Welcome!: February 2011

Monday, 28 February 2011

Domestic.

I was suddenly possessed by the spirit of Martha Stewart over the weekend. Yeah, scary, huh? I felt so domestic to the point that I decided to cook my sisters and cousin a hearty dinner.

They complained and objected the idea, but I insisted. I might have even threatened them a little. But I told you, I was possessed. Even on Saturday as we went grocery shopping, I could not contain my excitement. Running wildly from aisle to aisle, I picked up pasta and spaghetti sauce and tom yum soup paste and mushrooms and carrots and potatoes as if my life depended on it.

Anyway, everyone was pretty busy on Sunday so I offered to make baked pasta for dinner. It wasn’t rocket science, really. I was a little ashamed that I couldn’t impress you more by saying I made, um, risotto with scallops or something fancier like that. But perhaps you would be slightly impressed too by ‘baked pasta’, right until I told you how simple and easy the process actually was. A 5-year old kid could make that too. And then, your impressed-face would disappear as fast as my money after payday.

All I did was washing, chopping, boiling, mixing, adding sauce and salt and tada! Putting it in the oven and voila!

Hey, don’t look at me that way. Actually I enjoy cooking once in a while if there’s an occasion and an audience (even though I would have to force them into eating it.)

The problem is that I’m a lazy bum who would rather sleep and wake up to a well-prepared, all-ready, take-away food than cooking it from scratch.

Well, nobody’s perfect.

(Are you holding back the urge to throw up? Cos I kinda am.)

Sunday, 27 February 2011

Tumblr.

Tumblr, tumblr, tumblr.

Join me here.

It will be a lot easier to update pictures and short posts over there, so I'm gonna try updating it more often since I don't have much time to blog properly these days.

Anyway. Thanks for sticking by and I'll see you soon!

The View.

From up here, everything seems perfect.

Come to think of it, Singapore's not so bad at all.

Thursday, 24 February 2011

Back.

This is why I can never have a baby. I have a short attention span. I can't exactly neglect and abandon a baby like I do to my blog and my 101 other hobbies, can I?

I'm sorry in advance that I haven't been writing at all for the past few weeks. Ever since I've been back from my trip back home, I've been a basket case, a PMS kid in horrible mood swings and uncontrollable temper tantrums.

In short, I've been homesick and thus, in no condition to be writing.

Instead, I came back to work in full speed, taking no craps from annoying customers, and did a lot of writings for the company's magazine. I detached myself from personal life for a while as a way to deny reality and the fact that I was feeling so unmotivated and slightly lethargic.

It's been almost three weeks and I'm feeling a little better. But I wonder, why is it that nothing really excites me anymore these days?

I long for the days when I look forward to the next day, knowing I would do something useful. Or, when I spend an hour or two getting ready for a date because I'm so excited.

Is it a matter of the job which doesn't give me the mental stimulation, or is it me, who simply is going through a dry phase? I don't know, maybe a little of both.

As if to compensate for the lack of fighting spirit, I'm throwing myself to work even deeper these days. I know, that doesn't make any sense, but it happens.

Come to think of it, I've been in a committed relationship with my job for 8 months now. Eight! I know it doesn't seem that long, but it is! If I were seeing a man, this would be the time when I started getting a rash.

But I guess that what being committed essentially is. So I'm going to tough it up, grow up, act like an adult and brace the storm.

When sadness was the sea, you were the one that taught me to swim.

Everything's complicated, even those things that seem flat in their bleakness or sadness.

You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details.

I think when you get to the point where you don't need to be in love, then you could be in love. You have to just be OK with yourself-and that's a long process.

Words and hearts should be handled with care.. for words when spoken and hearts when broken are the hardest thing to repair.

It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.

It's just that I don't want to be somebody's crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don't want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it too.

The best and most beautiful things in life cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

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.