Fuzzy Blind.

Thursday meeting ran late. At midnight, I was still waiting for my last bus. I’ve been without specs since Monday. It doesn’t get any more vulnerable than wandering around outside partially half blind at witching hour. Thank goodness it didn’t take long for my connecting bus to arrive.

That ought to teach me a lesson in possessions.

Sometimes I Can’t Believe That I Believe

It’s tailor made, says the myth. I know I can’t see it when it’s right in front of me but this time?

I don’t know. The older you get, the more you know, the less you think you know and the more unwilling you are to say it out loud. Why? Because you don’t want to jinx it. It’s a silly superstition but maybe there’s some truth to it. Anything can happen.

So when it comes with details tailor made it doesn’t really surprise you. There’s no fanfare. Just: understanding, trust, time and attention. And a random assortment of complements.

That’s all anyone can ever really ask for.

Nothing Says Good Morning Like a Nosebleed.

Yesterday I lost my glasses and my student card. To top it off, I got drenched in the thunderstorm.

Today, I woke up with a nosebleed. It’s nothing serious. Usually nosebleeds are the best indicators of fatigue so I went back to sleep, partly to quell my sudden fear of … well nevermind. I’ m fine.

I think I’m going to go down and get myself some lunch. It’s close to 4pm. I really should learn to take care of myself better.

This Was Your Fight.

“Roark, before I met you, I had always been afraid of seeing someone like you, because I knew that I’d also have to see what I saw on the witness stand and I’d have to do what I did in that courtroom. I hated doing it, because it was an insult to you to defend you–and it was an insult to myself that you had to be defended… Roark, I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: their halfway, the almost, the just-about, the in-between. They have their justifications. I don’t know. I don’t care to inquire. I know that it is the one thing not given me to understand. When I think of what you are, I can’t accept any reality except a world of your kind. Or at least a world in which you have a fighting chance and a fight on your own terms. That does not exist. And I can’t live life torn between that which exists–and you. It would mean to struggle against things and men who don’t deserve to be your opponents. Your fight, using their methods–and that’s too horrible a desecration. It would mean doing for you what I did for Peter Keating: lie, flatter, evade, compromise, pander to every ineptitude–in order to beg of them a chance for you, beg them to let you live, to let you function, to beg them, Roark, not to laugh at them, but to tremble because they hold the power to hurt you. Am I too weak because I can’t do this? I don’t know which is the greater strength: to accept all this for you–or to love you so much that the rest is beyond acceptance. I don’t know. I love you too much.”

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand.

Though it has never got to this point, it was strange to watch you – for a time – sleepless and muttering things in the night, hunched over the dining table because you were so afraid, so frustrated, so tired of clinging on to your sense of integrity when it is thrown in your face like an insult to your idealism, to your books and to everything that makes you, you.

I don’t like the men that kept my father awake at night.

There are reprecussions here, smaller ones. One of them, I think, is your stomach flu but that’s just my haphazard theory on how hypochondria works.

We’ll see.

Thank God I’m Sober.

“I yearn for muscles to ache so much that all I can do is sleep so i can chalk this heart ache to a tiring day.”

I got what I wanted. My feet is keeeling meeh. Apparently I don’t need alcohol at all to get really high. Just give me two weeks of unadulterated stress and a rock concert. You’ve got a girl ripe enough to lose it. Her mind, that is.

I had fun with the girls! No self-consciousness whatsoever. Who cares if we’re obscene, right?

Okay, I do. In a few days, evidence shall resurface that will probably mortify me some years down the road. Probably? I can’t remember how I looked. That’s the whole point: forgetting about how I appear and doing something because I felt like it.

It was a great end to a tiring week.

Good night.

It All Started with..

Lunch: some ramblings on the sociology of religion, Shiite revolution and academia. None of them mine.

“So is it just something you are born into or something which you have chosen to accept as true?”

I am somewhere in between. Can’t you just allow me that space and time for me to choose what I believe in? It’s not even a choice. It’s an inheritance. Allow me some space and time to come closer in the only way I know how through books, dialogues and rituals. This faith is the most important thing i inherited from my father. I have an odd relationship with it. Religion has constructed my world for the better half of my life.

And then, it fell apart.

You can analyse it from a socio-economic perspective, the issue of ethnicity and race, the politics of ex-spouses and kin, islamic family law or just simply another bildungsroman.

Sometimes you catch yourself feeling sad. When life has had the chance to carve sorrow so deep, laced with a heady cocktail of guilt, anger, fear and hatred, it’s only natural for you to grow a thick hide. Of course the scars heal over. Just when you think you feel numb enough to tell an account of your life to a stranger uncoloured by emotion, floodgates break several hours after.

I don’t have to explain myself. It’s not self-pity if you can’t see me cry.

I pretend things are okay when i catch myself coming home to a quiet apartment, unable to sleep. I drown in music and in other people’s words but i feel miserable. Do I deserve this feeling of mysery when everything is going okay? Do I have to explain why I don’t feel hungry? Do I have to explain why it’s sickening to see you laugh and stuff your face with food as if this was a celebration? This was a farce.

