rainy monday

It's a good day for a sad song
'Cause the rain is fallin' and someone is saying "Good-bye"
Close the door when you leave
'Cause there's a cold wind blowin' and it's bringin' tears to my eyes

After you go, I guess I'll never know where you've run
Will you try to disguise how you're dyin inside?
Well, then you'll be the only one

Oh, I will get over you someday
Though, I never loved you anyway
And when you're gone my whole world won't fall apart
I swear, cross my broken heart

Word gets 'round in this small talk town
But I'll stand my ground and I won't even ask where you've gone to
When they play a song 'bout a love gone wrong
And you see me cryin', well, that don't mean I miss you
When I said I was crazy for you I was out of my mind

When the smokes clears I'll see it was not meant to be
Yeah, I will be just fine

By the second Tuesday of never I promise
That I will be just fine
Oh, yes, I will

(song: Cross my Broken Heart - Nelson)

I swear I will be fine by Tuesday =)
oh its my last day at work too!

planetary shifts

The planets must have been re-grouping themselves around my star.
What other reasons could there be, if not for all the changes that my
life is going through at the moment?

Caught a train that was running on a different schedule. The trip was
fantastic, but when the realisation struck on me that I have to move
on with my life, I alighted with a heart heavy as lead. It felt like coming
back to reality after a year long vacation, except a hundred times worse.
At the same time, I knew I've been putting it off for too long. It's better
this way too .. everyone's life is finally back on track as before.

Will also be moving my career to a local institution come middle of next month.
A more relaxed working culture, I heard, and a much better remuneration
were the reasons for my decision. It was the first time I ever resigned (well,
it is my first job after all) and I was thrilled it went so well. I cheated with
the tender of resignation though, I used the ready to use template from
www.i-resign.com =) Tomorrow, have to attend an exit interview. Another
first for me ..

Also heard some news from mom, who is in town for the week. I knew it was
coming; tried not to think about and perhaps suceeded for a while, though I
also knew its inevitable. Perhaps there really is no way to go against such a
big tide. I know I can try harder, but I am tired, I am relenting. Temptations
are telling me to be more rational and practical, to start thinking about my
future. I am scared ...

glorious melancholy

We'll live forever,
Knowing together,
That we did it all,
For the glory of love

miss

i miss saying "i miss u"...
guess i just have to "bear" with it
there, i' ve said it... =)

alight

3am in a desolate station,
not a soul around.
Only a distant sound of a carriage hints at why
I was there at that time.
Slowly further ...
Gradually fainter...

A mixed feeling of loneliness and serenity;
chilly air pervades the bones,
coldness creeps into the heart.

The night is darkest just before dawn...
(Be still my young beating heart)

short hair

Cropped my hair today ...
Walking out of the hair salon,
a song from yesteryears came back to me.
Maybe the situation was apt;
perhaps I was being my usual drama queen ...

The decision was tough;
the future journey will be easier.
Some may say tis but a coward calling
it quits when the going gets tough. Was I
too much a sissy to let go something I thought
was so beautiful and rare? I really don't know ..

I am really a very simple guy,
with little expectations.
I just want to be happy. Forgive me.



***************************************
Duan Fa by Gigi Leung



"I had my hair cut short;
along with any lingering doubts
and desires,
and all those confusing splitends..."

***************************************

out of reach

Twas a pretty hard week for me;
my first bodypump class instructor Jes, who has since became
one of my closest friend has left for Sydney. Maybe for a while
maybe for good. We don't know ...

******************************
Fly Away by Corrinne May

You can fly so high
Keep your gaze upon the sky
I'll be praying every step along the way
Even though it breaks my heart
to know we'll be so far apart
I love you too much to make you stay
Baby fly away

******************************

The night she left, at a karaoke bar along Orchard Road,
I was singing a Faye Wong number of a love;
beautiful but lost. And I thought of Jes, of relationships
with maturity dates, of doomed long distance couples,
clinging on to a faith and dream labelled under the term love.
I thought of myself ....

***********************************
Hong Dou by Faye Wong



"Most times,
we believe that everything will come to an end.
Farewells and reunions;
nothing stays constant in life.

But some times,
I'd rather tear as I refuse to let go.
Till everything has been said and done,
may we be like the gentle brook;
steady but lasting"

**********************************

Sunday afternoon;
the usual pump class was decidedly muted.
Perhaps lack of sleep induced by too much "happy"ness,
or a sense of foreboding,
maybe even begrudgement or dissapointment ...
The andrenaline and endorphin rush helped abit ...
but the chest was heavy and the throat was dry with expectations.
Eye contacts were awkward
and topics were skirted.
It was all behind when the cool down song came on ...

************************************
Out of Reach by Gabrielle

Knew the signs
Wasn't right
I was stupid for a while
Swept away by you,
And now I feel like the fool.

So confused, my hearts bruised,
Was I ever loved by you?

Out of reach, so far,
I never had you heart,
Out of reach, couldn't see,
We were never meant to be.

Catch myself from despair,
I could drown if I stay here,
Keeping busy every day,
I know I will be okay.

But I was
So confused, my hearts bruised,
Was I ever loved by you?

Out of reach, so far,
I never had your heart,
Out of reach, couldn't see,
We were never meant to be.

So much hurt, so much pain,
Takes a while to regain what is lost inside,
And I hope that in time, you'll be out of my mind.
I'll be over you.

But now i'm
So confused, my hearts bruised,
Was I ever loved by you.

Out of reach, so far,
I never had your heart,
Out of reach, couldn't see,
We were never meant to be.

