6/29/2004

Camel
Related: Vertebrates, or animals that actually have a backbone.

hoofed ruminant (mmm chew chew) of the family Camelidae. The family consists of three genera, the true camels of Asia (genus Camelus ); the wild guanaco and the domesticated alpaca and llama (who spits) , all of South America (genus Lama ); and the vicu�a , also of South America (genus Vicugna ), otherwise known as the evil fake camels. The two species of true camel are the single-humped Arabian camel, or dromedary, Camelus dromedarius, a domesticated animal used in Arabia and North Africa, and the two-humped Bactrian camel ( C. bactrianus ) of central Asia. Some wild Bactrian camels exist in Turkistan and Mongolia. The humps are storage places for fat. Camels range in color from dirty white to dark brown and have long necks, small ears, tough-skinned lips, and powerful teeth, some of which are sharply pointed. The camel uses the mouth in fighting, so don't piss it off. Adaptations to desert life include broad, flat, thick-soled cloven hoofs that do not sink into the sand; the ability to go without drinking for several days!!!�or longer if juicy plants are available, yum!; and valvular nostrils lined with hairs for protection against flying sand. Horny pads help to protect the chest, knees, and thigh joints against injury from the hard surfaces on which the camel sleeps. Strong camels usually carry from 500 to 600 lb (230 to 270 kg) and cover about 30 mi (48 km) a day. Some Bactrian camels can transport 1,000 lb (450 kg). A light, fleet breed of dromedary is used for riding and not for bearing heavy loads. The name dromedary was formerly applied to any swift riding camel. Geologic findings indicate that the camel originated in North America, that one group migrated to Asia and the other to South America, and that both became extinct in North America probably after the glacial period. Camels are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Artiodactyla, family Camelidae.

6/28/2004

I am so tempted, on a night like this, to say something controversial like "Sometimes, I just don't understand love."

It's a quote which may have come from some famous 1940 movie, that people are still talking about even today, because they so disagree with it, because they are so charmed by it, because those with the stone hearts are vindicated by it and those with the hearts of velvet are so offended by it, that they consign the said hero involved to the dustbin of their pity.

Could I be less subtle? No. If I were to romanticise it I would be born in the shadows, blind even, like the cobra. And whatever plans the charmer has for me, or how my every movement is cued, is a secret which vanishes in the cavernous minds of ancient Indian ascetics as they are slaughtered one by one by the heavy hand of death. And soon they will have no sons to pass it too, for they have long forgotten the joys of parenthood, and will weep for lack of descendants to pass their ancient skill to.

I'm tempted not to care, knowing you could survive without it. In fact, you'd probably survive in spite of it. Ooooh magic & secrets, magic & secrets. I will draw your hand for you.

Hate, annoyance, spite. Do I have the ability to make you close this page right now. Be irritatingly fascinated by it, because you detest me? My paranoia has 4 walls, and they are closing in on me. There is a hidden lever in the side of the room, which, if you pull, will offer you an escape hatch that will plunge you out of this room and into the next level. The easier way, of course, would be to rearrange the bricks with your head.

You know of course, that all this is possible, that its mental tricks that will stop you from the evil one who would love to make you all insane. That said, it's not really that different from the sanitorium.

Like Fiona Apple reminds me of Delirium. Maybe she isn't. Maybe someone would smoke herself to death and happy herself to death and jump jump jump away to her death. I am a rubbishy person. My parents always taught me to study hard or I would be a rubbish collector. Rubbish collectors are icky people doing a noble job which no one else does. It's like when I have chewing gum on my hand. eww. but when I'm in the jungle I don't mind mud on me. Just that I'm in my house now and I'm nice and clean and I don't want to have chewing gum on my hand. Ban chewing gum. I like chewing gum.





The beautiful game

I'm sitting here, on a Monday afternoon, feeling that I should be doing more important things. After a week in which I felt there was little time to spare, I finally have some breathing space, and I suddenly have no idea what to make of it!

