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bringing forth

a little notebook to scribble simple thoughts, inspired devotions and deep, quiet laments in.

 

On the Side of Me

I'm not the easiest person to love
I'm often the one who lets things go unresolved

Yet you choose to be
on the side of me
Yeah you choose to be on the side of me
on the side of me

I'm not too proud of some things
I've done in my life
The skeletons in my closet
Are too big for me to hide

Yet you choose to be
on the side of me
on the side of me
Blessed Charity
you're on the side of me
on the side of me

Everyone needs a friend to hold
when it's cold outside
and there's no place to go
Everyone needs a friend to hold
all alone I cried
there was no place to go
I remember when nobody cared
but you

I'm not the easiest person to love
But you, you've opened your heart to show me what I'm worth

'Cause you choose to be
on the side of me
on the side of me
What a mystery
You're on the side of me
on the side of me

Everyone needs a friend to hold when
it's cold outside
and there's no place to go
Everyone needs a friend to hold
all alone I cried
there was no place to go

I remember when nobody cared
I remember when nobody cared
Nobody cared
But you

Yeah you choose to be
on the side of me
on the side of me

On the Side of Me
Corrinne May
Beautiful Seed, 2007, Warner Music Singapore Pte Ltd

 
 

Panned or banned?

I was looking for Studio Ghibli dvd collection amongst a stack of discs and chanced upon this double-cd collection of Angela Zhang's music from around 2 years back. My friend bought it for me when she went to China on a vacation. The sleeve was decently printed with rich colours, the spine had the artist's name and some title for the disc, and it had that requisite silver foil circular sticker on the cover. It seemed genuine, or was it?
Upon closer inspection the silver sticker just said H1.0278 - certainly not some recognised board that certifies it does not violate copyright laws.
But the telltale signs lay in the translation. It is really quite a laugh. I read the Mandarin and in loose translation it should roughly arrive at: The most sweet and moving music, female songbird Zhang Shao Han (Angela Zhang) wants to share with you the story of love/a love story...
It became:
It is very profesional to collect very beautiful,the super singer very on intimale terms
Go on riencly contact of cose quanter very
[all spelling, grammatical, punctuation mistakes were retained for authenticity and maximum effect]

I think they just got tired of coming up with actual words.

And my Ghibli discs have yet to be found.

 
 

Glimmer, Shimmer

I went to Bintan over the weekend with my family. We had all never been there before, so winning a complimentary 2 day 1 night stay in one of the resorts was sweet and a real motivation to visit the famous island.

My sis makes great company if only because we understand each other's humour very well. To note: upon arrival at the resort, she spotted a dead white koi fish in the pond and pointed it out to me. We had a laugh about it with me commenting on it being the first koi I saw dead. But, this did not cast a pall over the trip. Still I love koi! They are very slender, with glimmering scales, and look positively inedible.

After checking into the hotel rooms, we happy folks trudged down to the beach. Oh it is amazing how vast and powerful and beautiful God's creation is! The rocks sat heavily, one atop the other, and faced the sea, solidly, like an army battalion. The soft beige of the sand, the sky with its cottony clouds, the sea heightening the sky's colour in even more lucid, glorious tones, and the shawls of green (even though we are wont to say eeuw to algae) which clothe the rocks are so becoming... I digress. There are many things words can describe but never fully express. The awe and splendour one experiences when you see such beauty is one such thing.

Anyway, back to writing lux. I was happily walking into the forthcoming waves, seeing the seaweed sway around my ankles and feeling the tropical breeze brush my skin when, lo and behold! Mozzie comes! One humongous Indonesian mosquito comes and attacks me. Apparently it is so big and heavy that it is less agile than its Singaporean counterparts. This also points out why it was less effective in getting a good long drink out of me. Despite all this it managed to prick my skin twice, prick because you can literally see the mark its straw left on my skin. Looking at it now, it looks like the size of the small moles on my skin. Thankfully it is not itchy although at that time I was wailing to my fellow happy folks how painful it was. Blood was also flowing out of the marks. Serious. These mozzies are vicious.

So we fled the beach for that time and proceeded to the pool. We caught a dad teaching his young ones how to swim. He told the girl - You have to jab at the water surface and not use your palms to slap down, otherwise you'll waste more energy. Then he proceeded to jab with much vigour. He told his younger boy - (who was learning the front crawl) Use your legs to draw a figure 8. At first me and my sis thought it was each foot drawing an 8, which didn't make sense and looked absolutely atrocious when I attempted it. Then we realised he referred to using both legs to draw the 8 at the same time.

