Wednesday, January 5, 2011 7:18 PM
highly literary, with occasional grammar slips
hi, and bye.
kthxbye
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 12:05 PM
highly literary, with occasional grammar slips
$30 to killin a bookshop.
i absolutely refuse to believe that one year had gone by. i am one day shy of finishing up my 21st year and i am not happy. i can't, for the love of my socks, recall how this year went by. but i did remember a certain 4th sept when i spent 3 hours in mph buying up my $30 worth of vouchers Group5 bestowed unto me on my birthday last year.
and boy oh boy, it pretty much sums up what i have been doing all these while.
i wanted to get my money's worth by using the vouchers for my lit texts; but blame the bookshop (or my friends, for buying vouchers from MPH and not borders or kino, which would be so much BETTER hahaha) for its inadequacies and tadah, i have $30 to spend on books i WANT to read.
i looked and looked but to no avail. i have absolutely no idea what i want, not need, to read. well, that was until i stumbled upon their classic literature section. there, i saw a glimpse of the library collection in Heaven. no seriously, it was classics to the day God comes. There was Rudyard Kipling (darned racist i hate to love), William Shakespeare (hmm, 'nuff said) and lo and behold, all-time favourite Jane Austen (victorian nut head).
and then i realised, all those journalism shizz and those investigative writing style have been rubbish. what i truly love is darned literature and i'm not going to sacrifice that for bullshit news stories or covering events!
it's fun to be a journalist and all. but i truly want to find the perfect blend that i can have between the literary and the current affairs. perhaps 8days, rather than Straits Times, is a better choice for me.
hur hur.
Friday, August 13, 2010 1:20 PM
highly literary, with occasional grammar slips
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney
- from Death of a Naturalist (1966)
12:59 PM
highly literary, with occasional grammar slips
tech idiot, who?just a little self-indulgent after furnishing the blog.
there's nothing like a good ol' clean-up to make me feel like writing again. i can't even begin to tell you how critical i have been on myself since i started exposing my penmanship to the myriad of editors. let's just say, i stopped writing to make myself feel better.
i told myself a couple of months ago to lock up my lexicon of literary language. writing in the papers is all about the objectivity and the immediacy. you need to push forward the news point, simplify your words and make it sharp and clean. well, that was how i was taught and that was how i should write, i reckon.
but nearly three months down the writer's path, i missed the summer-sweet flowers, the whiffs of fresh lavender and the touch of my pen. my pen. and also because i think my editors don't mind an occasional literary intoxication.
but don't take me wrongly, SPH has been smashin!
i kept pinching myself to make sure i was in real life - how can anything called Work be so amazing? how can waking up at 7am to watch out for errant cyclists at Sembawang MRT station feel so good?
and i think i heard a piece of puzzle fitted nicely into its place somewhere in the Higher Place. that's why, that's why.
i can't help but thank God.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 11:08 PM
highly literary, with occasional grammar slips
with due respect.
it has been laying around for the longest time, untouched. like a middle-aged woman who has outgrown her beauty and svelte contours, it has forgotten the wonder of being looked on with admiring glances.
i guess it was the new things in my life that had so appropriately and, perhaps, more delightfully, seized its rightful places in my life. this menopausal lady can be so demanding and exhausting to maintain. but at the same time, if i would spend more time on it, i would have sustained a certain passion that would continue to burn even as it ages.
nubile young things like Ms Face B. and 21-year-old Forever have so mercilessly seduced my roving gaze. they drew me to their bosoms like how i first encountered this ex-wife. it was soon, impossible to wean myself of them. i went to them daily; sometimes, many hours at one go. i knew my old lover, Really-Loud, was waiting patiently for me but i was just too engrossed.
but every time i encountered stumbling blocks and exciting things in life, i would always think of my aging girl first. she was still, and would always be, my first love. you know how people always say first loves are the most memorable; Really-Loud never fails to come into my consciousness even as i wandered elsewhere.
on my first day at work, i told myself i would go back to her. i wanted to share this phase of my life with her. i guess 21-year-old Forever was too sapping (literally, for the bank account) and Ms Face B. was a little too snappy, i knew my girl would suit me just fine.
i'm going to start romancing you again, Really-Loud.
and quoting from my first ever entry on this space, i would say it again: for the inhabitants of the world, it's going to be a whirl of a time.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 12:16 PM
highly literary, with occasional grammar slips
don't you dare.a community of politics (what does that even mean)
i reserve my strongest word for the sea of people around me every single day. when you live in a world downtrodden by the darkest stain a girl can ever have on her skirt, you would inevitably have to expect verbal swords and daggers crossing your paths every minute and every day. i hate politicking nonsense.
i hate having to look at someone in the eye and say niceties when deep down, you burn. the fire consumes your soul and sometimes, it goes all the way up to your brain. you cease to think every single time you smile and give a ceremonious pat on a person's shoulders. as if you could stop the desire to give a hard twist to dislocate the bloody structure that is holding the person.
deep at night, your eyes hurt. it hurts from staring too long at that blot of stain. it feels as if you have cut off a part of you, hating. that's when you know you have looked enough - when every thing else feels dimly bright, too bright, because you have been staring too hard at the black. you need to readjust.
when you do, things might not get better. but you would perhaps, find yourself a little wiser confronting what should not be confronted. what should have been kept in the sanctity of the sulphurous fires behind the gates of Hades. maybe you would find yourself entwined into the lure of the darkness that is so mysterious, yet, at the same time, alluring.
maybe, it's then, you'll know you need to stop.
perhaps, it's then, that you'll finally look beyond what looks so small, in the face of the great Heavens and Hell.
it might be then, that you'll start living like you should; having hated and despised, but now, simply enlightened.
i need to look at the Rock in the sea of faces and malicious waves when i am drowning.
yes, i need that.
i guess.
Thursday, March 11, 2010 12:06 AM
highly literary, with occasional grammar slips
it's a boy!urgh.
i am disgruntled with the way i am treated. there were so many sacrifices i had to make because of him and i could never complain. i need him for something more; that is why i need to hang on. but he needs to stop taunting me like that. the pain is too much for me to take.
yes, the period is definitely a boy.
stop bullying us.
