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...

death and taxes.

i should be reading the shitload of books i bought from the states, but my attention is drawn elsewhere. specifically to raymond carver's excellent ultramarine. i like the feeling of staying home all day and not doing a single thing. well nothing except playing with my adorable niece, who has a new name for me, - big. whoa, diet time.

i should have worked on replying to the inquiry on my tax returns, esp since i was way late, and i should have sent them the "evidence" on why that lazyass (haha) of a mother, isnt working her butt off since at 60+ she's pretty "young", and more because, i think it just doesnt feel governmentally right to be claiming relief because of her.

ah i'll write them tomorrow.

which brings me to the funny story of how the guys in my office concurrently decided, 3-4 days before i flew to the states that it was the appropriate time to submit ourselves to the tax dept.

naturally we were all bloody late. dean, the guy who casually asked the rest whether we did our taxes, was pleasantly surprised that there were 3 other guys who didnt grunt back that painful yes. so he had company for that ira trip. besides that, he also had something quite like a court appointment for the non-filling of tax thingys, so he didnt really have a choice. the other 3 of us were cowed by that officially looking paper and decided that since there was company we might as well troop down together.

upon reaching there, Jon, decided he wasnt really done procrastinating, so he sat outside. dean dilligently trooped upstairs to the more severe looking office while j.s. and i, (his bosses) waved cheerfully at him, and urging him to call us, if he need bail.

we went in. confronted with the impressive looking help kiosk, i, an audio visual entreprenuer, capable of solving complex audio visual systems, and mouthing off impressive-sounding theories on light rays and colour separation, turned immediately to the middle-age admin officer standing next to the kisok and said:

"uncle, press which button?"

followed by his cheerful retort:

"this one, the one that says "press here to start".

as a cover for my dim-wittedness, i, in my most intelligent voice said:

"ooohhh, wow, high tech huh?"

looking at the other queue, J.s. was looking equally dumb-founded. (and he makes this trip each year without fail.)

we got ushered to young admin officers (possibly arts and soci or biz ad grads) who beamed at us with brilliant smiles.

mine asked me:

"you mean up till now you still havent submitted your tax details?"

from the cubicle next to us, J.s.'s voice could be heard, apparently he was asked the same question:

"thats nothing, my colleague sitting in the next cubicle, one more is outside wondering whether he filed, and another one's upstair hoping we don't have to go up to bail him out."

i smiled as sweetly as i could to the pretty lady.

****

listeningto: joni mitchell - you turn me on i am a radio
reading: carver's ultramarine

bye bye hero.

another poetic hero has passed on. arthur yap passed away in his sleep yesterday. first kunitz then yap. oh well thats life.

actually made plans with cy and gaston to go kinda pay the last respect thing today but the interview for the new guy dragged into small talk, and discussion of plans for the year ahead took too long, and by the time i was done, it was over.

i suspect i subconsciously avoid funerals and wakes. i have exceeded the total amount of fingers i have for the number of funerals and wakes i have missed.

i dont really know how to behave at a funeral. its just me, but i tend to fidget, crack jokes and smile too much. i dunno why.

when my granduncle passed away, i was the only grand-whatever who wasnt present. and i was quite sure i was his favourite. i am not making any excuses now, but i wasnt sad for his passing then (i was 14) and since i knew i couldnt behave appropriately so i figured i make an excuse for my absence..

till date, i am still fondly thought of as being filial but unfortunate.

maybe i need a new heart.

or maybe i just need to be reminded. ha.

