writing.

i think i will write here again.

lazy fellow.

so i am more or less sticking to lj. 2 is too much trouble. so long blogger. eh. for now?

me - alittlebalcony.livejournal.com


listeningto: camera obscura's tears for affairs
reading: dana gioia's can poetry matter? essay
current location: where else? my other home, the bloody office.

the uneducated me.

i discovered (actually, i discovered the discovery long x 1000 time ago, so "discovered" is salah) so anyway, i acknowledge that i am inadequately equipped to intelligently (as opposed to "dissing") appraise and appreciate a range of poetry that is beyond what i deem a modern period.

so since i have been effectively crippled (again) for the next few days, i think its high time i brush up on my donnes, shakes, chaucers, (boring, boring) miltons (fun!) frosties, as well as the pounds, eliots, audens, whitmans, i.e. most of the relevant seriouslyx10 dead white men, all of whom (with the exception of shakey, frosty, and milton), i have only made half hearted attempts at reading so that at least when an intelligent poetically inclined person swings by, i can discuss something other than :

"wow loah, her g-string can see le!"

seriously, i have restricted/slanted my reading list so much towards a select bunch of modern poets and (not so seriously) d.w.ms that i have become myopic, and have almost started regarding poetry outside of that list as irrelevant and/or obsolete or rubbish. which, of course, is so wrong.

so if there are any chiobus (i stress chiobus) with said experience in said subject, and willing to tutor me, kindly email me your application form (must attach photo). kay?

on bloom.

so i wasted the entire weekend reading essays. yes. the entire weekend. O_O am so fucking intellectual can.

anyhow, my fav ones are still those of harold bloom's. he's biased, boombastic, sarcastic, brilliant, an irrelevant dinosaur who never fails to excite. i dont always agree, but that, i think, is the point. you must make your own decisions on his opinions, but ah... the way he presents it; like he must be right because should he be wrong, the literary world will be a smaller sadder place to live in.

convincing in an evil sense. excellent.

though i cannot help but agree wholeheartedly, mind and with what little soul i possess, on this one. ;)

listening to: camera obscura - my sister's social agony
reading: thumboo on whose canon, what texts, which methods.


__

confession. disclaimer.

i think i should say this.

if you are reading this, and are not a bot/alien/non-human of higher self consiousness, and have arrived at this site not through a random sequence of event, and believe that i am not aware of your presence...

you are so wrong. hahaha.

just thought i say it. yes. boredom strikes.

princess is home.

she is back and somehow i am happy again. :)

for last last sunday.

Apart from having to severely over-work myself, resulting in major illness, (again, i am a weak child) what was left of the last weekend actually turned out pretty interesting. albeit a wee bit embarrassing.

managed to attend the big orgy of a launch at sam on sat, as usual late, which turned out to be a good thing because i missed a sizable portion of dr kk seet’s intro. small mercies. the interesting bit actually came at the end of the thing, when cy suddenly introduced me to this girl:

cy: eric, come, this is rui.

me: oh oh hi. *smile politely*

cy: this is rui. *blink blink*

then it suddenly dawned on me that this was donna’s friend. the one who informed her about the existence of my flighty butterfly poem, then tormented me by refusing to tell me who she was.

me: OHHHHH.... *blush.* *blush*

rui: *smile* *semi-snigger*

me: *embarrassed to death*

naturally, being me, i tried to explain to her that i wasnt one of those weird stalker types you see in the movies. end result: i managed to impress her with my enormous stupidity, revealed that i actually wrote 2 more poems of related subject matter, and overall, i “eh” “ah” all over.

sor fern and beng liang who were also at the scene of the crime, were rather amused by this. and subsequently got even more amused when they discovered that i wrote poetry. this despite me hanging around perumal road with all of them. i think they thought i was the handyman, despite the very glaring fact that i didnt do any handy work there at all.

was over at their new place just the other day to look at their new telly and how my guys were gonna mount up the tv. they had guests, more of sor fern’s life editors and contributors i think. beng passed me the bracket that harvey norman’s gave them for the sharp and i was surprised to see that it was a copied one of paul’s 2632 bracket (long story, but i had a part to play in the design of the original model of that line, part of the XLT 26 range) in any case, they seemed more amused of that seemingly contrasting nugget of my life, and amused themselves by introducing me to their guests as the renaissance man, who can write poetry, mount tvs, and draw detailed diagrams for bracketry. i responded by informing their guests that despite that effeminate label, i was still, definitely straight.

managed to also catch wilson’s entry for the esplanade's sparks 4 creative development programme, entitled “Deviation: Dichterliebe” last last sunday. he used my poem, “one moment” in one of the scenes, the one where he drops roses while reciting it to the audience. it is an odd feeling when someone else reads your stuff, and in that dramatic voice, it’s quite eerie. but so ego that i blushed.

go watch it when wilson presents it for the next round. he got through this round to advance to the next one. which i think gets him more funding or something.

cy got nom-ed for singapore lit prize 06, but somehow feels that he won't win. even when all the nominees are poetry books. silly boy.

