my life seems to mirror particular tv characters at different junctures... it's getting quite freaky.
this time last year i was very much mr Peter Griffin. i ate whatever i saw fit.
last semester Earl Hickey was my calling. i believed in karma.
and now... well actually, for what seems like a very long time already...
i seem to be a real life teenage characterization of mr Hank Moody... well, at least minus all the mindless uncommitted sex that he so luxuriously indulges in...
it's the lack of push... a really sore loss of desire for the once enjoyed art of writing...
that's seriously bothering me right now...
yes...
i just have no feeling for it at this point of time, or rather, as mentioned earlier, for a long while now...
i used to be able to just let the fingers go crazy... and let go of whatever was on my mind...
it just seems that there's more than just a wall now... there's some form of lack... no feeling whatsover...
i mean there's always something to write about...
personal stuff...
trashy stuff...
it's just a matter of having the desire and motivation...
i could always start talking about this guy who's going for this girl even though there's a girl of his own back home... a blatant disregard for monogamy or faithfulness...
but i have no wish to let go of such trash...
there are certain things in life that i really want to talk about...
but it's really uncomfortable... for me... for whomever that may wind up listening..
for anyone...
it's things that no one should be made to listen to... to read about... to experience...
so here's as much writing as i could get down...
it's more than i thought i could...
that's a start...
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
i was just doing an essay on thailand and found out something that radically changed my prior perceptions of history! all this time i've been taught (during my primary and secondary school years in singapore that is) that THAILAND was a neutral country during the second world war... that they didnt want to be involved and just remained neutral, like Switzerland...
well well well... bloody hell... guess what the truth really was people!!!
In 1940 most of France was occupied by Nazi Germany, and Phibun(THAI GENERAL) immediately set out to avenge Siam's humiliations by France in 1893 and 1904, when the French had redrawn the borders of Siam with Laos and Cambodia by forcing a series of treaties.
Luang Wichit wrote a number of popular dramas that glorified the idea of many ethnic groups belonging to one greater "Thai" empire and condemned the evils of European colonial rule. Irredentist and anti-French demonstrations were incessantly held around Bangkok, and in late 1940 border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. In 1941, the skirmishes became a small scale war between Vichy France and Thailand.
The Thai forces dominated the war on the ground and in the air, but suffered a crushing naval defeat at the battle of Koh Chang. The Japanese then stepped in to mediate the conflict. The final settlement thus gave back to Thailand the disputed areas in Laos and Cambodia.
Phibun's prestige was so increased that he was able to bask in a feeling of being truly the nation's leader. As if to celebrate the occasion, he promoted himself to field marshal, skipping the ranks of lieutenant general and general.
This caused a rapid deterioration of relations with the United States and Britain. In April 1941 the United States cut off petroleum supplies to Thailand. Thailand's campaign for territorial expansion came to an end on December 8, 1941 when Japan invaded the country along its southern coastline and from Cambodia. After initially resisting, the Phibun regime allowed the Japanese to pass through the country in order to attack Burma and invade Malaya.
(OKAY SO THIS IS SUPPOSEDLY WHERE WE STOPPED DISCOVERING IN SINGAPORE HISTORY TEXTBOOKS. BUT READ ON TO FIND OUT THE TRUTH PEOPLE!)
Convinced by the Allied defeats of early 1942 that Japan was winning the war, Phibun decide to form an actual military alliance with the Japanese.
As a reward, Japan allowed Thailand to invade and annex the Shan States in northern Burma, and to resume sovereignty over the sultanates of northern Malaya which had previously been lost in a treaty with Britain. In January 1942 Phibun declared war on Britain and the United States.
By 1944 it was evident that the Japanese were going to lose the war, and their behaviour in Thailand had become increasingly arrogant. Bangkok also suffered heavily from the Allied bombing raids. This, plus the economic hardship caused by the loss of Thailand's rice export markets, made both the war and Phibun's regime very unpopular. In July 1944 Phibun was ousted by the Seri Thai-infiltrated government. The National Assembly reconvened and appointed the liberal lawyer Khuang Aphaiwong as Prime Minister. The new government hastily evacuated the British territories that Phibun had occupied and surreptitiously aided the Seri Thai movement, while at the same time maintaining ostensibly friendly relations with the Japanese.
The Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945. Immediately, the Allied military responsibility for Thailand fell to the British. As soon as practicable, British troops were flown in and these rapidly secured the release of surviving POWs. The British were surprised to find that the disarmament of the Japanese soldiers had already been largely completed by the Thais.
