Friday, April 27, 2007
My parents will be celebrating their 23rd wedding anniversary come this Labour Day. My father however, dreamt of the 25th the other night. He envisioned a gold ballroom, filled with mingling guests and clinking glasses. He said he saw me take to a raised platform or stage, give a little speech and play for him and my mother the Elvis song 'you were always on my mind', with 'a couple of band people'. I'm never one to dissect dreams and understand the subconscious, although I am wont to say that I have a couple of years now to make that dream really come true.
I guess that song is a special song. There are pieces of music, manifestations of emotion that just constantly tug at your heart strings. They're different from tearjerkers, not fleeting and ephemeral but gnawing and aching, the same feeling you get after a cramp subsides, a dull pang that brings discomfort, but promise of relief as well. 'You Were Always On My Mind' is a heart tugger. The lyrics are beautifully conflicting, wrestling with the undescribable emotion of regret tinged affection. Makes me realize I don't tell the people I love and cherish that I do, often enough. Some have left, physically and intangibly as well. And like many a gray final year in IB night, I tell myself not to have many regrets, not to look back at this period of my life ten, twenty years down the road and go 'if only...'
I wish the title to the song was 'But you were always on my mind', where the word could, like a damp cotton bud moisten the wound and ease the sharp pain just a tad. 'But you were always on my mind' allows me to find a little solace and reprive, as if saying 'hey I cared for you although I didn't do the right thing and show it' would help numb the hurt of lost. Which is why as Elvis croons ruefully,
"Maybe I didn't hold you all those lonely, lonely times,
And I guess I never told you, I'm so happy that you're mine,
If I made you feel second best, I'm sorry, I was blind. "
I prayed desperately that he could atone, amend, or even come to terms with his guilt by telling the girl he loved,
'But you were always on my mind'.
Actually, I'm glad he didn't. Without the conjunction the titular is isolated and feeble, sad and inadequete, like an old man in a storm trying to find his bearings. Regret is a painful thing. Remorse, shame and embarrassment may sting, but regret just took heart pain to a new level.
So in short, no one can read your mind. Tell people you love them. Please?
Goodnight.
Monday, April 23, 2007
wanna go back to om sweet om baby om sweet om
Sunday, April 22, 2007
got this from brendan's blog, hope you don't mind man (:
Singapore’s ‘Martyr,’ Chee Soon Juan
July/August 2006
By Hugo Restall
Striding into the Chinese restaurant of Singapore’s historic Fullerton Hotel, Chee Soon Juan hardly looks like a dangerous revolutionary. Casually dressed in a blue shirt with a gold pen clipped to the pocket, he could pass as just another mild-mannered, apolitical Singaporean. Smiling, he courteously apologizes for being late—even though it is only two minutes after the appointed time.
Nevertheless, according to prosecutors, this same man is not only a criminal, but a repeat offender. The opposition party leader has just come from a pre-trial conference at the courthouse, where he faces eight counts of speaking in public without a permit. He has already served numerous prison terms for this and other political offenses, including eight days in March for denying the independence of the judiciary. He expects to go to jail again later this year.
Mr. Chee does not seem too perturbed about this, but it drives Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong up the wall. Asked about his government’s persecution of the opposition during a trip to New Zealand last month, Mr. Lee launched into a tirade of abuse against Mr. Chee. “He’s a liar, he’s a cheat, he’s deceitful, he’s confrontational, it’s a destructive form of politics designed not to win elections in Singapore but to impress foreign supporters and make himself out to be a martyr,” Mr. Lee ranted. “He’s deliberately going against the rules because he says, ‘I’m like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. I want to be a martyr.’”
Coming at the end of a trip in which the prime minister essentially got a free ride on human rights from his hosts—New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark didn’t even raise the issue—this outburst showed a lack of self-control and acumen. Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the man who many believe still runs Singapore and who is the current prime minister’s father, has said much the same things about Mr. Chee—“a political gangster, a liar and a cheat”—but that was at home, and in the heat of an election campaign.Mr. Chee smiles when it’s suggested that he must be doing something right. “Every time he says something stupid like that, I think to myself, the worst thing to happen would be to be ignored. That would mean we’re not making any headway,” he agrees.