Boys and their fascination with little games. To be frank, I love soccer not because it's the best game in the world, or has the most emotion, or anything, but because I play it, and generally when you're involved in something even watching it satisfies you somehow, or gives you the urge to lace up your boots and play. Unfortunately, on Monday afternoons, most other guys are probably working.

The point anyway, is to write about soccer today. Because my memories are not about just who loved me, who I loved, or big important issues of life and death. I am sure the games of my youth have an equal significance or some chance bearing on the rest of my life. Something like "Rosebud". And because EURO 2004 has been in earnest for the past month, and faced with a sudden void of matches for the next 3 days, I do something irrational like this.

You'll never walk alone

There never used to be live telecasts of matches every week, if my memory doesn't fail me, and perhaps my earliest memories of watching soccer was "the history of the fa cup", where we would see the great feats of teams such as liverpool and everton. Live telecasts were probably of the FA Cup too, and my dad and my grandpa would go "jip" when someone scored.

Liverpool in the 90's was a declining force but they had the support of people like ym dad who saw them through the all-conquering days of the 90's. There was no S-League then, but all the same, our national team was wearing red and it was fashionable then to support teams wearing red "Arsenal, Man Utd, Liverpool, and our Lions." Apart from memories of the Malaysia Cup and Sea Games, perhaps liking Liverpool was more an adverse reaction to people who supported Man Utd, plus Robbie Fowler was probably the best damn striker there was. It was an age where I still loved the underdogs, where I would even hope for Utah Jazz or the Phoenix Suns to beat the Bulls.

My first major tournament was WC 94, when we loved Brazil. I was still in badminton then, and I remember training and there was this TV outside the hall and I would be distracted by Emmanuel Ammunike scoring against Bulgaria. (i think). Eventually, it led to me not playing badminton and joining soccer, where I started out as a left back because I hadn't much pedigree yet.

I soon progressed to left midfield, or sometimes the left central holding role, not because I was naturally left footed, but at least I could use both feet. It was frustrating however because I didn't feel I was contributing much in terms of creativity because I'm not used to surging runs or dribbles.

After some time though, I was lucky to be able to advance to a forward's position because I started shooting a lot during matches and somehow they went in. I liked that more because it was easier for me to play without the ball, to make runs, to shoot, and generally have a few neat touches, and let the playmakers have a field day.

I enjoyed these youth tournaments a lot, even the street soccer ones, and they'll stay with me.

Football is leisure now for me and sometimes watching soccer's lost some of its appeal, especially when you've watched it for over 10 years and sometimes few things surprise you. And yes I do bet, so I'm not all for the "purity" of the game, but I guess its just another addition to my interest, trying, foolishly sometimes to analyse how games go, because sometimes a game just doesn't kick it for me anymore. Then, now and again we're treated to something like Holland vs Czech Republic or England vs Portugal. Of course, the games that would stay in your memory are those that really mattered to you, whether it was Liverpool's FA Cup comeback against Arsenal, Singapore's triumph over Pahang, or even that match where you lost a hundred bucks on Italy. Or, to end off on the winning note, recouping your losses on the final. Heh. Good luck brothers.

6/18/2004

living is easy with eyes closed
Haven't been updating. Maybe it's EURO 2004. Compare this to the rest of what I wrote this year. It's absolutely horrendous. It's me taking 3 steps back.

When you called me, I was thinking one thing. "Maybe this is what guys are meant to do."

Well , of course, maybe I knew that all along, just that my personal philosophy differs.

Anyway. There you go. You took the trouble to call me up, I'll respect what you have to say. Perhaps you don't know my personality or anything and you never have to know, all i can hope for is that its reciprocated.

It's sometimes sad to think that there are so many lives. Inevitably, few matter, and the rest recedes into noise and static.

Strong words and firm action save the day. I'm very pleased with it. Then you will learn that personal suffering counts for little. History counts for little, and everything else has to count for little, for something to count more.

