Welcome!: October Highlights

Friday 5 November 2010

October Highlights

Oh my gosh, this month is passing by so quickly! I almost couldn’t believe when I woke up and saw the calendar the other day. It’s already November?! Shopping malls are starting to put Christmas decorations, and more than once I had to stop myself just to think about what a year it has been!

Alright, so I haven’t exactly found cure for cancer, or won any lotteries. I probably haven’t made significant changes to anyone’s lives but I feel like I have changed a great deal and gone through a lot! Wow, now this sounds like something I should write at the end of the year!

Yeah, fine. I’m gonna stop myself here then. Otherwise I won’t have much to talk about again coming December.

Just thought it might be appropriate to write some snippets of the things that’s been happening this month, since I hardly blog anymore (again, not that I don’t want to!) I hope I can redeem myself (and my typing skills.) Oh, by the way, I’m writing this on my laptop at home on a Friday evening, while the television is playing in mute. The only sound I’m hearing is my own tapping of keyboards and tickles of waters from the pool outside my unit. Ah, complete bliss.

1) Phuket trip (01-04 Oct)
First time going to Phuket and first time travelling with my two dear colleagues! I thought I was going to have a relaxing weekend abroad when I could just lay down in the beach and sun tanned all day long, and got drunk every night. I couldn’t have been more wrong! Reality was, it was a full-packed action weekend, filled with adrenaline-rush, lots of raining and getting wet, body-aching, crazy midnight bar actions involving pingpong shows and serious stripping acts.

Don’t act so innocent! Haha. Naked girl, ping pong balls, birds, needles. Very flexible and multifunctional vagy-gy. Use your imagination. It was hilarious! It was an eye opening experience, I’m telling you. At one point the bird used landed on my lap! I swore right there and then that I would burn my pants as soon as I got home.

A full day trip to Phi Phi island, went snorkelling and swimming by the beach, tried wakeboarding and had lots and lots of tom yum soup and not enough massages. All in all it was a good trip nonetheless. It stirred up my travel bug and I’m already looking forward to my next vacation!

2) Wedding dinner at Grand Copthorne (06 Oct)
My dearest former colleague invited me to her wedding reception on a Wednesday night. Although I came straight from work with dishevelled face, it was one of the most memorable wedding I’ve been to! It was great to see all my former colleagues again and you know, up to this point I’ve been to lots of weddings of my dad’s friends, and my sisters’ friends, but not so many of my own friends’. Knowing the bride or groom personally just made the whole evening more beautiful and I even teared up during the procession as the groom was given some tasks to get to the stage. At one point he was asked, “What do you love most about Eileen?” I think I don’t have to recite his answers to tell you that this moment was when I almost cried! The food was some awesome 7-course dinners which made me feel super guilty (but happy). After attending a friend’s wedding I always feel like getting married myself!

3) A ‘passionate’ cruise at sea ! (07 Oct)
Being in this yacht line of business, I have lots of customers asking all sorts of questions you can possibly think of about the cruise and the itineraries they can expect. My boss thought it would be great for me to experience what I’m selling. So he brought us along for an evening cruise with ‘Passion’ to highlight the different islands and activities we can do during the trip. I had a lot of fun! The boat was a 33’ motor cruiser and it could go really, really fast! We sat outside by the deck while the boat was cruising in full speed, and I don’t even want to imagine how silly I must have looked with my hair flying in all directions! I can see why some people just fall in love with the life at sea. People who love boating rarely turn back. You either love it, and try to be near the sea whenever you can, or you don’t and the thought of spending 4 hours in the boat made you feel sea sick.

4) Eat, Pray, Love (08 Oct)
I couldn’t remember the last time I watched a movie, probably since Inception. It was tad too long and I was really excited to see Eat, Pray, Love with my two girlfriends. The movie was delightful and entertaining from start to finish. I haven’t read the book, so comparison couldn’t be made, but I really admired Julia Robert’s character. It takes a lot of guts to really just go away to somewhere foreign and detach yourself from ‘real’ life. Although, at the end of it, one might wonder, which life is real? When your life is made of pretenses, isn’t it almost a sin to yourself to stay?

After which we went to Chijmes for some drinks. Le Baroque really had one of the best live music I’ve ever seen! From “The Empire State of Mind” to “Love the Way You Lie”, I lost track of time!

5) Little Nicolas and more Le Baroque (16 Oct)
My colleague and I have been talking about having a French night out which included seeing a French movie, having a French dinner and talking in French and ending the night at a French bar! Well, so it didn’t exactly go that way, since the only French word I knew was ‘Oui’ and after like, three times saying it, it got old quickly. I realized too that you couldn’t really have a conversation with just that one vocabulary.
Me: “Oui?”
Sam: “Oui oui!”
Me: “OUI!!!”
Sam: “Hm...Oui!!!”
Me and her: “.........”
See what I meant?

Catching the French movie was easy enough. The Picturehouse was showing this really adorable cute movie Little Nicolas! It was a feel-good, funny flick which really got me happy afterwards. We thought of sneaking cans of beer into the cinema but we ended up having the beer before the movie. Classy indeed. Anyway, it was a great night that ended with dancing and beers. (I’m certain the French won’t approve of that!)

