16:16.

Came across an excerpt of these lyrics here and felt enough connection to go check out the full lyrics. I've never really checked out Dubstar but darn, I have to download this song. The lyrics are too spot on for those melancholic moments.


Stars - Dubstar

Is it asking too much to be given time
To know these songs and to sing them
Is it asking too much of my vacant smile
And my laugh and lies that bring them

But as the stars are going out
And this stage is full of nothing
And the friends have all but gone
For my life, my God I'm singing

We'll take our hearts outside, leave our lives behind
I'll watch the stars go out
We'll take our hearts outside, leave our lives behind
I'll watch the stars go out

Is it asking too much of my favorite friends
To take these songs for real
Is it asking too much of my partner's hands
To take these songs for real

But as the stars are going out
And this stage is full of nothing
And the friends have all but gone
For my life, my God I'm singing

We'll take our hearts outside, leave our lives behind
I'll watch the stars go out
We'll take our hearts outside, leave our lives behind
I'll watch the stars go out

We'll take our hearts outside

We'll take our hearts outside, leave our lives behind
I'll watch the stars go out

We'll take our hearts outside, leave our lives behind
I'll watch the stars go out

We'll take our hearts outside (was I asking too much)
Leave our lives behind

I'll watch the stars go out (was I asking too much)

We'll take our hearts outside (was I asking too much)
Leave our lives behind

I'll watch the stars go out (was I asking too much)

(Was I asking too much)
I'll watch the stars go out (was I asking too much)

We'll take our hearts outside (was I asking too much)

I'll watch the stars go out (was I asking too much)

We'll take our hearts outside (was I asking too much)

(Was I asking too much)

(Was I asking too much)

22:34.

Acid juices make me hyper. Everytime I get gastric pain, my mind seems to distangle from my body. I talk louder, I talk nonsense, I laugh louder and generally behave rather unlike my usual "staid" self. (By the way, "staid" reminds me of elephants)

Does speaking faster connotes genius? I think not.

Does pushing your own pitch as the gospel truth make you the best salesman? Beep, not in my book.

When I am high on acid (that's what the tummy produces when one gets gastric I think), I tend to rave.

Acid juices II = Frustration. When I am frustrated, the testosterone in my body must go up. That's why I speak fast, I glare, I walk fast and I talk to myself, bullet-speed while I make calls, do work, mumble and get uncontrollable urges to hit things.

I wish hitting things was legal. Wait, it is. As long as the thing is indeed a thing, and not alive, and it belongs to no one who can sue you. If I break a punching bag, people stare. I don't get why. They should applaud at the spectacle. And provide me with more things to hit.

I am having gastric pains. Grrrr....

16:07.

Happiness.

I never used to think about it, or seek it like people I knew did. It wasn't a conscious thing but while others said things like I want to be happy, I never thought of this elusive pursuit at all.

Always just thought that once you get the meaning of life, everything else falls into place. With understanding and wisdom, that knowledge of your existence, you gain happiness, joy and well, all the good stuff necessary to put the puzzle together.

Maybe I am unconsciously feeling like this may not be true any more. Either that, or I'm simply realising that the search for meaning is a long journey riddled with potholes, pain, confusion and a lot of stuff that potentially makes one unhappy. And I hope this doesn't mean I am copping out of the long and narrow path because I know happiness is shifting into a focus for me now.

Why?

I really don't get it. Is this meant to be? Due to circumstances, environment, being a working young adult, selling out even? I don't know.

It's weird, not in a bad way.

I'm laughing more (and not just at inexplicable private jokes which I can never explain, but with people). I'm dressing in preppy high school garb and for the first time in my life, people are thinking I'm younger than my actual age.

That last point, my dears, is a big thing. This kid who always been old before her time has never had such comments.

But back to our personal discourse on happiness.

"I know there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil - this is the gift of God" - Ecclesiastes 3: 12, 13

That eternity set in my heart burns me. Everytime I read the words of Solomen above, I silently protest and then hang my head in defeat.

Is this it?

I protest but increasingly, understand how big a gift this is - finding satisfaction in my toil and being delighted with all these I know, worldly though they may be called.

In equal measures, increased understanding that there's nothing new under the sun, and everything is meaningless drive me crazy.

What do I do?

I know the words of the king is true, yet I know too an abundant life is possible. So I seek that. I take delight in my work, I continue to take delight in the small things and I seek happiness from this life. All the time knowing this world is not my home, and that what you put into a task or object affects the meaning you could derive from it.

It's possible to be happy because at the end of the day, our Father will not give us snakes when we ask for fish; nor stones when we ask for bread.

