Today, my grandma very loudly asked at lunch if I had a "boyfriend or girlfriend" that I wanted to bring to my mum's birthday party this weekend.

"Long, you have any BOY-friend or GIRL-friend to bring along? Nevermind don't pai seh. Call HIM or HER along for dinner lah?" Then she turns to my brother and half-yells (because she's deaf in one ear) "You know if Long got any GIRL-friend or BOY-friend anot ah?"

/die

I'm tempted to skip the dinner because how horribly badly behaved my mum was at my grandma's birthday dinner earlier this year. Spare you the gory details.

In other news, because of a bad case of insomnia on Saturday night and prompted by shaoann's post about Johann's book Quiet Time, I decided to re-read To Know Where I'm Coming From. Finally succumbing to fatigue at around 6am, I awake at around a quarter to noon and finish off the book before heading to the gym somewhat guilty at having missed Church (yet again).

Before having dinner, I pop into Kino and pick up Quiet Time. The night flies by as I consume the book enraptured. A little part of me wants to be like Josh and I can't help but associate the fictional character with a real life person of similar accomplishments. Feeling bored and realizing that I've been accidentally teetotal the past two weeks after some significant developments in my own personal life, I decide to pour myself a drink. A third of a bottle of vodka later (with two gingerbeers as mixers) I am literally swimming and feeling for the characters as I devour the text. Okay, I might sound a little bit loopy, but I found it actually fun to be drunk and reading. Being used to only associating an occasional bout of weekend alcoholism to loud music in dance clubs, I was surprised at myself, refreshed to be semi-smashed and under the covers, reading. I know, it was weird.

On a subtle level, the constrains of love, lust and rationality are woven at odds together with the themes of family, culture, values and other life's uncertainties. On a personal level, the characters were disturbingly real to me -- I did not expect to be rooting for some characters to just come to their senses damn it! I can't say how I feel about the writing on a literary level, because I hardly read anything more than the financial headlines anymore and that the manner I feel connected with some of the characters is simply too disarming; criticising the style of writing and use of language, to me, will probably miss the point.

Perhaps I feel this way partly due to my own lacking development in gaydom having only been out for a relatively short time. But looking into their lives, there's an eerie sense of familiarity. Not only with the settings but also with feelings -- of making difficult choices, of wishing we knew better, of hoping for the best, of having so much say but not being able to utter a whisper. Good book, I think!

1. Putin to Dell: "We don't need help, we're not invalids." Russia's been acting up lately... even with outright aggressive military action. I actually don't know what Russia stands for. Is it communist, socialist, capitalist? What is so great about Russia; is there a Russian culture, a Russian pride, and how does it run? From my limited understanding of this giant beast, it would seem that Putin is pushing for Russia to have greater weight on the world stage.

2. I suppose these questions about Russia stem from a nagging feeling that the reign of the "American capitalist way" is in decline. I think the world is looking for a replacement economic framework.

3. Decision making. I used to have faith in rationality and logic. Most, if not all decisions I made were logic-driven. But I'm far less so rational today. It's slightly internally inconsistent; how can I say my decisions are based on logic and then claim that i'm less logical today than yesterday? Perhaps it's because of certain events in my personal life that have led me to believe that not all decisions can be founded in logic and rationality. It could be more rational to realize that some decisions must be made with the current set of circumstances (consisting of experiences - emotional, physical or otherwise - of the past and present). Thus, while a rational solution exists, there are alternatives that may be acceptable, or even better than the rational solution.

4. I really should learn how to type properly, using all my my ten fingers. I began using the computer from age 10; one of the first things I did was to write and play a chess game in basic with a friend. I couldn't figure out how to create an artificial intelligence routine, so I simple made the computer move a set of moves in random. It was fun. Then came the internet, huge phone bills, and puberty, where my covert self-discovery missions included downloading naughty jigsaw puzzle programs. Anyway, the girl next to me (i'm in the library now) is typing faster than a Ferrari. I actually feel a little clumsy, typing with only two of my left fingers and three of my right; it's so inefficient. My overall typing speed is decent, but if only I could type as fast as I think...

