An off note. And another. His shivering gotten worse and he cannot continue.
Embarrassed, he turns towards his friends. They nudge him forward still.

An off note, still another, what that was easy became torturous. He never felt more vulnerable.

He cringed for his friends as they cringed for him.

Once more, and another. The simple notes are coming back to him now. Staggering, and full of mistakes, but comprehensible now. He delights his simple victory. He plays it a bit faster.

His friends cheered him on.

Mustering courage, he tries a different song, one easier still. But he fails.
Losing courage, trembling again, he begs to end (although deep down he wanted to keep at it still)

It ends and all departed. He was left with himself - still shivering, quite embarrassed, yet very much at ease.

Deep down he rejoices.

He rejoices that his vulnerability is laid for all to see. He rejoices that he shared being awkward with his closest friends. Deep down he rejoices that they saw his failure.

He dreams. He dreams of playing it better.

Happy and peaceful.

Simple. The way life should be.

The sun shines yellow today.

At 7am the room is filled with gentle warmness, nudging the senses to wake. Sounds of television and exercise livens the living room. (Baka spends 30 mins warming up for nothing, lol)

At 8pm breakfast of egg and dumpling is prepared. Warm.

By 9 the plates are washed and dried, chairs arranged, and the table wiped. We close the windows for the weekend ahead.


Today, the distant past finally disappeared.


Warmth. That has always there. A new beginning awaits.

This feeling of sadness, is hate.

All ropes has two ends.
The boy tied the rope around his neck. One end he gave to his best friend.
The other to that girl he loved.
Round his neck, a rope was tied. (Why. Why not.)


The rope call love.

But away from him they ran, killing the boy.

My memories of the past job are eroding. I cannot seem to recall how stressful it was and how nerve wrecking it can get. Was it the dreading of emails or phonecalls that unsettled me on sundays? Or was it the gruesome hours and deadlines? All i recall now is those faces of my smiling friends. Always busy and stressed, but mostly happy. Faces which I'm starting to miss.

It is times like this when i start to feel the weight of leaving my friends, all those time when we took care of one another. To leave a good paying job that made it all happen. The vast unknown ahead seems forbidding and fearsome tonight. Insecurity that comes surely with idleness starts to creep in.

2 years ago i had a 2 part plan. The first part involves working in Stanchart. The second involves quiting stanchart. It is finally time.

So this is the path i must take. Destiny beckons. The future never look brighter and more exciting then this.

Leaving stanchart

It has been a fantastic run. Today 23rd of April marks my last day with the bank.

So many friends that I've grown to like and love. I'll miss you all deeply.

One and a half year of hectic working. Grueling 70 hours workweek, incessant customers calling, the phobia of handphone ringing are all part of living a banking life. Forbidding targets and continuous stress was my life, and yet i lived it well. The stress of making and losing money.
One day all these memories may fade, but not yet.

Its with fond memories that i leave the job i've conditioned myself to love.

Farewell now.

I wasnt bitter because i didnt notice the emptiness.


You've lost me. You just dont know that.

Has it been a year already?

I'm still here

But where are all of you?

. . .

My grandfather laid on the hospital bed, his frail hand holding onto mine. His face distant yet strangely intimate. I must have known that face all my life without knowing who he is. Yet i live his life without knowing it, my life his memory.

He is exactly who i am.

A smile:
"find a girl that will take care of you, that will take care of your children. marry that girl. Do not fall for someone who leave you for her own pursuits. Not for someone who knows only to spend money. And you'll be happy."

Crystal clear: the truth can be that simple.

Exactly.

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Goodbye: May we find our happiness.
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Courage sweeps away the pain that everyday breaks the heart. But patiences and hope will wane. When the sadness fades, and the confused mind clears, the truth is plain to see.

Harsh and cold. Empty.

There is no love.

I hate this life.

For whom am i working so hard for.

It is the age where responsibility and duty catches up with you. You carry on a burden so that the people you love do not have to. It is a run, and you know you want to run light. But you pick up weights along the way, things that will slow you down. You pick up stones so that the people you love will not trip and fall. You clear the way so that their run will be easy. You worry that the weight will be too much. You worry that you may not get to the end point. But you cannot falter. If you fall they will fall.

You become stronger for them.

Phonecalls are collection letters.

