pick-a-boo

When some weeks ago I undertook to describe for my audience (all 3 or 4 of you) a selection of behavioural aberrations which aggravate me, I knew it was going to be a trying task. Not because I Love Everything About Everyone All Of The Time; rather, because I am generally too oblivious to the finer points of human intercourse to discern even the most offence-takeable conduct. I ended up having even more trouble than anticipated, not least for the realisation that I exhibit many of the very traits which I find undesirable in others. But I am not one to shirk from procrastinatory pontification, so here goes.

Laziness, the Root of All Evils. I'm not talking about the habitual sleepers-in, serial mess-leavers, those with below-average attentiveness to personal hygiene, or fans of inactivity allsorts - we're only human. Laziness of mind, by contrast, is less excusable. Dramatic reductions in ignorance, cruelty, conflict, isolation, shrink's bills, reality TV [to name just a few of the world's evils] would be achieved if more people:
- didn't confuse regurgitating what they choose to hear with intellectual discourse;
- read and wrote for fun;
- made time for one another;
- communicated through listening more than speaking;
- asked questions instead of trying to answer them;
- ...

Saying one thing to someone's face and another behind their back. Little White Lies lubricate, and as such are indispensable in any superfical setting. But with People In Your Life, be generous with your praise and frank with your criticism, is all I'm sayin'. Don't kid yourself: if you've thought it, it can't be better left unsaid.

"That's a little personal, don't ya think?" Maybe I have problems with Boundaries. Maybe I hear this line more often than the national average. Nevertheless. How am I to interact with a person without getting personal? Every crossing of paths is the culmination of incomprehensibly tremendous cosmic forces, why fight it?

when Harriet met Sally

Never seen When Harry Met Sally? Where've you been all your life?!

Disagreed with its thesis? Well don't feel special. It doesn't make you any more progressive than the next person - popular opinion has always been fairly evenly divided on this one.

For ye uncultured ones, aforementioned thesis runs: 2 persons of compatible sexual orientation* can never be Just Friends. (* updated for Equity & Diversity) Of which I thought I was a proud dissident. But lately, I'm not so sure.

midnight snack

... on quite possibly carcinogenic processed meat, Coke and an old episode of The Practice. On time-out from Procedure.

Looks like I'll be submitting two at-best-Credit papers in ~20 hrs' time. I've had 2 wks to do one and 1 wk to the other; yet still managed to "save" the bulk of both for the final 48 hrs. A tutor (I think) once jokingly (I think) said that last-minute cramming is good preparation for real-world practice. Little did s/he know that said technique nearly cost me the chance to enter said arena.

The battle to keep parentals oblivious of prospective employment conditions for as long as possible came to a premature and abrupt end this morning, when dad recognised the envelope leading mum to hover as I opened it. Expecting a fresh bout of financial-planning / property-hunting on my behalf to kick in sooner rather than later. Luckily the end is drawing near: I might be able to (feign) stress and thereby be left alone.

zest and tang

If gayness were sand, Liberace would be the subcontinents of Africa and Asia combined. Except not colonised by the British. ... Well, maybe sometimes.
Fishbulb, one of ma' homies from da hood, explaining Liberace's sexual orientation to his mother

Some people hang out with the old and/or frail. Others head to the nearest soup kitchen. And where do I go for a bit of good ol'-fashioned pro bono? A shady Azn joint, duh. A surer thing the universe knows not.

'tsnot bad actually. Informal and informative. Being (nearly) as competent as anyone there helps; although that's probably not much of a compliment to my colleagues. Suggestion for making the most of one's time clerking anywhere: whenever asked to do photocopying etc. - even if by a handsome polite young gent (only problem: still lives with parents), surround oneself with random paper piles and type/scribble furiously (e.g. one's memoirs or uni assignments).

Apart from the receptionist and the AC - Zeus knows how they cope - everyone communicates in a whirlwind of mixed Azn dialects interspersed with some occasional English. One gal had Jay Chou's latest album in the background all day including while dictating client correspondence. Kinda takes me back to the days of Dim Sum Dungeon, Sunflower (and undergrad Pharm lectures, come to think of it). Minus the tips and appetising aromas, that is.

They really are getting excellent value for their ... Oh wait, cheapskates. Nevertheless. Among the things achieved in the past 2 days: I single-handedly worked out wtf a Listing Conference Memorandum looks like, drafted one, and filed it in the Mag Ct. Like, that's gotta be worth a handful of billable units, yeah? <= Ugh, listen to myself.

Meanwhile, dig this weather. Everywhere you look is a forgettable painting: crisp edges, easy colours.

D Day tomorrow for my comrades all over this underpopulated supply-grossly-outweighing-demand State. I shall sleep through it (albeit following an all-nighter versus one sexy lecturer's not-so-sexy idea for a mid-term assessment). Yippee! (Really.)

mish-mash

I went walking in our salubrious neighbourhood, by myself after dinner on a Saturday night. The moon was a mass of yellow strolling through clouds and trees. Out of the giant windows of the river-front mansions couples families parties lit up the street. Everything looked and smelled and sounded nice. And for the first time in a very long time, I didn't wish that something would happen, or that someone would do something, or that I could.

Something... big, I guess, happened yesterday. Maybe that contributed. No, of course it did. But I like to think that I've also been making my own way out of the Dumpster. Slowly. Lucky for all, I am not prone to introspection in writing. Save to say that, how humbling, being believed in.

