Hey, Lucre! Bon voyage!

Today I officially began my slow...no, make that despairingly quick...descent into the realm of Pauperdom. Not quite the exotic South Indian cracker one dips into molten lava alias fish head curry, Pauperdom is the place you do not want to be. Imagine having to live on seven dollars for the rest of the month and possibly beyond.

What goes around comes around. Yet, unfortunately for me, my money never came back. It said goodbye, bid me adieu and dashed off to find sweet somnolent solace in the sanctum of whichever cash register, wherever. All it left me as a note of goodbye was a cruel, cruel receipt to remind me unbashedly, "Look at how you let me go."

I'm sorry, Money, that I have disloyally detached your sometimes red, sometimes purple, and sometimes, on good happy sunny weather cloudless skies early buses empty trains short queues nice people days, blue face from my now shrinking pocket. I never meant to treat you this way but other things seemed too lovely. I wish there could have been another way. But, alas, no.

Will we reunite? Will you come back in the ghostly figure of "hell money" while devout spirit chasers burn you by the roadside, destroying my bronchioles and plugging my vision with the hazy fog of a ghostly appartion: you, Money, rising up into the blue, blue, oh, so blue like your face once was, sky? Will you remember me? Will you remember how sometimes I'd peek into your chamber to see if you were still there, and how I vistited your family and looked through the Automatic This-is-where-your-money-is-but-it-won't-be-for-long Monitor (ATM) to make sure they were safe?

Do not forget me. Remember, if ever you need a place to stay, my house is your home.

bonjour, everybody

Well, in the past week I have lost 4 kg. I have either been crying too much that my tear glands, not known to me, are slowly performing a gentle improvisational dance in the character of shrivelled prunes, or I have simply stopped eating. Even though I do not cease to wonder at the layers of would-be lard hanging from around what used to be my waist, no, I am not anorexic.

Ca va? Ca va. (Note to self: must stop making up monologues in French in my head.)

I think I am hopelessly doomed to spend much of my campus life wandering the halls solo, and climbling the god-awful steps that only seem to get higher, steeper, fiercer everytime I face them with my size 6 feet. I beg the stairs, please, move on your own today, but I am always rudely refused by the realisation that technology (read: escalators) have not quite reached that part of the world yet.

The West is such a pain. No Jackie Chan dressed as a cowboy. No Will Smith walking into a saloon. No horses, donkeys, or pigs, unless you consider my schoolmates which/who generally can be classified under the Animal heading. The more I see/hear Ah Lians speaking in Chinese about how heavy their workloads are, the more I envision Hell to be a never-ending mural of Para Para machines, pink neon lights and Hello Kitty fornicating in a corner with the Daniel dude.

Let us not even think about the long train rides where if I get a seat, I face a multi-racial advertisement for open-mouthed sleeping, and loud MP3s blasting Pussycat Dolls and Nickelback and, funnily enough, The Beatles. And while I am talking about public transport, the Stalinist figures of the bus drivers and they do a Gestapo and force us mules to the back of the bus. (Rosa Parks, what has become of your legacy?) More and more, I realise I am stuck in some socialist regime. I spend up an average of 6 dollars a day standing in a bus or train.

I am broke, damned spot, broke. Je ne comprends pas! Je deteste!

because you like it

I am selling Sex And The City's first season on VHS for only S$45. I got it brought in from New York because Singapore tends to be a bit of a prude sometimes. It's in excellent condition, orignal and let's face it, "vintage". If you want to get it, you know where to find me.

in my sleep she haunts me still

It slithered to me, close like brothers’ breath.
It writhed like old men dying from their youth.
Beside me the moon and those faint, dark stairs.
By this table you love not who you choose.

When night descends the figure to me comes
and with it brings the water where I drown.
Time waits behind a quiet lonely dance
to watch me slay the slip’ry beast alone.

I call for you but you no longer hear
my voice, my cry, the echo of my blade
which stretches forth from hands and now, my dear,
all’s left is its black fins and bleeding head.

We walked apart that night as red dripped slow.
I left to follow where my soul did go.

i was so bored

I wrote a sonnet in class, as a silent subtle cry for help.

"His voice begins to never end.
A preacher before these thousand faces.
The light behind him frames the man
While hush dissolves these hundred voices.

My pen must write, what mouths! what eyes! what heads!
Until I lose my hands in deathly quiet.
Until the man decides his time must fade
For the woman now to amplify a fire.

