a great escape for any weary urbanite

Defeated by reality? Searching for my green light

I want to tell the world,

About love, hold on to love.

A selfish, mindless thing, but hold on to love.

A foolish, dangerous thing but hold on to love.

An irrational, inexplicable thing but hold on to love.

Find it, seek it and hide it like a cherished memory.

For some may never find it in their lifetime,

Some may be deadened, hollow from the inside out.

Looking everywhere and somehow, buried deep within

Tired…

Tired of myself, this myself.

About time, give me back my time.

The time when I used to think everything possible

The time when boundaries were but a definition of something physical

The time when I didn’t know being trapped in a prison called my Self

The time when…

Stop…refuse to go on.

Refuse to accept, without holding on.

Try, try hard

Remembrance held close to a sighing heart.

Always, there’s a choice

Burn out, or fade away.

Elva Hsiao

Dai Yan Ren

Piggy Wars Episode I

I love it when I have a lousy day. Then I can easily put up a blog entry :)

Don’t know if you guys have encountered a new menace. I think they all belong to the same gang. It’s called the Handphone Broadcast Gang, or HBG.

I’m not sure if this gang is ran by anyone, but if it is, then that person must have an extremely limited playlist, which consist mostly of Malay ballads and irritatingly obscure hip hop songs. Now I’m a self-professed hip hop music fan and I love listening to ballads when I'm in the mood (and definitely not have it on public transport screaming at me), and for me to say this really pains me, and took quite a bit of consideration on my part. Somewhat akin to slapping my own face, but anyway, the bottomline is, the situation is NOT funny.

Today, I finally did something that I’ve been dying to do. I told one of the HBG members, right there in the middle of a crowded MRT carriage, that isn’t the music too loud for him? I must add a disclaimer here: Although I did think he had to be deaf to put the blaring speaker right next to his right ear, I wasn’t being condescending or sarcastic when I blurted out that remark before I could stop myself. I took heart that he seemed a little embarrassed and apologized for it. If I were any nastier (or truly tired of living), I probably would have asked him,” What are you sorry for? For annoying the hell out of every other tired and frustrated commuter, or for destroying the pair of ears that your Mum and Dad gave you?”

Why is it that such people can get away with this kind of terrorism on something as communal as public transport, without anyone raising an opinion about it? Don’t the offenders have an iota of consideration or sense of shame when irate daggers are shot their way? Don’t they know how annoying they are? Don’t they know that even as they bop to the grating beats, someone’s (that would be mine) blood pressure is steadily increasing, threatening to shoot out the roof any second now…

Nope. They just don’t give a flying fark.

As soon as the words left my mouth, an irrational, or maybe not so irrational fear crept into my brain. What if these guys actually belong to some neighbourhood gang and are just waiting to meet them up for the next bloody clash? Should I alight at the next station and wait for another train? Should I alight at the last station to ensure they alight before me? After 3 stations flew by, my fear gave way to weary resignation. What’s said has been said already, and truth be told, I didn’t regret it at all. If these people didn’t bother about what others feel or think, and the afflicted ones are too scared to speak up, then it’s time someone who’s fed up enough do something about it.

I must confess, I am no hero. Even as we alight at the same freaking station, I kept praying silently that they are not trailing me for revenge of their public humiliation or meeting up with suspect gang members and then trail me. I even contemplated taking a cab home, which I did not in the end. Finally relieved to get on the bus home, only to encounter another LOUDER round of HBG couple, this time some soccer teens who once again, don’t give a shit about anything else except for their own hedonistic pleasure.

On my way home, now happily satiated with a cup of bubble tea, thoughts about my childhood dream of becoming a police woman came back. I was always puzzled by this compelling draw to the police force for no apparent reason. I joined the NPCC in the naïve hope that I would graduate to the police force and serve justice one day. Well, that conviction died faster than a candle in the wind, but that fire somehow became ingested into my entire being, forcing me to acknowledge what my senses couldn’t ignore. I am sick of being victimized, although to be fair I was never abused. I am sick of being manipulated by the powers that be, although I’m seldom mistreated. I am tired of looking beyond the surface for hidden agendas and motives, but it is a fact of life. I am unhappy with how the system has evolved, but I gain sadistic pleasure from working within it.

I am a man-made disaster: Full of righteous simmering anger, rambling on and on, and not too intelligent about it.

Things I took for granted

It really doesn't take much for someone to have a turn of face in an instant. Perhaps we were at fault, taking her good nature for granted. Perhaps we should have brought up the discussion when the exams were well and truly over. All in all, it was a case of bad timing and events.

I never thought that the small act of slicing up a mango can set me thinking about totally unrelated stuff. Like how I took my Dad for granted, the official fruit slicer of our family. I was cursing the slippery mango, which almost caused me to stab myself, when the image of my Dad holding these assorted fruits in his well-worn hands and slicing them with utmost concentration came up. Perhaps I should have been more grateful for these little things, and not expect him to live up to my expectations of what a Dad should do. Perhaps it was easier after all, to let life's little annoyances cloud the good things that our loved ones do for us on a day-to-day basis, so much so that they become routine and therefore, invisible.

The mango was really sweet and delicious, like the ones we used to have after dinner at home. Somehow, it made me miss home even more.

attack of ah bee :)

hehe it's finally the end of exam for me! haha got a stupid story to share with my nearest and dearest frens ;p
I came home and chanced upon a housemate of mine James, whom I had bumped into in the kitchen when I was having lunch earlier in the day. As he was washing his face I casually remarked that it was "James' Day", that I keep bumping into him. He then replied," Oh I wish the day was longer..." I immediately thought he was being his usual sweet-talker self and replied," You really know how to sweet-talk man..." while waving my butter knife at him. He asked me to repeat myself, and kept grinning at me. It was only until I got back to my room then I realize what he really meant about the day being longer (he had an exam the following day, and was wishing he had more time to study :s)

Moral of the story: Don't anyhow jump to conclusion and... I'm still as clueless as ever. Help me!!!

Beyond oneself

"As Mylius writes... to be green means to grow... therefore this virtue of generation and the preservation of things might be called the Soul of the World"

Jung writes:" The state of imperfect transformation, merely hoped for and waited for, does not seem to be one of torment only, but of positive, if hidden, happiness. It is the state of someone who, in his wanderings among the mazes of his psychic transformation, comes upon a secret happiness which reconciles him to his apparent loneliness. In communing with himself he finds not deadly boredom and melancholy but an inner partner; more than that, a relationship that seems like the happiness of a secret love, or like a hidden springtime, when the green seeds sprouts from the barren earth, holding out the promise of future harvests. It is the alchemical benedicta viriditas, the blessed greenness, signifying on the one hand the leprosy of the metals (verdigris), but on the other the secret immanence of the divine spirit of life in all things..."