Friday, March 30, 2012

the past is catching up with me...



I've been having disturbing 'clashes' with the past.
its like my past is haunting me or something.
so, on thursday after choir, i took the bus with emily because its more fun than taking the bus alone.
so we were on the bus, talking about her beautiful drawing of what i saw as a young chinese revolutionary with the fire of communism blazing in his eyes, and what she saw as a poor sad chinese man.
then, i saw a person.
wow, miriam, very smooth, like you don;t see people every minute of your life.
No, no, this person was from my primary school.
he belonged to the days when i wore black clips that pulled my hair tightly to the sides of my head and tied my hair in two plaits and mastered the art of walking around with my head buried in a book and not falling over.
he belonged to the days when i was a mouse of a girl, who had her comprehension papers snatched away and had to chase after the four fastest runners of the class to get it back (to no avail), and who was almost shut up in the tiny broom cupboard on her birthday with the strange boy who sat there in the dark during recess.
not exactly days i relished.
i think he recognised me, because he gave me a strange look (which i returned with the blur one i conjure up specially for occasions when i see vaguely familiar people that i don;t want to recognise or be approached by)
Then, a few stops later, another boy from my primary school got on and off the bus.
Now, here i musts stop and states the significance of these sightings.
Throughout my secondary school life, i searched the faces of the students at the bus stops to recognise anyone from my primary school, more from the novelty than anything else.
and i had not seen a single one in my life (save for a fleeting glimpse of a friend from AC barker, and the embarrassing periods when an ex HPPS turned SJI boy waits at the same bus stop as me).
Then, when i was walking across the over head bridge, who would i bump into but a girl from my primary school who said "Oh, hi! Hi :)" (you could almost see the smiley) eagerly and nervously. I returned and uncertain "h-hi"
and when i got to my tuition class, guess what?The boy sitting across the table from me just had to be someone from my primary school as well
Coincidence? i think not.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

a-chewing a-mooing to pass the hours away


my family is crazy, we drank three litres of milk in one evening.
i think i accounted for half of that amount.
haha im basically half cow now.

sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain







Ugh toille now that i've found out who thou art...REALLY? thou art a figment of my imagination called rehctelf toille. I mean, really....
(haha OWX this is for you <3, in remembrance of my super fail!!!)
good bye forever thy sec 2 ghost :)
NEW CHAPTER IN MY LIFE STARTS NOW

Foster the people


Why must the US government be so sticky about the adoption process?!?!?!
poor Jan Hai, who has no emotional ties to Laos, and in all but totally absorbed into his new family, can't be officially recognised as their child till they have lived with him overseas for 2 years.
I mean, whats the point? In those to years overseas they aren;t contributing to the US economy or anything so why???
"and Miriam was provoked to righteous anger..."

mushrooms


this poem was in my mining for meaning book (which we do for lit and i just randomly read while mrs neo rambles on about 'housekeepng matters' and 'blasting us to kingdom come')
Anyway i really love it, i can just envission the little mushrooms growing slowly and almost sinisterly during the night while humans quietly slumber unaware of the monumental achievement the fungi outside their window have just performed. (heh im getting all mushy about mushrooms)

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Rejuvenated


Just had the BEST ballet lesson EVER.
(apart from the part where i couldn't point...)
the first girls feet are mine, symbolising the infant stage of my pointe ability
the second girl's feet are emily's/gabrielle's becasue of their amazingly flexible feet
Jealous all#

Monday, March 19, 2012

as i was walking to school one morning


i saw two squashed snails on the path today.
they were terrible omens because true to my thoughts, my day was terrible.
First, i didn;t realise there was a new timetable and thus i was wearing the wrong uniform and didn't have all my books
second, my history test was bad
third, i drew on my uniform by accident
fourth, all the flushes in the toilet weren't working
fifth, i dropped my new yellow water bottle
sixth, i got really bad news.
so today was a series of unfortunate events.
please let tomorrow be better

and thissssssss








Stranger in a foreign place.