The British regarded Thailand as having been partly responsible for the immeasurable damage dealt upon the Allied cause and favoured treating the kingdom as a defeated enemy. However, the Americans had no sympathy for British and French colonialism and supported the new government. Thailand thus received little punishment for its wartime role under Phibun.
so so so so so...
although in truth thailand was split into two with Phibun on one side and the Thai ambassador to the U.S Seni Pramoj on the other... well, they were STILL on the side of the JAPANESE...
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat sia..
hahahahaha...
and all this while i thought they were neutrals!
well well well... bloody hell... guess what the truth really was people!!!
In 1940 most of France was occupied by Nazi Germany, and Phibun(THAI GENERAL) immediately set out to avenge Siam's humiliations by France in 1893 and 1904, when the French had redrawn the borders of Siam with Laos and Cambodia by forcing a series of treaties.
Luang Wichit wrote a number of popular dramas that glorified the idea of many ethnic groups belonging to one greater "Thai" empire and condemned the evils of European colonial rule. Irredentist and anti-French demonstrations were incessantly held around Bangkok, and in late 1940 border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. In 1941, the skirmishes became a small scale war between Vichy France and Thailand.
The Thai forces dominated the war on the ground and in the air, but suffered a crushing naval defeat at the battle of Koh Chang. The Japanese then stepped in to mediate the conflict. The final settlement thus gave back to Thailand the disputed areas in Laos and Cambodia.
Phibun's prestige was so increased that he was able to bask in a feeling of being truly the nation's leader. As if to celebrate the occasion, he promoted himself to field marshal, skipping the ranks of lieutenant general and general.
This caused a rapid deterioration of relations with the United States and Britain. In April 1941 the United States cut off petroleum supplies to Thailand. Thailand's campaign for territorial expansion came to an end on December 8, 1941 when Japan invaded the country along its southern coastline and from Cambodia. After initially resisting, the Phibun regime allowed the Japanese to pass through the country in order to attack Burma and invade Malaya.
(OKAY SO THIS IS SUPPOSEDLY WHERE WE STOPPED DISCOVERING IN SINGAPORE HISTORY TEXTBOOKS. BUT READ ON TO FIND OUT THE TRUTH PEOPLE!)
Convinced by the Allied defeats of early 1942 that Japan was winning the war, Phibun decide to form an actual military alliance with the Japanese.
As a reward, Japan allowed Thailand to invade and annex the Shan States in northern Burma, and to resume sovereignty over the sultanates of northern Malaya which had previously been lost in a treaty with Britain. In January 1942 Phibun declared war on Britain and the United States.
By 1944 it was evident that the Japanese were going to lose the war, and their behaviour in Thailand had become increasingly arrogant. Bangkok also suffered heavily from the Allied bombing raids. This, plus the economic hardship caused by the loss of Thailand's rice export markets, made both the war and Phibun's regime very unpopular. In July 1944 Phibun was ousted by the Seri Thai-infiltrated government. The National Assembly reconvened and appointed the liberal lawyer Khuang Aphaiwong as Prime Minister. The new government hastily evacuated the British territories that Phibun had occupied and surreptitiously aided the Seri Thai movement, while at the same time maintaining ostensibly friendly relations with the Japanese.
The Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945. Immediately, the Allied military responsibility for Thailand fell to the British. As soon as practicable, British troops were flown in and these rapidly secured the release of surviving POWs. The British were surprised to find that the disarmament of the Japanese soldiers had already been largely completed by the Thais.
The British regarded Thailand as having been partly responsible for the immeasurable damage dealt upon the Allied cause and favoured treating the kingdom as a defeated enemy. However, the Americans had no sympathy for British and French colonialism and supported the new government. Thailand thus received little punishment for its wartime role under Phibun.
so so so so so...
although in truth thailand was split into two with Phibun on one side and the Thai ambassador to the U.S Seni Pramoj on the other... well, they were STILL on the side of the JAPANESE...
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat sia..
hahahahaha...
and all this while i thought they were neutrals!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Olivia.
The black-haired AngMo girl.
It wasn’t that very long ago, that she strolled into my life...
And I couldn’t think of anything else, but wanting to be the man who loves her.
But then she leaves as quickly as she came...
Shattering every aspect of my life along the way.
The very first thing that came to mind when I saw her, besides the fact that she was beautiful, was that she looked absolutely delightful.
I don’t know about anyone out there, but I've never ever used or came across such a term to describe a member of the opposite sex, or anyone of any sex that is.