I had a friend who died loving. There was always a pain within his chest, a shortness of breath, a heightened sense of fear. For it is love, there is no doctor to be had. He tried treating himself, but his medication of effort and goodwill was not what that was required. I hate to see a good man die. In his last moments he struggled still. I can still remember his ashen face- a relief look of cold lifelessness. He shivered, he gave his last convulsion, he gave his last breath away. Of course he died of heart complications.

But mistakes reaffirms our beliefs. And that is important.

So things will change. And i will be happy again.

Hope you'll be too when i am

starry nights

So this is what it is like to be star-crossed lovers.

The heart and soul sinks into abject depression.

The mind is unwilling, unable to pull itself out of the misery that had so violently been cast upon oneself. Within a dream the confused mind runs in circles, here- places so loving and touching, there - devastatingly monstrosity and barrenness.

It is where lovers meet but cannot reach for each other. Souls, so lovingly and gently merged being pry apart. A little too early, much too late.

The souls suffer where courage fails to deliver them both.

What Destiny brought together fate kept apart.

Tired

What do we have to show for in life, when after a whirlwind of giddy events, we come to be the person we already are. In the confusion of our times, the intellect dulls, the spirit weighs, and the body sinks into this gray abyss. Further and more we get tricked into the preoccupation of base worldly concerns, the feeding - the bills- the pleasing- the ambitions; inane drudgery that suffocates the soul and heart. Habouring hours upon hours of greed for a bag, a house, a smile.

With every step i stray further from the simple joys that i seek.

It is the mood of my day, i'm sure. But it resonates sharply.

In the clarity of this forsaken hour, I look into the eyes of the one I love and wonders if I'm being loved. My alarmed heart whispers repeatedly: Love is not selfish. Not unkind! Why is it then that i know how it is like to be broken in. To be abused.

Trapped in that corner of my room, I ponder on.

The night before my second last day of exams. Such an important event this is, that I've taken time off from my agonising torment to write. The rationale behind enjoying my final suffering still exists, but lies hidden behind my already dulled and caffeinic body. I look on with desire at the deliverence wednesday brings, yet pity at the forever passing of this sufferable period. I detest, yet am drawn by this detestation.

mind

My mind is the beast, which i need to control. It throws tempers of random thoughts, vivid pictures of loathsome scenes, that seeks to ravage. It moves on its own accord, unrestrained and wild. Devouring by the same fearsome notions it feeds on, this incest of the intellect sickens it. On better days it conjures up images of hellfire's eternity, the itch of the burnt rotting worm dug flesh, trapped in a body that cannot, not a finger or a muscle or a vessel, move forever. For a second it fascinates the mind, like a fly drawn to shit. Thereafter the same thought overwhelms and paralyze it. What good is the intellect, is the conscious if we cannot controll it? An unrestrained mind, is an insane one.

When i do nothing, and die happy, then i have done enough

The sun had been scotching: burning, merciless, ceaseless.

What was a plain of fertile soil crowned with lush green blades of wavering grass had turn into barren aureate dirt, shamefully impotent.

That solitary tree, once fruit bearing, the land's humble only figure of hope, had baked into a black burnt wrinkled distorted mass. A witch tree.

Once did it rain, some many years ago, a great mighty pour onto that parched land, to breath it life. It flooded the land, drown its soil, and everything died.

Nobody prays for the land now, for nobody prays for rain.

Attachment

And it is officially over, not to the rousing booming deafening applauses from teary eyed colleagues waiting eagerly in line for the next hearty embrace. The hour for that had quietly slipped by, steadily and stealthy, to little fanfare. The minute hand of my watch jerked towards the mark, 60 seconds later past it, and the moment is all but gone.

Wholly immersed within saturday's crowd's pandemonium, my attachment had came to its abrupt end - but without my noticing.

Darryl and Dad

We were brash, ragged, strong and weak.
Holding onto memories, the faces i'll never see again. Stories of us. The scents and the colours of the day, long gone by. We breathed the same air, and saw the same sights. I live on, wishing that our lifes had not been in vain. Our happiness not lost. Our destiny kept alive. I see them smile, see us run, see him limp towards me, and hear our conversations.
I see them sometimes in my dreams

The promises we made, and the future we once held.

I understand now, the pain they must have felt when i turned away.

I imagine them looking down from above, thinking about the past like i always do, understanding how it is to live our lifes as one, once.