She says "suspicion" and she says "mistrust"
Into her hand her words escaoe, grow loud
Like wounds that burst and now they fester pus.
The faces front, she calls, "prevailing mood".

Now as I stop the blue of ink to hear
I vanish fast among the people here."

If this carries on, Shakespeare will have nothing on me.

(Oh, there is hope in dreaming.)

ok computer

Today I realised just how much I think my school rates on the Wahlao-o-Meter. I am enjoying myself so little that I am considering dropping out and working at A&W in Johor. (Choy, touchwood.) If I do, I'm not sure how often I'd come back to visit all of you. Probably rarely because I suffer from motion sickness and hardly want to spend my weekends spewing the most of my digestive system onto the roadside and/or the person in front of me. Unless the person is...okay, let's not go there today.

My school is so ridiculous that the female toilets are on separate levels from the male toilets. Apparently, they seem to think that we would find those guys attractive enough to want to listen to them pee/crap/do the unmentionable through the ventilation shaft. The truth is: no, never, no, no, no. There is such a pseudo-intellectual plastic kinetic boy in my French class that has thoroughly put me off all the school's men, unborn foetuses included.

In an ominously misdirected move, I was twenty minutes late to my first class of the year. If this is a portent, I am hanging myself out to dry. I hate all the bureaucratic red tape in this school that just screams civil service. Inefficiency is a crime against humanity, people. Keep up with the real world that does not - I pray, oh, I pray - run on emails and form-filling and "Please submit relevant documents by [insert date] or [insert convincing threat]." Observation: 'relevant' is subjective. Question: 'relevant' to what exactly? My potential happiness and/or sanity or your stress-related arthritis?

Why education? Why democracy? (Which, in case you did not notice, does not actually exist in our part of the world.) Why civilisation, O Ancient Revered Forefathers?

If anything, at least I was depressed enough to write a sonnet.

allaroundbackgroundsound: Llyod, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken - Camera Obscura; I Love You Ono - Stereo Total

photobooth

Check it out.

Other than my intense involvement in NDP, there is nothing to report about. I have remained my same height and unfortunately/fortunately my same weight. My hair is still black, my eyes are still brown. The last I checked, all my fingers and toes are in the same place God intended them. My name has not changed, nor my address. I still love chicken, I still sleep at night and wake up in the morning.

I still have my friends. I'm still lactose intolerant but that doesn't mean you can keep me away from milo bing or milk. I'm still broke, except that I get broke-r every day. I still hate one particluar girl (names & details not available for download but you can call and ask - I'll most likely end up screaming about her), I still hate her this(












)much and it only increases. I still would like to know why/how/what. I love movies and books and bumming around. My toenails are still painted red, I still hate school and it hasn't even started.

I still love India. I still plan to go there before I get bombed out. I still wonder at war but I think there is no such hope as peace. I still read about North Korea. I still read about cults. I still think Michael jackson is innocent and if you don't, you're no friend of mine. I still drink Green Tea, I still like Root Beer, I still crave cheese fries from KFC. I'm still praying to be skinny until my ribs show. I still get tired of people and places and things. And I'm still me and it sounds kind of boring.

allaroundbackgroundsound: Photobooth - Death Cab For Cutie

happy birthday!

[Insert fireworks here.]
[Insert my laughter here.]

allaroundbackgroundsound: All The Fish in The Sea Are Stupid Sluts Anyway - Big Japan

three days to ndp

I can hardly wait.

It is the biggest excuse to break the no-firecracker law and set off an army of fireworks to dazzle prying eyes for seconds before they recede fading, literally, into dark oblivion. And let us not forget men jumping out of planes and helicopters reminding us, "This is what your flag looks like" because, really, it's so hard to remember. I feel comforted knowing that in the event of war, our soldiers know how to operate parachutes and wave flags to the tune of screaming people.

Then, the goodie bags: every year an assortment of the best Malaysian-produced biscuits and obligatory bottles of New Water (Olivia Lum, is Malaysian, God bless her kampong soul), torchlights that feel as cheap as they look. The spectacular pyrotechnics will amaze the young toddlers sitting on their grandparents' laps, like a postcard snapshot from a coffee table book glorifying the culture of propaganda.

And then, there are those of us who can't get tickets and so we mope about how lame it is. (I actually prefer watching it at home - if I watch it at all - so count me out of the equation.)

This year it seems like a big thing to me that I actually may want to watch the encore telecast.

allaroundbackgroundsound: I'm Waiting For The Man - The Velvet Underground

Here is my fourth roll.