This was my english narrative essay and may i say i really was very proud of it.


Mrs Yang took a wary step forward. As the long queue snaked towards the immigration desk, Mrs Yang hastily smoothed down the fly away strands of hair, once jet black, but now peppered with strands of grey, that had escaped her tight bun during the tedious nineteen hour long flight. Dwarfed by the robust bulks of the Americans surrounding her, their pale white skin burgeoning out of their pin striped suits and their voices loud and brazen, Mrs Yang felt her confidence shrink equitably. Swallowing nervously, she glanced round, biting her lip in disappointment when she realised, not for the first time during her trip, that she was the only Asian in sight. American after American breezed through the counter, many of them rugged veterans of air travel, well used to the endless checking and re-checking one was forced to submit to in order to enter a country. Mrs Yang had none of that experience, getting flustered and jittery as she approached the front of the queue.

“Next, Please,” came the call from the crisp, well-versed immigration officer, beckoning towards Mrs Yang authoritatively.

Mrs Yang stepped nervously toward the immigration desk of the airport. Clutching her rugged back pack to her chest, she cleared her throat, tiptoeing so that her fine-boned face was visible above the clean, clinical surface of the desk.

“Passport,” drawled the bored voice of the immigration officer, stretching out her hand imperiously in a gesture that could not be mistaken as an order. Mrs yang, recognising the universal hand signal for ‘give’ rummaged in her pockets for the cardinal red passport identifying her as a Singaporean national, making apologetic whimper at the impatient frown on the other women’s face. Sighing with relief as she found the worn, red book, Mrs Yang tentatively slid it across to the immigration officer.

“Please stand behind the white line,” said the women, already mechanically checking and stamping Mrs Yang’s passport. Mrs Yang hesitated, confused at the foreign command. Looking up from the passport and rolling her eyes in annoyance, the officer repeated in the loud, slow voice reserved for the aurally impaired “Please could you stand behind that line,” pausing after each word and adding exaggerated hand gestures akin to a busy parent shooing away a particularly pesky child. Mrs Yang felt her cheeks flaming as she stumbled backwards hastily. She hunched her shoulders defensively, as if making herself physically smaller could make her less conspicuous to the passengers behind her, some of who were smothering giggles, while others shook their heads and tapped their feet in irritation at the bumbling, scatty Asian woman.

Staring at the smirking woman behind the desk, Mrs Yang felt hostility and frustration build up within her. She had taken a last minute decision to visit her son, who was studying in an American university, putting aside her fear of that vast unknown country and drumming up her courage to finally buy her air ticket. Her fear of entering a country full of unknown people and places, to a woman who had never set foot outside Singaporean soil, and who avoided travelling further from her home than she could help, the terror she had confronted when deciding whether or not to take the plunge and visit her only son as well as the constant distress that had plagued her on her trip had bordered on xenophobia.

It had not helped that the flight had been a sequential series of catastrophes. First, she had trouble finding her gate, the strange English characters seeming alien and unwelcome to an illiterate woman who only understood her native dialect. Then, the Chinese herbal medicine she had carefully packed away for her son had been confiscated at the security scan, and only after a brief struggle with the security guard attempting to throw away the precious bundle of ginseng and other traditional medicine she had carefully selected from her store was she told by a helpful, Asian, security guard that Traditional Chinese medicine was not allowed on the plane without a doctor’s prescription. On the plane, the air hostesses quickly learnt to steer clear of the dishevelled oriental woman whose requests in her native hokkien language, however polite, had no way of being understood by the English speaking hostesses.

Now, faced with an inhospitable immigration woman, Mrs Yang was sick and tired of being treated like a second class being, whether the derogatory treatment was intentional or not. The confusion and distress she had been feeling throughout her journey seemed to culminate within her, and from the maelstrom of fear and anger came a righteous sense of injustice.