And yet it struck my mind - it really is a suggestive term isn’t it...
Delightful.
That perhaps time spent with her will make me happy. And that really is one of the most important features when it comes to relationships. Without it, you might as well end whatever relationship of sorts you’re in because one of you will end up in bed with somebody else. That’s exactly what my mother did, three times nonetheless, with three different men, in three different marriages.
In this modern world where we constantly witness all these, uhm... what I’d call, fusion and integration between different people of diverse ethnicities, my daddy still never really believed in mix marriages, mixed relationships, or mixed love in any form- in fact, this was one of his major “traditionalist ideas” that was constantly stressed to me before he passed away.
So as difficult as it already was getting an amazing angmo girl like herself to notice me, I had to contend with the guilt of not following my father’s wishes.
And it’s really not that easy! I mean every moment that I spent with Olivia meant thinking about my dad – the vision of him with his finger pointed at me, “I DON’T BELIEVE IN MIX MARRIAGE! WHY CAN’T YOU JUST FIND A DECENT CHINESE GIRL? ” And you thought Caucasians were racist?
His views were totally contrary from my mum’s – who always believed after two disastrous marriages to Chinese guys that Caucasian men were her cure to heartbreak. Just like some women would say the darker the chocolate the richer the taste when they go black and never go back, my mum had her fair share of KungPao Chicken and will now only consume juicy beefy AngMo steaks (now that sounded really dirty, and wrong).
In any city street at any one time the most common form of mix couples is that of an Asian girl and an AngMo guy. Walking hand in hand with Olivia turned heads more often than not. You don’t see an Asian guy with an AngMo girl very regularly, if not, at all. So it was fun for her too- all the stares that came our way.
I guess what made her so appealing was that she's shorter than me, and not many are shorter, especially since she was an angmo girl.
She had a thousand watt smile that was natural... really natural.
I say natural because there are many smiling beauties in this world we live in, but when they aren’t in their smiling modes they look like the most arrogant and stuck-up individuals ever.
This girl - even when her white, white, teeth weren’t in a smile, you could see it in her eyes- okay I know I sound corny but yes, she had smiling eyes. Combined together, I called it her thousand-watt smile – it could light any room in the country.
The way she smiles - her pouty, sultry lips that screams kissable whenever her super wide funny yet sweet smile forms. You’ll love her smile; it’s as simple as that. It shows off just a bit too much gum, and yet, it’s those goofy-sweet-gums and the rosy redness that gets her out of trouble every time. It’s just those little things that most people overlook, the tiniest details of her soft bashful features, the stuff she does that nobody pays attention to - how she always pulls down on her well-conditioned jet black hair – the velvety smell of head & shoulders always flirting with my senses; they just make me appreciate her oh-so-much, and love her, more and more, each and every day, today more than yesterday, but slightly less than tomorrow.
She was very much a stranger when we first met, a stranger for goodness sakes, and it was truly weird, oh-so-weird, as to how familiar she really seemed. And that was how we became lovers. I guess you meet a hundred or even a thousand or so different strangers in your life; and the one person whom you develop a strong relationship with is the one who seems the most familiar, even though you have never ever met before. Well it helps if she’s a stunner as well I guess.
I’m going to be chauvinistic for a moment and talk about her chest, or as she used to say – her man-magnets. She had just right boobs that were supple – I’m not much of a “breast-man” to be honest but I used to tell her that she had really athletic boobs that were just right (If I was trying to be bombastic I’d probably use the word lithesome to describe her assets!).
She was always inquisitive, and that was the second thing I noticed about her. She could always talk and talk and talk and talk.
Perfect.
Beautiful AND a conversationalist.
Those two things are how I best remember her.
Yes she talked. She talked A LOT. But not so much so that she ate my eardrums.
One of the many things she learnt whilst being with me was to indulge in the fine culinary Asian Art of IndoMee making (which literally is nothing more than instant noodles and microwaves!). There was this one time when she suddenly spoke about the packaging of an instant noodle packet we were about to consume in one of those frequent midnight suppers we used to lavish ever so often, “our gastronomic adventures”. Oh the unpredictability of her, who actually ever talks about an instant noodle packet?
I still remember every single random word that she said during the wee hours of that early morning;
“All we ever do is mutilate the plastic package, chuck the desiccated starch into boiling water, drain after 3 minutes, add the flavoursome monosodium-glutamate powder, and bon appétit! You know what? I think there is actually a lot of work put into this packet of instant noodles! Look at the design, the details and instructions on the back – how to cook it, where it’s made, who owns the company , and there’s even nutritional information, or lack of it actually! Why exactly do we eat this unhealthy indulgence every other night?”