It was such a long time ago.


Their graves i never visit. Their faces i always see.

Table

And so the books began to pile up, open pages of half read text, filled with a collage of scibbles and underlinings and colour marked out sentenses. Yellowing leaves of ancient texts sits on top of them, and issues of magazines long expired gathers quietly in a corner. A few pens laid scattered across the table, idly waiting while they while away inbetween pages, in indifference. The blue inked scribblings on the table calander had all gone back to sleep, but their creator trudges on against his leaden eyelids and wind stunged eyes. He reached to the right, tearing a tissue away from its box, to hear the smoothing ruffling sound of its grainy texture. He looked at the shape of keys, its rough jagged edges and its smooth coin-round face. Its cold silver-whiteness and how it threw light off it. After a while that unsettled him. And so he turned, reluctantly back to his books. A part of him had momentarily died. Yet he know not why.

Music

My mind's pudgy aging man, in heavy specs and labourious motions, sings the song that resonates through the silent air to reach my sleeping ears. His is an ancient voice: better suited for dusky streets and screechy aging speakers, voices from that distant world of black and white. Of lizards along the yellow dimmed allay walls. Ashed marked plastic chairs. It smells of fresh drainage.

22

The inevitable air of change. Im 22 now. The cocoon of time interwoven happiness and despair has an air of mustiness. No longer capable of waiting for my life to happen, it begins, now. This shell cracked open, to face the crisp pristine air with guarded hopefulness. The quiver of expectation mingles with the ecstasy of aliveness. My phantasmagoric life must end, or it must begin. Who would accompany on this fresh beginning? Friends will come and they will go. Lovers too change like the fickle tender objects they are. The burst of passionate incandescent fireworks before it fades into the night. No. This path only i alone can embark. The searching of my happiness. Alone, hand in hand with my Lord.

When im old

Hours upon hours would i stand motionless, gazing out of the window into the bustling world which i am no longer part of. Like my father before, and as will my son after, i stand at this precarious moment, reflecting my life and contemplating the impending death. The young birds, in their flocks would grace the sky, in busy migration before the night sets in. The dewy scent of the fresh breeze invigorates my soul, as it did when i was a child. Ah! a child, as a child. The child of my memory, did i once lived my life as he? Yet how distant it felt. The colour of the sky changed from a baby blue, speckled with pure white distant clouds, into a navy tone somber veil, and finally into that all-forgiving darkness. In the miracle of life, i had lived once.

Photos yay!

Well when typing is tiring, and the mind is lazy, we turn to photos for remembrance of things past. In chronological order..
 



I was born with a pensive look, contemplating about life at such a tender age 

  
 


My older brother and I, upon receiving new toys. Those were the days where joy is cheaply and freely brought

  
 

 
At my godmum's place. With a baby whose name I cant remember. Erm.. 1 qs:Why is his head bigger than mine? Is mine smaller than average?  Questions that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

 
 

 
me and my godnephew. He is 11, while im 22 now. Time do fly. no?
 

 
(whoa! took me like soo much less time using photos instead of typing words. Pictures does convey alot of words)

entrance

Well the holidays will end soon enough. The very essence of life satiate the air now, enriching the very scent of air with the richest fullness, embellishing the setting yellowing rays with the romanticism of fathomless time, and imbueing the constant breeze with charming grace. Through the windows and into the room it spread its liveliness, invigorating the very pulse and beats within the body which lies submerge in its beauty. The preciousness of life is in that it will end. The grace of time is that it never will. While the beginning of term break is met with refreshing change, and the midst of it is bore with repetative mundaneness, the end, now, these days are graced by a placid beauty that comes with charming fleetingness. Such is the beauty, that the very breath that was drew was taken in hungrily, greedily, even lustfully, in the trying to placate the insatiable appetite of its desiring to consume within oneself the fullness of this subtle evanescing beaut.


Upon finishing the above paragraph, the moment had however, came and gone by.