She did not fear the immigration woman, she had experienced too much in her grim life, now reaching a span of four score years. Fear was seeing your father marched away with countless other fathers, brothers and uncles, herded into steel trucks by Japanese soldiers who barked and screamed. Fear was watching your mother keen silently in the agony of losing a husband, and realising that your father would never return, but you could not weep or wail in grief for fear of being overheard and reported to the very men who caused his disappearance. Fear was being married to a man you had never seen till your wedding day, having to learn quickly the art of being a good wife, despite never having been taught by a mother so ravaged with sorrow that she lost the will to provide for her children, who had to rely on the good will of neighbours to scrape by. Fear was watching as your firstborn child sickened and died in your arms, wailing and crying, tormented by a fever that you neither had the medicine nor the means to allay. Fear was watching as your only son left to a new land, and cursing yourself for the myriad of things unsaid, the deeds undone.

So Mrs Yang did not feel fear, yet she knew that it would take a monumental amount of courage to take the discrimination she was facing, the subtle digs and incivility that seemed omnipresent in this professed country of equality.

Throughout her life, spent in deference to the people around her, she had never contested the natural assertion of superiority many people seemed to assume over such a meek woman, from her husband, to her son, and even the lowly hawkers on the street. However, the authority they had assumed had been the respectful firmness fitting to a lady of her seniority and rank. The base, malicious jibe of this woman had hit her deep. Her spiteful mockery of Mrs Yang in public had caused Mrs Yang to lose face, something Mrs Yang’s strong sense of pride could not live down.

Yet, the ancient value of courage that had been drummed into her since young stopped her from bursting into tears or lacerating the insensitive woman with her tongue. Her devout buddhist faith had not stopped her from exploring other religions, and she vaguely remembered that “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head”.  True courage came from within, and the trials of her life had cultivated a steely courage within this wisp of a woman, a vein of strength masked within her docile actions and delicate features.  The true test of one’s inner steel were at situations such as these, and courage did not require one to brazenly declare one’s own superiority, but rather to accept the very same actions from those who did so. It was a matter of defying the age old adage “and eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth”, and being gracious in the face of adversary.

Mrs Yang breathed deeply, trying to regain her composure, making a small gasping sound akin to that of a diver coming up for life sustaining air. The immigration officer looked up with a cruel smile playing on her lips. “Come,” she intoned, making elaborate gestures with her hands. Mrs Yang straightened her back, and walked to the counter, feeling that with every step she took she was ascending the steps of a guillotine.

“Here’s your passport,” the woman said, a self-satisfied smirk playing on her lips as she sensed Mrs Yang’s discomfort. Mrs Yang took her passport without a word, but before leaving the counter, she uttered the two English words that she had learnt in the course of the trip.

“Thank you,”

Those two words, said with the gentle lilt of an Asian accent, yet encompassing a hint of steel that was impossible to miss. Mrs Yang fixed a resolute stare onto the immigration woman who had taken such malevolent pleasure in demeaning her previously, and repeated her words, “Thank you,” she said, and then again. Three times she said those two words, each time her voice strengthened, mounting in intensity till it seemed she was addressing not just the woman gazing shame facedly at her desk in front of her, but at the room of people who had seen no wrong in joining in taunting the clumsy, dull Asian oddity.

Ashamed at her bigotry, and cowed by the sheer force of courage Mrs Yang projected, the woman behind the counter looked down shiftily, ashamed. Sliding the red passport back along the counter, she whispered in a cracked, dry voice, “I apologise,” before looking up, the moment gone, her brisk, business-like veneer once again cast upon her face and the brash cry of “Next, please,” escaping from her parted lips.

Mrs Yang picked up her pass port, and left, taking her courage with her.

and this




Tell me you aren't hungry after seeing this...





