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

Saturday, April 30, 2005

I'm excited about Norway.

What started off as a random and insignificant suggestion of a trip of a lifetime has culminated to this.

Oslo, on the pinnacle of summer, I can't wait.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 5:02 PM

2 comments

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you
You're so like the lady with the mystic smile
Is it only 'cause you're lonely they have blamed you?
For that Mona Lisa strangeness in your smile?

Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa?
Or is this your way to hide a broken heart?
Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep
They just lie there and they die there
Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa?
Or just a cold and lonely lovely work of art?

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa..

nimgnoy let the night fall at 11:22 AM

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Wednesday, April 27, 2005

I feel certain I am falling ill. What was once a vague subtle malaise is now setting into my bones, and all over again, I am a stranger to vigour.

I wonder why some ladies on a rush hour train service to town, standing no less than a 10cm radius from everyone else, feel offended or even surprised when inertia occurs and my innocent hand happen to brush against their cellulite-packed butts.

Seriously, I can afford not to have that sort of gratification.

My sleep-debt has gotten the better of me. Signing out.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:26 PM

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Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami Beach or Hollywood.
I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River line
I'm in a New York state of mind.

Something about New York draws me. And to me, and many others - New York is certainly a state of mind we want to be in. Just like this Billy Joel song, an open love letter to the city.

I seen all the movie stars in their fancy cars and their limousines,
Been high in the Rockies under the evergreens,
But I know what I'm needing and I don't want to waste more time
I'm in a New York state of mind.

Capital city of the world, people call it. Everything there in magnificance and all due exaggeration stuns and stupifies. Even the greatest reality tv scene of the 21st century was staged in NY - 9/11 that is. Everything seems to be happening in New York.

It was so easy living day by day
Out of touch with the rhythm and the blues,
But now I need a little give and take,
The New York Times, the Daily News...

Or perhaps it's its icons that defines what New York means to us. Staten Island, Empire State, Trump, yellow cabs, Times Square just to name a few. The hustle and bustle of the streets with fast paced citizens in cloaks and suits, hands clutching onto a steaming frappe.

It comes down to reality-
and it's fine with me 'cause I've let it slide,
Don't care if it's Chinatown or Riverside,
I don't have any reasons, I've left them all behind
I'm in a New York state of mind.

No, I reckon it's more than just skyscrapers or the Statue of Liberty. New York is to us what we dream of. A postcard city, breakfast at Tiffany's with Miss Hepburn. We may have not visited New York, but yet we know it so well, as if it were tucked away somewhere in our backyards. And that's the New York state of mind, a paragon which allows us to escape and be free from the shakles of mundanity.

I'm just taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River line
'Cause I'm in a New York state of mind.

New York will always be exciting. A gargantuan stage set, an idyllic realm where dreams are created - and always room for reverie.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 10:30 AM

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Sunday, April 24, 2005

Images may take time to load, they're rather high in resolution.

So this is it, just like you said it would be.

Life goes easy for me, most of the time.

Last night was great.

Escaping into a world of friends.

Great food, even better company.

An ebullient chat, a debonair whisper.

Town, The Fullerton Hotel

We were happy, damn happy.

Our semi-private dining zone tucked in the city.

Here's all of us. It was a night with 9 of my best friends. Nine!
We adjourned to Alleybar then after.

15 vodka shots. I can't believe you guys.

I can't take my mind off all of you
I can't take my mind...
My mind...my mind...
Twas great. And I thank you guys - for being there last night, and for being with me everyday of our lives.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 10:06 AM

6 comments

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Whatever happened last night is with me and I remember it all.

Gosh my head still feels damn heavy.

Never would I have thought that I'd be spending my birthday like that.
And I'd have least expected that I'd be spending my birthday with you guys.
May I reiterate? A truly exceptional bunch.
Lewis, Yuzhen, Kaiwei, Weiyang and we can't ever forget...what his name? Jon.

Thanks for the Chivas, Jack Daniel and Martini shots. You can be sure its effects are long lasting. Fuck, my head.

And I had fun.

And how far can you actually plan in life when it's always the anomalous that gives life that little perk it needs after what seems to be an all-routine existence?
Living for the day, worries far away.

This will go down the history books I'm sure.

* *

And Yifang.
I'm so glad to have met you at Wala's.

Someone up there sure knows us well.
Spending the 12 o'clock hour with you seems to be the most appropriate of all. We practically grew up together. And you've seen me through everything, and I've seen you likewise.
I'm about to spill private memories, haha, but I'd better not. Best kept in our hearts.

