where thoughts materialise.

So we're into the sixth version of my blog after the last version hung around for a year or so.

Now, a bit of info on this image. This photo was taken one lovely spring afternoon, featuring the iconic Old Well from the UNC Chapel Hill campus. I would like to think of this image as a tribute to my time in UNC Chapel Hill, the awesome friends I made and the memories I now hold dear.

A milestone in my life indeed.

I've dropped the tagboard cos its useless and taking eons to load. But thanks to Angela who helped me set it up, I still do like and will miss the pink interface.

So yeah, it's the sixth one you fellas!

Yours.

27 April 2008

you know you miss my older entries

October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008

Monday, March 28, 2005

On Sin.

'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know Good and Evil...' Genesis 3:22

Aside : Don't you think these were rather enigmatic words spoken by God? Here, the Bible doesn't cleary state to whom the one God is speaking to, and - assuming he is unique - why he should use the expression 'one of us'.

Anyway. From its very inception, the human race has been condemned to exist within two eternal division, always moving between those two opposing poles. While the former is very much a taken, it is the latter part of the sentence that I find so intriguing.

We are intruments for both Good and Evil, and it's something I found hard to resolve for years. When Good and Evil are pitted against each other, is there a fraction of a second when Good will prevail?

There's a belief that Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of individual human beings.

And yet there's another, which seperates them as two complete entities, a fight between Good and Evil raging all the time in every individual's heart, which is the battleground where they would fight inch by inch for millenias in order to gain ground, until one of them finally vanquished the other.

The duality of Man. Which is what I have come to learn in this humble life. No situation can be totally good or bad, it is always ridden with both. How perfect can one be? It is an elysium unattainable.

But, I have found some sort of a resolution when pondering upon a perennial doubt. Why did Jesus ask the traitor to commit a sin at The Last Supper?

'So that scriptures would be fulfilled,' people would tell me.

But Jesus would never do that. In truth, He was pretty much a victim, as the traitor was. Why would He ask someone to commit a sin and thus leading him into eternal damnation?

Then, it all came together.
Evil had to manifest itself and fulfil its role, so that ultimately Good could prevail. If there was no betrayal, there would be no cross, no scarifice, no redemption.

Evil needed to be evinced if people were to understand the value of Good, and to finally move the hearts of people.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 10:43 AM

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Friday, March 25, 2005

Till, until.
(Tang don't start singing.)

Yes. Till and until.
Is it normal in life to be always waiting for something? To happen? To end?
An anticipation of a something to take shape.

On yearning.
To yearn is something different altogether though it overlaps the notion of waiting. Till, until.

Its connotation goes much deeper and bleaker. While it might be taken as a sense of hope, I rather read it is a melancholic desire. And as opposed to simply waiting, what we yearn for may never ever materialise. Which makes yearning something rather detrimental to our lifes. Building hopes up. Then after crashing them down occasionally.

But yet, yearning drives us on. Gives us a sense of purpose and keeps us going.
Essentially, we live our lives a gamble against time. Against the odds of the actualisation of our dreams. Until it entifies, we continue to place our bets and raise our stakes.

Seriously, what do you yearn for?
I personally feel that it speaks a lot about ourselves, where we position our priorities and what we truly value in life.

Yes we yearn and wait. And therein, our life.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 10:57 PM

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Wednesday, March 23, 2005

And so we've arrived
Past turbulent seas
Into the time coming
Just like it should be.

Now, turbulent seas would have sounded too cliched wouldn't it. And too bleak either. But we have indeed arrived, to this moment in time. Time that we have envisaged for so long, since so long.

One last look
At familiarity, which
Almost too soon
Distorts to oblivion.

It's true. Time deforms memory and falsifies to a certain extent. All that I have come to know the past two years would one day, become a distant hazy memory.
I took one last walk around the department. Good bye to you, and you, and you, and you.
No looking back now. It's forward we go.

Into the horizon
Silhouettes take shape
Orange clouds roll by
As we embrace the imminent.
So long..! And farewell !

Dammit, I'll miss the guys at work. A truly exceptional bunch.

My NS days have officially become history. And it now lives only in the confines of my memory. And I'm glad to lay it to rest.