Sunday, March 18, 2012

island in the sun


This weekend was an ice cream week end.
friday night, ben and jerry's chocolate fudge brownie and vanilla with rebecca and james and hannah and tim while watching africa united! woohoo
saturday after lunch, reverso and banana nananananana from island creamery (do you knwo there's an island creamery in holland V)  perfect combination i swear;
after that i also buy cupcake cases from a cool professional cake shop banana cupcakes to come plus lemon drizzle cake. lemon drizzle cupcakes maybe?
Sunday; more Ben and jerry's, same flavours, trying to hide away from jan hai who is allergic to dairy. give him shortbread instead.

creepy


like emily, this toille person is totally freaking me out.
who art thou?

once is gone, its gone


sunday morning rain is pouring


Sunday.
smiling at someone who used to make my tummy twist
his smile is still so beautiful but that doesn't matter any more.
monopoly deal in a tiny room
laughing at the boys who think they're so cool
ok they kind of are
running downstairs cos there's food.
balancing a three plates on my arms successfully
feeling lika boss (as james' phone says)
in the room.
small chair cos i'm cool like that.
eating watermelon but leaving the pips.
swinging jan Hai round
admiring his life-is-too-beautiful-and-it-amazes-me-every-time smile.
saving Jan hai from a flying ball.
racing in the lift up and down up and down.
Home
play play play with Jan hai bubbles everywhere
down his shirt in my hair.
wash up
rain pours down
James and Nic and hannah are in town
without an umbrella
so they come home,
listening to james play
yellow yesterday
someone like you
yellow submarine
(is it me or does he like yellow too?)
singing along from under a hat
wishing i could play the guitar like that

I love sundays too too much. i think i live out my life in a sequence of sundays and the days in between are me just scraping by to another sunday.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Life to you my sister


Get well soon emily :)
'life to you' (as my literature books says)

Friday, March 16, 2012

somebody to lean on









i love how harry and Hermione had a wholesome boy girl friendship that was nice and safe and good and friendly and they relied on each other for comfort and they didn't get jealous of each other or fall in love with each other. it is probably one of the most beautiful boy girl friendships of all time.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

the lorax

i went to watch this after my ballet exam (whih was not good and which i am feeling horrible about and so i shall not blog about it contrary to what i told emily)
and it (the movie) was surprisingly good! At first i thought it would be just a cliche, kiddy movie but it was really awesome.
it wasn't a movie that made me cry, but it was a movie that made me tap my feet and smile and laugh because of its preposterous funniness.
This is one of my favorite songs from it (it also happens to be the first song that is played, introducing the village of thneedville:) )
so yes go watch it if you want some laughs and cheering up.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

BEE a UTIFUL



How You Know
(this was not written by me)
 
You want to travel with them. You want to see what they’re like going through airport security, on planes, in strange countries. You want to meet their families and charm them to pieces. You want to nestle into their childhood beds and look around in the dark at all their old posters. You want to see all the embarrassing photos of them with braces and socks pulled up mid-calf. You want to hear all the stories about their drunken nights under the bleachers and their best friend’s jokes. You want to read all their journals, see how they took notes in high school. Did they use pen or pencil? What color highlighter? You want to work with them, just to see them work. You want to go out with them. You want to make out with them in the bathroom. You always want to touch them; you want them to always want to touch you.
You find reasons to disentangle yourself from them; it’s only going to hurt later, you can tell already. You stay up way past your bedtime for them. You look at the clock and know their schedule. You neglect other people and other things, and beat yourself up about it. But it’s like they have a hold of your hands and your voice, and you don’t mind. It’s like you’re trapped in an hourglass; you know your lungs might fill with sand, but there’s something sensual and comforting about the grains sliding down glass walls and pooling around your ankles, your knees, your waist.
You like things about their appearance that the rest of the world may cringe at and call strange, less than perfect. Their broken, reshaped noses; their little teeth or the gaps in between them; the way they pull their hair; their narrow hips; their wide shoulders; the depth of their pores. You can laugh when funny things happen in bed. You usually want to be in bed with them.
You think they’re smarter, better, friendlier, fitter, happier, more productive than you are. You strive to be as much as they are, as good as they are. You try to cheat and figure out what it is they’re going to teach you, if they’re going to fall from grace, if you’re going to play a part for them that you never thought you’d play before. You try and pull patterns and threads of meaning from the conversation or the way they looked at you the first time you met; what they did, what they offered. An apple stolen from the bar. Notes from a guitar. Pitchers of free beer. Pieces of bark with writing on them.
You cherish snippets of them; paste them up in your memories like old faded scrapbooks clutched to chests for generations. Their skin glows black and white in your head. They star in the little short films of your life that sneak up on you when you’re not looking. Like the walk to the South End for dinner on a quiet corner. The feel of the sun beating down on you both at an outdoor concert. The way they ordered wine on your first date. The slow swing of a hammock near a lake. The back seat of their car.
You can see yourself with them in the future you can’t quite see. You build apartments outfitted with all the right kitchen supplies and the perfect bed with two nightstands, each piled with books and magazines. You wait for them patiently while they chase their dreams; they wait for you patiently as you chase yours. You sit in bed eating dinner late at night, drinking tea and wine and whiskey as you tell each other all about the chasing. You create adopted dogs and cats; you have awkward conversations about money; you put up with each other’s crap. You see what they look like standing at the end of a candle-lit aisle in your grassy front yard and wonder if you’ll make it to the other end to meet them or if they’ll just end up in the scrapbook clutched to your chest or flickering on the screen in your brain.