But one charge made by the government does stick: Mr. Chee is not terribly concerned about election results. Which is just as well, because his Singapore Democratic Party did not do very well in the May 6 polls. It would be foolish, he suggests, for an opposition party in Singapore to pin its hopes on gaining one, or perhaps two, seats in parliament. He is aiming for a much bigger goal: bringing down the city-state’s one-party system of government. His weapon is a campaign of civil disobedience against laws designed to curtail democratic freedoms.
“You don’t vote out a dictatorship,” he says. “And basically that’s what Singapore is, albeit a very sophisticated one. It’s not possible for us to effect change just through the ballot box. They’ve got control of everything else around us.” Instead what’s needed is a coalition of civil society and political society coming together and demanding change—a color revolution for Singapore.
So far Mr. Chee doesn’t seem to be getting much, if any traction. While many Singaporeans don’t particularly like the PAP’s arrogant style of government, the ruling party has succeeded in depoliticizing the population to the extent that anybody who presses them to take action to make a change is regarded with resentment. And in a climate of fear—Mr. Chee lost his job as a psychology lecturer at the national university soon after entering opposition politics—a reluctance to get involved is hardly surprising.
Why is all this oppression necessary in a peaceful and prosperous country like Singapore where citizens otherwise enjoy so many freedoms? Mr. Chee has his own theory that the answer lies with strongman Lee Kuan Yew himself: “Why is he still so afraid? I honestly think that through the years he has accumulated enough skeletons in his closet that he knows that when he is gone, his son and the generations after him will have a price to pay. If we had parliamentary debates where the opposition could pry and ask questions, I think he is actually afraid of something like that.”
That raises the question of whether Singapore deserves its reputation for squeaky-clean government. A scandal involving the country’s biggest charity, the National Kidney Foundation, erupted in 2004 when it turned out that its Chief Executive T.T. Durai was not only drawing a $357,000 annual salary, but the charity was paying for his first-class flights, maintenance on his Mercedes, and gold-plated fixtures in his private office bathroom.The scandal was a gift for the opposition, which naturally raised questions about why the government didn’t do a better job of supervising the highly secretive NKF, whose patron was the wife of former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (she called Mr. Durai’s salary “peanuts”). But it had wider implications too. The government controls huge pools of public money in the Central Provident Fund and the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., both of which are highly nontransparent. It also controls spending on the public housing most Singaporeans live in, and openly uses the funds for refurbishing apartment blocks as a bribe for districts that vote for the ruling party. Singaporeans have no way of knowing whether officials are abusing their trust as Mr. Durai did.
It gets worse. Mr. Durai’s abuses only came to light because he sued the Straits Times newspaper for libel over an article detailing some of his perks. Why was Mr. Durai so confident he could win a libel suit when the allegations against him were true? Because he had done it before. The NKF won a libel case in 1998 against defendants who alleged it had paid for first-class flights for Mr. Durai. This time, however, he was up against a major bulwark of the regime, Singapore Press Holdings; its lawyers uncovered the truth.
Singaporean officials have a remarkable record of success in winning libel suits against their critics. The question then is, how many other libel suits have Singapore’s great and good wrongly won, resulting in the cover-up of real misdeeds? And are libel suits deliberately used as a tool to suppress questioning voices?
The bottling up of dissent conceals pressures and prevents conflicts from being resolved. For instance, extreme sensitivity over the issue of race relations means that the persistence of discrimination is a taboo topic. Yet according to Mr. Chee it is a problem that should be debated so that it can be better resolved. “The harder they press now, the stronger will be the reaction when he’s no longer around,” he says of Lee Kuan Yew.
The paternalism of the PAP also rankles, especially since foreigners get more consideration than locals. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund will hold their annual meeting in Singapore this fall, and have been trying to convince the authorities to allow the usual demonstrations to take place. The likely result is that international NGO groups will be given a designated area to scream and shout. “So we have a situation here where locals don’t have the right to protest in their own country, while foreigners are able to do that,” Mr. Chee marvels. Likewise, Singaporeans can’t organize freely into unions to negotiate wages; instead a National Wages Council sets salaries with input from the corporate sector, including foreign chambers of commerce.
