redletterday

>
(lomography[carol], letter from carol, photoshop cs)

it happened a few months back but at least i can talk to you about it now without breaking up into a million pieces inside...

twas a fucking red letter day for me... a letter from you with words i don't want to see...

"engaged..."

"marriage..."

"i'm sorry..."

"goodbye..."





Track Of The Day: SI*SE - Slip Away

ioline

(photography[skies over south china sea on the way to vietnam], photoshop cs)

-old words, new meaning-
------------------------------------------------------------------
ioline, running free,
bright yellow sun,
candied coloured skies,
i float,
i float,
into your arms,
i float,
blindfolded by these words you utter,
calmed by your heartbeat's stutter.

ioline, endless roads,
white cotton clouds,
candied coloured skies,
i float,
i float,
confused,
blinded,
breathless,
blissfully happy,
with this love you offer.
------------------------------------------------------------------
-thank you-

(words circa 2003, image composition june 2005)





Track Of The Day: Faithless - Miss You Less, See You More

i like the scars

i like the scars you left on my back when i first took you into my bed.

"it could hurt", i said and you smiled and told me you would hurt me back if it did...

i do not pretend that i remember them when you were still around. these light, raised lines across my back, for they were so much a part of me... the outline of the emotional wings of a tired and forsaken but still fighting emoboy... but now after you're gone, i reach back and touch them absent-mindedly without fail...

it's been 10 years... the distinct keloids are almost gone, the lighter colors have faded into my skin tone, my finger pads brush on almost smoothed out skin instead of those imperfect knots and valleys that i've grown so used to... almost gone... everything... just like you...

soon... i pray that your engagement and wedding day to v. comes soon... so i can bring myself to forget and learn to let you go...

but osong... i like these scars, just like you like the ones i gave you...

for all that's worth, i wish they would never go away. i wish they would never heal... so i can have you with me forever...



doi noh koh noh koginavaan




Track Of The Day: Dewa - Satu

loop and loop

(photography[office, audio studio]. photoshop cs)

sundays are the days where the silence is the loudest...





Track Of The Day: Asian Kung Fu Generation - Loop and Loop

pedobear

"ain't she a bit young? younger that the whole lot so far. gosh you're such a bloody paedo!~", dropkicksuzy grinned at me from behind the rim of beer can. i can hear her soft chuckles amplified by the half empty can.

twiddling the cigarette between my fingers, i shook my head before turning to look at dropkicksuzy in the eyes, "she's a go getter, what can i say... she caught me by the neck and took me down like a judo queen and did a arm lock on my heart..."

she laughed before saying, "ouch, that sounds brutally painful. how old is she?", a baritone female voice courtesy of speaking down a tin can boomed at me from my side.

"oh.. about ten years younger i guess?"

she nodded slowly, "hrm, off the top of my head filled with useless information, that's a pretty good match... oxen and rabbits.. congratulations! though if i remember correctly... you-know-who is a piggy right? that's your best combo y'know ", she added with a trademark dropkicksuzy squinty smile.

"yea... she's a piggy... a missing-in-action one at that", i threw her a crooked smile and she looked away. "anyways this kid and me.. we're going at this like two porcupines.. ehm.. going at it... aka carefully. so lets just sit back, enjoy the ride, take it easy and see where we go okay?", i stubbed the cigarette out on the kerb before tossing it into the gutter.

i looked up and got an eyeful of boobies right in my face, courtesy of dropkicksuzy standing up. i admired the view for a few more seconds before standing up myself.

she threw the can on the road and stomped on it before proceeding to pick it up and tossing it into the bin, "well.. take it slow and easy is the best. if you can't be lovers.. i bet you both would make heckuva good friends... though seriously, she sounds like she's worth all the trouble from all you've told me. imagine a teenager doing something that i wouldn't have the guts to do. kudos to her i guess."

"okiedokie, beer and cigarette session has come to an end", she looked at her watch and mumbled, "damn... it's THAT late? well, lets go home pedobear", she threw me a grin and a wink.

i look puzzled, "pedobear?"

