Today with my god-daughter

You came to be my god-daughter simply because your mom adopted me as a god-sister.

From a cared-for tenant at your parents’ abode to a dearly doted-on god-sister, your parents have treated me as if I were a blood relative. Staying at your home was a safe interlude for me, one of those rare places that I felt I belonged to and could sleep soundly at.

Even before our relationship had any official designation, you were easy to take a shine to, easy to like.

The Creative Habit

Still enamoured with Tywla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit, I brow beat the EAPers into discussion on cultivating a creative habit. They seem to grasp the concept of how preparation facilitates creation.

It’s a round robin discussion and one of the EAPers, in dulcet tones, speaks of how she prepares by daydreaming and imaging possibilities. It’s the dreamy me that I sight in her and I latch on to her statement.

“Is inspiration part of the preparation work? Or should we view preparation work as the physical tasks or skill sets that get us ready to rumble?”

The class considers.

“I’m gonna make an amazing webpage. Is dreaming how the webpage should look, the preparation work, or being excellent at using Dreamweaver and PS, the preparation?”

Every EAPer opted for the latter.

—–

It’s 0620h and I’ve been keeping vampire hours. ABBA’s winner takes it all is on the loop and there are people I am missing. I was going to sleep 7 songs ago but I felt I should trot out this entry, because writing will soon be an inescapable aspect of my work. Each entry I post ( or [robably draft) will make it a little easier for me to write on demand and reach expert level in typing in the darkness. :O)

I don’t see a point in posting all my drafts and I don’t post the 1125372383 travel photos I take, simply because there’s too much shit and flotsam in digispace. This post serves as a marker for myself. The “I did something because I OUGHT TO” marker.

And now I ought to sleep.

*smmmooooochies*

Love Language

I racked up ‘Quality Time’ as my love language on the bite-sized fb quiz. The result seemed accurate, given my penchant for basking in my loved ones’ warm company and my strive to be present for them, combined with doing what’s conceivable and appropriate, I hope.

And my, oh my, that quiz result was definitely a projection of my conscious mind and not of my unguarded self.

Words really get me. Toss a kind word my way and I’ll be gnawing on it. All yappy and contented. And puppyish. Whisper about yearnings to me and I’ll drink them without a pause. A vessel for your outpourings. Miming expansive arcs with outstretched arms; Love in heart-stopping motion. I watch myself tripping over words. Everyone else’s and mine. Gems of stock advice implode, turning into a shower of paper confetti. Slippery pearls of wisdom in mint-condition, lob towards these clumsy hands. Weigh down by what you said and everything that you wouldn’t. Sidestepping your rules, I walk into who I am. Your words in my birthday card.

Yes, you love me and yes, you can’t.

Let me

Let me, let me sit beside you on a stream. Let me, let me laugh with you and share your dream.

I’ll be your true friend until the end, you can depend on me.

‘30 Things To Do Before I Turn 30′ List

1. drive solo and safely
2. figure out how to take turns while riding a bike and stop without needing a tree before me
3. learn 100 Spanish phrases and 1000 Spanish words
4. finish reading the How to Excel at Excel book
5. ask for a raise
6. ask for a part-time work hours
7. look for a SW related part-time employment or volunteer again
8. get my SW accreditation if necessary
9. send out all the photos that I owe and write to the folks that I promised I would
10. submit my photographs to asia national geographic contest
11. learn how to use all the functions on the digicam
12. learn how to picasa perfectly
13. finish writing my burma blog
14. contemplate how to achieve my south america adventure
15. Put aside a lump sum of $$ for my trip
16. grow my hair till it reaches my butt crack and then go trim my hair short. (As if I dare to!)
17. quit my facebook game addiction
18. get started on my 100 item project

Loved and otherwise

To the people who love me, I owe you my life.

To the people who don’t, I owe them my achievements.

For Jlth

This would have to start with a love story where girl meets boy -

Girl is awestruck by boy’s talented performance.

Girl finds out boy’s name and class and always tries to hang around boy.

Girl actually turns up early for school so that she can spend time with boy before morning assemblies.

Boy accepts girl’s friendship.

Boy hangs out with girl.

Boy invites girl to take part in god-centred youth groups.

Girl wholeheartedly joins boy in his devotions.

Girl scrimps to buy exquisite candies for boy.

Boy is delighted by candies.

Boy cheers girl up when she is sad.

Girl is always thinking about boy.

Boy is always supportive of girl’s decisions.

Boy and girl spends tons of time together.

Sometimes they egg each other on to do wacky things, sometimes they quarrel with each other. On rare occasions, they have full on fights and cold wars. Mostly though, they are very comfortable with each other’s company.

One day, girl confesses her undying love for boy.

Boy laughs.

Another day, girl tries again.

Boy tries to laugh again.

Yet another day, she tries again. But, of course.

Boy is solemn.

Not long after, boy and girl part ways.

The seconds take a long long while to turn into years.