Gosh. After rereading that paragraph I seem to be emitting this vibe that she’s a finicky little girl huh? But no, she’s far from that really, miles away; she’s just very… random. And as weird as this may seem, I love her for it. After that night, she kept every single packet of noodles we ever ate, even mine. I bet that’s something none of you ever do, keeping something with no intrinsic value whatsoever. Well, she did. She’s a girl who keeps all the stuff that means something to her no matter how grubby they may seem, things that have no worth in any other person’s eyes. I mean just look! She chose me.
She’s very generous as a person. Especially with her love – she expresses it very well indeed, not in the “slutty kind of embrace every guy you meet” mind you, but more like knowing how to listen when need be, using her strong magical hugs as a cure for everything, loving love, and especially, loving me. She was an individual who made me feel so unencumbered and so very at ease that I wasn’t afraid to pour all my heart out to her. She was someone who I wasn’t afraid to touch – and as anyone who knows me well will vouch for this fact pertinently, I don’t even do hugs – so you could say that she was very charitable with her bigheartedness of love, and I was the charity who needed her.
For very often now, I have always thought what it would have been like if she didn’t leave me like she did. Would we have lived on to a hundred and five, together?
I mean just look at my dear old mother…
My mum has recently joined one of those Internet-dating websites, after 30 years of failed marriages, 3 husbands – two Singaporean Chinese, and one Scotsman, after births to 3 amazing children including a caesarian section (me!) , she has decided to embrace modern technology and shed herself of the traditional stereotypical norms about desperate women in correlation to dating agencies.
The first week after signing up with her credit card online, she told me ever so enthusiastically,
“Eh I have thousand over hits you know! Got hundred over ICE-BREAKERS!”
The day I rue when my mum uses words like “hits”, and “Ice-Breakers”. My GAWD!
For real though, my mum is 52 years old and I have always thought that by that age you’re supposed to have already learnt to be satisfied with whatever it is that you have, attempt to cherish whomever may be by your side, and just get on with life – a never-ending honeymoon, wrinkly and saggy. Well to shatter all my innocent little dreams, she’s not like that at all, hardly.
She tells me that there are three significant people in life when it comes to love. The sweetheart, the husband, and the person she enjoys life with. Apparently she hasn’t really found the last one just yet, or, in my step-mum’s very own words, “Your mother really very itchy-fuck lah! HAHAHAHA!”
My mother and the men who took the filling out of her egg tarts.
Just like that, she ended her seven year marriage to the Scottish poodle who once rocked her boat. Sometimes I am happy to have a family like that; they gave me so much material to write.
But other times though, I wonder, if there was a chance, if she didn’t go away, would Olivia and I be one of those Disney couples who seem to last for eternity?
Doesn’t anyone believe in happily ever after anymore?
Or would she have been like my mum and gradually grow bored of me?
Maybe we would have lasted the distance and grow old with a dozen or so bouncy little kids.
We often spoke about children, like most hackneyed couples do in their free time, it was always about their names and whether boys or girls will be more fun to raise; we always spoke of children, plural, and never child, not like most modern parents, who are pleased with just one, or none at all – you can tell that we were young and foolish, not understanding the perplexities and complicatedness of bringing up children, but hey, that’s when love is all true and innocent isn’t it? Before all the financial security and no-money- no-honey adulthood came into play.
Valentine was what we’d name our first girl, Leonardo if it was a boy, we never got around to naming the others – the kids that we never had, the kids that we never will have, the family which never had the chance to develop.
She never once looked down on my family, and always bugged me to bring her around to every single one of the complex lost branches on my large crisscrossed/mish-mashed family tree; she always told me that “there are all these little loose connections here and there that require massive rewiring, and I am going to help you every single step of the way.”
She really treasures family, if you can’t already tell, and it didn’t matter the condition or state that they were in, if you are family, half-blood, full-blood – then you will be loved. She didn’t like the idea of me neglecting certain branches because of the things that they did and said to me in the past. She told me that even though sometimes we might want to press “delete forever” on certain memories of certain people, to just “delete, delete, delete!” We just can’t, which in turn makes us who we are, in how we deal with the situations in our life.
“The greatest families are the broken ones, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are happy.”
Sometimes I catch her staring at a reflection of herself when no one is looking. She never does it in front of a mirror – too obvious I guess, “I’m not so VAIN lar!” (More proof of the bad influence I have on her language, using Singlish words like LAR!) She used to say; but she always sneaked a peak whenever she passed by a gleaming glassed window, even a glossy advertorial poster – as if to just check if she’s still gorgeous and made up right. She is, of course, gorgeous.