So, cheers to us, our 12 glorious years of friendship. And I love you.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 10:56 AM

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Friday, April 22, 2005

I'm a fool to want you
I'm a fool to want you
To want a love that can't be true
A love that's there for others too

Don't get me wrong. I'm not in.. or out of love. Laverne Butler's cantillating this song as I am writing this. Have I told you I like Jazz? I must have. You can say its the rhythm of my heart and face of my soul.

I'm a fool to hold you
Such a fool to hold you
To seek a kiss not mine alone
To share a kiss that devil has known

I've been too tired to write these days. I've incurred an innumerable sleep debt that I can't and shan't bother keeping track of. Which has been preventing me from doing things like thinking and other higher order skills. All remaining energy I have left is channelled towards sleeping (yes, you need energy for that) and trying not to forget to breathe.
Lets see. There's Gotham Penthouse on Tuesday, The Sound of Music on Wednesday, fetching Ty from a pretty late (or early, just how you see it) flight last night and Wala's tonight.

Time and time again
I said I'd leave you
Time and time again I went away
But then would come the time
When I would need you
And once again these words I had to say

Today was fun. Was a representative for STB at the zoo's Earth Day Commemoration. Besides being hot and slightly smelly, the zoo's quite a nice place actually. Its Botanic Gardens with animals.

Lunch was plain stress. Amongst were the Director of Marketing and Comm, Head of Horticulture, Nature Society President, some journalist from I-dunno-where, a Senior Associate of Citigate Dewe Rogerson, and me. Notice how small and short 'me' appears as compared to the big names. Yes, and in that manner, lunched was served.

All the high level talk is simply not for me, but I have to learn I guess. All the superficiality, suppressed feelings and painted smiles. I'm getting the hang of it, I'm gradually coporatised.

Take me back, I love you
I need you
I know it's wrong, it must be wrong
But right or wrong
I can't get along
Without you

As weekend draws near, I just pray for a moment of quietness and rest.
And all that's weary shall be rejuvenated.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 3:41 PM

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Monday, April 18, 2005

My place sits right beside one of the busiest roads in Jurong East. A broad roadway lined with trees, the only avenue in fact, of the entire town.

And along this avenue, sits my place in between two traffic junctions.

With all its plausibility, and a probability that is quite reasonably attainable, the lights at both the junction turn red at the same time.

The effect is to me, quite entrancing.

The quietness is very comforting. A glimpse into a moment in time where time stands still. No noise, no movement. The trees rustle.

Sometimes I would just wait up into the depths of the night for such a moment. And it's quite worth the wait. It's barely a minute no one stops to appreciate, a silence quite unheard of.

Green. Light. The floodgates open. Life resumes.

* *

Life resumes. Some meaning is slowly creeping back to my life since I started work.
It's funny though, that I am finding meaning through work. It's the last place I would want to accredit any meaning of sort to my life.

Routine is slipping back into my days. And with it comes a certainty that things are somehow back on track, on the pathed road of life.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 11:30 PM

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Wednesday, April 13, 2005

At some point in life, we would come to the realisation that we can't have everything.

A junture where we recognise that a choice has to be made, and that decision couldn't have been more difficult or mind-tearing. Living with consequences then after.

A time where we discern that the world just can't revolve around ourselves anymore, and that some things are just not within our grasp, like the passing on of a loved one or how life can be so brutally unjust.

And gradually but surely, we find ourselves having to make sacrifices and fathom that someone else's joy is indeed worthed much more than ours. And be truly happy for their bountiful gain.

And in that moment, we'd never see ourselves the same again.

We've all grown up.

Can you believe we were 16 then?

nimgnoy let the night fall at 6:24 PM

2 comments

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Our past creates our future.

Why is it so hard to live in the moment? Carpe diem - we are advised, yet as much as we try to keep it from happening, thoughts of the past and future keep popping into our present. And even if we are successful in temporarily clearing our mind of such thoughts, trying to capture a sense of the present is as difficult as trying to capture the wind.

Time. It's like how movies are created. Still images on celluloid are passed before our eyes so quickly that our brains interprets these images as moving, and not as the multitude of consecutive still images that they are really are. I guess it is also how we perceive time - moments tied together seamlessly so that we perceive them not as separate entities, but as one continuous stream.

Just as we are incapable of hearing as disjointed separate entities notes that we are tied together to form a tune, so we are incapable of separating time into distinct moments. In fact, in my opinion, there is no way that we can carpe diem because "Time is the medium of narration as it is the medium of life." In other words, our lives are a continuing story in which each of us has a starring role.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
Memory of course, is what makes the past real for us.