***
listening to: the verve - the drugs don't work
reading: mark strand - selected poems

overbudget.

i am back. a little spaced out, a little out of touch, but back nonetheless.

america is ... weird. okay, to be fair, orlando is weird. portions of everything are ott. way over the top. save for the first day/midnite's fiasco with the service staff, the people over there are eh... more friendly than i gave them credit for.

i blame free alcohol (courtesy of the fellows from pd) and the tackiness of hooters.

managed to squeeze in a looky-look at the mall area on the last 2 days before the flight home and made the mistake of going to the barnes and noble and the fye stores.

bought:
ted kooser - delights and shadows
various old/dead people - tales before tolkien (the fantasy fan in me still alive)
nikki giovanni - blue
carl dennis - practical gods
emerson - late wife
bukowski - mockingbird, wish me luck
billy collins - sailing alone around the room
mark strand - selected poems
latest issue of the new yorker
1 x moleskin notebook
way too much anime - samurai champloo (whole set), TAG (whole set) ninja scroll, gilamesh, blood, etc etc.

oh and got dragged in to this, i went willingly, of course:

sin cere.

there is something to be said about sincerity in poetry.

i think it's a "pre-"prerequisite. an over obvious pre-starting point. like a list for making fried rice would state rice, oil etc, but won't include the wok becoz it's understood. sincerity only matters if the poet is any good. becoz ultimately, almost all poetry is sincere, but it doesnt, by any stretch of will, make the poem good. in fact, sincerity is also an important ingredient in bad poetry.

i echo harold bloom's (who quoted oscar wilde) statement that sincerity isnt nearly enough to generate poems. yesyes, while as an aspirant, i may be guilty of flouting the rules (badly) sometimes, but as a reader, it is my right to claim bloom's stance.

skill/talent/meaning/execution cannot be put aside merely because we feel the poet was sincere in the protrayal of his theme (often political or with social baggage). the sincerity of his theme cannot be bigger than the rest of it or else the poem will be sunk by its ambitions.

yes, i've been reading bloom. haha. and cross referencing his introduction in best of the best american poetry (1984) where he makes a spirited rant against how people read and judge poetry by the wrong criteria.

tess gallagher says something to that effect about too many new poets using the sympathy for the tragedies in their lives as currency to buy readership. the "me-me" rant is so american.

thats what i been thinking about.

good news in the local poetry scene - excellent new entrant (well, to me new lah) in the form of a ms grace chua, the recent softblow update saw 3 interesting pieces from this lady and i must say one thing:

f-*, i was writing crap crap crap at her age. brillant stuff.

see esp. the 2nd poem, homesick. wow. nice. a simple repetitive poem, that has a banger of a closing line, an interesting progression of the repeated line with meaning and all that in 20 concise lines.

major cool.

other news: at present time, still trying to decipher american mentality. encountered something strange, why does the world's most capitalistic country have such protectionistic rules? the norway guys were trying to set up the system today at the convention hall, when a couple of them thought it be a good idea to focus the projector on their own using a ladder they borrowed from the other booth. well, end result, a $500 fine from the trade union for doing something the rigger/setup crew have to do. and they used 11 people to set up 4 parcans; 1 to each parcan, 1 to direct them from the floor, 1 to advise the guy directing them, and god knows where the rest were. talk about american efficiency. well, at least they looked garung.

and to add to last night fiasco with the room reservations, we were locked out of the room today again. apparently we weren't in the room last night, we never appeared, the receipt issued to us last night was a mysterious unexplainable event, so was how our luggage got into the room, how we somehow mysteriously got our keycards and according to the system, we didnt appear until just now when i started speaking harshly to people. however, the system did somehow remember that we had to pay for last night.

i can't remember how many times the same guy asked for our names. f-*, i thought i had bad short term memory.

and the statistics are wrong, 1 in 3 people here are not obese. 1 in 3 people here are considerably healthy. the rest are miraculously alive. i feel thin here. :) how their planes take off, and how they manage to shove their butts through the aisle i have no f-* idea, but i am impressed. diabetic medication must do well here.