in other news, princess is somewhere in russia. and i actually miss her.

today took a left turn at 6.15pm from good day territory to bad day ground zero. i am reduced to grinding my teeth in the dark again and worse, i have to write a dismissal letter again for second time in my career in this company. somewhere in my head i can hear boey kim cheng murmuring about the pace of life in singapore being too fast, mixed with the lyrical tone of his classic Day of No Name. all quietly murmured out, as is the way boey k.c reads.

am now on a cab headed towards millenia tower to fire-fight a potential disastrous event, and i keep asking myself the same questions: why is everything a matter of life or death here? responsibilities and liabilities aside, must every event be stamped with the priority chop until one day this country will turn into india where every email is marked “important” and everything is labelled “urgent” until it comes to the part where they got to pay. some days i hate being me and today shouldnt have to be one of them.

edit: at freaking 2.54am in the morning
i just finished work. damn.

edit 2: at freaking 735am only a little bit later in that same morning
i just woke up. to start work again. damn.

i hope you had a bad day too.

the loss. the £$%@!!! loss.

i lost my house keys. :( worse, i lost the thumbdrive that i used as a backup file which, due to my natural stupidity, i used as my f.ing keychain, whats more this thumbdrive has information about where the f. i stay. and everything i have written since a f.ing long time ago.

and its a freaking 1 gb t.drive. :(

for prospective burglars i spit at u. i changed the lock already.

and why did i lose it? i blame it on comex, on the love of my life. and the process of buying a laptop for her. oh, when told of my loss, she offered me the use of her void deck, as a place to zzz in case my parents drive me (not the first time i lost my keys, this year) and her echoing sniggers.

methinks i am gonna hang on to the laptop for a while. let her sweat while her masters homework piles up and she has to come beg me.

of course naturally, i will give in. am a weak willed idiot.

murmur murmur....

someone needs sex.

i made myself some triple layer ham sandwich just now because i'm mildly depressed and sandwiches are comforting, esp. when its gormet ham with odd names like walnut ham, pacific chicken ham, and something something sandwich ham. then to blanket the comfort, meiji plastic canister type milk.

fine, i failed at writing something which was meant to exorcise something and its pissing me off. so there, bourgeois depression. so urban nothing.

my house-hunting intentions has flared up again.

dry.

i am dry. dry i tell u.

insomniac2.

it's 3 freaking am.

i have a meeting at 9am. which means i have to be in at 7ish to clear a ton of work waiting for me at the office. (becoz i wasted my leave on thurs and fri, doing jack.)

i can't sleep. nabey. x100000000000000.

gonna see if reading lawrence durrell helps.

***
listeningto: SPEED! - my graduation! (hahahaa. omg. i turned into a schoolgirl.)
reading: reflections on a marine venus - lawrence durrell.

nabey, i am older than the pc.

trivia - the ibm 5150 pc, the original personal computer was launched on 12 aug 1981 which makes me nabey older than the freaking pc. so undignifying. :(

another - on one of my net-surfing/lurking trip, i reencountered one of my fav poems;

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
Without ever having felt sorry for itself.

-- D.H. Lawrence

cool huh?

went to the library lelong sale yesterday, ended up buying a pack of harper's magazine, which is actually an interesting read. bought other odd books, fitzgerald, etc and prospero's cell by lawrence durrell, which i already own, but my heart broke to see durrell's beautiful book tossed around by peasants who cannot recognise a gem for what it is. so i bought it for 2 bucks, so sad. lawrence durrell banished to the bargain bin.

total damage - 21$, 5 for the mags, 2 for each of the books = 8 books (some i know i won't even touch, why?).

listeningto: chanchan - buena vista social club
reading: after the fires - boey kim cheng

ego at guardian.

was having my 1st try at fun with guardian's poetry workshop. haha. it's also the first review i've got from writing stuff eh, for some time now. and it turned out pretty well, so i'm having a big ego moment, even though it's just another poetry workshop and i shouldnt. haha.

here it is - guardian.

hmmm, not too pleased that my line spacings were altered though. eh, however, i suspect thats due to apple mail translating to outlook rather than anything else. alamak, ah f-* it la. :)

***

listening to: every mother's son - the pretenders
reading: marrying off mother and other stories - gerald durrell

anniversary.

major insomnia yesterday/this morning. finally managed to knock out at 4, which meant i woke at 1.30, blur like sotong. i thought this insomnia thing was over and done with. oh well, think i caught it from the girl who doesnt sleep (come to think of it, that she has that name, makes it poetic irony).

oh, this is an anniversary, so i've been doing this blog thing for an entire year. odd feeling annivesaries, like it's some kind of achievement, when all it proves is that something was kept up for x period of time. whether you like it or not.

went to the yishun dam yesterday. arggh the place is being ruined. there are so many initial d-wannabes there with their souped up vehicles and their obligatory lians. (not complaining about that though) though the ice-cream men there do get major business.

it amazes me that people are so bored that they'll up and go all the way to yishun dam and just hang out in large band by the side of the road, doing jack. i dun get it but i was there too, so guilty of the same.

it's a weird place. there's nothing there, but the drive there and the wide expanse of water is cool, if there are no crowd.


listeningto: touched by the sun - carly simon
reading: anxiety of influence - harold bloom

just write.

i am still sick. while delirious and somewhat high on the little yellow pills, i attended cy's new book launch at booksactually. managed to take a heap of photos for the day, with pretty nice candid shots i must say. (ego ego) so if u know his site, go see.

mental note to self: if sick or delirious, just shut up and look intelligent rather than embarrass self. sigh. i never learn. :(

cy's new book is so different isn't it?

oh, fyi there's another launch on the 18th of aug. at select.