Pride. (05072003)

Humility is the bitter pill we thought we want to swallow. The subtleness of grace, the graceful beauty, the beautiful virtues that are enhanced with humility. All these are true, but only to the observing eye. The humbled sees nothing of the gentleness that others sees in this quality. Humility is like affliction, cast upon one, be it wanted or not. A stigma that afflicts the soul. The seeing of one's disgrace. Instead of elevating, it is a virtue that sinks one sense of self-worth into despair. It is the quality of down-cast heads, the almost quality of shame. The knowing that one is incomparable to the other, the lowering of esteem, the conscious knowing that gratifying pride is not for one. The feeling of little-worth. What a weight it is to the soul. Though uncouth and vile pride might be, it is this peccability that soothe one soul. However beautiful humility truly is, this very virtue shield it from our eyes, causing our reflection to be indescribably vile and impure. And how much harder it is for us to live under our own scrutiny! The ugliness of humility. The drowning of spirit in despair. The unworthiness of ourselves.

halfway done

Our understanding is bound by our need to understand. This flawed conceptual reasoning of ours is a reflection of truth, and the extend of accuracy relies jointly on our station (which is nature, for it is what it is), and on our faculty to comprehend it. It is therefore no cliche when we say that the search of truth begins within oneself, for we are part of nature, and behaves as nature does instinctively dictates, and hence the crystal truth can be approached through our analysising our unspoiled nature- free from the tint of customs and the folly of practices.

What then is our unspoiled nature. If that that is instinctive is that that is unspoiled, can any reasoning, or anything that arise out of it, be a fair reflection of what that is truth, since reasoning demands impulses to be surpressed, and thus this searching for truth in itself caused it to become distorted. This would imply that reasoning does not at all serve its purpose, or any purpose for that matter, and hence could not have existed at all (I am therefore I am, there is no nothingness in nature).

Since our ability to reason cannot be just a faculty to aid the understanding of truth, what then is it. Man, unlike brutes, are given two faculties, that of emotions and that of reasons. Just like nature is not a means to understand truth, but something that begets from truth, so is our ability to reason.

------ im tired... to be continued----
erm..
------ i forgot what the point is to be. The end then----

unfinish

It finally happened. The days where one can live happily alone in wanton ease is gone. No longer can the self take pleasure in the enjoyment of its own quiet solitude. The growing into comfort that comes with age, with the confidence that time invariably imparts, brings with it still its own excitation.

Charisma

Are you sure you really want this? The world will remain the same, but you will change. Your eyes will no longer see good, but your body will feel evil. You will look into your friends, only to find their faults revolting.

Run. Run now. Over the mountains and over the seas. Your self will not find you there. On green pastures you can remain happy and free.
Hid hid away from your maddening thoughts and your righteous ways.

A hand reached out for his head. More hands followed the first, surrounding all of his vision. He shut his lids as his eyes grew tired. Their tongues begun to chant. The light will appear any moment now. The body should feel lighter. A sense of joy should fill my soul. Damnit. Nothing at all. Yet it was done. Nothing had changed, but nothing was the same now

Thousands of days had passed. Still he grew troubled, weighted by his own thoughts. Stop judging! Stop it!! But it was no use. Can infliction transcend the mind and perverse the body? He felt a wave of nausea. His body felt sick and he wished he could just throw up. His head was spinning and his temples begun to burn. An excruciating migraine was eating into his head.

He peered opened his eyes and tried to smile.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep

The change, irreversible, had begun.

Jc days

I was poor when I was in Jc. Its amazing how none of my new classmates then realized that I was broke. It wasn't a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth on my part. I saw no shame in poverty, so there were no reasons to hide it. It was just a situation I found myself in. There were more important things to be concerned about. It just never occurred to me to seek their help. I hope to, without exaggerating nor understating, try to convey the extend of the poverty then. I'll do away with the explaining of why or how I found myself to be in that situation, since it serve little to provide an insight on my life then. All one need to know, for now, was that at that point of time, I was living alone.

Back then, my dad tries to send back 150 dollars every month. It wasn't a secured amount though. Many times it wil fall short of that amount, but sometimes when i'm lucky he'll send back more. I try to not to ask for more, for I knew that he had a hard time raising even that sum of money. Transportation to school took up almost half of that amount. I need to change two buses and a train ride just to get to school. There were many instances when I had to walked home from the train station, for I couldn't afford to take the bus. To be fair my house wasn't that far away from the station though. A 15 minute walk. Still it was pretty sad to cannot afford a 50c bus ride. I couldn't buy a cup of 30 cents coke without worrying if I had enough money to go home. It goes without saying that it was impossible to pay the school bills. Or to pay for those miscellaneous fees. Was it 17 dollars a month? Whenever I did pay up, it would only mean that there was less to eat.