6) Halloween night! (30 Oct)
The title pretty much explained itself. I tried being Kat Von D although I think it was more like the ‘Before’ version of her, or perhaps the Kat Von D if she had never made it to television. Kat Von D without the money and personal trainer! How terrible! I had to put on tattoos in both my arms and put on long black wig, heavy make-up and stars at the side of my face, and although I looked ridiculous, it was fun getting ready! When else am I able to dress up like that, right? We went to Clarke Quay and it was packed like a can of sardines! Inside the club I could hardly move and it was skin-on-skin with the people around you all night long! I’m still undecided whether I liked it, but well. Half of Singapore population must have been in that club that night!

Apart from these, I’ve been doing another freelance writing job. I did the last article in basically one day! But my editor seemed to like the writing, so no complaints here. If you want to see, here are my previous published articles for Mind+ magazine.

What a month! November is gonna be even busier as I'm bracing myself for more work. But hey, ready or not, here I come!

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Quotes

There's a hundred million different ways of writing, and it takes you a long time to sort through that stuff. And I think it takes anyone a long time to find a voice.

You must learn to take the good with the bad, the happy with the sad, love what you’ve got and remember what you had. Learn to forgive, but never forget, learn from your mistakes but never regret. People change and things go wrong, but you just have to remember that life goes on.

The day before I’m supposed to be meeting Caroline for a drink, I develop all the textbook symptoms of a crush: nervous stomach, long periods spent daydreaming, an inability to remember what she looks like. I can bring back the dress and the boots, and I can see her bangs, but her face is a blank.

I don't know, I think that if I could just accept the fact that my life is supposed to be difficult. You know, that's what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I'll just be glad when something nice happens.

I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.

There's a big fucking world out there. It's messy, and it's chaotic, and it's never, never ever the thing you'd expect. It is ok to be scared, but you cannot allow your fears to turn you into an asshole, not when it comes to the people that love you, the people that need you.

Maybe what I'm saying is, is the world might be evolving the way a person evolves. Right? Like, I mean, me for example. Am I getting worse? Am I improving? I don't know. When I was younger, I was healthier, but I was, uh, whacked with insecurity, you know? Now I'm older and my problems are deeper, but I'm more equipped to handle them.

I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.

Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.

A woman needs to be held, even, and science has shown this, if its with someone she doesn't care about. Protective hormones are released, and the amount of hormones released depends on the degree to which she is held. The first and best is the complete surround. He wraps you in both arms, whispers how beautiful you are. Second best is the 'arm around.' He is next to you but with one arm around you. Third is he's just next to you on his elbow, but he rests his hand on your stomach and looks at you. Fourth is you snuggling up to him with your head on his chest, while he looks away into space. But when the first best happens, you feel completely, wonderfully like a woman.

So, so what, so fuck off, go home, leave you alone? I'll tell you something Paul, there isn't anything that I've wanted for eighteen years, cause I was a kid eighteen years ago. And if I did still want the same things I'd think I'd gone wrong somewhere, because actually I don't want to marry David Cassidy, I don't want bigger tits, I don't want to do better on my marks. I've stopped worrying about that kind of thing and maybe you should try.

Well maybe there's a big bit of you that's gone missing somewhere, maybe everyone should want something they've always wanted.

Why is it that adults aren't supposed to go mad about anything? You gotta keep a lid on it. And if you don't then people are apparently entitled to say what they like. "You haven't grown up. You're a moron. Your conversation is trivial and boorish. You can't express your emotional needs. You can't relate to your children." And you die, lonely and miserable. But you know, what the hell, every cloud has a silver lining.

I just woke up one morning and didn't feel the same way. Where did it go? It was like there had been a lot of food on a plate in front of us, and we ate it all really quickly, and then there was nothing left. Maybe that's how couples stay together: they're not greedy. They know that what they have in front of them has to last a long time, so they kind of pick at it. I hope it's not like that, though. I hope that when people are happy together, it feels as though someone keeps piling seconds and thirds on their plates.

That is what I have learned: Sex is destructive. Love is nothing to be fooled with. I learned that I was dangerous, not to be trusted. I wondered if my parents were right, with all of their stiff lovelessness. Maybe they knew better. My parents don't dole out love for the deserving or the undeserving. I was learning that love could cost me.

You could say all you liked about reason and logic and common sense and imagination, but when the chips were down, the one skill you needed was the ability to think about absolutely nothing whatsoever.

There is a comfort in never making an effort, but it's a lonely comfort. What keeps you going is the knowledge that you're only playing with only four cards showing. But when you see other people succeeding with their mediocre hands, you have to make a decision. If you turn over that final card you're certain of victory, but it also means you have nothing in reserve.

I’d gone through life believing in the strength and competence of others; never in my own. Now, dazzled, I discovered that my capacities were real. It was like finding a fortune in the lining of an old coat.

Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as mere consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.