"ten seconds left until midnight nine chances to drown ourselves in black hairdye eight faces turned away from the clock seven windows and six of them were locked five stories falling forever and ever three cheers to the mirror and now there're two of us can we have one last dance?"
and now a summary of the year, with the first paragraphs of the first posts of each month. jan it's been quite a while, but let's round up the year with the next few posts.
feb "though i'm afraid afraid that i have made mistakes now there's nothing here for me the things you once told me the thoughts you once gave me sound like the wind in my ears that blows out the knots i've got in my long brown hair" shadows - warpaint
mar i went on a trip to bandung, indonesia with 3 friends i knew from ns. this was taken outside the airport after we spent over an hour in immigration.
apr my cat has been here for almost 5 years now, and was only a few months old when it came. after being around humans and ZERO cats for this long, it is quite interesting, yet often overlooked as to how its behaviour came to be more cat-like rather than human-like.
may i was listening to this video just a minute ago and when he started singing i suddenly felt like crying. tears actually welled up in my eyes WTF?
jun remember the time when i had a new phone? on tuesday the screen decided to stop working, and i had to switch back to my awesome nokia flip phone.
jul had this video on repeat for the past week after i heard it on misfits.
aug last night i went to watch warpaint for the second time this year. their set was short, only about an hour so that was rather disappointing. if a 48-year-old robert smith could play for 3 hours...
sep there was a group of kids in the waiting area making a hell lot of noise and my friend was trying to shut them up. i went over to have a look and found them talking shit to my friend, so i told him to pretend to note down their group number so that the judges can deduct their score.
oct about 2 weeks back i finally gave up on having to find some running partners every time i want to go for a jog and decided to fuck it and run on my own.
nov and just like that, november is here.
dec so one fine day a few weeks ago, i was waiting to cross the road in front of my house. across the road there was a girl in jc uniform waiting to cross over too.
1. foals - spanish sahara this was in the beginning of the year after i went to laneway festival. before that, i didn't see much in foals but they really impressed me with their live performance.
my friend and reader (probably 1 of 3 who still come here) dqb happened to be very into this song too, which made me more interested in it.
2. warpaint - shadows i got to see warpaint twice this year and it was lovely. there was a time when i was obsessively listening to their songs and i really found it amazing that i just couldn't get sick of them.
amongst their songs, i have a few that i like more than the others, but this one probably stands out because twice i've seen them and twice they didn't play it. in fact, a search on youtube seems to show that they never ever play it live.
3. damien rice - delicate it was in june when i first heard this song on misfits. june was a very transitional period for me, having finally finished my exams and i was just constantly wondering 'what's next?'
what's next was i bought a laptop and downloaded all these shows, and misfits was one that really messed with me to the point where i stopped watching it.
4. bright eyes ft. tom morello - arienette / no one would riot for less i've said enough about this here and here. i had arienette on repeat on youtube for a few weeks straight and it was just driving me insane how damn good it was and yet i knew no one to share it with who could appreciate it as much.
5. brand new - daisy this one's been around the entire year. to me, this song is about rebirth. sometimes in life we find ourselves stuck in what we're supposed to be, and just can't get out.
for example imagine a hermit doesn't wanna be alone anymore, but he doesn't know any other way to live, or even perhaps he feels like he'll be betraying the very essence of who he is.
we're all stuck in some way or another but it's ok to change, allow yourself to be reborn and it'll be alright.
i was watching the sun set and it just made me think if i followed the sun far enough over the horizon, it would be right overhead in central africa, and how our setting sun was just rising in new york, half a world away.
recently i met up with some of my platoon mates from BMT, which was during the period of july to september 2008. since then, this is probably only the third time we've met up, and each time with a different group of people.
so as expected, we were sharing (or reminding each other of) stories during BMT. some stories i never heard of or can't remember at all, and others i recall vividly, but even the stories i remembered, the storyteller would interpret the incidents in a way totally different from mine.
i thought it was interesting that although we experienced our BMT together as a platoon, we each brought back vastly different versions of our time there. perhaps this is to be expected for such a big group of 40 people, but if we narrow it down to the smallest unit of measure, let's say a couple in a relationship, would it be any different?
for a couple who are in love with each other, wouldn't it be kinda silly when this 'love' they share is in fact a very different thing to each of them?
would it be correct then to say that what they love is not their partner, but rather just who they picture this person to be?
my expectations were high and the album just came across as being a notch too weird for my liking. at that time, i remembered telling myself that i didn't really like the entire devil and god album when i first heard it too. maybe this one would be the same.
i tried my best but i just couldn't feel it in daisy, and i gave up after a few listens, only popping by once in a while over the next year. (i think it also had something to do with the shitty audio on the computer i was using back then)
then earlier this year i came across these videos of their acoustic session and it just blew everything out of the water. the acoustic versions of the song put everything in a new light and i was drawn back to the album. how did i miss out on such gems?