All these tensions will erupt when strongman Lee Kuan Yew dies. Mr. Chee notes that the ruling party is so insecure that Singapore’s founder has been unable to step back from front-line politics. The PAP still needs the fear he inspires in order to keep the population in line. Power may have officially passed to his son, Lee Hsien Loong, but even supporters privately admit that the new prime minister doesn’t inspire confidence.
During the election, Prime Minister Lee made what should have been a routine attack on multiparty democracy: “Suppose you had 10, 15, 20 opposition members in parliament. Instead of spending my time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I’m going to spend all my time thinking what’s the right way to fix them, to buy my supporters’ votes, how can I solve this week’s problem and forget about next year’s challenges?” But of course the ominous phrases “buy votes” and “fix them” stuck out. That is the kind of mistake, Mr. Chee suggests, Lee Sr. would not make.
“He’s got a kind of intelligence that would serve you very well when you put a problem in front of him,” he says of the prime minister. “But when it comes to administration or political leadership, when you really need to be media savvy and motivate people, I think he is very lacking in that area. And his father senses it as well.”
However, the elder Mr. Lee’s death—he is now 82—is a necessary but not sufficient condition for change. Another big factor is how civil society is able to use new technologies to bypass PAP control over information and free speech. The government has tried to stifle political filmmaking, blogging and podcasting. Singapore Rebel, a 2004 film about Mr. Chee by independent artist Martyn See, was banned but is widely available on the Internet.
Meanwhile, pressure for Singapore to remain competitive in the region has sparked debate about the government’s dominant role in the economy. Can a top-down approach promote creativity and independent thinking? The need for transparency and accountability also means that Singapore will have to change. That is the source of Mr. Chee’s optimism in the face of all his setbacks: “I realize that Singapore is not at that level yet. But we’ve got to start somewhere. And I’m prepared to see this out, in the sense that in the next five, 10, 15 years, time is on our side. We need to continue to organize and educate and encourage. And it will come.”He doesn’t dwell on his personal tribulations, but mentions in passing selling his self-published books on the street. That is his primary source of income to feed his family, along with the occasional grant. As to the charge of wanting to be a martyr, once he started dissenting, he found it impossible to stop in good conscience. “The more you got involved, the more you found out what they’re capable of, it steels you, so you say, ‘No, I will not back down.’ It makes you more determined.”
Perhaps it’s in his genes. One of Mr. Chee’s daughters is old enough that she had to be told that her father was going to prison. She stood up before her class and announced, “My papa is in jail, but he didn’t do anything wrong. People have just been unfair to him.”
Mr. Restall is editor of the REVIEW.
Good morning, Wonderful.
Delivered at 10:22 AM;
Friday, April 20, 2007
Sighhh
My wallet and nano got koped today from my bag in the lt during band. Surprisingly, when I found out, I was erm, comfortably numb, to quote pink floyd. Besides the mandatory oshitz and wtfs, all I could muster emotionally was a rather staid 'when it rains it pours' feeling of resignation and weariness.
That scares me a little. Unfazed certainly didn't get anyone far in life...
Monday, April 16, 2007
So I went to MOS Burger the other day and ordered a Yasukuni burger. Ya know, the one with the tender beef slices and grilled onions tucked inside fluffy white rice? The youngster at the cashier didn't, apparently and suggested the Yakiniku meal instead. I refused, for it wasn't class A enough for me. Sigh, IB invades the subconscious. :(
The Singapore band scene is pretty amusing actually, rife with politics, competition and emotion in the name of music. It's a most happening scene, with SYF being the happeningest of happening events within the scene and as my rare visits to Bandfusion.com has shown, means a whole lot to, well a whole lotta people.
So instead of going into whole strains of bandie talk and riffraff, I'll just say that tommorow I'll be expecting the most mindblowing confluence of sound that the Singapore Conference Hall has ever heard from the ACS(I) Symphonic Band. Seriously.
Godspeed.
"Guys, please. I need you to cheer from your hearts for our ACS...We need all your support.."
Or something along those lines. In my six years in the school, the rugby team has never needed to garner favour from the general populace of the institution, for the simple reason that it was mandatory and commonplace for us to give our sportsmen, musicians, actors etc the support that could enable them move mountains. We're ACSians, no?