And you know something? He's the Boss.

:)

18:22.

Puppet master, hear my cry
Prostrate and beaten, I'm thine
If I could smile, I would plead

please

La you sing, La again
Stop looking away, look at me
My revolution, confusion


Jump

22:16.

A Different Kind Of Blue - U2

Those cars
On you
So small
Down there
From here
So high
We drift
We fly

Twilight breaks through
A different kind of blue

More lights
Blue signs
All gold
All new
So small
So high
Down there
Tonight

With twilight breaking through
It's a different kind of blue

Twilight breaking through
It's a different kind of blue

21:50.

Just strangers in a strange land
Where the moon is dim
Wanderers in a pack hunting
Alone and feeling grim

I don't know what you mean sometimes
The distance between us is too great
But yet, I can feel you here right now
breathing inside of me

This is the air I breathe
My daily bread
This is the life I lead
That which I'm loathe to forget

So cut those words into my heart
Lest I forget to cry
What is my truth, dear Lord?
Let my words be few

17:20:

Actually, with my penchant for shooting myself in the foot, I really should not be surprised at my own actions.

And actually, with my history of getting dodgy haircuts, I really should not be surprised the hairdresser gave me weird bangs like those eye-brows type fringe schnauzers have. Umm, I just made myself sound weird, didn't I? Actually (the third actually in one entry) it ain't that bad after I derangingly tried to further trim them myself. Count that as another shot in my abused feet, but oh well, it's just hair (I'm reminding myself).

Last week was... interesting. Good too. Tues and Wed, I left work at 12.30am, Thurs, 1am. By Friday, I was swaying like Caption Jack Sparrow when I woke up. But gee, how happy I was.

The workaholic in me has returned to take a bigger place in my life. So have more inspiration and a feeling of worth.

This week, I predict there will be at least two late working nights but hey, we are cool with it. Cheerios and bingo and all that.

It is strange what growing up brings.

Sometimes, you just stop and realisations hit you unceasingly. Realisations of how you have evolved. I see it in me, certain traits, but yet they are not constant which worries me.

Things like being more approachable, open, some say PR, I enjoy company a lot more these days and no longer cringe (or not that much) at dining with perfect strangers when I meet them at some mutual friend's place or something.

I probably hate knowing I'm shy. But all right, at the grand old age of 22, I can admit it and embrace that unpredictable, selective trait as part of me and deal with it.

Talking about growing up changes again, it's also surprising to me how I have remained the same girl in as many ways as I've changed.

I will write more but I'm awfully hungry... it's a good feeling.

By the way, I'm buying a second-hand acoustic Epiphone. It will be my third guitar. I hope it's a stunner and in good shape. I'm not familiar with buying things second hand at all.

Love ya, Lord.

22:20.

For it's the mystery of the universe - You're the God of holiness
Yet You welcome souls like me

And with the blessing of Your Father's heart
You discipline the ones you love with Your kindess and Your majesty

Jesus, those who recognise Your Power know just how wonderful You are - That you draw near

- Sacred King

21:50.

A colleague I like and respect came back to the office today after a six-month hiatus.

She said it felt like two weeks, I thought it seemed longer than six months.

How do I begin to tell her what happened over these six months if she asks?

I have no idea.

So much happened.

I've grew as a person.

Learnt guts as well as lost some.

How does one begin to relate one's life?

That's why it's so hard for me to keep up with friends.

When they ask, so how have you been?

What do you say?

Good, ok, not.

How does one find the words?

So when people talk, I listen.

When newsmakers speak of their lives, I am a raptured audience.

I cannot give much, but I can listen to your story.

I hope you understand it's important.

16:34.

One big advantage of working in a media conglomerate is the amount of information you have at your fingertips. I came across the article below while searching for some other information, and I loved it. A bit whimisical, rather cynical, but very much so, from a journalist's heart.


Published 1993 Sept 24
Author: Asad Latif

SINGAPORE takes pride in its food. I do not mean the confluence of so many culinary cultures here, though that is important. I am talking about the way people eat.

I used to visit a restaurant - "eating-place" is more accurate - in Kerbau Road, off Serangoon Road. There, at peak hours, would gather a congregation of the hungry, appetites sharpened into devotion by long hours of toil. Some
moulded stone and mortar into the houses and roads of Singapore. One wrote about Singapore on computer screens.

Those who had just arrived would sit back in grateful expectation after ordering their food. I joined them.