The place was peaceful. We slowed down to allow time to take its course. We watched these small birds, which were flying back to their home on the ledges of the hotel building, move with such velocity and flapping their wings so fast that it became a mini sight and sound performance for us. Dinner took over an hour. Such a pleasure, if you ever sat in for our weekday dinners which we go through with such efficiency you wonder if our stomachs can catch up with our mouths and minds.




The best part was spent admiring this little water body that breaks off from the sea and carves an arc through the sand. I do not know how better to describe it so a picture shall do the speaking. Me and my sis proceeded to step into the waters, lured by the appearance of small fishes with gleaming bodies. It was rather scary because the sand was so soft that it would push away with each footstep that falls. Now I know why they say quicksand... So we navigated our way through the narrow stream, watching the water level rise to brush the leg of our shorts, and seeing fishes weave in and out of logs and legs. We tried to catch fish but they slipped right through our fingers.
Then it was time to head back. We went back to the koi pond and saw the dead white koi was scooped out. A turn to the water installation nearby and we saw a lizard at least 45cm long was disappearing into the crevices of the wall of rocks. And it all seemed to conclude our visit - the awesome face of nature in the midst of human creation. Who is the winner?

 
 

Playing footy

I found out, upon a fairly recent visit to the doctor's, that I have a viral wart on my toe. When I first came back to Singapore early on in November, I was convinced, or more likely want to believe, that it was a corn and hence needed to be treated as one.
Off I went to the pharmacy and bought a box of corn plasters. They are elaborate. Allow me to enlighten all blessed persons who have yet to find the need/urge to buy any.

1. Small round medicated plaster with a diameter of around a centimetre. It also has a sticky top side which purpose you will soon find out. This you stick directly onto corn. If yours is bigger than this, sorry.

2. Oval shaped plaster with an underside that has a centre the size of the medicated plaster. Apparently it goes directly on top of the plaster, sort of like a cap, and is intended to pad the area surrounding the corn.

Corns are painful, as was mine, and therefore elaborate plasters are much needed. But lo and behold, it was not a corn to be.

Told this to my sis and the ensuing exchange turned out to be a tad typically dry.

Me - It is not a corn. I treated it in the wrong manner.
Sis - So what is it?
Me - It is a viral wart.
Sis - What?
Me - A wart. I think the wart must be thinking, 'What? She thought I was a corn? I'm a wart!'
Sis - Whatever... Hahaha

I have no idea why I am blogging on a wart. My first wart (therefore the misadeventure in self-diagnosis) which really looks quite disgusting. It is dry and hard and was rather painful. But it will receive the best treatment possible in Melbourne. Since I have paid for my student medical insurance. Doctor's care and liquid nitrogen. It shall die once and for all!

 
 

Two Steps Forward

Well into the second day of 2008 and already challenges have arrived. Relationships of any kind, personal goals (for want of euphemisms or sugar-coated, politically correct language), how to occupy my time (which in fact is a strange thought since I am planned to meet many friends; meaning it really is about work/interning/'official stuff that please mum's ears') and staying positive-minded. After all I do want to change the way I think and the perspectives I take on matters.
So yesterday my sister and I proceeded to calculate our BMIs (Body Mass Index - an index which gauges how healthy our weight is by dividing our weight by the square of our height in metre format). She came in at 17.46 and me at a glorious 17.31. Sheesh. I had better boost my eating patterns and food portions. Maybe women around the world who think skin and thin is glam will regard me as being on the right track but I do not want to make myself vulnerable to osteoporosis in my latter years, with a frail me tottering around in a skeleton of paper-thin skin covering bones with hardly any flesh for padding.
On a chirpier note I think I will like to applaud myself for being so unconventional. =.= On New Year's Eve, I decided I will spend the last hour journaling. So with a Bible, my brinjal-coloured notebook (yes unusual as it sounds it really is brinjal) and my trusty pen I plonked myself belly-down on my parents' queen-sized bed and began to plan ahead for the year. First point, scribble studiously. Pause. Second point, lacklustre scribbling. Longer pause. Put head on bolster and found it a good position to be in. Eyes flutter for a while then close. Third point, scribble with much difficulty. Ahhh decided that bolster is much better. Shall correspond with God in my sleep. So when midnight came I was nicely snuggled in. Mum had earlier on switched off the lights, complaining that I am wasting electricity. She was loudly shouting for everyone to look at the fireworks. People were singing away and shouting... This much I knew but bolster is good and a wide berth of mattress even better. =)
I slept through the countdown! But thank God 2008 still came. Whether or not people were caught drink driving, or were hurt or killed by fireworks, ill, rejoicing, with loved ones or not. It is here.