* *

SUSAN

...What do we do now?

A long silence.

YOUNG MAN

It will come to us.

Susan smiles, the fireworks finale goes off, the MUSIC comes up from below, the night fills with light. The Young Man searches Susan's face, now takes her hand -- and together they start walking back towards the party.

THE END

nimgnoy let the night fall at 4:34 PM

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Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Time consumes.

Consumes like fire with a wild appetite. Every moment elapsed is every moment passed on to antiquity. Even the present as we know it slips through our fingers ever so (too) quickly.

And tomorrow, a new chapter of my life begins. A ticket to civility and freedom.

Oh, I'm so hungry now. Hungry for the future.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 5:02 PM

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Sunday, March 20, 2005

I just realised, not that it suddenly happened but rather it was there all along undisturbed, that I am still languid about stuff as the time I first realised I was languid about stuff.

Gosh that was a rweally bad sentence but I can't exactly make it sound more concise.

* *

What's up with all the hype with a particular Miss Wendy Cheng's blog anyway?

I write with great reluctance and indisposition for tainting this entry with mentions of her, but hey, I guess I should air my thoughts.

What good is a website that scoffs and belittle? And what's more important is, what does it say about the thousands of people that actually (I abhor at this incredulity), that actually love reading it?

Well. I personally feel that, to be entertained by all that bitching shows a trend of how inhibited in expression we are these days. Environment, stress, whatever. But to release and relieve that stress through enjoyment at the expense of such low morals is the main point of contention here. How low have we become?

There could be a voice we are unable to project, a voice so desperately seeking to be heard, and people frantically embrace someone who bogusly steps up to do what they can't, however low it may be. Very blindly, very mindless if I must add. And a particular Miss Cheng embodies that voice, for some (okay, for many judging by her hits).

What's wrong with the world mamma?!

* *

These days, being nice is indeed boring.

There's a growing penchant for people to like someone who is cheeky, morally deviant, has a I-don't-give-damn-for-the-world attitude and utters vulgarity maybe. Punk appeal if I can sum it up.

And I figured, that humour (in the form that Miss Wendy Cheng champions for) - the crudely derogatory one, is a slothful and whimsical alternative for what she lacks in every aspect of her being, or simply the loose change she keeps between her ears.

But ensuingly, being nice prevails.

Tested, proven and totally experienced.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 10:22 AM

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Wednesday, March 16, 2005

I've been bothered of late, by a question that seems totally irrelevant in my life now.

"What would you change in your life, if you had the means to go back in time to do so?"

And I wonder who, or what, ever implanted that question into my head. Fuelled by what I perceive as an avid desire to reach a resolution, I couldn't let this question rest.

Night after night before I sleep, this question presents itself to me, paraphrased or not, right smack into my face. And I'm forced to think about it - a few sleepless nights as a consequence.

And there again, I look back into my life, and begin the ardous task of sifting through memories left untouched since the moment they were created. The formulation of memory has always fascinated me, but that's for another post, another inspiration, another day.

It is easy to lose yourself to the past, to lose track of what one is exactly looking for amongst reminiscence - especially so if the question in mind is as vague as the above.

An easy way out of course would be the standard-beauty-pageant answer that, there is absolutely nothing one would change, because events in life - good or otherwise - moulds and shapes one to what he has become today. (Pardon me for the masculine pronoun.)

Too easy an answer I thought. I can't and wouldn't buy that. What I am searching for has to be more than just that.

But I digress.

So I figured that, an event in life I would want to change, would be one where a mistake has been made, and yet refusing to learn from it, thus allowing it to reoccur.

And I finally found the answer late last night, of which much of the details I wish to withhold.
Well, the purpose of this entry is not my resoultion, but yours.
Go think about it.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:44 PM

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Monday, March 14, 2005

Night has its effect on me.

When all goes silent and weary, I write my best and most confessional. And it seems like with darkness, I let my guard down and my inner thoughts start to unravel.

Was I never meant to face the light?

Illumination. It's ironical how the night elucidates who I am. And it is within this obscurity I see myself in a better light.

It is similar how the night only makes the moon brighter and apparent. The grandiose of the vast blackness reaching out to the furthest ends of the horizon, embracing its cosmogonical residents. And our souls do reside in the night.

