talk is cheap.

action is nowhere better, really.

sometimes i look at the 2nd finger on my right hand. i don't see those small silvers anymore. but i guess those scars are more than broken skin. i just.

start to remember everything again.

and memories aren't really like that metric montage we see in the movies where they appear at regular intervals.

memories are longer.

it's beautiful when you are thinking of something lovely like a smile or a surprise, and the memory just replays on loop and gets brighter and cheerier somehow. but it's haunting when you think of things like...

and i wonder. if anyone can really ever get over anything? and what does getting over something really mean?

does it mean i become numb?

or does it mean i learn something valuable out of it?

but i can learn something valuable and yet cry every time i think about it right?

then it becomes weird because it's like. every time you recount how you learnt that valuable lesson, you recount that bitter memory which just leaves your sense dry, then you rehearse that emotion again. and i think it's scary to become numb. to feel nothing about something you felt something about in the past.

and i feel a little upset cos i watched 500 days of summer and i really don't think it's as nice as what some friends or the trailer have made it out to be. content not very creative. but i like the directing, and i like the way they played with time. i always thought that was a kind of writing i would never be able to pull off. i liked the little parodies on french new wave and the seventh seal. and actually my favorite line in the movie wasn't from the main characters but from that shaggy looking friend of Tom who said that his girlfriend is not anything like the dream girl he has in mind. she is better. she is real.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

-Neil Gaiman

Love, where is your fire?

I've been sitting here, smoking away...

Making signals with sticks

and odd ends and twigs

but still there's no sign of a flame.

Hurts hurt.

But between grief and nothing.

I will take grief.

i'm getting odder and odder. or maybe older and older. or maybe i'm just coming to terms with myself.

i feel like tell you about me today. i hope you can identify.

i think strangers are interesting. i can stare at people in the train forever. of course, if they stare back. it's awkward. i like to lean back on the glass panel thing and stare into the train door reflection of the person opposite me so that they won't know that i'm looking at them.

my favorite stalking material? people in pairs. it could be the most intimate or most awkward setting.

person i stalked today on the bus? this indian guy. i felt so sad for him when the lady beside him rudely asked him to stand up so that she could get up. she really could have said it nicely. when he moved in after that, and ruffled his hair and stared outside blankly. i almost could feel the rush of shame to his cheeks and how much he must be missing home right now staring at the smoothly tarred streets and symmetrically lined buildings of Singapore.

one of my favorite things to do when i get home is to grab my pillow and lie on my bed. cos my sheets are really the best sheets around. i love them. sometimes i will drift off to sleep. but that doesn't happen very often. because i just like to lie down. and then it will get very cold. then i will get up. but i really like my bed. it's my favorite place in the whole house.

and i like to wear a jacket on a cold day.

and i don't know why i got so worked up today. it's not like i try very hard anyway. but maybe it's because you have such great expectations about filling up a stupid box and when you see it so empty. you think that perhaps, maybe this is symbolic about how we are like that pretty box as well. it was made to contain many memories and many things, but whatever was inside was so little and insignificant, that we really could have done without a box or we really could have started nothing in the first place and then everyone would be happy and there would be no such thing as a disappointed girl looking like an idiot sitting in a crowded food court with an empty box that may or may not be symbolic of who we really are. now that box reminds me of today and i never want to see it ever again.

xiang will not let work take away her Love for Life.

sometimes life throws you a buffet, but the truth is that all i want to eat now is chocolate fudge cake from lana. you worry about the number of bulleted points you have on your resume. but it's really not about the sea of words you have on your resume but the white spaces you have in between all those entangled lines that matter. these white spaces are the times you spend sitting at a park bench watching life unravel in the gaze of lovers or in the hands of a child holding tightly onto his mothers skirt because she is all that he has, right now. these white spaces are the times you spend weaving silence with a friend under a bridge, taking in the skyline of the city, watching shadows flickering and dancing under the street lamps. these white spaces are the times where you curl up on a couch with your all time favourite non-bestseller book and dive into another world. and i'm upset because the world doesn't understand the beauty of these white spaces and is just focusing all their energy into staining pristine paper with Achievements and Grades and Relevant Experiences. we all know how to write, how to type and how to arrange words so that they will look good to a Superior. but we seem to have lost the basic skill of learning how to erase, how to delete and how to cancel. we rush, we run, we sprint towards the end of the day, instead of living each moment like how it's meant to be...treasured and relished because you'll never see the Moment again. but that's how life is now...Moments are not Moments anymore. they just become seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and dates in our little tiny organisers or pdas that rule our life. and we pretend that we are having a good life by ordering cable television and watching national geographic or discovery travel and living and live our lives vicariously through these shows. as if watching them and being "educated" by these shows help us learn how to live life better. non, they are just illusions that make you think that your life is enriched so that you will be satisfied by the end of the day and will go to work the next day as a happy labourer, thinking that you have just travelled around the world. but you haven't. it's just all a farce. i can't believe that my life has been officially governed by School. i can't stand it. i don't understand why some of people can stand themselves being enslaved by their school work, their CCA and even become councillors or some stupid important looking post and be Happy. because that's not Happiness to me. it's just plain stupidity. and i have stupidly allowed myself to be conned into such an idiotic way of life. i want my other lifestyle back. the life where i am able to go home early, go for care groups and go for service without thinking about the next assignment or whether i am doing my work correctly or not.

and maybe you should too.

this is phillipines.

having been there twice, i really have a heavy heart after watching this film. i can't shake off the image of this homeless man i saw, just sleeping near the church. what pained me the most was not how skinny he was and how the clothes on his back were so torn and tattered. but what left an imprint in me was his eyes. i will never forget that look of hopelessness. glazed, blank and empty. if the eyes were windows to our soul. his soul was already dead. he had nothing to live for, nothing to look towards except for sporadic kind acts from strangers who also have nothing much to give in a country polluted by corruption and poverty. what also gets me is when i see how poverty affects our children. these kids are not stupid. these kids are not naughty. but because of such a deep seated cycle of poverty, they are denied opportunities to ever make it somewhere. in 10 years time where would they be? i hope they will have the chance to study, to work, to travel, to live life vicariously as how people should. but chances are, they might end up like their father because golden opportunities will never come knocking on their doors... whereas i'm sure i will have a lot of opportunities in the future. the least i can do for them... is to use my opportunities for them. i really have no idea what... but i'm quite sure God doesn't put burdens in my heart just to break it and leave it broken and sore.