james blunt

this english bloke here is james blunt. he's my hero. he's da man. he's a genius. beautiful. he's artistic & brilliant. he rocks my world! as you can tell, i'm a huge fan! his lyrics, are like pure poems he strums on his guitar.

my brothers are tired of waking up to james blunt just cos i do.

his words say it all. ok i'll stop gushing and just let him sing to you now.


You're Beautiful


My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I'm sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'Cause I've got a plan.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw you face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.

Yeah, she caught my eye,
As we walked on by.
She could see from my face that I was,
F**king high,
And I don't think that I'll see her again,
But we shared a moment that will last till the end.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw you face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.
You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
There must be an angel with a smile on her face,
When she thought up that I should be with you.
But it's time to face the truth,
I will never be with you.


Goodbye My Lover

Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what's mine by eternal right.
Took your soul out into the night.
It may be over but it won't stop there,
I am here for you if you'd only care.
You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I've kissed your lips and held your head.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I've been addicted to you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I am a dreamer but when I wake,
You can't break my spirit - it's my dreams you take.
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be
I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile.
I've watched you sleeping for a while.
I'd be the father of your child.
I'd spend a lifetime with you.
I know your fears and you know mine.
We've had our doubts but now we're fine,
And I love you, I swear that's true.
I cannot live without you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

And I still hold your hand in mine.
In mine when I'm asleep.
And I will bear my soul in time,
When I'm kneeling at your feet.
Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.
I'm so hollow, baby, I'm so hollow.
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow.

woof woof year

it's the chinese new year today. the first day of the year of the dog.

without fail, new year wishes full of pun packed into the inbox of my cell phone.

there were so many good ones - but only one emerged as the top dog.

from chap: "have a woof woof year. welcome it in doggie style! and may you be the top bitch of the pack! woof!"

woof woof

at second uncle's house (during chinese new year house visiting)... crammed on the sofa with my brother and sister.i felt clammed up...and claustrophobic. my uncle loves dogs - but since moving into a smaller apartment he's stopped keeping his dog at his house. it's now at his daughter's place where there's a garden for the dog. to compensate for the lack of the furry one... my uncle has decorated his house with images of dogs every where. stuffed ones, dogs on cushion covers, dog statuettes, dog pictures, procelain dogs, dog coasters...they were every where.... woof woof. everywhere i turned...a pair of dog eyes were staring at me.

woof woof

and my favorite dog story of the day?

a new friend i met in nyc told me he's getting a goldendoodle. i never knew such a breed existed. the little cute pup you see here is a goldendoodle. zach says he's gonna get me a pup too. lotsa them!

woof woof




and my chinese new year's resolution this year?

to spend more quality time with my golden retriever, ash.

cutie pie!

woof woof

just like water in a glass

everyone has stories in them. secrets they hold in. love they harbor. old hurts they keep. happiness they can hardly contain. just like water in a glass.

my one weakness is i live in a clear glass. i'm transparent. it's my one strength too....like all other double -edged great shakespearean themes i learnt at 17, but never understood till i became myself a hamlet, an ophelia, gertrude and polonius at varying points in the last decade.

i've recently been told by a certain person that my poems are personal. it was said in a tone rinsed with alarm and caution. (with an echoey feedback of ...."the wholeworld isgonna know you were insanely heartbroken from reading that poem")

the same has been said about some of my blog entries. a close friend recently said: your stuff is so heartwrenching i can barely read it." another self proclaimed open minded person begged for my blog address. i gave it to him only never to hear from him again.

my initial knee jerk responses were usually self-disciplninary in nature. i'd wonder if i've given too much of myself away...as if there might have been something to be ashamed about which in turn drives me to wonder maybe i should sound less intense or less affected. a little more normal...

these lapses of vulnerabilty tend to be fleeting as i return to being me.

my work (poems, prose and that unfinished novel) is personal - it's no accident. i'm a truth addict - graphically, i'm an exhibitionist of emotions. i present the moment as i feel it, see it and experience it.. my work has to be personal, it can only be personal - it comes from insideme. and gives me an avenue for expression...aren;t poems supposed to be personal? if they're not personal then they're just a bunch of words that mean nothing and say nothing much,no?

i believe that there is hardly a disconnect between the said and the unsaid in life that people see and recognize.
when it comes certain core human emotions emanating from lovelost, death, love found..despair..hopelessness....hope etc whether you show it openly or keep it in... the same emotions will still be there. you can't escape from feeling what u do.

you will see me as i am in my good times and bad.

i'm just like water in a glass. a clear glass

a day in the life of a 2-and-a half-year-old

< 11 am: "i just got up"
















11:30 am: "it's time to make breakfast"















4 pm: "it's time to walk the balloon"



















6:30 pm: "i work hard for my milk!"

egoholic's scrap book

art took these pics couple of months back.i kinda like this series. :O i'm so vain!

reality check

got a reality check the other day.

it's called getting billed for your property tax.

i'm no longer thinking through issues like wondering if people wearing rose tinted glasses know if they're wearing rose tinted glasses.

i don't belong

went to an indie rock band gig two weekends ago with a friend. i didn't belong.

life is like/but a dream

the other day in the car, my second sister rosemary and her daughter baby krissa and i were singing.