Reflection. Decipher.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 11:35 PM

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Saturday, March 12, 2005

Can I just shout out fuck?

Fcuk! Nopes, that was a typo error. Fcuk - which, by the way, I used to adore - is now a total crap. I imagine a bunch of half-witted designers (french or brits, i have no idea) giggling puerilely each time they think of some tagline that incoporates 'fcuk' in it. They get the kick out of spoofing fuck. Toying with fuck that's not really fuck. Distasteful, those imbeciles.

And i was saying - Fuck! No, actually what I really mean is FUCK!

FUCK has more an impact than Fuck, wouldn't you say so?
ITS LIKE SCREAMING OUT AND HOLLERIN' YOU COULD IMAGINE MY LUNGS ALMOST BURSTING OUT ALREADY. While on the contrary, writing in lower case seems like I'm Michael Jackson saying 'I'll never hurt no little kid..' (innocent bleached face. blink blink. a sharper nose.(you could think pinnochio as well)).

Wow, I just did it - a parenthesis within a parenthesis. I thought I'd only see that in Maths. A pat on my humble back. Gosh, half rhyme!

And by the way, the saddest part of this Michael Jackson scandal is that all of this could have been avoided if he just stuck to grabbing his own crotch.

Which I digress so badly. And that human ain't it? To digress.

And back to where I said I wanted to shout out fuck.

Yes. When I look back at my posts, I do feel a slight awkwardness about it. This was me, then? (No, I don't remotely mean J. Lo.) Even entries I wrote a few days before seem eeky.

Like how I glorify friendships to the extent that I find it a little jarring to the eye. Or how I overtly paint an all-too-rosy picture of life.
And reality bites somehow, no, reality lacerates. Sometimes the practicalities of life just cannot be avoided.

But on hindsight, it's not a bad thing after all. Let reality gnaw, so we're constantly reminded to always look life in the eye. Face it, and then we can appreciate the good things when they come along. It's all about relativity. Perception.

So there, FUCK! I can't believe myself, writing like an eccentirc.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 9:46 AM

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Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Sometimes I force myself up late into hushed nights just so I waste time reading through nonsensical blogs that have little or no bearing to my life as a whole.

And in my mind, ideas for a blog entry get tossed around, remoulded and sculpted, twisted and paraphrased, and more often than not, it gets trashed into the gallows all together in the end.

I end up writing what was never in my mind.

I have always wanted to write a humourous entry, one that's easy reading and soothing to the eye and brain.

I try to be funny, but I can't.

I try to let the ideas flow but I think I lost my sense of humour somewhere along the alley a pretty long time ago.

I read Ellen Degeneres' books and wished I could make you guys laugh the way it made me smile. But I can't.

It's weird, this funny business of humour. I bet the process of producing something that tickles our funny bones isn't as easy the way it smoothly seeps into our consciousness and gets the happy hormones gushing through our bloodstream.

It's tough I must say! Like a clown in the circus ring making those children smile. Comedians take their job seriously. And I say that with a straight face, irony intended.

Feigned happiness, in my opinion.

And I got a feeling this post is turning into a pessimistic one, as most of my posts generally tend towards. Which might give you the misconception that I am one who is cynical and fatalistic.

I'm quite a happy person in fact. I know you find that hard to believe, but, trust me. In my mind, the world is beautiful. Blue skies, fluffy white clouds I could almost mistake as candy floss (now tell me, who in the hell sells white candy floss) , green grass I can sleep on, birds chirping relentlessly (surprisingly) without getting me irritated and all. And when no matter what life may present to me, I take it easy peasy. There's so much more to celebrate in life than to worry about.

Which is why I feel so irksome when I read people's blogs that seem to ooze negativity and much triviality in their lives.

Sometimes I force myself up late into hushed nights just so I waste time reading through these nonsensical blogs that have little or no bearing to my life as a whole.

And in my mind, ideas for a blog entry get tossed around, remoulded and sculpted, twisted and paraphrased, and more often than not, it gets trashed into the gallows all together in the end.

I end up writing what was never in my mind.