There was the dreadful issue of providing food to eat. I wasn't left with much money after spending on transportation. The only food I could afford was bread. A loaf of bread for my 2 meals. Before and after school. In the beginning of the month I would still have the luxury of buying a can of kaya to go with the bread. I would go to the supermarket and gather all the different brands. The next thing is to compare the nutrition values found in each brand, and more importantly, the weight of the content for each brand. Its amazing how a few grams of kaya can become so important. However i was 17 then, and a loaf of bread a day wasn't enough to keep me full. Far from enough. All it does is to assuage the hunger for a couple of hours. And when the bread stock runs out, and when night sets in, the hunger creeps back in. It is a torture to try sleep with an empty, growling, hungry stomach. You flip and turn but can never get to sleep. It is then that feel your hunger most. It is then you realize how hungry you really are.

One of the cheapest food in school is mashed potato. It cost 50c per serving. Although it was a small serving, I reckoned that potato and the butter in it would provide some form of carbohydrates. And it tasted so good. I couldn't afford protein anyway. On those good days when I received my allowance, on top of having only bread (which wasn't filling anyway), I would treat myself to 2 addtional servings of mash potatoes for breakfast.

Very often however, I would run out of money. That means that I couldn't afford food. This means that I couldn't even afford some stupid plain bread. It was a terrible terrible feeling. To go hungry for days. To be hungry the entire time in school, and to come back and continue the hunger spell. To be able to do nothing about it. To sleep hungry, and to wake up hungry. The body will then become faint and weak. It is during those days when I will ended up drinking tap water to try to alleviate that hunger. To blot the stomach.
I hate that feeling of water filling my empty stomach.

I was on the phone, talking to my friend, on one those nights. I haven't had food for some time now. I was trying not to think about the hunger. I curled up on the floor, clenching my stomach. Then I started crying.

I woke up to the knocks on my door. It was 2am. I had fallen asleep crying. I opened my door to find my friend smiling. He had taken a taxi down to pasir ris to fetch me. To fetch me for supper.

Never neverland

It used to be this. I almost forgot the feeling.

There is this dream, where I was in a room. I am a child in this white room. The whole place was bright. The most pleasantly brightened room. It has the white of the clouds. Light seems just to radiate, illuminate the room. The way I imagined how heaven would be. I would experience the most wonderful feelings there. A magical place where I escape to, where only I can go to, where it waits alway for me. Where its existence is for me alone. A special secret place hidden away. Where I can be in perfect harmony.

This is those dreams where even when dreaming, you know it is a dream. Yet the place seemed not to be just a dream. That room is very real to me. As if it is a magical secret place hidden away, and dreaming is the way to get back into that room. The recurring nature of this dream allows me to make frequent visits to this room.

I cannot remember it in details now. Its has been quite a while since I last visited that place. There may have been people in the room, little guards of some sort, companions maybe, because I know I never felt lonely in that dream. A sense of enchantment. Enchanting quiet joy. Peaceful, nature like. I think there were a few rows of toys, simple toys that would line on the shelf on the wall. I do think there is someone beside the shelf, on the left hand corner, against the perpendicular wall that runs beside the shelf. I was allowed to take my pick.

Everything was perfect. I was perfect. A child with his toy. Oblivious to everything else. It feels almost like a glimpse of heaven. Perfect tranquility. I sat on the whitish floor and played with the toy. Chilling comfortable floor. Marble like. Beautiful floor. I think it was a red toy train, but I can't be sure. It feels like a train.

It may be in my grandmother's house. Within it this secret room was hidden. Beneath it I think. The dream will begin to end when I start hearing voices from outside, echoing across the rooms. Its time to go. A feeling swept through my heart. When the dreaming first started, I couldn't recognize the feeling I had felt. I was probably 13 then. But I do recognize the emotion now. It was the inarticulate feeling of sadness. I will come to a small passageway flanked by two guards. One on each side of the entrance. They were in white too. I looked at them but they did not look back. They just kept looking on ahead. Just 3 steps into the tunnel there was a toilet on the right. It has no doors. I will hurry into the toilet, and sitting on the toilet lid, I wonder if flushing is the right procedure to get transported out of the place. I would search my memory of the previous time I had this dream. How did I do it the previous time. Yes it was the flushing that will transport me to the toilet in my grandmother's house. The last part of this dream. Soon it will end and I will wake. I hope no ones in that toilet now.

