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

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Tuesday, May 22, 2007

hello again, from naples today.

weather is sure damn hot here, almost like singapore on a very hot day, less the humidity. we just came back from a day trip to capri (that's where mariah vacations) and its really awesome there, just like a super high class phi phi islands. i mean, you find prada and ferragamo opening their shops there.

naples is really like dirt and grime. its a side of italy that's quite not what we are used to. people here are rougher and the city is generally not charming. tourists usually come here for the non urban stuff like pompeii and capri, which was what we did.

tomorrow i take the 630am train back to rome. then its off to dubai the following day.

* *

keyboards in italy are weird. the punctuation marks are all over the place where you least expected it. it took me awhile to find the '@' sign.

oh, i have 2000 photos to date. hurhur. okay i'll try to blog in dubai.

take care and yours.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 11:05 PM

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Friday, May 18, 2007

Its 5plus pm in Singapore and my day is just beginning in Milan. This trip has been quite the eye opener thus far and it has brought me far up north of Italy, where the Alps can be seen backing the city skyline.

Milan is a big city, usual stuff, taller buildings, busier and wider roads and all that stuff.

And I am only but halfway through my journey. Larkin's The Importance of Elsewhere always finds its relevance in journeys far from home. You just marvel at how Singapore is so safe and well (but very micro-lly) managed. You really do not have to worry about clutching onto your bag everywhere you go. And you do not have to note when the sun goes down to hurry yourself back or run the risk of being mugged or something. Its all these little things that make you stand back and say Singapore boleh lah.

Ok gotta run. Tomorrow I head to Venice, before zipping all the way south to Naples the following day.

See yall.

I wanna wala real soon. Phuture too. Mambo too. and eat cheap food too.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 5:14 PM

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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

it seems like everyone going from changi airport has to make the mandatory blog post from the internet counters at the airport.

ok never mind, im superly sleepy but the gate is not open yet. yawn. throbbing headache setting in.

wake me up when i'm at dubai will you?

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:50 AM

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Monday, May 07, 2007

which went really well I must say, nothing like chilling out on a saturday afternoon over food and words.

Surreal that I'll be leaving this place behind in less than an hour's time and jetting off to Rome. There's always something about faraway lands that intrigue and mystifies. The sheer size of how big the world is, the million of things you know you have not seen. It feels great to be doing something for the first time, but often a first time implies a hazy vision ahead.

But who knows what lies ahead, in this faraway land, for me? I hope to come back with faraway tales of unseen and unheard wonders, just like living life for the very first time.

As if it were the first time
I would like to believe that I am going to look on this new year as if it were the first time that 365 days have unfolded before my eyes. To see the people around me with surprise and amazement, happy to discover that they are by my side and sharing something so often mentioned and so seldom understood, called love.

I shall climb on the first bus that comes along without asking where it is going to and I shall get off as soon as I see something that catches my attention. I shall pass by a beggar who asks me for some spare change. Maybe I’ll give him something, maybe I’ll think that he will spend it on drink and just walk past – hearing his insults and understanding that that is the way he has to communicate with me. I shall pass by someone who is trying to wreck a telephone booth. Maybe I’ll try to stop them, maybe I’ll understand that they are doing that because there is nobody to talk to on the other side of the line and that is their way of chasing off loneliness.

On each of these 365 days I shall look at everything and everybody as if it were the first time – especially the small things that I am not used to and whose magic I have forgotten. The keys of my computer, for example, that move with an energy that I fail to understand. The paper that appears on the screen and for a long time has not been revealed in a physical manner, although I believe that I am writing on a white sheet where it is easy to make corrections by pressing a key. At the side of the computer monitor are some papers that I do not have the patience to put in order, but if I feel that they are hiding something new, than all these letters, memoranda, newspaper cuttings and receipts will gain a life of their own and will have odd stories of the past and the future to tell me. So many things in the world, so many paths trodden, so many entrances and exits in my life.

I am going to put on a shirt that I wear a lot and for the first time I shall pay attention to the label and the way it was sewn, and I am going to imagine the hands that designed it and the machines that changed this design into something material and visible.