* *

This is purely an experimental post on cyclic writing. It was a less than satisfactory attempt.
And the irony of it all is that I do end up writing what I have in mind, well, more or less.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:11 AM

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Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Well, jus nostalgic about Melbourne.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 6:37 PM

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Monday, March 07, 2005

Phillip Island, Melbourne, Australia.
November 24th, 2004

* *

The only difference between this sunset from the one I last saw? The defined outline of the latter.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 9:38 PM

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Sunday, March 06, 2005

My eyes feel weary and I guess I'll quickly leave a post before heading to sleep.

I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets yesterday evening. And I bet anyone in Singapore would have experienced a certain extent of it.

I'm sure there might have been similar or even more brilliant sunsets before, but I just felt the vibe yesterday. The last time I saw such an awesome sight wasn't too long ago though, Phillip Island Melbourne, November 04.

Sundown was a warm glow. A magnificent orange that struck through all of the land and invigorating even the most inanimate object it laid its hands on.

All in its path shimmered a fervent luminosity, and even exudes an ardent cheer.

And in the urban horizon punctuated by skyscrapers, the sun stood still. It's outline distinctively clear as I saw its zealous incandescence encapsulated within.

All too soon, the sun takes a bow and the curtain falls. Or should I say nightfall.

Silence throughout.

* *

Sunsets like these happen all the time and given the right atmospheric conditions, it can be a lovely sight. All it takes is for one to sit down, put all cares and concerns aside and simply be in awe at nature's wonder show.

Nobody hardly takes the time to stop and appreciate nature these days, it's therapeutic in my opinion. Then, our lives seem so small. Like leaning out trying to grab the clouds - the more we try to reach out, the more insurmountable they become.

I wasn't even at a prime lookout point when I took in all of these. Just me and my grandma, sitting side by side in the balcony of her apartment.

And it was bliss in its simplest sense.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 11:23 PM

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Saturday, March 05, 2005

Check this out.
See how your English compares in the Commonly Confused Words Test!

Anyway, my results were:
You scored 93% Beginner, 86% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 83% Expert!

Tell me how you did.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 2:22 AM

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And it's perhaps why deaths are a quintessential part of life - they teach us how to live.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:57 AM

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Friday, March 04, 2005

Once again, my days begin to blur into each other. Sunny afternoons merge into each other and dusks gently break into dawns.

As Joseph aptly puts it, everyday's like Sunday.

And I'm not complaining at all. Life's been great to me. Well, the only thing irking me of course would be Martha Steward's release. I thought we had an agreement that she would be released the same week I ORD? Now she gets the taste of civillian life 19 days earlier than I do.

* *

As quickly as the dust is stirred, it settles at an equally comforting pace. The pieces remain the same, life still has a semblance of what it used to be like. The only difference now is how these pieces are rearranged, displaced. And all it takes is a little getting used to.

And when it comes to an event as huge as quietly losing someone I love, everything else seem to pale and become so trivial in comparison to its magnitude. Things that used to bother me didn't really seem to matter anymore, I ain't got no time for petty little things in life.

And suddenly, people who harp on these frivolous and measly insignificance of life irk me. It simply deems them childish and exemplifying the most disgreeable traits of our time. Life, as I mentioned before, takes on a whole new perspective.

It becomes evidently clear now what I want and need in life. Things that are important to me emerges starkingly eminent. Things like family, friends and a good education.
You have to know yourself, and do what you really want. Someone said this to me today. And I thank you for that.

Which brings me to my point. I feel I am unfittingly blessed, even in the situation that I am in now.

I am blessed with such a loving family who truly cares and love each other with the sincerest of hearts.

I am blessed with so many friends who'll stick with me no matter what. I feel no arrogance when I say that while others are blessed with a handful, I am unfittingly blessed with hordes. No nonsense, beyond superficiality. You guys know who you are.

I am blessed that, in this juncture of my life, events have made me realize what I really want to pursue and how lucky I am to be in the midst of all these.
Winners are simply willing to do what losers won't. Powerful.

And though I am going through the most trying phase of my life so far, Life has convinced me that nothing can ever be too bad or lousy. Take a deep breath and step back a little, life's worth living. Something beautiful and precious has come out of this, and I would always remember this as a defining moment of my life.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 5:00 PM

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