If greatness comes hand-in-hand with a robust sense of self-worth, I'm not sure how far I'll get in life. One cannot be self-aware and not filled with self-doubt, the same way that one cannot be worldly and not a bit dysthymic. Somewhere along the way, early on, I forgot how determinative Determination is and how pointless it is to do anything half-arsed.

Most of my acquaintances, blood relations included, do not doubt my ability to do anything, for I give them no reason to. But if I sometimes do twice as well as everyone else, it's only because I always try four times as hard.

Then there are the select few who, knowing the frequency with which I fuck up and the ease with which I am given to feeling defeated, wait patiently yet confidently at the end of each tunnel with candy & blue wine, happy-hour cocktails, offers of fashion advice, and more. Thankyou: you know who you are.

Cheers too, to my meditating philosophising boss-to-be, a stranger who's taking an astounding chance on me. He looked past my mediocre grades and into my profoundly cynical hence well-equipped-for-the-job, soul.

soundscape

For a compulsive blog-hopper: 10 songs with stories, in no particular order.

橄榄树 * 齐豫 [olive tree * Chyi Yu]

不要问我从哪里来 我的故乡在远方 ask me not whence I came - my home is afar
为什么流浪 流浪远方 流浪 or wherefore I roam, roam afar, roam -
为了天空飞翔的小鸟 for the birds in the sky
为了山间轻流的小溪 for the brooks in the valleys
为了宽阔的草原 for wide open prairies
流浪远方 流浪 - roam afar, roam
还有 还有 and, and -
为了梦中的橄榄树 橄榄树 for the olive tree in my dreams, olive tree
不要问我从哪里来 我的故乡在远方 ask me not whence I came - my home is afar

Clearly, a crowd-pleaser among migrants, fugitives, hippies, and the like. One of mum's faves too. As I get older I've come to discern a higher significance of this song to the ever-declining number of people who know it: we dream in song what we mostly do not in life, namely, run far far away.

you owe me nothing in return * Alanis Morissette For a long time I took this song literally - to be about unconditional love, the only kind of love that there really is - and was fond. Then I stumbled upon an interpretation (not sure whether Alanis') of it being 'an interesting perspective on obsession', which ruined it for me somewhat. The song continues to encapsulate much of what I (try to) live by, but I can no longer hear it in blissful ignorance of my unhealthy disposition.

let down * Radiohead A track off the CD currently playing on loop in my car. Fascinatingly dichotomous: such upbeat melody, such morose lyrics. let down and hanging around / crushed like a bug in the ground Well, morose only if taken literally. I prefer to think that it's about freeing oneself of expectations, which is the ultimate Catharsis. and one day I am going to grow wings

美错 * 王菲 [beautiful mistake * Faye Wong]

不是来得太快 either it comes too soon
就是来得太迟 or it comes too late
美丽的错误往往最接近真实 often closest to the real thing, is a beautiful mistake

A delicate ballad of a rare un-trashy variety, about being gentle yet daring, generous yet stubborn, when it comes to Love. About loss and bad timing. Features a swimming pool and a meteorite. One of very few Faye songs that I can sing not totally disastrously.

the scientist * Coldplay I call this my 'coming out song'. It was on radio a lot That Year, and got to me bad every single time. I remember pulling over, or stopping whatever else I happened to be doing, so as not to risk a major fuck-up. To this day I can't listen to it with an unclenched heart. What it did was, it helped me to believe not only that I could do This - being honest and bold - but also that I had to. nobody said it was easy

啤酒泡泡 * 小刚 [beer foam * Steve Chow] (Not to be confused with Stephen Chow.) Also during That Year, the smallest/randomest things made me pine for That Girl. This song speaks to just such fixations, and thereby vented a little of my frustration. 思念没有味道 像那啤酒泡泡 longing, bland like beer foam

盛夏的果实 * 莫文蔚 [midsummer fruit * Karen Mok]

也许放弃 才能靠近你 perhaps I must give up, to get closer to you

不再见你 你才会把我记起 must stop seeing you, to be remembered by you

时间累积 这盛夏的果实 time accumulates this midsummer fruit

回忆里寂寞的香气 in our memory the scent of loneliness

我要试着离开你 不要再想你 I must try to leave you, to think of you no more

虽然这并不是我本意 though it isn't my intention

(Karen, can you be any hotter.) A break-up song for the Decidedly Hung-Up, but special to me for an entirely unrelated reason. I used to sing to N lots (until she discovered TV etc). Out of my small repertoire of suitable-for-lullabying material she had her faves, this being one of them. I kid you not at one point, before she spoke phrases let alone sentences, she could sing along word-perfect.

without you * Mariah Carey A must-do at every karaoke session with Bro, despite neither of us being able to hit the high end of the chorus. I don't have anyone in mind as I sing this (gladly more than sadly), but I know he does, and it breaks my heart.

do what you have to do * Sarah McLachlan The trouble with trying to tell someone something using a song, is that thereafter that something, that someone and that song will be forever messily entwined. If your plan blows up in your face, you can expect to be hit with the weight of your mistake every time you hear that song. Take it from one who has so erred many times over, albeit in respect of only one person.

我 * 张国荣 [I * Leslie Cheung ] (I love Leslie as much as I'll ever love a man, dead and queer be he...) One for all Outcasts (which, if read as confined to homos, would be doing the song gross injustice). Anyone who's ever not fit in somewhere, and who felt proud of it, would enjoy belting this one out. 我就是我 是颜色不一样的烟火 I am what I am, fireworks of a different colour