songs, places, books and people.

I've spent the whole night listening to worship songs and every song belongs to a period, depending on when I listened to a particular song the most.

The same goes for places and books, they all belong to periods. And I know I should read less of Murakami or feed myself healthy dosages of it else I might start feeling blue.

When I was fifteen, I read The Bell Jar and I was depressed for days. The image of how she slithed her wrist with a razor over the bath tub and likened the blood to a long river with tributaries comes whenever I think of that book. It is as though it makes perfect sense that geography and suicide came hand in hand.

Between eight to ten, I loved Enid Blyton. I always wanted a tree house I could climb into with my picnic basket, or sucking toffees and skipping to the forest.

I wonder what I'd make of this Murakami phase a few years down the road.

I guess reading is, in many ways, a form of waiting. Waiting to find that someone else feels the same way as you do in fiction, and waiting to find that you feel the same way as the writer in reality.

Do people belong to periods too?

Beauty and Delusion

Grand Shanghai’s ambience is awesome—the red couches, dimmed spotlights, green lamps, retro cheongsam women paintings, and most of all, a live band accompanying jazz songs. I rarely recommend eateries but this place is such a must-go, it ought to be top on the list of HungryGoWhere. I was a little surprised that such a place exists in our little modernized island and it definitely ranks high on my list of Chinese restaurants to visit.

In line with beautiful places and things, watching a kite fly is gorgeous (for the lack of a wider vocabulary). There is something alluring about watching it shrink into the blueness of the sky as the wind takes control, and agency takes a backseat. And the only thing that snaps one out of daydreaming is the occasional tugs on the string as a fresh brew of wind stirs.

Switching perspectives, trees, hills, houses, brown mud, buildings, mountains, grass patches, blue sea. That’s how the world looks like from an airplane. The vehicles and the people become black dots that disappear as the plane soars higher. Michael Jackson died. A friend broke up with her boyfriend. Just as how the world spins and we don’t feel it, the magnitude of these problems fade from up above.

Someone said this over the weekend, but I can't remember who now. "Life itself is a delusion".....It's been floating in my mind ever since.

My favourite MJ songs are Heal the World and Ben.

trains and trees

I journeyed to a foreign part of Singapore, saw the crowd on the other part of the island, took the Circle Line home for the first time today. I love all the times I spend travelling on the train, it is always such precious alone time. All the way home, I felt jittery. But I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t at ease and I scrolled through my messages wondering if it is because Sarah is going to be gone soon and that would mean dealing without a pillar in my life for half a year. I feel a certain sense of loss but I can’t quite place my finger on it. Sarah’s only gone in a month’s time and it’s too early to be feeling this way. Walking home with night-scent wind on my face, I realized circumstances and situations have made me a little steadier even when leaves and branches shake.

Found & Lost

My room feels new because the bulb from the old table lamp blew and now everything looks different in white light instead of the previous orange light.

In other news, I’ve gotten myself excited coming up with a list of haute places to visit:

i) SAM- TransportAsian exhibit
ii) Polymath and Crust- To purchase Wena Poon’s “Lion in Winter” and Suchen Christine Lim’s “The Lies that build a Marriage” or just to soak in the atmosphere.
iii) Sinema Old School- White Days
iv) Tom’s Palette/ Island Creamery/ Dempsey’s Ben & Jerry’s- Ice Cream is the world's best creation!
v) Heirloom and Caramel
vi) Mac Café opposite Parkway Parade on a week night
vii) Pacific Coffee at Vivo City
viii) Chinatown- The whole Club Street, Ann Siang Hill area is quite a treasure I recently discovered.
ix) The tree houses in VJ and running to Bedok Jetty
x) Mr Teh Tarik at Far East Square
(to be continued…)
Drawing up this list made me realize how places are so intricately linked to people. Every place belongs to someone who was there with you and who made enough impact to be the first person you think of when that place comes to mind.







I love this quote I found on Wena Poon’s site:

“So, to all of you, writers and dreamers out there, whether published or unpublished, whether employed or not: remember Kafka was an insurance salesman. The odds may be stacked against you and you may have to run away from your gift in order to survive. Your friends, parents, society may define success as having a career as a lawyer, a banker, an engineer, a doctor. But take heart. Because in the end, you don’t choose Art. Art chooses you. And Instinct always wins, in the end.”

First gleam of dawn

Coming home from a powerful service feels like being the birthday host staring at presents and leftover party food after the last Goodbye. The first wave that hits is the awareness of being alone and the next wave is the realization of the need to bring evocated emotions and feelings into decisions and actions or else the impact lasts only for two hours.

To Mk’s question on “how long are you going to appear offline?” on late Thursday night, I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t ask if she was referring to real life or virtual life but I said I don’t know. When one is vulnerable, one is afraid of “yes”, “no”s and definite replies. I still show up where I have to. I’m at work early every morning. I go for my weekly visitations talking to the children as if my skies are always blue. I attend my writing workshops and make the usual obligatory small talk. On Wednesday, we had a dialogue session with the Permanent Secretary and I looked bright and fresh in my starched collared shirt. I am good at playing the roles I have to play, I keep showing up everywhere. It may not be a spring, but it isn’t a limp either, I just keep walking.

But my walk isn’t progressive. I am not walking nearer any destination, I am simply walking and then retreating and regretting. I am hesitant to meet people, I am tired of being brave and more comfortable being left alone. When I’m alone, I think about reversing time, undoing things that have been done, retracting emotions and energy that has been invested, editing the wrongs to rights. This is my winter: cold, gloomy, not conducive for growth a time of testing.

And Pastor Tan said, “With every winter comes spring.” That was a comforting knowledge that I already knew and I waited for what he was going to say next. I looked at him on stage, eyes of deep concentration and a sincerity to translate every thought into the most precise words. He paused and said, “God doesn’t waste any experience.”

God draws us close to Him, and cleanses us.

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater”

Isaiah 55:10

If I could take home just a single sentence last night, that’d be the one I'd be bringing back.