tonight is a saturday night, like many others. well, it's a little bit special. it's a night when the moon is especially big and yellow, and kids are out playing with their lanterns although it's a day early for mooncake festival. went out with clarence for a movie, it could just be your typical saturday night.

everything is normal. they are a little coloured by the lens, that this would be the last night in singapore for maybe 9 months or so. no biggie. quite a few people have left, and almost everyone who wanted to has returned. so maybe these lenses are a bit reflective, a bit self-absorbed, and apart from thinking about everything outside of you, other people's problems (not mine!) you do let yourself wander from time to time, and think how it will be, and maybe more importantly, how it was. �so, how do you feel about your last night in Singapore for a bit?� �well, I guess I ought to be thinking more about how I�m feeling. It doesn�t feel like the last night�. but I guess you do feel that way, you just don�t think it. and nerves are just like those cracks in paint, when a bit of water gets in and you don�t hold �em well it just flakes off, bit by bit.

Perhaps people don�t need all this emotion in their lives. I, we, get by most of the time, heads down, working for whatever we have to do, heads up, enjoying ourselves. we fight and we argue, but you know I hate confrontation, so I see people fighting and arguing, wonder why people keep tripping themselves up. but it�s because they do the things they have to.

but as I walked out the car back home, I felt a moment. everybody feels moments. sometimes it makes them a little more poetic or to stop to think and resolve to act more decently the next time. get on with it. get a cup of water, get in the shower.

the shower�s on, and it just makes you cry. now if you could pin it down you could just stop crying. but no, you�re sad now, and you�re just crying because you don�t know why! �there you go. you�ve done it now. you let it get to you, this nothing thing, and everything�s coming at you now.�

I should have said thanks. I love you, I�m sorry. you still can. oh I can say them still! to whom, to who? there are so many!

�they say everythin� can be replaced
yet every distance is not near
so I remember every face
of evry� man who put me here�

I am crying because I don�t know how to tell each of you how much I appreciate it. I�m crying maybe because some of you care less for me than you used to. I am crying because this night, I remind myself that every day takes me further from a day when I was 12. I�m crying because I wish all of you could see me, this is what you mean to me! Because my mother feels old, and she�s missing me already, and oh what a life she�s had! how she�s loved me and kept me safe. Because people couldn�t get jobs in the Great Depression. Because I still have a sense of outrage and decency and this feeling. Because I am lonely now, like it was sometimes in Brunei, and maybe because I haven�t had reason nor time enough to cry for some time. And a man can live like that, but he should not. next to you you�ll always find new friends, new colleagues, associates, whatever. you can replace anything you need. but it�s not always easy, and it was a long hard road. I am crying because I will always have half my brain muddying around in the past with sentimentalism. and at 17 I wanted to write grand letters to everyone, but not now, it all seems so different, I�m close to 21, and everyone knows, maybe, unwordingly (if there�s such a word).

oh god. all this melodrama. if you�ve watched kill bill 2 (and maybe I�m crying because I watched kill bill 2), I am the bride rolling around on the floor clutching myself saying �thank you, thank you�, while the 2 magpies are on Disney channel spreading joy to kids, and the little girl�s watching, amused. and she wipes off her tears when she�s done, because we all have needs, from time to time. and once we�ve done with them, we wipe �em off, walk again into people�s lives with all the optimism and joy in the world and once again, we function.

and I think I�m crying because I�ve to do each one of you justice. now that I�ve sorted it out. I�m sorry if I haven�t found the circumstances to say it in your face, or if I�ve ignored you. know that I do, alone.

and I�m crying because tomorrow, I will be on a plane to London. I will be wearing a smile at the airport, and I�ll be damned if you ever see me cry. And I will wear the smile and bring it to London. I will smile at people. Maybe someone I smile to will smile back and we will frolick like jackrabbits in the grass. Maybe my smiles will go unreturned, maybe from time to time it�ll be difficult to smile. but fuck tomorrow, because I�ve had today, and thanks for helping me make it this far, and making me think, that I�m a decent person, I haven�t fared too bad after all, and I�ve decency and lots of love left. sorry for suddenly sounding like a gospel singer, it�s too much nina simone. thank you, thank you, thank you.

p/s look forward to my pictures. will continue to write!