And even the things that I am used to – such as my bow and arrows, the breakfast coffee mug, the boots that have become an extension of my feet after wearing them so much – will be coated in the mystery of discovery. Let everything that my hand touches, my eyes see and my mouth taste be different now, although they been the same for many a year. In that way they will no longer be still-lifes and start to convey the secret of having been with me for such a long time, and they will show me the miracle of coming into touch again with emotions already worn down by routine.

I want to look at the sun for the first time, if the sun comes out tomorrow, or at cloudy weather, if tomorrow is overcast. Above my head there is a sky for which all of humanity - over thousands of years of observation - has given a series of reasonable explanations. Well, I shall forget everything I have ever learned about the stars, and they will once more turn into angels, or children, or anything else that I feel like believing in at the moment.

Time and life have changed everything into something perfectly understandable – and I need mystery, the thunder that is the voice of an angry god rather than just a simple electric discharge that sets off vibrations in the atmosphere. I want to fill my life again with fantasy, because an angry god is far more curious, frightening and interesting than a phenomenon of physics.

And finally, let me look at myself on each of these 365 days as if it were the first time that I was in contact with my body and my soul. Let me look at this person who walks, feels and talks like any other, let me feel surprised at his most simple gestures, like chatting to the mailman, opening his correspondence, contemplating his wife sleeping at his side, wondering what she is dreaming about.

And so I shall remain what I am and what I like to be, a constant surprise to myself. This I who was not created by my father or by my mother, nor by my school, but by all that I have lived so far - suddenly I forgot and am discovering it all over again.

See yall in 3 weeks.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 10:21 PM

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Saturday, May 05, 2007

Happy Birthday Mr Nah!
From me and dr zoidberg. dr zoidberg and i.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 12:40 AM

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Friday, May 04, 2007

That's junhan by the way.

nimgnoy let the night fall at 11:03 PM

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Thursday, May 03, 2007

Ah finally, I'm done with 2nd year. And so the 3 months summer vacation has dawned upon us. I can't wait to relax and take it easy, doing everything I've always wanted but had no time for. Like lazy breakfasts at O'Briens or something.

On a very different note, Happy Birthday Yi Fang! 14 years of good, solid friendship. Can't get better than that!

nimgnoy let the night fall at 11:13 PM

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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

We celebrated Ah Nae's birthday only once in her life. She never told us her birthday and not a single person in the family knew when it was.

I remember how she used to tell me that she would wake up early at dawn on her birthday, make a simple red hard boiled egg, pray to the gods, and spend a quiet birthday with only herself.

It was not until a trip to Beijing in 2001 when this perennial mystery was solved (for only myself at least). I noticed how she was beaming and exceptionally glad on the trip and asked her why. She refused to budge but eventually told me "I'm glad cos I spent my birthday with the emperor!," which baffled me at first but later realised we visited the Forbidden City on her birthday. What humour, but that sentence still remains one of the most vivid lines etched in my memory. And she made me promise that I told no one about it.

No one knew why she refused to let us know. I can only guess that she didn't want us to celebrate her birthday cos she felt it rather mafan and she would rather spend time, effort and money on us than the other way round.

So for the next 3 years up till 2004, Ah Nae's birthday was quietly celebrated by one more person - me. I would each year, buy her flowers - the simple pleasures which delighted her tremedously. I would try not to make it obvious but the happiness she felt was palpable - how the most incomplex things in life, if sincerely given, were things she treasured the most.

2005 was the year Ah Nae was diagnosed with cancer. When the tumour miraculously retarded growth mid that year, I decided that the whole family should celebrate her birthday proper. She deserved every bit of it, really. That year, I bought her the bestest flowers ever. She did not then, knew I had told everyone her birth date. We brought her out for dinner, which she thought totally normal, and when we came home we surprised her bringing a birthday cake out.

I was apprehensive cos I didn't want to upset her, since she wanted her birthday to be a secret and I was entrusted with that promise.

But I saw, as everyone else saw, happiness upon her face like never before. She was thoroughly moved, like a dream fulfilled.

It was the first, and the last time we celebrated her birthday. But the bliss we witnessed in her eyes, though in a single moment that was to be the only moment we ever knew, made it all worthwhile.

Image(431)

nimgnoy let the night fall at 7:10 PM

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