***
listening to: jason mraz - geek in pink (when in rome do as the romans, when in america, pls deposit your cow senses at the customs [livestock restrictions] and it will mailed back to when you leave the country, thank you and have a nice day.)

o.c.

ok, after a sleepless 19 hour flight, neckache, stomachache, headache, plus a 3 hour long connecting flight + distress from 20 odd screaming female high school hillbillies on what must probably be their 1st flight anywhere, a 60$S cab ride with no change back, blur as f-* front desk hotel staff, no ciggies!!! and some momentary distress in getting the internet up, bad food...

i am finally properly in orlando, orange county where i'll be till the 13th/14th before making that f-* trip back.

f-* its 3.24am. and i can't sleep. and no smokes, coz its a no smoking room and i have no ciggies!!

nabey. x 1000.

name-dropping.

i liked this weekend. while it still had a couple of irritating phone calls from work-related parties, and though my trip to beijing is most likely cancelled, due to no sq tickets (principal vendor refuses to fly anything else) and no ready product prototype, the weekend passed rather pleasantly. for one, i managed to read quite a bit. i finished interrogation at noon and most of minsk, read bits of milosz's second space and started on carver's what we talk about when we talk about love.

whole chunks of net-poetry were devoured too. gumball poetry is back up, see them at this site. i think the concept is so sweet, imagine buying poetry in this manner. of course, being pragmatic and singaporean, cyril says it won't happen here. but i am allowed to dream about my perfect retirement bookshop now am i? which incidentally i visited. (see previous post)

read more blackmail press, the issue with cy and hsin min's stuff in it.

there's this cute hawaiian site, by the name of tinfish that's quite impressive.

stumbled onto prairie schooner. high browishly nice.

cyril sent me this sweet poem by david grubb on shadow train. excellent go google him.

didnt do much writing this weekend, but the readings more than made up for it. i think i am coming out with a list of "have to get my hands on" books, that includes poetry books by bukowski, more mark strand, the confessions by augustine, aquinas's Summa Theologica (though i just know i will fall asleep reading these 2), aurelius's meditations (who am i kidding?) and ... the entire collected works of beatrix potter regarding peter wabbit and friends. for my niece, and the not so young, leo.

i wanna do something to my room, like put my books/poetry collection in some form of order. actually quite a number of my books are in the office, freaking out visitors and staff.

went cruising the seletar reservoir area with damien and rawn, ate ice cream and before that teochew porridge. it's such a weird, relax-jack, place. wish spore island could loosen up and have more places that are just incidentally fun, rather than, all made-up and touristy. spore island needs spots for its own inhabitants too u know.

and my orlando tixs are confirmed. so i'll be flying on a jet plane (which i actually hate) a holiday disguised as work is always a beautiful thing. :)

***
reading: seamus heaney - electric light

***

week of 1sts.

a large week of firsts. whilst waiting for various members of cy-sheo large fag/queen club, (this weekend being the largest standing at a table of 8) i went roaming the silent, greater tanjong pagar area and suddenly realised that i could pop by booksactually.

now that was nerdishly exciting because i have never been to the place. so i went to consult the tanjong pagar station map, worked out the exit alphabet and then got on my way.

i wasnt disappointed.

it was open, this quaint place, up a small flight of stairs, into the brightest of lofts, open and welcome. a white place led up to by a small contingent of plastic army men. walls ringed with books and books. the old cameras and typewriters set the mood. so cool.

the books didnt disappoint, i saw charles bukowski's "the Captain Is Out To Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship", bought czelaw milosz's "Second Space", and carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love". milosz's ABC beckons... the poetry collection is acceptable, but has gaps. still many good books i would love to get me hands on.

it is a happy place. :)

go there, they close on sundays, open weekdays till sat, 11am-9pm 125A telok ayer street. i think from my conversation with the people there, one kenneth and karen, they seem to have a poetry reading every 2nd something of the month.

anyways, do go. very nice place.

after that on the way back to duxton road to meet the large band of alternative-ers i passed by





and





















i remembered the last time i was there i was with b. the brain really f-s with you sometimes no?

other 1sts - 2 movies in a week, alone. both movies cannot make it. 1st milosz book, 1st time to bliss, 1st time to seriouslyseriously Indian pub (but was fun and friendly)

all in all a heady week.

***

listeningto: kansascali - if i...
reading: raymond carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love