***

qlrs is back up with the new issue. it is reassuring to know that it is, at least for oct, gonna carry on. it is interesting to note, that while by now everyone has put arthur yap's passing to the back of their minds, and all literary busybodies (me included/esp) were eagerly anticipating t. hsin min's reply to that newpaper writeup about qlrs, i thought it was pretty cool of him to say something about arthur yap's passing first before dealing with the writeup in a quick, short paragraph. in fact, i blush in shame.

i am in this issue of qlrs, and the latest issue of blackmail press, (sweet how they came out a day apart from each other) and i was gonna head down to the office yesterday mid-afternoon to print my latest attempts at submission for snail-mailing out, but somehow decided against it by not bringing my ibook along. procrastination has somehow gotten the best of me today. but did get some real work work done so am pretty proud of self. :) hee.

tell me something: why do you submit?

i am curious.

***
reading: rereading minsk - lavinia greenlaw
listeningto: its too late - carol king


***

disrespecting the poets.

this is crap. i am crap. literally. damn stomach problem aint going away. this is ridiculous. am not suppose to get stomach crap and i am not even sure why i got stomach crap. i mean come on, i was eating everything in hcm city, even the roadside stalls with the suspect meat sandwiches (which is excellent really) and i was good. but now here i am, in spore, home and out of no where i get stomach crap.

spent entire day in toilet bombing the crap outta several major cities. for company, i dragged in mark strand's selected poems, the but anthology and billy collins' sailing alone around the room. so if you are mr. m.s. or mr. b.c. or one of the people on the but anthology (there's a pun here, but i dun wanna talk about it) and you're wondering why the day smells like crap on your end, now you know.

yesyes, i washed my hands.

i am in a bad mood and i can't sleep.

***
listening to: oh, you dun wanna hear.
reading: billy colins - sailing alone around the room.


***

seed reading.

got a preview of cy’s new not-yet-for-sale book, Like a Seed with its Singular Purpose, eh actually i have the whole book, hee.

its such a pretty book. not sure if ffurious did it, but i like it as compared to most of the rest of his books.

it was a quick read, plus, had to get away from the house chores, so i disappeared to the nearby 24/7 macs to devour this. it took a short while to adjust myself to the noise of mundane lians and bengs (chio tally: 1 maybe cute lian only) but i soon got into it. its so well arranged. and i think its the best one since the orbit one. its quite different but still recognisably cy.

and i shall stop here. i'll pick this up after his launch of the book at the end of the month. so go buy it once its out.

the death of mind fuck day

mind fuck day came and went yesterday. supposedly if i remembered right it should have been her birthday yesterday.

thats the thing though, i am starting to forget. which should be a good thing, but if i indulge myself and go right into this, i wonder, what will i be like when and if i give this hankering up? i've been a puppy for so long i forget what i am really like.

anyway, as mind fuck days go, yesterday was a non event. my eventual amnesia would make for the best birthday present she would ever want from me. but while that certainly looks promising i still have a wee bit more to go before i give up all the memories.

so for now, the best thing i could give her for yesterday, is my continued non-participation in her life.

oh, well, happy supposed birthday, b.

chao.

whoohoo. am home. as in vietnam, ho chi minh city. oh i miss this place so much. more later. :)

edit: 9.7.2006, somewhere in substation.

finally decided to update about this trip. well for one, it was a really short trip. reached there on friday back on the sunday morning flight to singapore. basically a work trip for our new venture in vietnam and to scout the ground and see whether it was worth setting up an outpost in ho chi minh. am so gonna envy whoever we send there for the permanent posting if this venture goes through. becoz whoever it is, it can't be me! :( damn.

ho chi minh is messy. everybody who goes there will take their hat to the traffic. it was crazy ten years ago, crazy in my post army days in 2000 and still still crazy today. i have pictures somewhere in my phone. i love the craziness though. something about being born and bred in orderly singapore probably instilled this longing for a little chaos. the rest confess they can't take the weaving madness, i on the other was just getting used to it. thank god i dun drive though. the horn isnt used so much as a frustrated fist-waving tool but more as a "hey i am here" announcement speaker. everybody adjusts instantly, without checking mirrors and such. traffic there is a daily miracle.

the people are friendly. not in your face, smile because you are a tourist friendly but a genuine interest in being a nice friendly person. its not fake. that kind of friendliness is really hard to find.

i know i could so live there.

sigh. miss it so much.

oh, spied a beautiful side table i might wanna buy... hmmm...