The new auditorium is pretty amazing in terms of stature and capacity, one of the largest in educational institutions if I'm not wrong, a corollolary of the influx of physical, psychological and social change. It was funnily quiet when we were requested to stand up to cheer, especially from the lower secondary levels, akin to a deathly chasm where all the ideas, notions and values cherished by the old guard evaporated into void.
The young man stood on the rostrum and gazed into the crowd, pleading with his eyes and voice. I saw his shoulders slump as he got a negligible response, nothing more than ambivalent laughter from mere children, too young to remember glory and to old to give a damn.
I had malaise. Those at the rostrum, in our school colours are never scorned this way. It was a pitiful sight. The contents of those rousing cheers echoed hollow, and only exacerbated my feelings of loss and despair in a sea of apathy.
Frankly I don't give a shit if you think I'm 'over enthu', 'on' or 'having too much time.' Actually, I don't give a shit either way. The old gods have died a long time ago.
I'll post some more later because I have things to do now. yinghua yinghua diyiming.
Delivered at 10:24 PM;
Delivered at 7:03 PM;
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The Yuletide season has come early to Singapore. With ministers, teachers and even PM Lee himself apparently getting pay increases, it's certainly looks like a white white white christmas. But ho ho ho! That's not even the best of the goodies yet. Look what I found, on all places the Mindef website:
Jingle Bells!Jingle Bells!Jingle All the Way!Oh what fun it is to enlistbecause I can be Pes A!
Anyway, I've been thinking about God. Of recent times I've come to find Bible Thumpers, "believe or you're going to hell" types and people who don't practice what they preach, well pretty irksome. I know why I haven't been as 'on fire' as these types, especially in school, where I don't attempt to assert my beliefs for the simple reason that I don't think I'm a good representation of what it means to be a Christian, although I believe with all my heart that Jesus loves me, and I love Him too.
I don't think I'm right to lay off evangilizing, or not trying to be as Christlike as I know I should. It's called the great commission. But I don't know, I don't put Bible verses as my msn screen names, blog about theology per se etc etc because I do not relish appearing as someone with all the head knowledge and that's it. I abhor hypocrisy, much more from a Christian. I guess this is what alot of non-believers feel as well, or why people are put off by Christians in certain situations. It's as if we Christians percieve ourselves to be morally and ethically superior to non-believers so we can talk down to them and yet behave like the sinner we are at the same time. I think it's a privilege, it's the epitome of a deal too good to be true and instead of slamming non-believers with the consequences of unbelief and using fear and apprehension as coercive tactics, why can't we as believers translate the love and grace showered upon us to like love for our fellow man?
I guess I don't like Sunday Christians. As a believer myself I have come across too many Christians who raise their hands to the ceiling during worship but have attitudes akin to a raised finger. Personally, I don't proclaim my faith as much as I should, because I know my shortcomings. I know I'm no image of Christ, but that doesn't mean I'm not trying to be a better person. Still before my walk matches my talk, I don't see myself in a position to ya know, evangilize. Which is why all I ask from Christians, or those who profess to be Christians, is for them to at least attempt to practice what they preach, literally.
I want to be humble because I don't deserve an ounce of His Love. I think that's the main reason why I honestly have not been sharing the Gospel or behaving as I should. It's hard to explain, hence my short, punctuated and stuttering sentences. I don't think I have to explain myself further. I just feel indebted to God to try to be a better person and well there's this song called Keeper and Sustainer of My Life by Dennis Jernigan I found from an old and dusty CD in my drawer just a while ago, which helped me get over some doubts and hopefully it will comfort anyone who sees this. No strings attached. No Bible thumped.
God Bless. I need to go think.
You are light in the darkness
Shelter from the storm
You are a shepard
Who will guide me
You are joy to all who mourn
You are bread of life that fills me
Living water when I'm dry
You are the keeper and sustainer of my life
Without your life
I know there is no life
For I was dead in sin
And You gave life to me
Without your life
I'd surely rather die
Lord Jesus live your life
through me
You are bread of life that fills meLiving water when I'm dryYou are the keeper and sustainer of my life
You are hope for the hopeless
Sight for all the blind
You are health for all the hurting
Healing heart and healing mind
You are plenty when there's nothing
You are peace admist all strife
You are the keeper and sustainer of my life.