"yes you.. you're now officially mr.pedobear. lets hope they don't get younger as you grow older m'kay", she laughed as I sighed and stumbled, being pulled along by her towards her car.





Track Of The Day: NERD - She Wants To Move [her pick]

and she asked: how 2b pretty?

a message from shiori popped up on my screen a while back, "how 2b pretty sethy?"

I was taken aback. shiori wouldn't strike me as the person to ask such a question, her confidence is a tad short of overwhelming. for in my mind, shiori is as pretty as a dolled up school girl in a shibuya arcade in all her pre-20 five feet two glory. with her straight long sparsely tinted hair, chunky framed tinted specs and a slight ganguro tint on her skin. she could look all the lian that she is on a bad day but rarely it is so because without fail, almost everyday has been a good day to her.

what makes a pretty girl ask how to be prettier?

"him again?", i asked her. she said no, yes then maybe. i nodded a reply to her.

and to you that broke her, do not let such a trivial thing be a make-or-break gauge to your relationship. do not let something skin deep, as cliched as it may sound, break something good. take this friendly advice. eventhough i feel like driving halfway across the state now just to punch you in the face. do not walk the same path that i am walking. do not play the ego-game, do not feint nochalance, do not pretend that you don't when in actual fact you do... because you have once told me before that she means the world to you...

because if you do play this game, you will lose, just like me...





Track Of The Day: Thievery Corp. - Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes Out

if we have never met...

she once said, if i never answered that question you asked a lifetime ago, we would never have known each other...

this internet thing. without it, i might not have even known you at all. two separate beings, thousands of miles apart, in two totally different countries. in actual fact, we would have never met and we would have continued our lives pretty much oblivious to each other's existence. and even if we did live in the same place and time, i'm pretty sure we would have gone through our lives without ever hooking up. we could have bumped into each other on the streets and not bat an eyelid. we could have lined up behind one another in a bus queue. maybe i would have seen your face pass by, framed by a window of a moving bus. our eyes could have even lingered for a few seconds too long on each other's face, checking out and maybe thinking how pretty/good looking the other person is, but that's it. we would have never walked up to each other to say hi, maybe an absent-minded smile would be exchanged between us and tomorrow, everything will be forgotten.


and she said, like two ships in the night, never meeting but always passing by. you and i. but we might meet again. in another lifetime. when all the questions have been answered, and there is nothing searching and seeking in me. when you have answered all your questions and searched and sought for them in your journeys to the moon and then back. then, maybe, perhaps, we might meet again. when there is nothing more. when the world melts away and we are but the sum of ourselves... we can take ourselves back to the start, say hi and begin all over again...


i once said, if i never said hi to you online a lifetime ago, we would never have known each other... and in reality i'm glad i did, cos' up till now, i have never regretted it one bit...





Track Of The Day: Dirty Vegas - Days Go By (acoustic version)

the circle is never fair

"i want you, regardless... of all your "missing e." moments... regardless of all your emo-depression-maniac moments when it strikes you..."

you cannot imagine how stunned i was as i sat there staring at this sentence that flashed across my screen. my fingers hovered momentarily a few inches above the keyboard, my mind racing scenarios for a reply to her confession.

then slowly i lowered my hands and a rhythmic tapping on the keyboard spelled out my reply, "would it be fair to you? to actually want someone that so stubborn, someone that refuses to budge from this limbo that he put himself into? y'know, i'd like to be with you, you know that... but i'm afraid i cannot devote one hundred percent of my whole being to you... i could give you fifty percent, maybe eighty but that's all that i can bring myself to let go from me. and that is unfortunately the truth... no matter how unfair it is..."

"when was love fair sethy? y'know, i'm not trying to be mean or anything but for all your pining for her here, have you stopped to think that she could already be with someone else? And yet you still wait and wait and wait... i'm sorry, who am i to criticise her, let's give her the benefit of the doubt shall we...", she paused for a few seconds before adding,"... for all that i know, i may not get you and if i do, there's nothing i can do to stop you from going back to her when... if... she calls for you in the future..."

and thus she splashed across the screen what that has been lodged in my mind for so long...