And A telling me about the person on acid who thought he was an orange. He took the kitchen knife and started peeling his flesh. Are we always so 'a-peeling'. cut things up to put them elsewhere. cut and paste.

Your all is partial, Prospero
My will is all my own
Your need to love shall never know
Me: I am I, Antonio,
By choice myself alone.


But my humour is not my own! I try to share it with all of you!

One note is jarring, Prospero,
My humour is my own
Tense Trinculo will never know
The paradox, Antonio
Laughs at, in woods alone.


Alone, alone, alone. Nothing better to say is it?

6/10/2004

Mailman, bring me no more blues

I would have just gone to sleep today because I've just finished my last driving lesson (yes yes!) but I got an interesting mix of mail today.

Okay hrmm study in UK stuff from the British Council. GEPAA letter, and an interesting cardboard backed envelope that looked like most of the sponsorship ads i've been dealing with the past few weeks, cept that this was addressed to me.

Okay cool man. Whoever did this thing was guilty of a lot of effort. It's like wow, I wish I had this little knack of doing little things like this to make me happy. Really love it.

So of course, this is more or less a thank you but being the person I am, I always doubt a lot. Haha. Who the hell sent this to me. Suspects range from my sister to others... anyway... haha also felt a certain obligation to reply in some sort, as well as express the fact that yay!, but I'm still misconstrued, oh but maybe you know me more than I do myself, but just goes to show that what you like about yourself isn't what others like about you.

It's half hilarious and half spooky how the faces are blacked out and stuff... i don't know maybe because it's cause i always see these things in b grade hollywood thrillers... not to disparage the work, but anyway, enough already.

that's all i had to say, i had nothing further really.

6/06/2004

D-Day

I'm very moved by this whole spectacle of D-Day. You see, I'm sure all the dead people on Normandy's beaches, if you gave them a choice, would like to live rather than have this little spectacular celebrating the worst day of their lives. But glory is often thrust upon those who shun it.

You see, for many reasons, this event really could have had no significance to me. The war could have been won anyway. Maybe what would have affected my life more would be some landing on Japan which liberated my ancestors. But who knows. Maybe the factor that lost Normandy was that Rommel decided to return for his wife's birthday and Germany lost one of their most talented generals when they needed him the most.

Maybe it's the scale of it all, that it's probably one of the greatest beach-head landings and we'll never see millions shedding blood to invade people like that ever again, not in our time, nor would we want it. So it's a great sacrifice we all commemorate, the great stories. It calls back heroism on a large scale from a pretty much bygone era. It's a combering realisation that life is not all MTV and fun and games, and we should be grateful if it is.

And when the vestiges of the free world decide to send the finest of their generation to try and try again till they get their beach-head, still life must go on. Through all the darkness of war, Rommel still has a wife who has a birthday.

I'm always very delighted when people can describe the little things that make them happy. It makes me feel that they've all grown up, they can see past the immediate feelings and emotions that they have or realise that they have all this different emotions and feelings. That people are happy.

Back to WW2, I never took history past sec 2. I'm glad, that though i disagree with my father about many things, that he has still at least imbibed me with some sense of history. Maybe he left books about Stalin, Hitler and Churchill's own memoirs of the war lying around for that very purpose. More likely than not, he himself had an avid interest in history. Think about how much the English Language opened up for him, and for me.

I mean, just imagine the terror of facing a German heavy-machine gun. If you even get to see it at all when you've stepped out of a landing craft. It's something no amount of training's ever gonna achieve. But it's still important, to hone awareness about terrain, drills, and drills are what you fall back to when you're terrified.

And this ceremony probably helps Bush a lot. Reminds people that when you've made a mess, your job is to go out there and clean it. Did the US go to Iraq for oil?

Think about it. Bush may be horrible with economics, the environment, and general diplomacy. He lacks a lot in finesse and the media hates him, and probably a lot of other people because he's brash, rude and shouldn't be the U.S President cause there's probably someone smarter.