5. My above para is an example of how bad my writing is. Whenever I try to put anything into writing, it gets muddled up because I have so many things I want to say at once and I trip over myself saying things that are seemingly irrelevant. Typing, jig-saw puzzles, internet porn and fast cars.

6. Yuan manipulation (or lack thereof). I don't think the Americans are in any position to criticize the Chinese. Look at the Americans themselves; with target interest rates already at or near zero, the treasury has resorted to a tactic called quantitative easing, which to me, is a simply a metaphor for printing money. The Americans can do this with abandon and not inflate themselves to the moon because the dollar is currently the worlds' reserve currency. I feel the Americans are abusing the seniorage properties of the dollar. Though "quantitative easing" they are stealing from the world. All governments in the world only have taxation and credit (borrowing) as revenue streams. The US has a third revenue stream - seniorage - the process of collecting money by printing it. The Fed prints and prints dollars and savings around the world flow into these dollars. Rocket-like inflation is prevented because it is the worlds' reserve currency; on the other hand the Fed reaps the benefits of capital by simplying printing it. If this is not currency manipulation, I wonder what is! (*Disclaimer, I am not an econs student so please take this at face value and correct me if I'm wrong.)

7. Epic fail. Google tags the entire internet as malware.

1) Market Rigging and False Trading. We went though some of the rules governing market conduct in one of my classes last week. It is an interesting class that touches on aspects of trusts, wealth preservation and securities markets law. The instructor that teaches the seminars on securities market law seems to like to pick on me -- it is a small class and in classes I find interesting I am strongly vocal -- asking for my opinion several times. It's fine - I don't mind the airtime, but what this instructor does with my opinion severely irritates me. She likes to apply her brand of logic-superiority, one that is founded in the written law.

For example, she asked if anyone had comments regarding a certain court case where an investor repeatedly placed orders for a certain share at a bid price higher than the last done price. Done over six months, this investor was hauled up and charged and found guilty for false trading - for artificially raising the price of the stock. The way he traded was deemed by law to intentionally create a false or misleading appearance in that stock.

So no one had anything to say, and to break the silence she picked on me for what I thought. I said (something like this, for I cannot recall exactly what I said): "for the sake of argument, an investor would use all tools at his disposal within the law to ensure that his holdings do not diminish in value. Indeed, investors are distinctly incentivized to ensure that the value of their holdings actually increase! Perhaps this investor, not knowing the law, intended to create signals in the market to raise the market price. This is a frequently used tactic by fund managers of sufficient size - they move to signal confidence; likewise this investor is placing legitimate orders to signal confidence in the stock. There doesn't seem anything wrong with this as long as each order placed is a legitimate order. "

She then smugly decides to call on a trio of law students to pounce on me.

"What do the lawyers in the class have to say?"
"Ignorance of the law is not an excuse"
"Jurina"
"Ignorance of the law is not an excuse"
"Kenneth"
"Ignorance of the law is not an excuse"

She then proceeds and loudly proclaims that yes, "ignorance of the law is not an excuse".

You don't need to be a "lawyer" to know that. You think I don't know that ignorance of the law is not an excuse? She asked for my opininon and I gave it. Yet she decides to ignore everything I said. She could have discussed some of the harder cases, the grey line between what is legitimate and illegal market signaling, what actions fund managers/private bankers carry out to prevent themselves from running afoul with the law. But no. she focuses on something you would have learnt in your first law course.

She seems to think law students are of a superior breed, and always refers to them as the "lawyers" ("what do the lawyers have to say about this?", and "what would a lawyer say?"). I am profoundly irritated by this instructor because she seems to make fun of your effort to start a lively discussion in class. Bitch.

2) Armin van Bruuen was in town -- Zouk -- but I didn't go. Heard it was really, really crowded anyway, so I shalln't record a loss.

3) I've discovered a renewed love for trancy beats.