"i know... understand... that you gave up something solid, something that could be almost forever. something that's eight freaking years to gamble on something that's so beautifully ethereal and so wonderfully unreal at that current moment in time. so what now when it shatters and breaks, and everything comes falling apart? what you had, you lost... what you longed after, disappeared. that doesn't mean you have to lock yourself in and wait right? i do not pretend to understand the bond that you once had with e. i also do not doubt the strength that which you loved each other. and sadly i do not think it has disappeared for good... because she has not said anything negative to you yet, correct? but seriously sethy... if you ever find that you need someone, i will be always be here, outside this circle that you've drawn and confined yourself into..."

and with that said, she logged off.





Track Of The Day: Keane - Bend and Break

friends in 9spaces: jenny/strobe

(photography[MMA2005], jenny, photoshop cs)

say hello to my audio-video producer...





Track Of The Day: Misia - Everything[her pick]

self in 9spaces: wannabesuperstarDJ

(photography[MMA2005], photoshop cs)

hey Sam, lookatme!!!~ i'm a DJ just like you!!!~ :D

bah, who am i kidding... a crash course, a Pioneer CDJ 100S, a SCLAT Ecler Professional Modular Mixing Console, some no name programmable precussion pads does not make me a DJ, ever... lol. but i had a night of practice... so now i can spin 4/4 technos and some house beats, timing my programmed precussions and do a pretty good cross fade-mix now... whooo, i bet some ah beng discotechque would hire me, no shit... hahahaha!~

well, i'm still waiting to see you spin babe... can get me an invite into *cough* s'pore when i'm down pleaseplease? so i can hang out with ya up in the DJ/lighting console booth, where the view of dancefloor is helluva good *winks*





Track Of The Day: Faithless - God is a DJ

getting the hits

(lomography[old flats], photoshop cs)

it's funny, i never knew fourtwenty was one of the drug of choices among the cheenas of the cheenas(read: ah bengs) until another 4-20 hero said he could get "stock" from way deep in the chinese heartland of 6pm serial dramas, taiwanese tearjerkers, wanton cantonese swearing and modded proton sagas(read: kepong) i've always figured them to be the chem chronics, that's association by familiarity anyways...

so as we wander down the hallways of this dilapidated pre-70s walk up flat, looking for an seedy character named ah keong, with tattoos straight out of a hongkong gangster flick in block 3 unit 5a. it feels so surreal. behind these doors emblazoned with red chinese paper symbols and plastic lanterns dangling way past CNY, i can pick out mahjong games in sessions, loud raucous banters and cantonese serial dramas on astro... and all this, way past midnight.

we found the flat and rang the bell. ah keong was shorter than i thought he would be, about five feet five, shirtless, tattoed and the golden dyed-bleached to hell hair. i looked pass behind him on the sofa, lay a few guys and girls with equally blinding hair colors as well. my eyes caught some girls looking back at us. not bad, but too bad they're lians.

we talked, then money and chronic was exchanged. we complimented each others on our tattoos and piercings. and before we walked away, true to the pusher's credo... he tried to sell us some chems.

"we don't do chems", i said in cantonese, "we're surfers.. not trippers"

he nodded, and smiled.





Track Of The Day: Verve - The Drugs Don't Work

friends in 9spaces: dinner/tbg/fighting for...

(digital photography[chilli's 1U], tbg, me, photoshop cs)

good conversation and company over a few good drinks... thank you tbg for your wonderful company...





Track Of The Day: Oasis - Cigarettes and Alcohol

crossfade

(photog[langkawi], rocking chair[stock photo] photoshop cs, illus cs)





Track Of The Day: Crossfade - Cold

circle wall chasm separation

it's funny how small my big circle of singapore friends is. as i recollect back, i know a female bassist/designer... who knows a music activist (can i call her that?)... who knows a female dj/lighting tech at a famous disco... who knows a female gig photographer... who in turn knows another few female person that i also know, and lo and behold... they know e. as well...