But in retrospect, I must say that going to Iraq was right. Yes on the record. There is nothing more fucked up than going to war and being betrayed by people at home. Ask the French at Dien Bien Phu, who got dud grenades with "vote Communist" on them.

You see, doubt the motives for going into Iraq. Oil, or just more tiresome U.S meddling in others affairs. Or what, Bush is just some daddy's boy who's playing around with other people's lives for his own glory and prestige.

Wait. what glory and prestige. Isn't the whole damn world against him? Think about it. He's the President of the United States. Sometimes that job involves having to sacrifice innocent lives.

Now I believe he's really in Iraq because he really means a difference. The reason why everyone hates him is why Iraq? It's like going to Vietnam to do community service on a 10-day overseas trip but doing nothing at home. But his thought together with the neo-cons...

Still won't vote him if I'd the chance because anyway, someone else could handle post-war Iraq better.
This sounds very strange, but recently its as if I've lost the ability to be dissatisfied.

I can be pissed at some thing, but generally speaking I'm rarely dissapointed. Like, no matter how hard I try, its pretty hard for me to be depressed about something. Probably because I keep having things to do aah well so its no loss.

I don't know. I wrote in February how indelibly happy I was and I don't know it seems the same now. I'm just trying to figure out why I'm just generally happier than i was in general over the past years though it doesn't really seem that a lot has changed. Still no chick, no fame, no success, no glory. Hmm.

It's weird to be even talking about this because of cause there's the "commentators curse" Gosh. But maybe I'm trying to prevent irrational exuberance.

6/04/2004

I felt remarkably insane as I tried to sleep. I was unbelievably happy and brimming with optimism at 2345 hrs after reading some criticism or something. I think it's been developing since Thursday when some things my sister said about our society got me pretty depressed and unhappy. When I saw those wunder-kid soloists with their parents having their portfolios they didn't seem little bundles of innocence anymore.

But anyway! Mull mull mull. Then I realised, as I lay down, on a personal level, what could change. Many of us are disenfranchised or disenchanted with the system, want freedom, and its all brimming. Its either us or the next half generation that's gonna have the revolution. That's right, look out ladies, the times are a changing.

So life is shitty now. (Not really, just could be better). Never mind. I guess we're "it". As Philip Larkin put it, "sex began in 1963". We're the generation that's gonna be hippy, cool, or at least we're gonna let our children do it. The dropout generation. Paris in Summer 1960. Walk out of the ecoles. Jai Guru Deva Om. World Peace. Life began after the Beatles.

I don't know. Woohoo. I was crying. Gee whish. Why not me. Why can't I be in Singapore that has hallucinogenic drugs and legalised cannabis. I could be so much more than I am.

Haha. So nmind. Let my children do it. Give em enough money to spend. And when their hippie ways are over, they'll switch over seamlessly to yuppie lifestyles which their creative childhoods have prepared them for.

"You say you want a revolution yeah eh..."
Lennon
"So I'll start a revolution from my bed"
Oasis

I'm crying. gee. Sort of. Who the hell will see what I see. They have their own fantastic visions. I goddamn love em all. "All you need is love!"

Work on it. Phish. Who wanna make my babies? Ladies please watch out.
Much inertia... thoughts disorganised... need time for order... let me settle this for you... hope you like it...

"If there's a gun in Act 1, it should always go off by Act 2 Scene 3"

-Anton Chekhov or smth, not verbatim

6/02/2004

Une Saison en Enfer?

My belief in hell is a shaky one, given that it's so scary that it's hardly ever possible to imagine anyone remotely compassionate having to dream one up.

Unlike Rimbaud, I wasn't sodomized in the ass. I don't suffer from the same wounds he does, nor is my life governed by different poles of delirium or despair. I'd like to believe though, or at least that some things are the same. Like the terror of dying is the same whether or not you dream it or not. And the eighteenth level of hell was never scary because it was so fake.