Maybe it's the people I'm socializing with lately. Maybe it's because one of the most beautiful moments of my life I can recall is when I had on a pair of noise cancelling earphones listening to Tiesto while watching the sun rise. I was sitting on a bench outside my dorm overlooking the Hudson river valley and there was a slight breeze in the air.

It began snowing for the first time that year (and it was the first time I experienced enough snowfall to cover everything white). There was a singular calmness.

4) I may start blogging again :-)

I've always found it oddly cathartic to write here. I just have concerns that people would form a wrong impression of me because I 1) don't speak like I write, or write like I speak; 2) tend to write here when I'm angry or pissed off (see above); 3) sometimes just spout rubbish for variety; and 4) sometimes feel a little insecure because I'm worried people might just scroll past all that angsty text and dismiss my musings as inane rubbish :-)

It's already been a week since the exams ended last Thursday and I haven't accomplished much anything! Which may in itself be some kind of accomplishment. Don't have to worry about much this month. But I am increasingly anxious of my pending graduation into a crappy job market. Crappy. Nevermind that, it's still 6 months away. Anything can happen in 6 months. 

If I must label what I've been up to the past week, I would call myself a professional house-sitter. My duties consist of sleeping till 11 and playing with the dog. Thankfully I don't need to clean and cook, although it might be fun to try and toy with the oven for a little bit. Hmmm.

Now, I'm awake at 1 a.m. wondering what to do for tomorrow and the weekend. So many possibilities, yet I feel so lazy and just fart around the house all day. I should really treasure this month. Doubt I would have anything like this ever again!

Once again, blood has been split afresh. The twice yearly ransom paid with more and more soul each time.

Thankfully, I will not have to endure much more torture. I've been mauled numb enough.

I would have loved to have had the time to blog about so many issues during my rather unexciting life, but I have instead been forced by the system to focus on spotting questions, memorizing frameworks and preparing for questions purposely designed to trick you on technicalities.

It honestly doesn't make any sense. In reality all we really do is to do everything. We pay lip-service of having smaller seminars to encourage collaborative learning, yet we never embrace the essence of the pursuit of knowledge - all we embrace is a new form of assessment to be dissected and formularized into a ten year series.

Class participation, projects, peer assessments, peer projects reviews, presentations, peer presentation reviews and critiques, research papers, assignments and 'extra credit'... Obviously, you can be different by doing everything. Obviously, the point is lost, because the idea was to be different by doing what needed doing. I'm guilty of participating in a race where there is no winner; only a mad-rush to dismal hyper-competition.

Yet, so much of the SMU-psyche is obsessed with being so-called different to the point I feel truly threatened by the zealots awaiting in the shadows with poisoned knives. I would be readily crucified for the-horror-of-horrors, stepping out of line and only doing what mattered.

I've learned so much in my 4 years. I've gained so much from the university, changed so drastically from the person I was before - and for the better -- I just don't want to associate pain with the fond memories I clutch close.

Really should be mugging my brains out for my last two papers.

But alas the readings I need to download choose to load so slowly I can read faster than the text appears.

At this point in time anyway, almost all I can think about is 



on a new 

A story in six words? I can try making six-word titles, but stories in six words like Hemingway's baby shoes and beyond me.

• I saw I came I conquered?
• Gazing into the distance, she wept.
• Betrayal: The heart asks pleasure first.

or maybe

• "Goodbye love, till we meet again"
  
• He refused to capitulate. Never again.
• His soul was broken, spirit shattered.

Why not go crazy?

• Dumbledore loved donuts and cream crackers

Or, well, to suit the emotional funk that I'm currently in:

I finally understood and let go.

9:07 - Reach home
9:17 - Realize that the dateline for application of rights is 9:30, not 11:30.
9:18 - Out the door
9:20 - Reach the Esso station down the road, discover the ATM there is out of order
9:26 - Reach the next nearest ATM. Totally anyhow park.
9:28 - Discover that I need to actually know my CDP account number.