and it's funny reading their blog/phlog/multiply/etc. and finding out that e. drops a message here and there from time to time, stalking behind those words on the other side of mine. and i drop my own comments here and there as well. we are always out of sync... never in the same comment box, never replying to the same entries and she careful to not run into me in this virtual circle of friends, circumventing the invisible circle. seeing her replies, reading them, its funny how a few words that she writes can break the iron man in me easily. and for all that's worth, that makes me feel fucked up knowing she's just right over there, just beyond the horizon, right there behind the few common friends we both share. just slightly out of reach and slightly out of sub atomic sync vibration with my longing molecules... so thus, i appear to not exist to her and her, to me...

so is my sacrificing 8 years all for naught? tell me that i sacrificed an 8 year relationship for something and not this nothing that sits in the place where once i had love. is my pining for you so wrong? do lovers not pine for the empty space, the gap between their arms where a body once rested to be filled once again? did your heart not beat in time, next to mine when we lay like 6 and 9, like two perfect inverted commas, with our hands in each others grasp? was there no supernova heatwave emissions when you reached out to eagerly press my body on yours against the wall in that dark hallway? was there no electriclovearcs when we locked lips earnestly? do you forever refuse this heart-throne-crown-nation that you once love-sat-wore-ruled and suddenly refused so hastily? is my melodramatic emo pleas so overbearing? that you see fit to just keep me in this yesnomaybe limbo to suffer? tell me something, anything... anything is better than this brutal nothing...

All the subtle flavours of my life have become
Bitter seeds and poisoned leaves without you
You represent what's true
I drain the colour from the sky
And turn blue without you

These arms lack a purpose
Flapping like a humming bird
I'm nervous cuts
I'm the left eye, you're the right
Would it not be madness to fight
We come one

In you the song which rights my wrongs
In you the fullness of living
The power to begin again
From right now
In you, in you, in you...

We come one
We come one
We come one

I'm unafraid
Never never scared
Worries washed, pressed air
I'm the left eye, you're the right
Would it not be madness to fight?

We come one
We come
One





Track Of The Day: Faithless - We Come One

mer de noms: tasha

Recollecting Tasha...

Natasha Binti Mohamed Irwan Abdullah could be considered the first malay girl that I was totally smitten with. For the next two year, she would be the girl that sat in front of me in class. On the first day of secondary one, everybody had to do the stand up and introduce yourself speech. So I looked on as everybody did their introductions and tried really hard to remember the names to match their faces. Then it was Tasha's turn to introduce herself. She did this perky hop and smile before introducing herself and that got the whole class laughing, including the teacher. Needless to say, she made a very good first impression with her personality. My turn came next and Tasha turned around in her seat, propped her chin on her forearm, on the back rest of the chair and looked at me with the prettiest of light brown eyes this young chinese boy has ever seen, ever. It was Instant attraction and I paused for a split second, she smiled at me and at that current point in time, if she asked for it, I would've gladly gave a piece of my heart to her there and then...

Coming from a national ed school, malay girls were nothing new to me. I've never put much thought into them... because they are, well, icky girls as well. Just like the chinese girls. And now in high school, girls were still somewhat icky but I'm starting to see them in a new light ever since the Ling incident. Malay girls to me were like something you always knew is there but you never gave much notice to them. And when I did notice Tasha, it went kablam right in my cheena face with the force of a knockout punch from a heavyweight boxer. Here she was, all packed into a 5-feet tall dynamite cutie... her chocolate milk skin tone... her big, light brown eyes... her naturally long, beautiful eyelashes... her wavy, long hair... her absolutely overwhelming in a exhilarating way spunk and positive energy... and most of all, I adore that half laugh-smile that she makes... that particular one that make her eye go all squinty and she would be covering her mouth with her hands and kick her feet in joy....