I just regret not telling her more so in the past.
All I ever used to say to her was that I couldn’t care less if she thought she was cool, but cigarette smokers die painful deaths.
And it robbed her. It really robbed her of her lovely life. Overnight, almost.
The doctors, they said it wasn’t the smoking, they said the malignant growth in her was genetic, what do they know right?
I just thought, “How can someone as divine as she was possess something as evil as that… malignancy… in her? It’s the damn fucking cigarettes and whatever shit they put inside! It’s killing her! It killed her…”
There’s nothing they could do they said, chemotherapies, radiotherapies, they have no curative potential – it’s a matter of quality versus quantity of life. Go through whatever available treatment there was, and she could perhaps extend a bit of her lifespan, how much, who knows? There’s no curative potential, they said, again, and again. Don’t go through with it and although she might have a shorter ride left on this earth, it won’t be a bumpy one.
Hope – that was what she wanted. No matter how diminutive or minute. If there wasn’t any meaning or reason to live on and persevere, to fight and hang on, then life wasn’t worth living for. And so she chose treatment – even though there wasn’t any curative potential. At that moment I just wished that her hugs could do all the magic and cure her.
She passed away at exactly 6.06am in the morning. With her eyes closed.
It’s a traditional Chinese custom to believe that when a person dies in the morning without having breakfast, lunch, or dinner, he/she is leaving all of it for the people they love. If you die with your eyes open, you have unfulfilled wishes. So in a way (or rather, in a cross-cultural way seeing that she really wasn’t much Chinese) on the day she passed on to an afterlife where she suffered no more, she was still as generous as ever, and though she left the world, left me, at such a tender, youthful, early stage, she was contented.
The first thing about having a loved one with a disease is that you never expect them to leave you, no matter how terminal it may be. You expect some kind of miracle, or rather, you sort of believe that she WILL survive, that some sort of heavenly intervention will save her, and we will go about living life the way we always did after all the drama is over.
But it never happens. It never happened.
No one in this world really is all that perfect, but when they go away in the manner that she did, it is only the good memories that linger.
She didn’t leave me the way most girls did.
Not like Laura and her bloody SMS. What is the friggin’ deal with SMS breakups man?!
That is like, the single most cowardly and pathetic way to end anything. I’ve heard of divorces via SMS in Malaysia, and people also being fired from their jobs via SMS. I mean this is totally fucktup man! SMS should always be a connecting tool of positivity, such as a way of meeting up, “C U @ 8” or telling people you love them “LUV U XXX”. Not a way of being fired, or in my case, being dumped. (I’m such a loser lar! haha)
At least Olivia didn’t resort to that right? Who am I kidding?
She left in the cruelest way possible, and yet, you could somehow see that the way of her passing was such that she stamped an extraordinarily impressionable memory of herself unto me, full of pleasant and dreamy thoughts, rid of all the ugly.
Olivia hated being termed as Photogenic. She thought that it was the worst compliment one could receive. You see, she always thought that this would mean that she was ugly in person and only good looking in photographs. Which wasn’t true of course- she was awesome looking both ways.
But I still look at her photographs every single night before nodding off to dreamy-land. I just love looking at photographs, more so when they are of her. Somehow or another I can always remember the smell of the place where the photograph was taken, and it just swirls about in memory, a visual reminder of a woman who will always be braver, and so much more mature, than I will ever be. An individual who left way before her time was due, touching so many hearts along the way, and captivating mine. A person who will always and forever mean the world and so much more to me.
Olivia, the black haired AngMo girl.
The black-haired AngMo girl.
It wasn’t that very long ago, that she strolled into my life...
And I couldn’t think of anything else, but wanting to be the man who loves her.
But then she leaves as quickly as she came...
Shattering every aspect of my life along the way.
The very first thing that came to mind when I saw her, besides the fact that she was beautiful, was that she looked absolutely delightful.
I don’t know about anyone out there, but I've never ever used or came across such a term to describe a member of the opposite sex, or anyone of any sex that is.
And yet it struck my mind - it really is a suggestive term isn’t it...
Delightful.
That perhaps time spent with her will make me happy. And that really is one of the most important features when it comes to relationships. Without it, you might as well end whatever relationship of sorts you’re in because one of you will end up in bed with somebody else. That’s exactly what my mother did, three times nonetheless, with three different men, in three different marriages.