Without your lifeI know there is no lifeFor I was dead in sin And You gave life to me Without your life I'd surely rather dieLord Jesus live your lifethrough me
You are plenty when there's nothingYou are peace admist all strife You are the keeper and sustainer of my life.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
http://www.myspace.com/virginblackofficial If you've got a moment to spare in the hustle and bustle of your life, check Virgin Black's new song out. Please.
"Virgin Black (ver-jin blak) : An anomalous harmony between the juxtapositions of purity and humanity's darkness.
The music world is rife with bold claims that deliver little. Virgin Black is a band that has historically not only avoided that pitfall, but soared above it. The scope of its latest offering is ambitious almost to the point of absurdity. In a groundbreaking endeavour, Australia's premier experimentalists will release three albums simultaneously. Each is a separate entity, but each is also linked through recurring musical themes and artistic motifs. When fully unfurled in all its grandeur, listeners will experience a grandiloquent over two and a half hour Requiem Mass with three stages of evolution.
Requiem - pianissimo is an entirely classical album with instrumentation performed by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and featuring spectacular choral arrangements along with tenor, mezzo-soprano and soprano solo voices. "Requiem - pianissimo" forsakes guitars and drums in favour of the melancholic tragedy and bombastic dynamics of classical composition.
Requiem - mezzo forte is where the band joins the orchestra and strikes a balance more reminiscent of previous Virgin Black outings, albeit, with greater epic breadth.
Requiem - fortissimo unleashes a sound infinitely heavier than anything in Virgin Black's history. While still retaining an air of classical sensibility, it concludes the series with an intense dose of death/doom.
With Virgin Black, ambition is a given. REQUIEM is beyond ambition."
The world spins on... Tuesday, April 03, 2007
The new Dark Tranquillity album, "Fiction" will sound amazing, at least from the samples I've heard over the internet. When I thought the pioneers of Gothenburg melodic death metal could not get anymore melodic, here comes pieces characterized by wailing guitars and incredible harmonies, with amazingly beautiful piano parts creeping in and out the chaos and melee. And I haven't even got to Mikael "I can growl intelligbly" Stanne. A must buy. Sadly Heeren will probably stock it like next year for something akin to 80 bucks. haha.
Anyhow I think I've decided, under the influence of Anthony Bourdain's latest episode of No Reservations in Paris and the travelogues of Bologna and Belgium pubished in today's Life! that before I die I will travel across Europe, find myself a cosy spot in every outdoor cafe available, order the best coffee and the best local delicacies and just remain there, glistening and observing. I wouldn't mind dying in one of those chairs actually, head tilted heavenward, sunrays permeating everywhere. And besides, I probably won't get chased away for hogging the area. A side dream would be to open a similar cafe in Singapore, to force people, if anything to allow themselves to indulge in indulgence. But because of discrapencies in weather, cuisine, land resource and general attitude of citizens, it will for now, remain a dream.
In other news, I remember that when I was four and a half, my parents told me that "you'll have someone to play with soon". Having just entered nursery and actually enjoying the company of twenty other bundles of crack (including, holy shit, milton.hahaha), I couldn't wait for my sister to arrive to join the motley crew. At that point of time,I made absolutely no connection that the size of my mom's stomach was inversely proportionate to the amount of time left for a sibling to emerge. In fact, for a considerable while I thought my mom had redefined binging. Ah, I was pretty damn shocked when she told me, my eyes squriming and trying to make sense of the pink cloth wrapped baby in the nursery at the hospital, that my sister had to grow up and not appear from the start as my peer.
Now shas just entered secondary school. Soon it would be sweet sixteen. And I'll be, hmmm 21. Curiously enough, that does not seem that far away. Another cool factoid it'll be 2010, when Singapore wins the world cup. Besides, I just got my NS Documentation and Medical Check Up letter in the mail two days ago.
Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rainI've seen sunny days that I thought would never endI've seen lonely times when I could not find a friendBut I always thought that I'd see you again
Delivered at 7:13 PM;