And she did put all this energy into good use. She was in the school team for netball and she played hockey on the side was well. I still remember seeing her for the first time in class, wearing that white polo top and white skirt. She made my heart and those of the other guys in the class skipped a few million beats that day and I think that sly girl knew it. I for one, was never much of a sports person. I did do volleyball for the school though I'm usually the unofficial bench warmer/occasional ball setter. I didn't complain. More time for my books and sketching I guess, since technically I was more a geek than a jock anyways. So I spent most of my time sketching back then, and sketch well I did. I wasn't good at drawing people so I would be sketching mostly the sceneries. And even if I did attempt to draw people, they would just be quick strokes. We did most of our school training in the late evening or during the weekends. And so during our between training breaks, Tasha would come look for me and we would chat a bit or eat/drink together. She absolutely adored my sketches and most of time, she would look around, searching before pointing out things for me to sketch. So she would be there, waiting patiently next to me, leaning with her face oh-so-close next to my ears. I could feel the warmth of her breath on my cheeks. I could smell the shampoo that she uses. All those things that made my heart race a little bit faster. When it's done, I would show it to her. And her reaction would range from awe, with her mouth wide open... to her adorable laugh-smile... and to a comical sticking her tongue out action if it's lousy. In actual fact, her reactions matters not to me, for I would gladly draw anything for her if she stays a little bit longer next to me...

So it was during the year end for secondary two when she suddenly announced to the class that she's moving state. You see, her father was goverment officer, the transfer offered a better pay check and perks. So naturally he took it. I took the news calmly, though I felt like a sun has just went supernova in my body. My relationship with her was pretty much in a gray area. That alwaysfriends and occasionallovers gray zone that I have such a knack for, right up until now. I do not blame her, nor do I blame myself. For our feelings were never spoken and love was never exchanged. In actual fact, her over-friendliness with me could just be that because she is a very friendly girl by nature. I could be wrong because she's friendlier to me than others, or so I feel. So we exchanged numbers and mailing addresses and promised to keep in touch and sealed it with a quick hug. But unfortunately like all young people with equally young and inexperienced hearts, what is undying devotion, what is "rindu" and what is "sayang", when things changes... comes and goes in our lives quicker than we can cope with. So we lost touch after a little less than a year or so, the consistent letters became sporadic and it stopped coming a little before SRP examinations.

So this is for Tasha, recollecting you... the first malay girl that stole my heart...





Track Of The Day: Headwind - Suraya

friends in 9spaces: mel/soup to heal the heart

(digital photography[office bistro], mel, me, photoshop cs)

and she looked at me and said, "you look like you need some of my soup to heal your heart"

and i smiled, nodded slowly and said yes please...

there's definitely nothing better than a homecook meal. and there's most definitely nothing better than a friend who would make you breakfast, lunch, dinner and now soup just to heal your heart...

thank you mel, i adore you... you're such a sweetheart...





Track Of The Day: Aimee Mann & Micheal Penn - Two Of Us

this is for two

i brushed away the strands of hair falling across your forehead and hooked them behind your left ear... ran my coarse fingerpads across your silky smooth hairline, straightening out the awkward ones... and you just sat there... quietly... still... and let me do it... you didn't flinch, didn't dodge... you just let me...

i told you to get some rest because you work too damn hard and you look so bloody tired... you looked at me squarely in the eyes, nodded earnestly and smiled radiantly with your superultraemotive brown eyes... i told you let's drop everything, let's go on a holiday... let's go back to your new zealand... let's stay in that dilapidated apartment above the grocery store run by that old maori couple down by the bay... you can be the cashier and i can be the delivery boy... we can have triple scoop vanilla ice creams with hot choc sauce, warm fizz-less root beers and hot dogs with sauerkrauts by the pier everyday...

you say you'd love to and made me promise to take you back when i made my big money... i said it would be my pleasure... i wouldn't have it any other way... and you did your makemeweak look away smile again...

unfortunately you shot me in the heart later when you suddenly talked about all those other guys who are interested in you... told me what they did for you... told me how highly you thought of them...



what is going through your head moccagirl... what do you want from me... cos' seriously, you confuse me so damn much...





Track Of The Day: Deftones - Mascara

gradually then suddenly

4 souls, prozac nation, dark room, glowing tv, watching the ultra hot emogothpessimist christina ricci falling into complete and utter confusion-depression. And stuck in my mind, a line quoted from Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" from the movie...