You don’t care. But I can’t. It sickens me that you can feel that way and I CAN’T.

So in the end you feel alone, cocooned inside your own deafening silence, without anyone else to pour your frustrations onto because you’re afraid of saying all it is you need to say and being judged or hurting another or worse, being unheard. I tiptoe around taking the politically correct route until in the end there’s nothing left to say. No expletives. Nothing. I’m looking for some cathartic release to set me free. So I write but even in writing I’d look at the words and see how ugly it is, how mean it is, and i don’t want to read it anymore and poof it goes to the trash. 

I yearn for muscles to ache so much that all I can do is sleep so i can chalk this heart ache to a tiring day.

nothing more.

“Maybe it means that the rest of your life will be peaceful now”

I hope so. But nothing is for certain.

A Little Less Madness.

Despite the kind of crap i spew out here, in real life (where actual things happen) I’ve been a little swamped with three presentations, two reports, an exhibition, an assignment, two performances to pull off within the space of 9 days. Insane much?

I didn’t want to write about it because a) I don’t want to turn my bitching into self-fulfilling prophecies and b) it’s probably about classmates that you know and how much i reaaaaaaaaally don’t like them and their whining and their procrastination and their excuses and their non-cooperation. Generally, how much of an aneurysm they are to me.

That’s not very nice and i think I’m capable of very colorful expletives. I’m a responsible writer. I know I’m already someone else’s headache so let’s just keep the good karma okay?

Keeping things inside does nothing good for my system. I think it appears on my face though which is why I probably look like a monster for the last 5 days.

So, I’ve taken a breather.

Now: I have an interview with 93.8fm, a presentation, a research paper, an assignment and one final exam plus Diaspora.

yep. After that madness? This is totally manageable.

I’m not a man, not yet a woman.

I’ve spent too many days lately pretending I’m a child to court affections. Allow yourself a weakness, she said, so they’ll be strong and have a reason to be there for you. Guys aren’t looking for a comedian, sweetheart. They’re looking for an audience. Sweet, coy, unassuming, demure, unintimidating, safe,

enough

 I’ve read so much psychological babble about love from the biological makeup of attachment, the evolutionary aspect of choosing a mate to the psedo-intellectual ramblings of a dating blog found in stray pieces online. Yes that’s sad. I’m sick of this. Sick sick sick of it, Kinsey and Freud.

Between being hypersensitive and oblivious, think I’ll stick with the latter from now on. If you like me, hit me with a frying pan.

I am pretty sure you can google any cure for any ailment. Ask Jeeves! He’s your modern day apothecary. But you can’t cure what ails me if what ails me isn’t a sickness really.

Oh forget it. I’m moving on. My baby diaspora is crying for attention. Our Agenda and Perspektif section is growing in unexpected ways with so many possible collabs in the future. Big names with big brains to boot, with very big boots too.

Dad: “The interview questions are good. So when does your exam end?”

Me: “You’re paying for the airfare?”

Dad: “and food and accomodation and clothes and fruit and vegetables. Hurry before the ministry starts doing actual work”

I’ve got thrills you can’t buy, baby. Bye bye.

How to Grow Tall.

You get to a point in your life where you realise you are a singular entity: a being of your own design. To be single and still without pining for a future former lover. Forget you! You’re not my salvation. Open up the folds of skin around your eyes and there’s an entire path laid out before you, some bright world that was always there. The colours seeped at the folds of your graduation gown some three and a half years ago. Where’d you go, girly girl? You were bubbly, caustic, brash, random, and an organized hurricane when you wanted to be.

This time it is different. I am different.

I’m comfortable in my own shadows which swelled quietly into bloom, I know that an iron will necessitates the softness of touch. There are always at least two ways of doing things; it’s a conscious choice. Language is kin, not foe. Numbers and the art of reading them is power. Love is a function, not a gift nor a feeling, so love thy neighbour. Make your own tribe. Ask a stranger. Know your priorities. Be kind, be honest, be present, be critical: things that we lack in this world. Don’t think (about some things). Think (about everything else).

Oh, grow up.

Let Me Have Your Words In My Mouth.

Bitter and metallic with a hint of sweetness. Is rust sweet? I’m irrevocably in love with your thoughts and the way your words line themselves up for an action: a stab, a twist and a surrendered palm. You exist. Your words exist and I devour them.

You do not offer salve nor quick conclusions. No balm is offered but by being close to the visceral, there is penance.

Maybe? I guess. I don’t know.

I want your courage.

Week 11

was fantastic. really. ups and downs, twists and turns. sweet apparitions and toils and troubles and much tears. A lot of tears. Actually too much tears that I care to admit. My face feels like a twisted mop.

 But there were some real good times and highlights. Tiny gestures and small words that can make your feelings soar. I wrote it in detail but i realised how incredibly mundane it is to you. But not to me.

I suppose that’s life.