Lesson learnt. Don't wait till the last minute. Or if you are going to be last minute, know what the damn last minute is and know what you need to know.

Argh.

I was minding my own business, in the line for the carpark at AMK Hub. Because of the yellow box, there was some space between the car in front and me. And this prick cuts my queue:

New York New York's Meat Platter... for 2. Kinda like the pic. Eating and food :) Too much of it no matter where I go!

Several close friends have individually told me that I should make use of my coming trip to Beijing to purge out the old and renew. I asked them, what made them think I needed rest and renewal? And they said, they saw it in my eyes, the change from then till now, that things in my life must not be going too well.

I fear that I can be so easily read, but it's true, I'm bogged down these few months by several very weighty issues, but not only from my personal life. I tell myself I need to be bigger and overcome the challenges, but still I find myself sighing even more, putting up a puppet face.

The emotional issues and guilt involved with realizing I might have went frighteningly crazy while it lasted quickly descended into chaos as other things piled up unexpectedly, the less serious ones having to do with a sudden lack of confidence in my academic pursuits, a general malaise about purpose, a sudden realization that I have lost the passions I once had, and some minor medical issues with family members. A few more serious ones joined the fray, of which I have limited influence over, but affects me nonetheless. Sometimes quite drastically.

Lest this post descends quickly into self-pity, let me say that I am grateful for the friends I have around me who have kept me out of my room, where I admit I have at times hidden under the covers and cried or screamed in frustration into a pillow. I'm thankful for all the care and help I've had in school, a great group of ambitious friends that find the capacity to be amazingly human while excelling at literally everything. Thankful for a bedrock of support in Church, where patience and understanding is never ending. All in all, an exceptional circle of friends and acquaintances from which I draw strength through interaction and sometimes just through plain presence.

The most trying part of what I'm experiencing right now is that I can't seem to attribute the emotions I feel to the events which triggered them, because they have all come to head at the same time. It's a confusing process that I find hard to describe. To make matters a little worse, I indiscriminately shoved all of it into the closet when the exams were nearing, in an effort to cut the losses. But now that I have the time to look at it and reflect, it is like opening a can of worms. It's particularly bad since some solutions to those issues were time sensitive and now I just have to live with the guilt of not doing what needed to be done at that time.

A result of taking a suicidally heavy academic load and having this drama in other parts of my life is that I have been forced to find a new perspective in an effort to manage competing demands. It's less about solving and understanding the issues surrounding the drama than it is about satisfying what needs to be done and how to placate the demands of school and life right now. I'm finding that I'm far more reactive a person now which goes against the self-concept I've had growing up. I've always been more proactive than reactive.

In any case, I feel that I've grown positively, and I'm starting to get a hold of the issues that I have control over. Managing those that I don't. The serenity prayer - the courage to change those things I can change, acceptance of those which I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference - is a calming breath. Rest and renewal doesn't need to happen only in Beijing. For one, I've found writing an effective (albeit self-indulgent) form of catharsis.The road is long but there ain't no mountain high enough. Ridiculously overpriced chocolate fondue helps too! :-)

Had Fathers Day lunch at the New Majestic. My parents are overseas so we celebrated for my Uncle (who's a dad) and my Dad in-absentia :) Gastronomic Highlights:





Seared Foie Gras hidden under Peking Duck Skin and Wasabi Prawn on a Watermelon Pedestal.

Foie Gras absolutely perfectly done, melted in the mouth, caused multiple orgasms. Went very well with the peking duck skin which was crisp. Accompanying salad was well dressed with slightly tangy sauce which allowed taste buds to recover in time for the Wasabi Prawn which was itself delightfully sweet and not cloyingly dressed. Bite sized watermelon pedestal completes the experience providing textual finish and soft, watermelony relief. Heaven.







Chicken Sharks Fin Soup.

Boiled till the soup is white and milky, but with the consistency of clear soup. Leaves a slightly dry after taste, as the tongue recovers from screaming in delight. Each sip brings a new level of high. Nothing like the gelatin-fest that some restaurants call sharks fin.