Finally, boy and girl meet again.

Now, girl is with another boy. Boy is with someone else.

Boy and girl are awkward.

Boy smiles at girl.

Girl greets boy and looks away.

The seconds take a while to turn into months.

Boy and girl become friends again.

The months turn into years.

Boy and girl carefully strive to rebuild their friendship.

With hope that the years will give way to decades.

* * *

Happy 15th Anniversary my beloved J.

For a sweetheart

I’m alone and the restaurant staff catches me staring off into the distance. As he clears my plate, he is concerned and asks, “Is the food not to your taste?” His question jolts me out of my reverie and it’s a while before I utter these syllabuses, “Yar-dar-shee-day.” He isn’t able to conceal his surprise that I replied in Burmese. We smile simultaneously; our smiles, sincere and awkward.

Then I’m left alone again. It’s a white formica topped table that my laptop is perched on. Surrounding the table are the perennial beech wood-backed chairs with spindly stainless steel legs. This place is chillier than your average shopping mall foodcourt. F4’s Meteor Garden theme is pumping in the background. The first rendition is in Mandarin.

And now, Burmese.

You would like these songs on the playlist today. You would break into a smile at hearing them while turning your face away from mine. Not wanting to bear the tease of my knowing eyes and good natured smirk. You might even state the obvious, “I like this song,” while you refrain from nodding to the chorus and my laughing rejoinder will be “I know!”

Bon Jovi hasn’t heard the Burmese cover of their ‘Thank You’. I’m listening to it right now and it is quite an effort to will back the sniffles.

Thank you for treating me as sweetly as you did during our Burmese days too long ago.

Project: the Apple that Eva Bit

I’m embarking on another of slightly crackpotty attempts to reach my version of nirbana again by eating veggies, chicken eggs & dairy products. I hope quails eggs are unfertilised too.

what inspired this? Being vegetarian on parts of my burma trip and running into a good no of vegetarians throughout my trip could have been the inspiration. But on returning to Singapore, I was devouring chicken rice, succulent cream coloured chicen breat, chicken liver and loh bak and too much Popeye’s fried chicken.

A catalyst, perhaps? After feasting on Popeye’s chicken and taiwanese chicken chop at our T3(I had an immense chicken craving when reaching SG), I tumbled home in the early rainy morning on 4 July and saw a lizard on the bathroom wall.

The Lizard. Suspended on my wall. It was heading towards to floor. Its tail curved as a sickle. Black beady eyes. Gleaming. I gasped, jerked my arms and insisted, “Shoo, shoo!” The bugger stayed perfectly still. It was a XL-sized lizard. Could have hugged a stiletto heel and a little more with its entire span. Popeye’s chicken was churning at the back of my throat. “Shhhooooo?!Hmpf!”It didn’t even twitched. I pretended to be brave and eyeballed it. Black beady eyes, a little glazed over. It did not flinched. Did not moved. Could not moved. One of it hind limbs was twisted awkwardly. The plasticky brown body seemed resigned. My sprained thumb was throbbing. I grabbed my toothbrush and turned away.

It was a huge lizard that outran its course of life. Somehow, the little bugger made me connect to the logic that my some of my food just as alive as it was, as I am.

After, it was the Apple that Eve bit.

So I’ve been relatively vegetarian for the past 2 weeks. Trying to fit into this new eating habit. Chomping on bits of meats – not entirely by choice. and working out my own brand of rock and roll vegetarianism.

Let’s go veg with me, leave the cow to be!

Time Wastes Too Fast

“time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen. the days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of windy day – never to return – more everything presses on – and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, every absence which follows it, are preludes to the eternal separation which we are shortly to make!” – ‘Tristram Shandy’ by Laurence Sterne.

Chanced upon the above at this site – http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/time-wastes-too-fast/?em

I feel as if there is too little time in my life. Too little time to love to the extend that I wish to love. The peoples, the places, the preoccupations. Truly too much left to love and accomplish. And hours I want to spend holding your child in my arms, lifting and swinging the little ones before these muscles are worn. Hearing you tell me about the past week/month/year in your life. Pressing my fingertips into your shoulders in friendship or bear-hugging, rough housing you. Pressing my lips against your ears and telling you what I want to hear. “Besos linda!” you taught.

The times I want to be left alone with the sunrises, sunsets, the good books, the hot teas. All the inanimates, intangibles that I love. Travelling with the wind in my hair. I left my hair growing longer and longer these past years. My trademark hair joke is that I left it long to ensnare the boys, but something more honest, would be that I left it long to catch the breeze in these waves.

And then, there’s the future and that rainy day I’m suppose to prepare for. I’m expected to stockpile assets, money and accolades and scale to greater heights in my heels. I want all these too, because I keep wanting to do this, that and that in my life. To travel, to gift, to have the money spend on bettering something, pampering someone. To leave a certain legacy.

Time does waste too fast and I want this brief lifetime of mine wasted on you.