"gradually... then suddenly"

gradually for eight years... suddenly for a few days... depression is what the movie deals with... falling in love, that's what it is in my case...

bloody fucking melancholia sucks. stuck in a doorless, windowless room with a4 print outs, polaroids and photos of you double sided taped on the grungy, water-damaged, mossy walls is so goddamn unhealthy... a single yellow light bulb swings over head, casting long shadows rhythmically in all directions... i sat down, cros-legged, side by side with hendrix, morrison and che, lit up a ten feet long fourtwenty "captain caveman"... we sat and laughed, watching flowers bloom and die off from the fluffy white clouds that came out of our mouths and noses... we floated up into the ceiling, the roof opened up into a purple-red sky and the whole room morphed into a winged yellow submarine, flying us all the way to uk... and along the way, we dodged multicolored lighting bolts flying at us out of multicolored clouds... we picked you up and proceeded to climb high into the skies, passing demons and goddesses engaging in earth shattering, lightning generating bizzare sexual acts... we kept flying upwards until we reached and touched the surface of glowing hot stars... we stopped to roast marshmallows side by side with flaming moon men in antique diving suits, and their mechanical rabbit pets with eyes that shoot honey sweet rainbow love... we then nose dived into the aqua colored sea, breaking the surface like glass as we hit it... we were ejected from the submarine, sank hand in hand and i made love to you a million times underwater outside the viewing ports as they cheered us on with psychedelic light shows... we slowly sink into the deep dark abyss, surrounded and pushed together by millions of stinging jelly-fishes, giving us erotic electric shocks... we floated down like twins on a ultra slow uterus ejection ride, cojoined at the hips and the lips... and we sang, sinking still, amongst a thousand pods of singing whales with naked humanoid sirens riding on their smooth black backs...

fourtwenty isn't a cure all, it's far from it when you "wake" up sober once the high leaves... but it gives us breathing space... and we can all dream again...





Track Of The Day: Bjork feat. Tricky - Enjoy

mona lisa overdrive

(photography[by the pool], photoshop cs)

this be a fine line to thread and balance on, my dear... this thing that you unwittingly made, and i willingly accept...

i miss your suffocating love...

Track Of The Day: Tricky - Suffocated Love

don't be nice to girls

"y'know... you're too nice sethy, do not be too nice to girls..."

She said between cigarette puffs. The matter-of-fact look on her face told me she wasn't joking. I swirled the coffee around in my paper cup and looked up.

"What do you mean?", I asked, furrowing my brows. I asked even when I knew what she was talking about. I looked down quickly when I caught her eyes looking at me. There's a storm brewing in the coffee cup and I can imagine myself swirling on a miniature paper boat in the black brown sugarless vortex.

"Well you're just too nice. You know I LIKED you... heck I still do to a certain extent. That's why I have these walls around me when I'm hanging out with you... I know you know..."

She took another long drag on the cigarette, making it glow angry red, before stubbing it out slowly on the sole of her sneakers.

"You're waiting for her right?", she sighed, a hint of friendly concern echoed off her voice.

"I don't know", I told her a nanosecond later, " I really don't know what I want... I met so many wonderful girls in between this yesnomaybe limbo and the break-up... can I say I'm spoilt for choice? And that's providing if they feel the same way for me, like what I feel for them... but I still wanna give me and e. a go, regardless."

"8 years wait Sethy, I don't blame you... I would wanna give it a go to if we've both waited that long... ", her gaze fixed on an imaginary point in the distance.

After a moment of silence, she suddenly laughed. Her hands absent-mindedly reaching for and lighting another ciggie, "You're just like your uncle, Seth... Mr. Accidental Nice Guy, that's what we would call him... part buaya, part gentleman. When I used to work for him with the rest of the other girls, not one of us didn't have at least a little feeling for him. And you're just like him in so so many gentlemanly good but emotionally bad ways. Sometimes... just sometimes, to balance all your heart-breaking goodness out... just be an asshole... be a creep... be a stereotypical MCP... be predictable, typical. Don't throw the poor girls off guard please. Maybe things would work out better for you and all those girls that ebb and flow in and out of your life."

"Yeah... I'll think about that... doubt I can make it though. I'm pre-wired to be extra nice to girls", I laughed out loud, before shoulder bumping her and throwing a cheeky glance in her direction. She frowned, smirked and shook her head.