"row, row row your boat, gently down the stream"

"merrily, merrily, merrily"

and then the group splintered into

me: "life is LIKE a dream"

rosy&krissa: "life is BUT a dream"

for about 25 years of my life, i've been singing "like" - while it seems the rest of the world had and has the word "but" on their lips.

"what do you mean BUT?" i lamented.
"it has to be like"
"what kind of a depressing song is that? why would anyone want to depress a young kid?"

rosemary laughed incessantly. krissa laughed too, cos her mom was.

"you have been singing the wrong word!!!!" my sister points out, as her sniggering threatened to morph into a snort.

"i don't care, i'm gonna sing it with a like and not a but!" I was really miffed...


and quietly wondered to myself...

just as i've always wondered if a mad person knows he is mad, now i am thinking:

"does a person wearing rose-tinted glasses know he is wearing rose tinted glasses?"

a friend was once sharing with me the woes of dating life.

"when you've made a mistake in love - you'll find yourself like a small ship drifting in the dark waiting to get picked up by a big ship!"

i listened. and was again hit by the then yet-to-be discovered like-NOT-But syndrome.

"why that's no problem at all," i cried out with joy.

"why do you see yourself as a small ship? what if you ARE the big ship? just be the big ship and you will pick up the small ship..."

we both looked at each other and laughed.

and so it seems: i think i am a serial optimist.

but i'm beginning to wonder now if that comes with a heavy price sometimes.

in my compulsive optimistic ways - i have been let down gravely several times, real BIG TIME, to the tune of pessimists' saying "i told you so" or "you're TOO trusting" and one has even ventured to declare that i should strive to become a "selfish bitch"

my eldest sister, who has always protected me and would want me to be my authentic myself at all times (ie, optimistic and trusting) - has even come up with the novel idea of bubble wrapping me.

i see now how there is likely a fine line between being an optimist and being in denial.

i could be both at the same for all you know. and dependent on the context - i would be delivered with varied sets of results/outcomes.

a like-minded serial trusting-optimist friend of mine and I were talking a little about this debacle yesterday.

he said: "we must learn to see reality"

i was struck.

i'm wondering now if i should then strive to be a realistic optimist.

but then again, i never knew i even had rose tinted glasses on.

someone, please pass me that bubble wrap.

some birdie's missing

i had dinner with an old childhood friend last night. we've not seen each other in 15 years! after dinner, we took a stroll in our childhood residential estate and ran into this precious poster. some birdie's missing!

...more about Normanton Park childhood days nostalgia coming up soon.

candy blues

on sunday, we had about 20 minutes of eating candy and painting our tongues blue =)

my beautiful enemy

after a coffee meeting the other day, i went to a local book store to browse at what homegrown writers have been writing about. of the 20 or thirty titles that lined the shelf - one in particular stood out and has held me hostage for the last week. it's a thin book, no more than 120 pages.

"Heaven Can Wait - Conversations with Bonny Hicks" - is written by Tal Ben-Shahar who pulls together his correspondences with Bonny, a former model and writer who died just before she turned 30 in an airplane crash. the two are kindred spirits and found in each other a "beautiful enemy." They amplified each other's goodness and brilliance and were companions in their search for meaning and purpose in life. the book details the intensity and beauty when two kindred souls meet, two hungry minds meet with a common purpose of knowledge and the distillation of truth in life - as is revealed to them.

The wisdom, passion and compassion between these pages move me. they motivate me. Tal wrote the book as a testimony to the sacredness of his one-year friendship with this beautiful woman. it was also a form of catharsis for him.

and for me, vicariously. as it lays out the preamble for my own....

the urgency of life tugs and pulls me. to manifest, quickly....

for my beautiful enemy.


Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841)

Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighbourly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give, and of me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the annals of heroism have yet made good.

poems i love

poems i love. they've given me tears & joy. heart & imagination. they've broken me down & built me up. they've made me fragile only to strengthen me more. they've given me hope and shared beauty & magic. they've quietened me - silencing the madness of even wanting to understand the chaos of it all. they are poems i love. here are just some


i carry your heart with me
by e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

SWEETNESS

by Stephen Dunn

Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet...