and so fueled by this new appreciation, i began regularly listening to the album and fell deeply in love with it, at the moment even surpassing my love for the devil and god.
it was in the early months of 2010 and my mood was at the lowest it had been in years. things weren't right, both in my head and the stuff that was going on around me.
it came to a point where i didn't want to sink any further because then it'll be hell trying to get out of the hole. so one night i came to the conclusion that the best thing i could do was to surrender.
i surrendered and everything felt alright. i didn't have any expectations, didn't harbour any hopes, i didn't struggle against the tide. i emptied myself of all emotions and just allowed things to be as they were and it was fine.
not that things weren't just as bad as they had been, it was just that i didn't feel it anymore and that's all that matters. i guess that was the closest i've come to attaining nirvana.
it's late and i can't sleep. i thought i should update this blog of mine and so i opened this and haven't figured out what to fill it up with. i loitered around the web, hoping to find something but somehow i feel that the web has been devoid of inspiration for the longest time.
it's all tumblr and photos and no one bothers to write anymore. well who am i to complain? i haven't been writing too. i went to check out msn and that place is one barren desert these days. everyone's on mac and msn doesn't work well on there. it's difficult to keep up a decent online conversation on facebook or wherever the fuck else.
i've always been fascinated by the vampire genre since i was young.
there are the action-packed ones, like those old chinese movies with hopping vampires and yellow talisman, and the blade series. merciless killers that will stop at nothing to suck your blood, or intelligent psychopathic killers that will also stop at nothing to suck your blood.
as i grew older, my tastes gravitated towards the romanticised ideas of vampires. immortal beings walking the earth for eternity, cursed to be both human and monster. to be so tired of this world that their death just seems so much more appealing.
i never really got deep into it though. i read christopher pike's the last vampire in secondary school and found it quite nice, and when i was younger i watched bits of interview with the vampire on tv, which was what got me interested in the romanticised vampires.
and then along came the fucking abomination that is TWILIGHT. holy shit it was terrible. i didn't enter the cinema with high expectations, or any expectations at all. sure the books were popular as hell, but i once read a page and decided that it was shit.
the movie couldn't be that much different, could it? holy shit it exceeded all my expectations. it was so bad that midway through the movie i actually felt myself getting really angry that these movie producers thought that it was alright to sell this piece of shit to us.
like for fuck's sake, somewhere along the whole chain from the earliest production to the final review, someone, somewhere must have realised that it was a complete piece of shit right? NO! it still made it all the way through.
that movie alone turned me off all the recent spate of vampire series that everyone's crazy about. i figured that they all came out because of the popularity of twilight to ride on its coattails, and if twilight sucked so so so bad, these couldn't be too far behind.
so yeah, fuck all of them. true blood, vampire diaries, what else? blame it all on that fucking twilight.
i have been sick since sunday and this afternoon i had the weirdest dream ever. i was having the chills and fever at the same time. i would first feel cold, and wrap myself up in the blanket. then i'll start to overheat and sweat and then have to lie out in the open again.
in my semi-conscious state, i was trying my best to find the equilibrium point from which i would be finally able to sleep in peace. i was rolling around in bed, having a battle with my pillows and blanket.
so while doing this, i dreamt that my body was being split into 5 parts (i was actually something like a starfish) by some niggers and they were stacking the parts on top of each other to find the perfect temperature range.
when that failed, they decided to bring each part of my body to a different place, for example one into the snow, one into the desert, so that overall the differences would even each other out to equilibrium.
seriously though, i know i was sick and all, but what the fuck kinda dream was that?!
so one fine day a few weeks ago, i was waiting to cross the road in front of my house. across the road there was a girl in jc uniform waiting to cross over too.
at first glance she looked pretty nondescript and i was just minding my own business when it suddenly hit me. there was something really special about this girl and her stock just shot up a thousand points.
there was an aura about this girl that i could just sense. even in her neat uniform, ponytailed hair, simple shoes and backpack, she just exuded an attitude that could best be described as 'i don't give a fuck.'
you see, i often find that people these days like to bother themselves with lots of superfluous issues that really shouldn't matter at all. instead, they allow these things to slowly take over their lives. they don't even realise it because it just feels so natural.
the art of not-giving-a-fuck is one that is dying and so rarely seen, yet so highly-prized by me. it isn't about not giving a fuck about everything, but rather having enough good sense to only bother with the issues that truly matter.
thus you can imagine how i felt when i realised that i had just found a living specimen just across the road from me.
from that moment on i stole glances at her, not wanting to go all-out creepy, but with each glance she seemed to get prettier and it got harder for me not to look.
i wished that the train of vehicles would not end. finally it did, and with a heavy heart i began crossing the road, as did she.
as i passed her, i took one final glance, hoping that she would look up too and i would catch her eye. alas, one of the pains of being attracted to such a girl is that the chances are, i'm also included in the grand list of things she doesn't give a fuck about.
and indeed she didn't, and she passed without once looking up. i wonder if she heard my heart shattering.