In this modern world where we constantly witness all these, uhm... what I’d call, fusion and integration between different people of diverse ethnicities, my daddy still never really believed in mix marriages, mixed relationships, or mixed love in any form- in fact, this was one of his major “traditionalist ideas” that was constantly stressed to me before he passed away.
So as difficult as it already was getting an amazing angmo girl like herself to notice me, I had to contend with the guilt of not following my father’s wishes.
And it’s really not that easy! I mean every moment that I spent with Olivia meant thinking about my dad – the vision of him with his finger pointed at me, “I DON’T BELIEVE IN MIX MARRIAGE! WHY CAN’T YOU JUST FIND A DECENT CHINESE GIRL? ” And you thought Caucasians were racist?
His views were totally contrary from my mum’s – who always believed after two disastrous marriages to Chinese guys that Caucasian men were her cure to heartbreak. Just like some women would say the darker the chocolate the richer the taste when they go black and never go back, my mum had her fair share of KungPao Chicken and will now only consume juicy beefy AngMo steaks (now that sounded really dirty, and wrong).
In any city street at any one time the most common form of mix couples is that of an Asian girl and an AngMo guy. Walking hand in hand with Olivia turned heads more often than not. You don’t see an Asian guy with an AngMo girl very regularly, if not, at all. So it was fun for her too- all the stares that came our way.
I guess what made her so appealing was that she's shorter than me, and not many are shorter, especially since she was an angmo girl.
She had a thousand watt smile that was natural... really natural.
I say natural because there are many smiling beauties in this world we live in, but when they aren’t in their smiling modes they look like the most arrogant and stuck-up individuals ever.
This girl - even when her white, white, teeth weren’t in a smile, you could see it in her eyes- okay I know I sound corny but yes, she had smiling eyes. Combined together, I called it her thousand-watt smile – it could light any room in the country.
The way she smiles - her pouty, sultry lips that screams kissable whenever her super wide funny yet sweet smile forms. You’ll love her smile; it’s as simple as that. It shows off just a bit too much gum, and yet, it’s those goofy-sweet-gums and the rosy redness that gets her out of trouble every time. It’s just those little things that most people overlook, the tiniest details of her soft bashful features, the stuff she does that nobody pays attention to - how she always pulls down on her well-conditioned jet black hair – the velvety smell of head & shoulders always flirting with my senses; they just make me appreciate her oh-so-much, and love her, more and more, each and every day, today more than yesterday, but slightly less than tomorrow.
She was very much a stranger when we first met, a stranger for goodness sakes, and it was truly weird, oh-so-weird, as to how familiar she really seemed. And that was how we became lovers. I guess you meet a hundred or even a thousand or so different strangers in your life; and the one person whom you develop a strong relationship with is the one who seems the most familiar, even though you have never ever met before. Well it helps if she’s a stunner as well I guess.
I’m going to be chauvinistic for a moment and talk about her chest, or as she used to say – her man-magnets. She had just right boobs that were supple – I’m not much of a “breast-man” to be honest but I used to tell her that she had really athletic boobs that were just right (If I was trying to be bombastic I’d probably use the word lithesome to describe her assets!).
She was always inquisitive, and that was the second thing I noticed about her. She could always talk and talk and talk and talk.
Perfect.
Beautiful AND a conversationalist.
Those two things are how I best remember her.
Yes she talked. She talked A LOT. But not so much so that she ate my eardrums.
One of the many things she learnt whilst being with me was to indulge in the fine culinary Asian Art of IndoMee making (which literally is nothing more than instant noodles and microwaves!). There was this one time when she suddenly spoke about the packaging of an instant noodle packet we were about to consume in one of those frequent midnight suppers we used to lavish ever so often, “our gastronomic adventures”. Oh the unpredictability of her, who actually ever talks about an instant noodle packet?
I still remember every single random word that she said during the wee hours of that early morning;
“All we ever do is mutilate the plastic package, chuck the desiccated starch into boiling water, drain after 3 minutes, add the flavoursome monosodium-glutamate powder, and bon appétit! You know what? I think there is actually a lot of work put into this packet of instant noodles! Look at the design, the details and instructions on the back – how to cook it, where it’s made, who owns the company , and there’s even nutritional information, or lack of it actually! Why exactly do we eat this unhealthy indulgence every other night?”