water water everywhere


today was the wettest walking home from school day ever
if i didn;t have extended curriculum it would have never have happened
i would not have been clutching my file so hard that it left imprints in my arms so it wouldn't get wet
i would not have been walking round with a half dark blue (wet) and half lightblue (dry becasue i clutched my fiel in front of it) dress.
i would not have been walking in shoes that actually sloshed as i walked
i would not have been so wet that i could wring water out of my dress
water water everywhere
in my shoes
in my hair

Saturday, March 10, 2012

faster than a bullet


today i went running (as promised about three posts down)
some cosmic force must have been disgusted at my lame attempts to start (i would run for about 30 seconds, then stop because of a pain at my left lower abdomen, and then walk for a long long long time)
so it sent two (how do i say this) catalysts for me to actually start running properly.
First was the dog.
I'd been walking some time and i saw i card on the road.
curious, i picked it up.
it was a cash card
'dangerous to leave it on the road' i thought so i went to throw it away
but the minute i straightened up, i saw the dog
it was sandy coloured and staring at me.
i started walking again
i jumped up and ran at me growling
to prevent myself from suffering any harm i ran really fast, away from the dog (i know this is a stupid thing to do when a dog chases you but this one stopped. perhaps it was tired)
after a while i slowed down to a jog and surprise surprise, my tummy no longer hurt!
Then the second providential event happened.
it started drizzling. then raining. then pouring
it was so cooling to run in the rain, and i kept going until i realised that i was running in my new shoes which probably would not appreciate getting wet. so i stopped.
and now i'm waiting for my cookies to bake.

nit picking


my chinese teacher (who is the sweetest teacher in the school and gives us five minute naps when we feel tired.) has a very strange sense of time.
when class is nearly over she'll look at the clock intently and then say.
ok we have one minute left.
and then proceed to show us a chinese news video that takes five minutes to run.
?

half sleeping wakefulness


this has been my state of mind most of the week.
it was so bad on friday that when i did my chem test i thought that 0.05 was 1/5 of 0.1 !!!! :(
and i almost killed myself on wednesday when i failed to notice that the traffic light was red and just bloidly followed the people walking in front of me across the road and was just a hairs breadth from being squashed by a taxi.  when i finally got to the other side.
bad week.

you'd better run


i'm going running to feel good and exercised and healthy so i can eat my chocolate :)
after that i shall follow my to do list and:
1) bake chocolate chip cookies (no toby, not a lemon drizzle cake, i've baked them 2 weeks in a row on saturday and both timesyou missed your chance.)
2) do an essay
3) do a log sheet for things fall apart (i think the title of my lit book is so ominous, being the superstitious sometimes creature that i am)
4) ballet practice
5) BALLET

What is it about ghim moh that calms me


roti prata and iced milo and browsing through shops that sell guppies and slabs of meat and thin batik dresses and i'm perfectly content.