Something lives on in our memory, and it is inevitably going to colour and influence the way we look at things that occur in the present. Therefore, past and present are not mutually exclusive, for they commingles in the unity of our consciousness.

Our past, present and future form a totality that is our life. And acknowledging our past is an important process, for it allows us to become more fully human.

"For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating one's self endlessly."

* *

I can't write at 3am in the morning, this is far too much an ambitious attempt. Disorganised.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 3:08 AM

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Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Gimme one more entry on death and I'll be done with it, for now.

Why do people weep when death comes around, if as true believers that they profess to be, believe that they have moved on to a better place?

Do we mourn for our loss, or their gain?

Are we selfish or just sentimental?

Or could there be a part of us that abruptly fathoms that all that is promised may not be true?

Are they done, or have they come undone? Done once and for all, or undone from the shackles of this enslaved world of sin.

* *

Okay, I'm done. I'm leaving questions today cos the answers I have not found and probably would never will. A question only begets more questions, and thus we become clouded and less lucid than when we started.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 8:41 AM

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Sunday, April 03, 2005

Is life a mere product of chance?
Where people come and go, enter and exit, born and die, and our molecules go back into the earth just so to complete a natural cycle?

If so, wouldn't it then make everything we do or care for in this transient world somehow, meaningless?

The question was glaringly apparent then, as it is now. Our purpose of existence. Our reason for being.
Our raison d'etre.

Think about it.
As big the idea of "our purpose of existence" seems, or as foreign as raison d'etre sounds, it essentially is the underlying basis of everything in our lives. I do not see how we can go on living our lives when our purpose is not clear. Which leads us back to my question again. Wouldn't it then make everything we do or care for in this transcient world somehow meaningless?

Are you following me? I hope I didn't lose you somewhere in the midst, cos many people do.

It's like a road trip with no direction, destination or end in mind.

And like a random thought conjured up months ago, I figured there has to be more to life than just living and dying into nothingness then after. We decompose, lose all memory, cease our existence, be forgotten, flowers by our graves yearly, is that it? For a mind as complex as ours, emotions as deep as our hearts go, there has to be more than just that.

I have turned atheist to agnostic.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:34 PM

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Friday, April 01, 2005

Tonight I sit before my desktop, and recollect.

Nostalgia, a reliable old friend I always fall back on when nights sometimes prove too quiet (or lonely?).

I remember you.

I remember a coincidental outing that would seal our friendship forever. Marina Square, 1999. We shared our first laughter.

I remember our phone calls, often late into the nights. You shared your dreams, I told you mine. Our secrets, there were none between us. One particular night, half chatting on the phone, half trying to complete Mrs Lee's physics grind. We said our good-nights at 5am.

I remember the silly things we do. Always evacuating school premises within 5 minutes of dismissal to catch the 143 bus down town. Running off some talk to see Mandy Moore. Studying for O levels while queueing outside HMV for you know who. Carrying off test tubes and conical flasks (euphemistic enough?). Syncronising our VCRs so we watched the exact same Bardot show at the same time, all these while we're over the phone at home. Marrying each other if we were single by the time we're 30? (Now that's only 9 years away.)
Bear in mind that all the afore-mentioned events are under the 'silly things' category.

I remember your tears. And mine.

I remembered us, walking down Oxford Street, against a wind so strong. Dangling our legs out the windows of our hotel in Coventry (we beat Mr Jackson to that). Visiting the home of S Club. Studying for lit and geog on the plane. Taking that step into the London HMV (It was a big thing for us then.). Regent Street, GAP, Virgin, Saintsbury's, St Paul's, Shakepeare's Globe - we shared these escapades together. You looked damn fine in the afternoon sun, sitting around Piccadilly Circus. We made a pact and swore never to leave each other alone.

Time is indeed the lens where memories are captured and dreams are created.

On hindsight, everything seemed so silly, almost impractical and absurd. These promises of forever. Did we then think it would materialise? But I smile as I reminisce. Innocence then, and never such innocence again. Time then was ours to hold, we couldn't care for the world.

Does nostalgia connote a sense of better days gone by? Flip it around, it also means better days to come.

Friends do fade from our radar screens as we grow older in life. But thank goodness not you. We've grown and come so far.
And I thank you for keeping that little flicker marked "you" always somewhere on my screen, never faltering, telling me although times are different now, you're never too far away.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:07 AM

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