Time. Waits for no man. It keeps going, on and on. So much has happened -- in my own life, my family, my friends. So much to think about, so much to recount. Yet in our rushed lives we never want to be seen standing still. It's always: what's next? The next course to take, the next job application to send out, the next internship for the next holiday. Always, moving, forward. Progress, that's what they say. But in moving on, there is always...

Pain. Sometimes necessary, sometimes for naught. Physical, emotional, real or imagined? Pain is known by all men. Who dare show it? Some handle it immediately, others defer it within. But there isn't any other way. You've got to deal with it sooner or later. To take away the pain, must you...

Change? They say it is the only constant. But it presupposes a concept of constancy that is ironic as is circular - is this consistent? The rules of rational logic never change, so does it follow to have faith only in rationality? I never felt so. Stubbornly, I cling onto...

Hope. That life is a comedy where everyone gets married. It can't be a tragedy where all the leads die, can it? Is life really that cruel? No! It must be a false dichotomy. Hope, that there is something greater to live for than just the next day, the next year, the next season, the next promotion, the next new toy. Hope, that there is indeed...

1) The good thing about taking a holiday is that you have time to do mundane tasks in twice the amount of time it takes if you were in a hurry. Today is no exception. Went out to get lunch for my grandma again. Today, I settled for sliced fish soup and a slightly spicy otah. Going to take her out for 水饺 and 锅贴 tomorrow at her favourite Chinatown place.

2) The bad thing about taking a holiday is that you have too much time to think and wallow. Can't wait till work starts next week, for two weeks. It isn't helping that the (volunteer) job is probably going to be slow and a little boring.

3) My passions are gone. I really liked playing the classical guitar - so much so that I even applied to music school. Today, I can't even play a quarter of the pieces I had trained and can't even do the scales properly and am too lazy to even take out the footstool for proper positioning. It's all gone, sight reading too.

4) I really liked playing computer games - so much so that I competed and was ranked 6th pan-Asia way back before it became popular and was given "sport" status. There were things I loved doing, set out to learn and did well in. But something happened since University began and instead of stepping up I stepped down and chased dreams which were not mine.

4) I still chase those imposed dreams. Because it's the rational thing to do. Sometimes, being rational kinda sucks, doesn't it?

5) End of Term party later at China Club tonight. Don't feel like going and being social. Sure, friends will be there and all. But it's a little tiresome to have to mingle.

6) I attribute my current despondency on a sudden surge in my general malaise.

Came along my finals, of which were terrifyingly difficult (never have I felt so stupid after an exam, ever), which I threw myself into in an effort create a productive distraction.

Tonight, after bouncing back a barrage of emails directed at me of which were increasingly impatient (probably due to me falling off the earth and living under a rock... err, I mean, in the library), I am writing this post with a Heineken by my side (I don't even like beer!). Steamboat dinner at Tiong Bahru this evening was very satisfying, and finally watching Dreamgirls at zenhiao's a nice way to wrap the week up.

Well, the past few weeks have blurred, April, May came and went; I've got to forge on and try not to get stuck. I hid everything under the sheets and well, the free time I've had the last two days since the end of the exams have told me I can't just ignore it and not sort it out. And I will, by myself.  会逼自己向前走。

Sometimes I ask, why did it happen? But I can't want anything but to have known how it felt, if even it was only till dawn.

I spent all of today in my personal self. I've been thinking lately, how to properly separate the personal and the professional (right now, professional = studies) selves - I haven't got into a rhythm just yet. I also spent a little time doing my semi-annual Life Audit.

I've learned that if things in the personal self go badly, the personal self takes over and the professional self gets kinda neglected. What I've also learned that when things in the personal self go really, smashingly well, the personal self also takes over, and the professional self gets kinda neglected. Thus it logically follows that from henceforth to be fair to the professional self, the way things are in the personal self shall no longer influence the attention given to the professional self and vice-versa.