I would then flush the toilet, somehow get sucked into it, and be transported to my grandmother's house. Soon after I will wake from the dream, feeling happy.

It has been awhile since I last dreamt of that. I wonder if that has to do with my growing up. The losing of my sense of awe. I do actually miss that dream however. To experience that lovely place once again.

Bastard

It is 1:33am. If there was ever a jerk of a man, it would have been my sister's husband. To be shouting at his wife for no apparent reason, to be slamming, cursing, throwing things around, to wake the kid up in the middle of the night because of his sudden fit. My nephew didn't even seemed surprised. It couldn't have been the first time. I wonder what man would want to embarrass his wife in front of guest. To shame her in front of her brother. To seek to embarrass his wife. My heart grows indignant. I heard him say something about being sick of her already. He spoke with an abusive loathsome growl. I want to punch his puny freaking face for that. I really do. Who the hell he is to make my sister sad. Fuck? Fuck himself too. I really want to punch him. Mother-fucking son of a bitch. I swear I would if he touch her. Ill make him sorry. I just need a reason to interfere. That bastard.

What can I do to make her sorrow go away. She is now in my nephew's room, patting him to sleep, reassuring him that nothing is wrong. I tried to see if she was upset. But whatever sadness she might be experiencing is hidden away in the darkness. All I can do is to pat her on her head and ask if she is alright. That's all I can do. All I can do is try to provide some comfort, but what comfort can I really give? I hope she don't cry. A part of me wished i had never seen this episode. It sickens me to think that this will continue, had continued, for so long. That this is my sister's life. She do not deserve this.

PoetryBluff

How could it be, that three and a half years have passed. It was then that I came with a heavy heart, determined to use what's left of the one week to finish what I had started. I came to my godsister's place to do the final touch up on the poetry webpage I had been involved in. My final dealing with Emerson, Yeats, Fitzgerald. In one week time I was about to be enlisted for the army.

That china kid is here to play again. After so long nothing had change. He seems bigger, taller, but I couldn't be sure. Looking at the kid now seemed to erode the very little memory I had of him. He could well have shrunked but my mind would still perceive him to have had grown taller. I wonder if he still recognizes me. I broke into a nervous smile, the best one I could muster to hid my nervy heart. The is nothing quite as shameful as being forgotten by someone, even if the someone happens to be a child.

Do you still remember me?

I do. He looked at me with his eyes beaming, breaking into those enchanting boyish smiles. I cant help but returned a sheepish grin. That kid had just made my day. My godnephew, one year younger but very much smaller in size, peered over the sofa to see who was outside. Titi korkor! Titi korkor!! My sister came out of the kitchen and saw me. I noticed that she too was trying to hid her smile. I was quickly ushered in.

If time can stop, it must have did in this house. The CD that I had bought 3 years ago still lays laying here on the table. The life I had then had arched into my memory, but now upon my returning, I realized it never did become just another memory. It laid there all this time, as if it were waiting for me to return. As if it was just yesterday that I was here. As if time never did fled by.

The china kid have grown into a pretty little boy. Those boyish looks that will, in time to come, charm and break many young girl's heart. The one thing that surprised me most is the way he converse in English. Something did change afterall. He lost the uncertain inaccurate accent that people growing up in Chinese speaking families tend to have. That overcompensating way they tend to speak. He speaks now with the demeanor like that of any kid brought up in a good English family. Yet he possess none of the cockiness, that self-indulging muckness, the over bearing confidence English educated kids tend to have. Even at such tender age, it is obvious to see that he retained a certain easy humility. One that not even time nor experiences can buy.

For some reasons I fluster with pride at the thought of him. I wonder why.

Pictures

There's this photo, of a kid in a graduation gown, taken 15 years ago. The child in the photo, a boy, couldn't have been older than 6. He stood upright balancing the hat that rested on his head, careful not to fidget, while the adults around fussed with his hair, making sure it was well combed and parted, and adjusted the tie he has around his neck. It was a red tie, and his mother, or teacher, or perhaps the photographer himself was mindful in deliberately slanting it to create a desired effect. A slight untidiness to make the picture more pleasing. Even then they know how a slight imperfection will make the whole seems more natural. Perfection is seldom tolerated. Too overbearing. Too insincere.

