just thinking about the book being on the dirty bus floor AUGH. i've never felt so heavy-hearted over a lost book before.

i've been lugging it around with me for some time and likewise, this morning on the way to school. on the bus, i fell asleep and suddenly! the uncle sitting beside me is furiously tapping my shoulder because woah i've reached school and all other felloe cjc students were filing out of the bus. very flustered and harried, i sprung up saying thankyouthankyouexcusemeexcuseme and got off the bus.

forgetting that the book was in my lap.

and no, i've already called SMRT - almost immediately - and they said the bus driver didn't find anything, nor had anyone returned it to the interchange counter. this, despite the fact that i had valuable information like knowing that i got off the bus at exactly 07:25. i suppose someone could have found it, the nice uncle maybe, and is on the way to returning it to a library near you? i hope so. do you think? so much heartache.

the worse thing is that the reason why i was so sleepy was because i was watching (finally!) The Talented Mr. Ripley the night before and i suppose this is very overdue but oh my, that movie is brilliant and painful and oh oh. so now, by an unfortunate habit, i'm going to always associate the movie with this loss.

<3-ache!

it's odd how a relatively trivial thing like losing a book can have this much emotional impact. is it trivial though?

Thursday, January 05, 2006

you people don't tag anymore.

usually, this would make me quite sad but not this time round - and it's not because i've suddenly gained immense self-confidence and no longer need the assurance that: you like me, you really like me! the truth is simple.

FRANZ FERDINAND, HERE I COME!

also, it has dawned on me that i am quite mad, jumping into doing so many things at the same time when there's only one of me and 24 hours in a day. the problem is of course, i love it! it's crazy and insane but dear god help me, i feel most alive when i'm running around with a packed schedule and buzzing from all that multi-tasking. it's such a thrill, and is quite exciting.

even though in all that buzz, sometimes i feel like dying and i wonder: i am a giant macedamia. A HUGE NUT. and i start thinking like my mom, along the lines of shrill are you crazy?! you're going to burn out and come home exhausted everyday and just completely crash. which is completely true. then sometimes i think the voice in my head that is actually my mother is quite right as well, and i am tempted to take it easy, be like a normal person with some slack CCA and just stroll through school life without jumping at every door that opens and enthusiastically nodding YES I'LL DO IT, even though at the back of my mind, that very voice that is my mother is frantically gesticulating for me to say No.

my mother compares me to small cc engine. to continue that metaphor, she thinks i'm behaving like say, a Benz when i am in fact, a rusty old Toyota Starlet. Which by the way, in the very like event that i will not be able to afford a 1957 Volkswagon Beetle, will be my car of choice. it's a very boxy little car, usually smelly because it's second-hand and completely lacks the glamour that its name suggests. i find this very funny. i will name my car something along the lines of a atypical 1950s starlet as well, like Scarlett Davis.

Monday, January 02, 2006

A somewhat mandatory post for the new year. I would post pictures, but am too lazy and tired, it is 04:34AM. Do cross your fingers that the late night and lack of sleep will not cause me to trail into a rambling mass of sentimentality though strangely, i feel inclined to rambling today, or tonight, how can it be morning when it's not day? i am quite tired of being forcing myself to be so restrained in what is written here.

strange, that this attempt in achieving some degree of maturity means beginning to ignore or censoring what you really want to do, say or feel. i should have known that's what growing up is all about.

This year, was an emotional buffet.

Terribly brilliant, and brilliantly terrible - what was simply awesome was that it was incredibly intense, and here i am being Ms. Superlative again but maybe that was what the past 365 days were: a superlative year.

I loved it.

The year was great because of the EBS – simply because they were completely non-school related. Originating from CAP05, which was also brilliant in its odd and tedious way with its never-ending plenaries and not-too-great workshops but who cares when out of it, we had pseudo teeniegoth poetry, and actually WON the poetry reading contest with it (which says something about the latter in itself) and then there was the delirious sleepless nights (though Hazri would have to beg to differ on this point, since all he did was sleep) and the Adventures of Super-orgy Man and clover and cranberry <3 and I don’t know, that funny sperm whale that janice draws.

Then there were of course the sleepover/movie marathons – of which I missed half of the last one RAWR. But awesome nevertheless, and yes, life-changing what with brilliant movies watched and equally brilliant (though occasionally comatose) company.

Top 3 movies:
Old Boy
28 Days Later
Requiem For A Dream

Bottom Movies:
Monty Python's Holy Grail
Donnie Darko (admittedly, a cut version that caused it to suck, janice says. We believe her.)

AND ALL THAT CAMWHORING. more, please.

oh there are so many things i want to talk about but it really would be too long to chronicle everything and the only reason why there's a substantial chunk on the EBS is because i jotted it down earlier when i was thinking about making this post, please don't hate me, people i have neglected!

so here's what i'm going to do; a whole list of names, in no particular order, my own People of 2005. I know it's not exactly the Times magazine, or even a trashy but lovable and strangely alluring tabloid but yeah. If you spot your name, well, yay you!:
charmaine matthew gennie nadya hazri vincent janice zara jennifer jeremy steffi tash myPWgroup bern aini cjdebatepeople yasmin theslutposse cjdramapeople dhaniah anisha.

oh boy, that was a briefer list than anticipated.

and yet it doesn't quite do any justice to all the things that are behind those names and why they're there. like for zara, because you're one of my closest friends in cj and i can really talk to you and wouldn't know what to do without you and hey, look! i'm writing what i meant to put it your christmas card that i never got around to making (sorry) but anyhow, it's lovely to have someone to obsess over art materials with (BATTERY-OPERATED ERASER ZOMG) without getting weird stares from other people and telling you about my paranoia and vice-versa and never feeling the fear of being judged as a complete psychopath because i know you understand and thank you for that, you are the nicest person i've ever known and i think you managed to make me nicer, somehow. love you muchly.

and gennie, even though you flew off to canada and have to yourself haagen daz in your school cafetaria while i stare with much melancholy at sad, dismal sugar donuts, i'm glad we're still friends and we've come a long way baby! it's amazing that after all these years, we can still meet up and still make sense in the same wavelenghth.

cjdebatepeople, even though none of you read this, save for the inactive nadya (haha), well, you're in that list because debating was just intense and made me want to die and i spent those dark dark times with you guys, and came out of it still liking all of you despite my nasty habit to lump unpleasant events with the people that came along with it so hurrah! glad that we were sharing the same leaky boat.

charmaine! why wouldn't you be there in that list? in all fully meant cheesiness - best friends forever. even though you never tag. tag! i think that phonecall just about redeemed all the distance and drifting we had this year, thank you.

oh this is horrid i'm falling into that overused pattern of short tributes for almost everybody - i think what we can learn from this is that if i ever win an award, it'll be a long speech i'll be giving and they'll probably take away my newly-loved plastic, gilted statuette and ruin my $15 This Fashion dress by pelting me with assorted fruit. if it helps do stock up on fruits i like: raspberries and cranberries. which brings me to the first person i converted into cranberry<3 - matthew. you wouldn't think i would actually write a whole Chronicles of 2005 without a proper mention of you, did you? So, to the person who still annoys me almost as much as he did when we weren't really friends, but somehow i put up with it (i.e. being so anal, stubborn, sometimes cranky, being perpetually busy) because we are friends now, and great ones at that and this should be a cue for some epic and dramatic soundtrack, because this year was that, wasn't it? It's an odd way to put it and i don't quite mean it in a blase way, but in addition to everything else: it's been nice talking. And i'm not only being nice because i owe you money. Damn.




So here's to 2006!