Of course, policy is one thing. Execution is another altogether. But it's a start I guess. I've been doing several exercises to try and internalize it. Like visualizing myself wearing a "Personal Self" hat and kicking ass doing personal things (whatever those are, you are free to imagine). And visualizing myself kicking ass doing professional things while wearing a "Professional Self" hat, like, erm, consolidating 3 subsidiaries and 2 associate companies with ease (how sexy!). You see, I kinda resort to such corny visualizations when I realize that simply telling myself over and over "Don't let work be affected" doesn't end up, err, working. Hopefully the visualization works - anyone got any other ideas?

Life Audit was difficult this time around. I decided to do one even though it's only April because I think a lot has happened since then and I might need to recalibrate the compass. Certain parts of my life stood still... for example, guitar neglected, as has been the case ever since I started university. I won't detail my life audit online here, but from the looks of it in my notebook, a lot happened this year so far. And the process of thinking through it and documenting, quite therapeutic.

Ok, won't bore you. Good luck to those having exams, or otherwise need the luck. Myself included. Please, kick ass.

Experimenting posting from my mobile. Beef noodles i had for dinner last week. :)

Mon 10/03/2008 23:24 10032008142

When I meet someone new, I've come to realize that I unconsciously categorize them into certain stereotypical-archetypes. It's a cruel process that I would not intentionally carry out, but I do so none the less. It is particularly dangerous because it is instinctual, at least for me, to unfortunately, be immediate and ruthless. "Too fairy", "too scary", "gay from a mile away", "too tall", "too much".

I've been thinking lately, that maybe I should try my best not to judge fit with such immediacy, but I have come to the conclusion that it probably is best to remain with the status-quo. I'd think we're all guilty of relying on our highly developed stereotypes at some level or another, and perhaps it might not be the ideal case rationally to do so. But practically and for all human purposes, I think it is for the best ultimately, since we'd probably come out net positive in terms of happiness to rely on these stereotypes, sacrificing the theoretical exceptions. I am philosophically founded in the belief for the maximization of happiness.

I don't know about you, but rarely anyone gets past these gates... past the claws of evil stereotypes. It's not that some are "better" or some are "worse". To think such is to believe everyone falls on a straight line continuum -- the reality is that we all are far to varied to fall into any distribution. "Better" or "worse" also predicates a needless approval and disapproval where we could probably do without.

So what do you do when you pleasantly realize that someone did actually get past the gates of immediacy? You grab them, and scrutinize them... yes, the stars mercifully aligned and you had a fleeting glimpse of the utopia. Anticipation. Excitement. Possibility. Did you see? Or was it a figment of your imagination? Either way, you start to realize that these are flashes of nothing but the start of a journey with no plotted path.

You tread with caution... a dark path, with pitfalls. For one, time - and timing - still rules us all. With even less compassion, mercilessly ticking endlessly. Tick. Tick. Tick. As if it mocks you.

--

So first you need the stars to align and next you need time to align as well. Frighteningly it analogously compares to the space time continuum, where space is but a point in time. Not only are the instances rare, but they also are ruled by the laws of time - so each instance - each time your stars align, each time you glimpse the unseen - is doomed to be a finite point in time, a fleeting moment while it lasts before the law forces you along. No matter how hard you cry, how loud you scream, how hard you try... You ask for more time because you want the moment to last, the feeling of happiness to stay, to never go away. But even time is ruled by it's own law.

Does this leave us powerless, that each instance is doomed to end, by the very definition? That to not glimpse but to see is but an impossibility? The laws demand it. The laws will take... Excluding the presence of any additional force we are doomed to be ruled by the fickleness of each passing moment. To its whim and fancy.

But I refuse to believe so. I want to stay still. I need a force unexplainable to hold me down. A force unexplainable - to make one of those rare instances last... yes, cliche as it may be, till it lasts for all time. Cue the violins.

A force, to not glimpse but to see and grow a lasting vision. A force, to fold space and time... so I stay still, calm, at peace together with my instance. My one other, that lasts for all time. All together now... "To make time serve us."