Gosh. After rereading that paragraph I seem to be emitting this vibe that she’s a finicky little girl huh? But no, she’s far from that really, miles away; she’s just very… random. And as weird as this may seem, I love her for it. After that night, she kept every single packet of noodles we ever ate, even mine. I bet that’s something none of you ever do, keeping something with no intrinsic value whatsoever. Well, she did. She’s a girl who keeps all the stuff that means something to her no matter how grubby they may seem, things that have no worth in any other person’s eyes. I mean just look! She chose me.
She’s very generous as a person. Especially with her love – she expresses it very well indeed, not in the “slutty kind of embrace every guy you meet” mind you, but more like knowing how to listen when need be, using her strong magical hugs as a cure for everything, loving love, and especially, loving me. She was an individual who made me feel so unencumbered and so very at ease that I wasn’t afraid to pour all my heart out to her. She was someone who I wasn’t afraid to touch – and as anyone who knows me well will vouch for this fact pertinently, I don’t even do hugs – so you could say that she was very charitable with her bigheartedness of love, and I was the charity who needed her.
For very often now, I have always thought what it would have been like if she didn’t leave me like she did. Would we have lived on to a hundred and five, together?
I mean just look at my dear old mother…
My mum has recently joined one of those Internet-dating websites, after 30 years of failed marriages, 3 husbands – two Singaporean Chinese, and one Scotsman, after births to 3 amazing children including a caesarian section (me!) , she has decided to embrace modern technology and shed herself of the traditional stereotypical norms about desperate women in correlation to dating agencies.
The first week after signing up with her credit card online, she told me ever so enthusiastically,
“Eh I have thousand over hits you know! Got hundred over ICE-BREAKERS!”
The day I rue when my mum uses words like “hits”, and “Ice-Breakers”. My GAWD!
For real though, my mum is 52 years old and I have always thought that by that age you’re supposed to have already learnt to be satisfied with whatever it is that you have, attempt to cherish whomever may be by your side, and just get on with life – a never-ending honeymoon, wrinkly and saggy. Well to shatter all my innocent little dreams, she’s not like that at all, hardly.
She tells me that there are three significant people in life when it comes to love. The sweetheart, the husband, and the person she enjoys life with. Apparently she hasn’t really found the last one just yet, or, in my step-mum’s very own words, “Your mother really very itchy-fuck lah! HAHAHAHA!”
My mother and the men who took the filling out of her egg tarts.
Just like that, she ended her seven year marriage to the Scottish poodle who once rocked her boat. Sometimes I am happy to have a family like that; they gave me so much material to write.
But other times though, I wonder, if there was a chance, if she didn’t go away, would Olivia and I be one of those Disney couples who seem to last for eternity?
Doesn’t anyone believe in happily ever after anymore?
Or would she have been like my mum and gradually grow bored of me?
Maybe we would have lasted the distance and grow old with a dozen or so bouncy little kids.
We often spoke about children, like most hackneyed couples do in their free time, it was always about their names and whether boys or girls will be more fun to raise; we always spoke of children, plural, and never child, not like most modern parents, who are pleased with just one, or none at all – you can tell that we were young and foolish, not understanding the perplexities and complicatedness of bringing up children, but hey, that’s when love is all true and innocent isn’t it? Before all the financial security and no-money- no-honey adulthood came into play.
Valentine was what we’d name our first girl, Leonardo if it was a boy, we never got around to naming the others – the kids that we never had, the kids that we never will have, the family which never had the chance to develop.
She never once looked down on my family, and always bugged me to bring her around to every single one of the complex lost branches on my large crisscrossed/mish-mashed family tree; she always told me that “there are all these little loose connections here and there that require massive rewiring, and I am going to help you every single step of the way.”
She really treasures family, if you can’t already tell, and it didn’t matter the condition or state that they were in, if you are family, half-blood, full-blood – then you will be loved. She didn’t like the idea of me neglecting certain branches because of the things that they did and said to me in the past. She told me that even though sometimes we might want to press “delete forever” on certain memories of certain people, to just “delete, delete, delete!” We just can’t, which in turn makes us who we are, in how we deal with the situations in our life.
“The greatest families are the broken ones, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are happy.”
Sometimes I catch her staring at a reflection of herself when no one is looking. She never does it in front of a mirror – too obvious I guess, “I’m not so VAIN lar!” (More proof of the bad influence I have on her language, using Singlish words like LAR!) She used to say; but she always sneaked a peak whenever she passed by a gleaming glassed window, even a glossy advertorial poster – as if to just check if she’s still gorgeous and made up right. She is, of course, gorgeous.
I just regret not telling her more so in the past.
All I ever used to say to her was that I couldn’t care less if she thought she was cool, but cigarette smokers die painful deaths.