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care

where it's been, or what bitter road
it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written,
I am not done with my changes.

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.


&
from dead poet's society...

I went into the woods
Because i wanted to live deliberately
i wanted to live deep in
suck out all the marrow of life
to put, to rout all that was not life
and not when i come to die
discover that i have not lived

my first open mic

so dread followed me out of the office because i was going to tick off one of my new year's resolutions this evening.

i decided two evenings ago that i'd go for an open mic - to bring a personal poem out to the public and share it with whomever who would listen. this evening i stood in front of i think 25 people and read one of my poems.

i was scared shit. couple of close friends were there. funnily, we all turned up in green with no prior plans to do so. it lasted for all of 90 seconds maybe - i was petrified but it felt good after. i was terrified to hang around after the session though... just in case someone was gonna throw rotten eggs at me as a delayed reaction; so me and the green team scooted at the sound of the goodbye note. (heh i'm such a coward still...)

what an interesting evening! what an interesting crowd: the ghost story writer, the autistic poet&artist/ a psychic/ published & unpublished writers/publishers & my first open mic were all woven into one story tonight.

leaving the office with dread

for the first time, i'm leaving the office with dread. real dread looming around me. dread is in front of me. behind me. on my left and on my right. it's been stalking me the whole day. and I, ME, my ownself am the sole creator of this monster named dread. it's been my pet for the day - a pet who refuses to be abandoned.

wish me luck folks. =)

missing november entry #1: debbie 10K & brad in NYC

invite to the photo exhibit aka sex & the city filmng set


me & brad in our pre-bad days....so last year (1 american head = half a hainanese head) heh


me & debbie 10K looking so fine as we dine! hahah!


debs & i in an nyc cab



that's where debs stays!! that's her apt - she kept the lights on!!!

*************
afterthought
*************

the problem with my blog is it lacks immediacy.

a lot of times, the entries are reconstructed accounts of what happened last month, last week or yesterday. most times, i'm a lazy blogger. i often get lines like "why didn't you write about us ...." or "you mean that XX wasn't even worth a blog entry?"

in my most recent memory: here are some recent recollections.

debbie 10 K & brad in NYC

debs has just relocated to the big apple. i was visiting her in nyc - winding down from my 2-week Chicago trip. but during my 3-day stay in the city, i spent more or equal time with debs' pal and former B school classmate - Brad. only cos debs got staffed on a maj project.

two weeks ago brad texted: "not even one entry of your stay in NYC!!"

so here goes "BAD" brad.

the second or third time i met brad > he proposed to me. in jest, of course. only cos he liked what he saw in my ipod. "dixie chicks!!!woahhhh" he also approved other names like john lennon, fleetwood mac, jack johnson and john lennon.

he's really a sweet guy. (i just didn't dare tell him i used to dig NKOTB as a teen)

when i arrived in NYC, he was home early at debs apt so that someone could let me in. really sweet sweet guy.

another nice thing he did was escort me to a photo exhibit at the meatpackers' district, as debs couldn't go with me cos of work. i wished i blogged that evening cos the experience was intensely vivid. i walked into the show and felt like i had stepped onto a set of Sex & the city. i was immediatedly surrounded by people who were beautiful, who were with beautiful people and people with beautiful clothes. people with beautiful foreign accents, beautiful hair and beautiful skin. and then there were the quirky, arty farty people. at a corner was the quintessential short bald guy with dark framed glasses with three tall models by his side. one was french, one russian and the other from somewhere exotic too, presumably. their mixed accents scented the room with the allure of a eurpoean movie in hollywood. in came a couple, in their clean styled, crisp clothes with a toy dog donning a burberry print. investment banker types with their wine glasses clinking - talking shop and sealing deals. and bohemian dressed artists exchanging names of favorite photograhers and collectors comparing going prices for artwork.

and then there was me, brad and his colleague. the fraternity triplets. we played our roles well - adding flavor to the scene. we were nice kids. nice & sweet. haaha

ANOTHER nice gesture from brad: when i got home to Singapore. i switched on my cell and recieved a text from him in NYC, it said: "welcome back to singapore." awwww

now. according to brad. the both of us have a serious problem.

unwittingly - brad and i seem to have identified somethg about ourselves in each other. we think of ourselves as the mr nice guy and ms nice gal. ( i know it sounds a little obnoxious and therefore contradictory saying it out loud...but...it's one of those things. either way, you sound silly.)

so according to a new year's resolution drafted by brad...the both of us are to turn over a new leaf in 2006.

"we have to be real bad!" AND "debs is going home now to teach you how to be bad!" he says over sms from NYC. hahah.

hmmm somehow, announcing our imminent badness has a familiar tinge of goodiness. ha ah. you're funny, brad. and real nice.