I can go on and tell you why I believe pairs are the best - and how natural beauty only occurs in pairs... but all I want to ask now is... do you believe in having the power to fold your own space and time?

1. It's time to declare the end to procrastination. I'm guilty of the following:

i. having a bathroom without a mirror and towel rack... for two weeks already since moving in
ii. only unpacking one suitcase out of three. One of the two remaining suitcases has never been unpacked since I returned from New York, 24th December 2006. (the "Hey, they're winter clothes" excuse)
iii. staying away from any physical activity because of the rather serious case of shin-splints I still have. I can swim but have been putting it off... since October
iv. being lazy to reply to a flood of exco emails from the CCA at school.
v. having another 1,127 unread (mostly) junky mail from my gmail inbox, and not answering several "hello, how are you" emails from the exchange gang.

2. While updating some audit work papers in front of the telly tonight, it suddenly hit me that after all the emotional churning that goes on in this little dishwasher soul I have, nothing I could have done would have made nary a difference. Interesting prospect or not, sometimes the guy upstairs does things to you and you can't understand why; except know that it hurts, especially when you are alone, in front of the telly eating junk food.

The irony of it is that to do better "next time" is to want less than nothing, which makes my head hurt a little. It frightens me, too, because it is not that I want nothing or less... but that what I want is to "feel more content that I have ever been". But there is no guide. "No ready made 30 year plan, no easy, obvious milestones".

So each time, I try to rationalize. I end up sitting longer in front of the telly, replaying scenes over and over in my head, wondering what if this, what if that. A whole lot of selfish, jealous what ifs and a lot of why this, why that, why can't it be? And how would it have been had I been this or that... or any of the infinite combinations...

Better to just keep it simple, silly? Just conclude that I had no choice but to feel the way I felt and just let whatever will be...? Not a coward's stance, but a pragmatic realization? The last part is feeling satisfied with this realization, but it feels frightfully cold and empty.

Sorry if this is a little riddle-like.

1. I've moved back. From being able to walk to Cineleisure in 12 minutes, I now have to take a 1-hour long bus ride, excluding wait time. If I choose to take the train, waiting for the shuttle bus is another pain. It does not help that the "shuttle bus" is the same bus that goes to the zoo, and every so often you get a lost tourist insisting to pay the bus fare with a $2 note. Cue to noisy arguments and loud shrieks at the "laundry hanging dangerously outside the window on long poles twenty floors in the air".

2. Anyway, here are the pics of my room. Will post more of my room and more of the house when it is more presentable :)



3. In more exciting news, I met my brother's friend when I returned home tonight. I was opening the gate to get in when he was parking. He was here to pick my brother up for a night rugby game in some indoor court, somewhere.

He said he saw me at Taka and waved at me then. He said I gave him a little look and then looked away, and did not recognize him. I'm thinking now, could he be the elusive Mr Taka that I've been thinking about? From what I can remember, he does bear a little bit of resemblance, going by the fading memory of that encounter. Anyway, the brother's friend is a trainer at Cali now, and well... very hot! Into Muay Thai, into running at Bishan park, and lives a little down the hill. But I don't think he's gay, so that's that. Plus, he's a friend of the brother, who thinks I'm like, totally straight, dude. Sigh.

Maybe, just maybe, could he be one of us? Sometimes, I just wish I knew for sure I was wrong to hope just so I'd learn to not hope anymore... but I never seem to get anywhere and end up feeling short-changed. And then I do it all over again.

3. Reading Invitation to Treat by Eleanor Wong. Halfway through Wills now. Fiercely written, too bad I never caught any of the three plays. Now, if only I can get my hands on a copy of "Peculiar Chris" and "To Know Where I'm Coming From". You know how hard it is to find Peculiar Chris? I've even went to Books Actually down in Telok Ayer and they didn't have a copy. I'd sleep around for a chance to read it. Just kidding. Really. I know Pelangi Pride Center has copies, but I want to own a copy.