| don't want to go for a meeting at 8am on a saturday and I would like this grey shroud to disappear |
[Mar. 7th, 2009|01:40 am] |
| [ | and action? |
| | groggy | ] |
Yes, that about explains it.
I have reached my week 9 saturation point and am tapping my feet impatiently at the bottom of everyone's emotional well, including my own! Lately I've been feeling like you, me and everyone else could use a little dimmer on the lights and just stop - stop doing, stop fretting, stop the furrowing of brows, stop the deep sighing, silence the skeptics, blink past the detractors, shrug off the unspoken droop of the shoulders, stop the filling of rooms with conversation and manic thoughts so thick you can slice it with a knife.
Give me a little quiet, a little slow dancing, a familiar song. Nothing to do for a day but unravel. I want to feel something other than this woolly cotton tongued mess of distance, space and deafening silence that is duty. Surely we're entitled to that. |
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| Gang signs and ford crossings |
[Dec. 23rd, 2008|12:25 am] |
| [ | and action? |
| | awake | ] |

After the upteenth ford crossing, this is the one where we decided - surely this deserves hopping out of the car with two cameras and evidently, making peace with the horrendous weather. Thousands and thousands of pictures to sort through :)
(facebook for the rest)
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| Writer's Block: The Wrath of Ohrwurm |
[Nov. 27th, 2008|02:30 am] |
Too late, it already did. THREE times today (in the bathroom at Raffles City, in a shop and what are the odds - sitting beside some teenager on the train with no concept of in-ear music)
I'M NOT A GIRL, NOT YET A WOOOOMAN. ALL I NEED IS TIME, A MOMENT THAT IS MINE, WHIIIIIIIIILE I'M IN BEE-TWEEEN (repeat. Endless friggin' repeat)
(Britney Spears) THAT LINE KEEPS PLAYING IN MY HEAD.
Undead Earworms: Aa singing with tremendous gusto that irritating Enrique song (I REFUSE to google the title - doyouknowwhat it feeeeeeeeeeeeels like, lovin someone/body) because he knows it makes my skin crawl and that obviously gives him endless joy and glee.
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| between good and great is the score |
[Nov. 24th, 2008|02:04 pm] |
| [ | and action? |
| | cheerful | ] |
| [ | roll playback |
| | Ennio Morricone - theme from The Untouchables | ] | I woke up this morning to the strains of a flautist playing the Gift of a Thistle (from the Braveheart soundtrack) and It was SO hauntingly good it gave me goose bumps. I sat in the kitchen for a good whole hour reading the papers and then later on, a cellist started playing the bagpipe parts to The Secret Wedding.
Apparently the people who are renting the unit upstairs are teaching at the conservatory in SG and will be here for awhile. Anyhow, I don't know if it's just me, but they just don't compose movie scores like they used to. Call me a sentimentalist but the best of them belong to Ennio Morricone. Maybe it's because I love this movie so much, and everything that it represents - childhood, a great love for cinema, the adventure, heartache and small pains of life on and off screen. I swear the first time I watched it with a big bunch of friends, when the fine sign came on we all sat in silence until one of the guys sighed. Moriccone could not have done a better job on it.
(Live in Warsaw, Poland - Ennio Moriccone, Love theme from Cinema Paradiso)
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| Art and Crafty |
[Nov. 23rd, 2008|11:15 pm] |
I'M OFFICIALLY ON LEAVE! Well not entirely, but other than a couple of odds and ends, the year has closed for me. Hurrah! (if anyone dare to so much as insinuate that we teachers have so much leave, I will release a throng of sweaty ape-like man-teens on you)
Aa is away in India on a community work trip and as a pseudo single, I have done none of the girly things expected. NO. I HAVE BEEN CLEANING MY ROOM LIKE A DOG, HOWLING AT THE INSUFFERABLE RAIN and WORKING (yes, like a dog) at completing several overdue designs till my eyes burn from effort. If only telekinesis would happen. A friend of mine is setting up a really eclectic second hand book store (not of the Sunny variety) and I'm helping her design some big stencils for their walls as well as their company letterhead/namecards. Here are some dingbats I did up for her creature feature section! The frazzy cat was inspired by what mich always says I look like when I'm harried and stressed by morons.
This is a part of Ron's wedding card. I absolutely love monograms. There's something special and classy about them. I'm constantly inspired by Aa's handkerchiefs and shall endeavour to get mine stitched so they can be drooled on! Haha!
Be taking the graduating batch next year so their A levels will bleed sanity and free time out of me (while sawing at my arterial freedoms with a butter knife). I just hope it won't be as painful as it sounds. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching and the surprising intellectual rigour that comes with it. The kids make me laugh everyday and the admin/politics/competition/marking is only as bad as one's perception, capability, EQ and competency (or the lack thereof) is. I suppose that's a reminder to myself. Suffice to say I have become infinitely more patient. It was a real shocker to read the survey comments - the kids actually believe I am a veritable fount of patience.
ME. PATIENT. The Divine, has truly intervened.