As the food arrived, we dipped our fingers slowly into the rice, feeling its heat. We spread it out as if to increase its yield, spicing its taste with salivary waiting. The vegetables and spices were mixed in, slowly, calmly. We mixed them in a little more, the pace increasing.

And then, in the abandon of delicious freedom, we began eating. Rice, avial, sambar, papad, more, pickles, meat, egg or fish, we ate it all, great, shameless quantities of it all. Ours was a gusto which, if watched by the merest of artists, would have turned his canvas into a masterpiece.

The food swept into us, strengthening our limbs and gratifying our hearts, uniting a ragtag band of devotees into seamless, undistracted impatience.

It cost $3 for the chicken-meal, $2.50 for the fish-meal. The rice and vegetables were unlimited. The pieces of meat or fish were fixed. But the gravy was unlimited.

The restaurant has since moved, leaving no address behind.

THE closure of the restaurant meant the destruction of a community, for me, anyway. For it was there I learnt that a community is a group of people united by a common purpose though they may follow different paths, rarely agree with
each other and often have little to do with each other as individuals.

Which brings me to the market.

If you go to a market quite late in the day, when prices are likely to be lower than during peak hours, you will see old women scanning the remaining fish. They smile with a kind of sheepish greed that is meant to disarm the vendor but actually irritates him. Though the fish themselves are becoming second-rate, the vendor can be quite rough with these second-rate customers.

That attitude becomes doubly irksome if he happens to be nice to you, a proper customer who is late because he did not have the time - not because he did not have the money - to come earlier.

And when the old lady smiles at you because you are trying to make things a little better for her by smiling, you know that the only thing you can do is write.

I AM sometimes tempted to divide the world into three groups: states, unreal people and real people.

The state we know about. Unreal people are the kakis of the state.

They owe their livelihood indirectly to the state as a source of power. Conservatives, democrats, situational democrats, anarchists, armchair anarchists, intellectuals, economists, staid senior leader/feature writers (Selfews), Contentious news reporters (Connerps) snapping at the Selfews' ideological heels - all are hangers-on of the state, pretenders to imaginary thrones, parasites feeding on suspect lineages, unreal people all.

Those at the receiving end of their actions are real. Children, housewives, students, teachers, hawkers, entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors, lovers stealing a kiss in the dark, rubbish-cleaners, dreamers - these are the real people of the world.

Unreal people speak: Real people are spoken about. Unreal people write: Real people are written about. Real people love or at least make love: Unreal people make money by writing about love.

Now, mark me, I do not have anything against the state. I do not understand those who are railing forever against "the state", as if there was a viable alternative to it. Nor am I saying that real people are "good" and unreal
people "bad". Life is hardly as uncomplicated as that, and roles do overlap.

The loan-shark is a real person, but I doubt that you would want him as your friendly next-door neighbour. No one but journalists (if even they) likes journalists, but imagine a world without (unreal) journalism.

Which brings me to my point. Journalism is perhaps the only unreal profession which exists only because there are real people around. Democrats could chant passages from De Tocqueville and economists could continue to disagree with
each other, but only journalists are privileged to enter the lives of real people without knocking. They are suffered, as all intruders are, but they are suffered on trust. And it is that trust they need to keep when they write.

I HOPE that the thoughts on food and markets are some small proof of this, even though I am a Selfew who was once a Connerp. Though this is not always possible, I feel that it is better to try and describe things well than to explain them, for most explanations debase the thing being explained.

"To discover the various uses of things is the work of history," Marx wrote, on the first page of the first volume of Das Kapital. He himself lived up to that challenge quite well; as someone said recently: "No other writer gives more vivid, intense accounts of modern 'things'. No one has better described the ambience of a great textile mill or the misery of a brickfield or the enigmatic nature of commodities."

Unlike his successors, Marx was not a Marxist; unlike them, the early Marx at least understood how important it was to allow things to speak for themselves instead of getting polemic to speak for them. It is not surprising that Marx
was once a practising journalist; so was Dickens.

SO IT is that real people create real situations, and that journalists must write about them.

I was travelling by bus last week. At a stop, I was looking around idly, when my eyes fell on two teenage schoolgirls. One of them was waving at a student who had entered the bus and saying something; the other was giggling, her
right hand cupped lightly over her mouth.

What a sight. I do not have a sister, but if I did, and if she at 16 had giggled like that, my brother's-heart would have awakened from its slumber and soared on the wings of her laughter. Dear girl, hold on to your laughter; keep
your giggling youth as long as you can. For one day you will be as old as I am. You will not only have to think before you speak, but think before you laugh.

But, then, as a journalist, you will have the freedom to capture your captivity and turn it into words.