Sherri

First time i log on to MSN in yonks and this happens…

Sherri says (10:36 PM):
hi

elle says (10:36 PM):
hi

Sherri says (10:36 PM):
hi how are you today?

elle says (10:36 PM):
i’m sorry may i know who you are?
=/

Sherri says (10:36 PM):
my name is  paris I’m doing great today I’m 21 yrs old how old are you?
listen hun, I am just about to start my webcam show with jen, come chat me there in my chat room? We can cyber, I will get naked if u do..lol!

elle says (10:36 PM):
HAHAHAHA
bai sherri

Sherri says (10:37 PM):
I can show u how to watch free if u promise not to tell anyone else how to do it???PLEASE

 

 

If anyone is interested her email address is sherribobili@hotmail.com.

I wonder what happens when two bots meet: cyber and make lots of cyber baby bots?

See you in three weeks

Week 11 was pretty fantastic. This upcoming few weeks though? not so grand.

Toodles.

Like A Blind Date with a Dozen.

I have butterflies in my stomach, the kind you get before a date. I suppose this is like a blind date: I don’t know if they’ll come, how many will turn up, who they are and if we’ll get along at all.

I feel queasy and it feels great! With so many of the unexpected lovelies you meet, this had to come in the midst of five projects (with presentation and reports). I wished I had cleaned up my life before this but i suppose this is how it works sometimes.

I’ve got a really good feeling about this somehow. I think this is going to be one of my favourite babies.

Circa 2010 and Beyond.

I used to think i was on the forefront of web design but that’s false now. I am so circa 2005.

My HTML is dismal and my CSS is best described as ‘trial and error’. This is good news. It means that all throughout university i was learning something else. But I’m kicking my programming fingers into operation this term. Yes thank you Mr. Sumi. Three years of foobar on Visual Basics is finally paying off. Lo and behold, the payoff is dismal though. Oh well. Better than nothing.

Some social science students tend to recoil when it comes to numbers. It’s just numbers! Most of the math that you’ll encounter in an average smoo lifetime (if you didn’t major in QuantFinance, OpsMgmt, Accountancy or Econs) is often solely confined to statistics. Shut up and suck it up, folks. Statistics is your bread and butter if you align yourself with the behavioralists. Even if you lie on the other end of the spectrum (and i really do love and respect ethnography and its kin) understanding the language of math is important! Pay attention to the beginnings of an economic model (not the conclusion) where they state their assumptions. Economists could very well get away with murder. We’re partly to blame for not wanting to understand their language.

All the amazing works out there right now stems from interdisciplinary roots anyways.

No, it’s not good enough to cling to beliefs that Everybody Fails CAT or the like, though it’s likely that most people do fail the subject. So much the better for me!

The attitude for 2010 and beyond changes.

Starting now.

Shut Up and Get to Work.

I’m having the kind of day where you forget that all you ate for sustenance was two cookies for breakfast and a cup of coffee. Your tummy rumbles inside a meeting that you’re supposed to be leading but you know you’re rapidly losing control of.. well the meeting was okay, actually, it’s fine…. You’re just not completely sure whether you’ve grasped everything there is to grasp. Daniel doesn’t mind if you scream. 

Your body is feeding on reserve fat cells, turning them into glucose. It’s 4pm and you’ve got another meeting to go which rapidly spirals into an argument between two former lovers.  Her life is inside a suitcase with somewhere to go and nowhere to sleep tonight. What can you do?  You offer a room but you’re just a bystander. Deer in headlights. 

What the fark just happened here? You print a copy of the work over hushed tones and declare yourself a secret understudy. In the space of 24 hours you have 45 people to answer to outside of work which makes you happy, strangely. No you’re not confused, frustrated or panicking; you know exactly what to do.

That’s the weirdest part.

I’m having that sort of day.

All I need right now is a plate of food, a steady internet connection and maybe, a cup of coffee.

Long night tonight. Here we go.

Declaring Independence.

All at once, I don’t feel foreign at all. I don’t belong anywhere.

You know what, screw these socially constructed notions of nationality. I’ve had it, trying to fit in. I’ve had it trying to make concessions and going all out so i won’t lose touch with. with what exactly? So we worry about having anchors, worry about having nothing to say to one another but there it is you see: SMALL TALK.

I’VE HAD IT WITH BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT.

I’m making my own tribe.

Love Thy Neighbour.

I am hesitant to write about politics. I am not afraid of my opinions. I have lived here for eight years and Singapore is part of who I am but I cannot lay claim to it. I am afraid because I do like to live here. Remember I am a lowly migrant, humbly seeking a rice bowl in this lovely country.

It is a lovely country. I admire your pavement. I’m not being sardonic. I really do admire your flawless roadwork.

Peerless.

Dinner with Chloe finally! I know you’ll scoff at this but I missed you, for all the reasons I have outlined over dinner.

This is all I have lately. Not a lot of our lives are fit for print. It’s really not that interesting. Sometimes when it is interesting, it is often something that should not be written.

And that? That is the end to all the emo you’re going to get. I promise!

Also in other news I need fresh blooooood. BLOOOOOOD!

To a humanist,

You!

Yes, you!

I hope you’re happy now!

(=

Maybe when it all works out, you’d be one of the many proofs that
It exists.

as real as dust.