Out of reach, so far,
You never gave your heart,
In my reach, I can see,
There's a life out there for me.

*********************************

Nothing lasts forever,
and somebody once said before
"The only thing constant in life is change".
Things happen. People happen.

For a reason, for a season, for a lifetime.

Nobody knows.

Should I stay, or should I go?

weird

KEEPING A DIARY? BETTER THINK AGAIN

TALKING about a problem is supposed to help one get over it, but apparently writing does the very opposite.

Psychologists have found that keeping a diary is bad for your health, the New Scientist weekly reported. Diarists were more likely than non-diarists to be plagued by headaches, sleeplessness, digestive problems and social awkwardness.

Hmmm... better stop that 'Dear Diary' habit...

weak

i cant bring myself to say wat shd follow ....
altho most people think its inevitable
so i'll just leave it at this.

lighthouse

to the passing vessel;
a safe respite,
a brief interlude from the rocky seas,
a momentary break from the monotone
of the vast ocean,
a temporary shelter ...

important in need,
forgotten otherwise.
too early to tell,
too late to regret.
too soon to flail,
too deep to withdraw.

what it takes to be happy ...

At the wake of the new regulations allowing singles to buy HDB of any sizes, and also some comments from ikepod about him preferring flats to private properties, I will share this article below from today's Sydney Morning Herald (how apt eh?) . It's time to move nearer to central kodomo-san, hear hear ...

Quote of the week: the sentence is bold (hmm didnt' know that he is actually quite a deep person)


"It's time we realised that money can't buy us happiness, writes Peter Martin.
Driving to work this past week, I've had an insight into the key to happiness. We have moved house, and it now takes twice as long as it did to get to work each morning. No big deal, do I hear you cry?

Well, it seems like a big deal to me, and the more I ask, the more I discover that to researchers in the field of happiness, it is one of the very few things that is.

Their problem is that happiness is slippery. Money or changed circumstances can buy more of it, but the effect usually doesn't last long.

It needs to be said first that happiness itself is easy to measure. The researchers ask people whether they are (a) very happy; (b) fairly happy; or (c) not happy.
The results line up with other measures of happiness.

The people who say they are happy are those more likely to call up friends, less likely to commit suicide. And their brains light up in the same sort of pattern when they are put under a scanner.

The researchers find that people who win the lottery do indeed feel happier to start with, but after a while they feel a little better than they did before. Conversely, people mutilated in accidents feel devastated at first, but after a year or so often feel as happy as always.

As Ethan Hawke puts it in the new movie Before Sunset: "If they were basically optimistic and jovial, now they're optimistic and jovial in a wheelchair. If they were petty and miserable, now they're petty and miserable with a new Cadillac, a house and a boat."

Each of us seems to have our own built-in happiness equilibrium, resistant to attempts to upset it. The Holy Grail in economic research (as with much pharmacological research) is to work out how to use money to break free of it.

Robert Frank, a Cornell University economist, believes that as a matter of logic it must be possible. He says money can buy many truly useful things. Surely, some of them must be able to make a permanent impression on the way we feel.

In the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Science, Ddalus, he asks: "Would we really not be any happier if, say, the environment were a little cleaner, or if we could take a little more time off, or even just eliminate a few of the hassles of everyday life?"

He says the problem is that we choose to spend money on things that don't help. In the US house sizes are getting bigger and bigger. In Australia the typical new house has doubled in size over the past 50 years. It's now more than 250 square metres; about 100 square metres of indoor space per person. And many of the new houses being built in Sydney's south-west are bigger still.

Is all of the extra space making us happier? The evidence suggests that more space doesn't make us happier for long, in the same way as better views from our office windows don't work their magic for long. We get used to them.

But there are things that we could spend money on instead that might make a good deal of difference to the way we feel about life.

Robert Frank asks us to perform this thought experiment. Imagine, he says, two societies, equally wealthy, but with different patterns of spending. In society A the houses take up 4000 square feet and the journey to work takes one hour each day in heavy traffic. In society B the houses are 3000 square feet, and the journey to work takes only 15 minutes. He asks in which society we would prefer to live.

If we were choosing on the basis of likely happiness, the answer would have to be society B. All of the evidence suggests that the stress of driving through traffic is something we never completely adapt to. It wears us down day after day, and it shortens our lives. Escaping it stands a very good chance of making us happier.

Frank performs other thought experiments. Which society would you rather live in? One in which everyone lived in a house of 4000 square feet and had one week's holiday a year, or one in which the houses were 3000 square feet and people got four weeks off each year?
In each case he is offering a choice between "conspicuous consumption" and what he calls "inconspicuous consumption". Frank's notion of inconspicuous consumption usually involves time: arranging things so that you have more time to do the things you like, by spending less time doing the things that you don't.

It's a lesson that would come as no surprise to my teenage daughter. She's grown up playing The Sims, an incredibly complex computer game in which you manipulate the decisions of artificially intelligent beings in simulated societies. It's a sort of electronic economic laboratory.

One of the unexpected discoveries made by fans of The Sims is that the best way to make the characters happy is to have them free up their time, rather than buy them luxuries. In the words of the game's creator Will Wright, time is the resource, happiness is the score.

Perhaps that's just a result of the way that game is set up. The characters in the computer game don't seem particularly susceptible to envy. But if we were less susceptible to envy as well, we probably would not be as keen as we are on large houses. We would look for smaller houses closer in; saving ourselves stress, giving ourselves the gift of time, and quite possibly genuinely buying happiness.

The boom in inner-city living over the past few years suggests it's a realisation that more and more are waking up to. The next time our family moves, perhaps we should, too."