The thing is though, I despise how all-consuming it all is and I want the space to start writing freelance again and working on some designs. They don't really pay a pretty penny (or maybe I'm too self conscious/scared/cheap to ask for more) but it forces me to have a life outside the whirlpool that is school. Anyway, this all is a shameless plug for you to please come visit my website when/if it's up next year and give me a little support if you're intending to design anything, draw graphics, make your name card, print journals, wedding paraphanelia or better yet, buy some paintings and sketches etc. I'll be donating the money for those to a listed charity! .. I'm thinking about the sound of crunching icicles under my feet and breathing in air so thick you can slice it, slather on snow and eat it alive.(I say that now, but every time I travel in winter it's SO dr hard strip and shower)
 (breathes) |
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| bushy tailed and bright eyed |
[Oct. 30th, 2008|01:02 pm] |
| [ | and action? |
| | sneaky | ] |

chose the wrong nut to crack. I is be makesing squirrel trapsss for you! Beware. |
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| 11 on scale of 10 |
[Oct. 30th, 2008|10:02 am] |
| [ | and action? |
| | numb | ] | Everybody is afflicted - some more so than others. Mine is a hole in my sole with the laces undone, and to add on to well worn matters, I'm having one of those Mother Migraines. My hands have gone cold, I'm starting to see blind spots in my vision and I am swallowing the urge to throw up. Meanwhile, little elves are pounding a sledgehammer deep inside my right eye and tunneling through the base of my neck. The office is too bright, the aircon is too cold, people's heels are clacking too loudly and the sound of phones going off is driving me insane.
Out out damned spot, all the Mefamic anaflex synflex imigrans of this world cannot sweeten this blight.
Meep. |
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| stream o' consciousness |
[Oct. 15th, 2008|01:38 pm] |
| [ | and action? |
| | bored | ] |
With modernity crumbling, our thoughts turn to antiquity. No lah. With post exams, comes hours of letting your mind sprawl.
At it's most generous, school bestows the rare gift of free time and independence. It's been one of those slow weeks with nothing much to do. (but I'm almost afraid to type that out). I started off sipping a liquid breakfast in an empty canteen, having a long chat with my regular group of boys about world events, presidential debates, and for today, out of body experiences and crop circles (why is it that the girls have so little opinion?)
The office is too quiet, and at once alive with the sound of mouseclicks - people buying air tickets, FB stalking and trawling through online news (which is infinitely less productive than reading it hard copy). I love the smell of newspapers, especially when they're sunwarmed (being read outdoors) and crisp. I always read the comics first. That's the way the world should be read, no? With a sure sense of brevity and a smile.
Alas piles of journals and magazines are piling up on my desk begging me to PLZ UPDATE SELF ABOUT WORLD EVENTS YOU LAZY TOOT. The lack of motivation lately is startling - it feels like I'm just chalking up hours. I was just telling drea that night how I'm the last person to give advice on change. My answer will always be yes. Do it. Or at least try. She laughed. It's true though, impulsiveness is an easy pill to swallow but can make for a queasy morning after. For pretty much all of my so called adult life, I've just stood there and grabbed whatever came my way. Ferociously. I don't always make measured decisions. I like a little fight. I like to find out. And then when I get good at what I do (my problem is wringing all challenge out of it), I get bored (naturally). Repeat.
But to be honest, I haven't felt that way in a long time. I still hanker after change, but only to break the monotony of routine: a glimpse of someone to inspire a sketch, an encounter that nets hours of worthy conversation, a class that sets you down a new path — whatever it is, it will seem predestined, the kind of epiphany that, as many would insist, can only happen to dreamers and kids. Things to look forward to rather than big ticket amusements. Making plans about my drool worthy (imaginary) wall-to-floor library with a sliding ladder. Doing things well, and not budging till I see long term returns. Blue chip stocks at bargain basement prices. Holding power.
To be writing about all this seems really weird as well. Who writes about these things? Why am I no longer compelled to write only when I'm having an ache, am angry or adamant about something? (I'd much rather talk it out or sleep and wake with a different perspective). Maybe this is what growing definitively into your late twenties is supposed to be like. Like being comfortable in a sweet spot but knowing that whenever I want to shake things up, I can.
A molotov cocktail. We could all use something like that. |
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| Postcard and priorities |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|03:18 pm] |
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "I don't much care where-," said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat. "-so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough." / Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland A dream last night:
I have been opening windows to worlds and traversing lands - to no avail. Nothing will move you. And now my eyeballs are dry in their sockets. My ears have folded. I'm dragging a 35kg pack and wilting in the sand.
If only I knew how easy it was. All it took was something so simple. Stamps. Postcards. A room with a view. We learn from the strangest, most unlikely of places. Some of us sat around today playing a lets-go-to (insert destination!) game. I lost to an outrageous plan, and started planning that instead. Even if falls flat and doesn't come through, I would have already enjoyed myself heaps dreaming up enough to make it count. And ah, dreams are a bit like fantasies that way - just with a tipple of earthiness, and a one in three chances of turning them into plans. Here's hoping.
And oh, a ticket to anywhere please. I want to be a grad student in this dream. Anywhere but here.
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