The boy received a certificate. It was rolled up, and bounded by a strip of ribbon. A small bow was on top of the ribbon. Both are red. He held onto it, but was soon told that his grip was wrong. Right hand clench from beneath, left over. He was a somewhat reserved boy, or as his report book puts it, a shy boy with a quiet disposition. Boys of this nature, although not timid, can at times fluster easily. However this time the instructions were clearly given, and he was able to quickly and calmly re-adjust his grip.

the scroll,tilt it more, more, ok good. Don't move. Smile






The photo was taken and his mother was pleased. That was her son, and she was proud.

Results

It must have been around 8am when my phone ringed. I should have turn off the ring of the phone. It is those pesky phone in which, in intervals will keep on ringing, until something is done about it. I wondered if I had staggered out of my sleep, like what I used to always do. Yet staggering suggest a struggle between sleep-reality, the trying to keep awake. It would be more accurate to describe it as a state of semi-comatose. Boundaries blurred, and dreams seemed more real than reality. Forms may become less concrete, and time becomes distorted, yet within the dream itself, it almost make perfect sense. The forming of a complete whole through imperfect parts, this consummate child of my fallible mind.

I dreamt that I did badly in my exams. Grades that were similar to last year. Mediocrity leaves a bad after-taste. The shattering of lofty dreams, the wavering of spirit, perharps the eroding of hope. The fall back to reality slap.better to reign in hell then serve in heaven. This was my final push. If I were to fail now, again, will I be able to muster more strength and courage to try again? A silent, almost resolute voice within myself seems to whisper yes. There is this tenacity about the human spirit. Still it will be cruel to go that way, that weary path of agonizing defeat. My well trodden path for the past 3 months.

It was dreadful watching myself do badly. The suspense before the unfolding of results, the ecstatical mix of guarded hope and hopeful fear. The encouragement all anticipation brings. The suddenness of disappointment. The grappling with the truth, and the eventual sad pangs of failure. I don't think I have had the best of dreams.

I woke up relief. Its amazing how a dream can so quickly lower my expectation. Fell on my knees to pray

Hey I did well! Not the best of results, but almost there. Obtained AABB for the four subjects I took. A vast improvement from the previous semester, although still falling short of ambit. Well the ambitious knows no bounds. Still this ought to placate my restless heart for a couple of days. Phonecalls and messages from well-wishers came flooding in. It will continue to do so for the next few days. Im just glad this time round there is no longer the agony that i had felt previously. Im going out to play now.

24 hours ago

I guess its time to grow up. I never understood how pple can change in jus a few days, or how friendship hard fought could be so quickly dismissed. Wasn't the bond between brothers suppose to surpass time and events? Yet within so few an hour, I realize that for some, friendships is but only a temporal distraction, warming the seat until a girl arrive. The lesser must fade when the greater comes. How true can friendship be when it can be so quickly replaced? What happened to friends being part of family?

When pple change, they seem to die and disappear. The face remains. The body stays the same. Yet the person becomes an entirely different person; the conversation turns unfamiliar, the tone becomes hostile, an impregnable distance gaps the souls. What that is left is the memory of how it used to be, which does nothing but serve as a harsh contrast, a reminder of how different it is now. the agony of hell is the loss of heaven. I liked the idea of changes. That idea of evolving and growing together, the meeting of circumstances, come what may. Yet nobody told me it was more like the losing of friends to changes. I guess it would be accurate to say that my closest friend had died overnight.

White streaks of lighting flashes thru the crimson night sky. A soft rhythmic, almost gentle thundering fills the otherwise silent night. It is 4:32 am now. What a ghostly time. Those dead hours where the sound of it stirs one into nostalgia. I hope it rains. Nothing is as uplifting as sleeping to the prattle of falling rain. The salty smell, the cool caress of its breeze. The reassuring sleep to a soothing lullaby.

I'm almost certain that this feeling of loss will be gone by the time I awake. The body will find ways to heal itself, while the mind is capable of numbing itself to sadness. Scars may remain, but at the comfort of a mended wound. Emotions are but fleeting and inconsequential. Things we attached the most values to may be the things that could be just as easily overlooked. Still I wonder why happiness seems momentaneous, while an injured heart can persist in that state for such a long time.

Oh yes. My schl results will be due later this morning.