"Just like your uncle, Sethy... so much like your uncle... I wonder how is his girls collection in Jakarta", she grinned, "Maybe you should join him. It's a guiltless hunting ground for guys down there from what I heard. The rest of the fellas are having a ball, I don't seem to understand why you refuse to join them there. You'll definitely be a heart breaker and they don't play for keeps in jakarta, so you don't have to worry about treading carefully", she playfully leaned against me.


We finished up our last cigarette ( smoking one whole box between the both of us), drinking up our last drop of 7 cups of sugarless coffee and 3 sticks of chewing gum before taking a slow, silent drive home.





Track Of The Day: Lain - Duvet [her pick]

mapping out the almost impossible

Twenty thousand feet above the ground, my chaotic thoughts skipped carelessly across the skies along with the aircraft on angry gray clouds. My hands reach out and flipped open a map book, scanned the South East London section and picked out Searles Road... I wonder where exactly you're staying? which house? which floor? which window? Or should I just stake out the whole immediate area when I'm there, passing out "Looking For.." flyers and pasting up "Missing Persons" posters all along the street?

That's providing you haven't moved in the last 6 months since I've seen or spoken to you... Chasing I can manage... but chasing a ghost, I don't know how long I can keep this up before I break...





Track Of The Day: Van Hunt - Down Here In Hell (With You)

friends in 9spaces: lunch/reta/amber

(digital photography[just thai, 1U], reta, me, photoshop cs)

good conversation and company over lunch... thank you reta for your wonderful company...





Track Of The Day: 311- Amber

mer de noms: ling

Recollecting Ling...

I met Ling the year I stopped shifting school for good. I was in primary six then. I was one of those kids that sat in the corner, way in the back, shooting rubberbands and folded V-shaped paper at the back of other classmates' heads. She was the girl that sat in back, in the other corner of room. I never spoke to her much in the beginning. I only addressed her as Ling and know her as just another chinese girl in the class. I wouldn't call her pretty. All I can recall now is her bob-cut hair ala Vivian Chow in the 80s, an exact replica down to the wide cloth headbands that was popular back then. She wasn't outstanding in sports or studies. Just another normal chinese girl in a chinese neighbourhood. Come to think of it, she was kinda ah lian-ish if I look back now. But she was different. She was quiet and composed, unlike the guys who were a bunch of monkeys. She was mature. And shifting school every one to two years, I took a long time to warm up to girls. I'm an expert in art of being lansi eventhough I was trying very hard to actually say hello. So it happened a week or two after school started, when we by chance looked in each others general direction, caught each other stare, smiled and said hello.

It's a weird time, these pre-teen periods, when feeling transitions between buddy buddy boy-girl to something else we wouldn't thought would happen. It was halfway through the year when I found that I liked her a little bit more than "one of the guys". We would walk to school and back everyday. We would climb trees and bitch about school. We would hang out by the mining pool/fishing pond, skip rocks across the surface and talk about cartoons. And during the school holidays, me, her and some of the classmates would all go downtown in a group to hang out. Back then, The Mall was a kickass place. It was the place to be due to being the only shopping complex with a indoor fun park in town and The Mall is actually on the bus route that services my neighbourhood. So it's all good.

I never did actually told her I liked(loved?) her. Heck, in actual fact, I don't even know what I felt. The word like and love was so alien and foreign to the young me. In cantonese, "chung yee" is so universal. I could never forget that she said once "ngor chung yee pong lei hai mai yat chai. Ngor pong lei hai mai yat chai, hou hoi sum...". I guess the feeling was mutual, I was "hoi sum" as well. But I just couldn't accurately pin this "hoi sum" feeling to something bigger than just being happy that she was there to do all those things with me. But then the school year ended and everybody was busy looking for secondary schools. Being boys, being still kids... I wasn't too worked up about choosing secondary school, So I followed the guys, while she went to another secondary school in the same district. And being a stupid boy, I never bothered to ask her for the home number nor her address. But I still have a picture I took with her back then on the last day of school. We looked happy in the picture, like we always do when we're together. It's slightly faded and dog-eared, but it's still there in my photo album, in it's own special little pocket...





Track Of The Day: Zhang Hong Liang - Mei Li De Hua Wu Tieh