I say this because at some point in time (JC) or so, I began losing this notion of individuality that I held to for most of my secondary school life, which seemed then like a method of survival. I was horribly inferior to most other classmates in different ways, so I just had to feel that well, I guess I felt more than them and was just horribly distracted and would eventually come good.

As I grew, I realised people are driven by very much the same needs and desires. To a certain extent, people feel the same way. Sort of realised this when I realised succesful people were more or less equally distracted by the same things and display the same vulnerabilities such as anger or rage or anything its just that they have this annoying way of timing them so that everything comes good.

That's not to say everyone's the same. I now believe other people, in fact, seem to be capable of feeling so much more (uh-huh), and I'm a cold rational person by the side of them, who happens to have some artistic sensitivity.

I Miss

Past is Prologue -Shakespeare?

In the beginning there was the Word.
The Word was made Flesh.
And Flesh brought desire.

Desire.

One of my strongest feelings... but why is it always associated with the present, and wanting things now? Desire can wait, and it can snake its way to the past and present itself to your subconcious in the most insidious of ways.

Life of 852 and of Tierney's Gourmet, where the very route spoke of the past. Past RI, Past Mt Alvernia's, past Serene Center when my friend asked me if I knew that I could get the best Portuguese canned sardines and Tierney's for 2 dollars a pop. Medicated oil, feng you smell.


I miss the little transactions of friendship. Cycling to Adam Road Hospital to interview a psychiatrist. Pretending to look at cans on a shelf. Waiting for someone at Macs.

Transactions nowadays are more complicated. Because things are worth more, they cost more. And you know, I really could do without the frills. Like fucking someone from the rear, or something like that. I don't need that. (sure you don't.) No, I'm a sexual creature, the same, but its traumatic, when the cost of that is to preen and act like you've the biggest dick around, mainly because it's the size of your head, be alternately sweet and yet be able to mark out your territory by peeing around it in a circle. Like I know, it's essential for evolution, that's why it sounds horrible in words, but I guess in reality actions are the evidence of impulses. cause and effect. and that's how you know.

i'd be fine with happiness, but who knows, I might bring in a squad of hitmen to kill you all because it would be good for you. Gosh why was Uma Thurman just rolling about on the floor crying "Thank you, thank you." It was to thank Bill for being the biggest bastard he could have been. It's what she deserves.

I'm no less eccentric or emotional. I don't really commit many social faux pas. I don't know what best friend means, cause I couldn't rank it if I tried. Maybe my best friend is someone who's a bastard for the best part of my life but who comes for me when it really counts. Can you count like that?

In sepia, pan to the sea.

Fishing, and the sea, and why it attracts old men.

I'm amazed by the wonder of nothingness. That so much nothing can exist. Granted, when you fish, you see the concomitant distractions, sailors and sailoresses from VJC, gigantic oil tankers. There's the sea, and my lousy fishing skills. I'm in charge of catching small ones for bait to catch big ones.

It's fantasy. The sunlight, "ai mai ai mai", want to shine don't want to shine. Cannot have a tan. You can indulge in your own fantasy. The thing in front of you could be a scene from your trip to Siberia next year, smoking into the nothingness in the biting cold.

Plenty of time to think and dwell, but your mind can only fix upon one thing at a time. Maybe I should buy flowers. Oh what the fuck. Just wait till I go to London and I can start afresh. Now and then, now and then is just a time to enjoy myself. All the little things, the minutiae, which are of little comport.

I could blame thousands of people. I could conduct the silent criticism I always reserve in my heart, only to rebuke it later. Fuck off from here if you don't like it, why bitch to me. Why don't you change things. Whatever. I'm staying here. I like the roads here, and all they remind me off. The roads elsewhere are empty. Blame the older generation for being so scary. I was really scared of them. Maybe they changed my destiny.

with the aged and empty streets too dead for dreaming...
hey mr tambourine man play a song for me
i'm not sleepy, and there is no place i'm going to.


Good luck to you. I hope some of my cynicism has brushed off on you. It's all that I could give you. I hope some day you'll thank me for it, but it's too much to ask.