And it robbed her. It really robbed her of her lovely life. Overnight, almost.
The doctors, they said it wasn’t the smoking, they said the malignant growth in her was genetic, what do they know right?
I just thought, “How can someone as divine as she was possess something as evil as that… malignancy… in her? It’s the damn fucking cigarettes and whatever shit they put inside! It’s killing her! It killed her…”
There’s nothing they could do they said, chemotherapies, radiotherapies, they have no curative potential – it’s a matter of quality versus quantity of life. Go through whatever available treatment there was, and she could perhaps extend a bit of her lifespan, how much, who knows? There’s no curative potential, they said, again, and again. Don’t go through with it and although she might have a shorter ride left on this earth, it won’t be a bumpy one.
Hope – that was what she wanted. No matter how diminutive or minute. If there wasn’t any meaning or reason to live on and persevere, to fight and hang on, then life wasn’t worth living for. And so she chose treatment – even though there wasn’t any curative potential. At that moment I just wished that her hugs could do all the magic and cure her.
She passed away at exactly 6.06am in the morning. With her eyes closed.
It’s a traditional Chinese custom to believe that when a person dies in the morning without having breakfast, lunch, or dinner, he/she is leaving all of it for the people they love. If you die with your eyes open, you have unfulfilled wishes. So in a way (or rather, in a cross-cultural way seeing that she really wasn’t much Chinese) on the day she passed on to an afterlife where she suffered no more, she was still as generous as ever, and though she left the world, left me, at such a tender, youthful, early stage, she was contented.
The first thing about having a loved one with a disease is that you never expect them to leave you, no matter how terminal it may be. You expect some kind of miracle, or rather, you sort of believe that she WILL survive, that some sort of heavenly intervention will save her, and we will go about living life the way we always did after all the drama is over.
But it never happens. It never happened.
No one in this world really is all that perfect, but when they go away in the manner that she did, it is only the good memories that linger.
She didn’t leave me the way most girls did.
Not like Laura and her bloody SMS. What is the friggin’ deal with SMS breakups man?!
That is like, the single most cowardly and pathetic way to end anything. I’ve heard of divorces via SMS in Malaysia, and people also being fired from their jobs via SMS. I mean this is totally fucktup man! SMS should always be a connecting tool of positivity, such as a way of meeting up, “C U @ 8” or telling people you love them “LUV U XXX”. Not a way of being fired, or in my case, being dumped. (I’m such a loser lar! haha)
At least Olivia didn’t resort to that right? Who am I kidding?
She left in the cruelest way possible, and yet, you could somehow see that the way of her passing was such that she stamped an extraordinarily impressionable memory of herself unto me, full of pleasant and dreamy thoughts, rid of all the ugly.
Olivia hated being termed as Photogenic. She thought that it was the worst compliment one could receive. You see, she always thought that this would mean that she was ugly in person and only good looking in photographs. Which wasn’t true of course- she was awesome looking both ways.
But I still look at her photographs every single night before nodding off to dreamy-land. I just love looking at photographs, more so when they are of her. Somehow or another I can always remember the smell of the place where the photograph was taken, and it just swirls about in memory, a visual reminder of a woman who will always be braver, and so much more mature, than I will ever be. An individual who left way before her time was due, touching so many hearts along the way, and captivating mine. A person who will always and forever mean the world and so much more to me.
Olivia, the black haired AngMo girl.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Earth angel,
Earth angel
Will you be mine
My darling dear
Love you all the time
Im just a fool,
A fool in love, with you
Earth angel
Earth angel
The one I adore
Love you forever
And ever more
Im just a fool,
A fool in-love with you
I fell for you
And I knew
The vision of your lovliness
I hope and I pray,
That someday,
Ill be the vision of your
Happiness
Earth angel,
Earth angel
Please you be mine
My darling dear
Love you all the time
Im just a fool,
A fool in love, with you
I fell for you
And I knew
The vision of your lovliness
I hope and I pray,
That someday,
Ill be the vision of your
Happiness
Earth angel,
Earth angel
Please you be mine
My darling dear
Love you all the time
Im just a fool,
A fool in love, with you
seventy years down the road, you and me, by the jukebox, hand in hand.
Earth angel
Will you be mine
My darling dear
Love you all the time
Im just a fool,
A fool in love, with you
Earth angel
Earth angel
The one I adore
Love you forever
And ever more
Im just a fool,
A fool in-love with you
I fell for you
And I knew
The vision of your lovliness
I hope and I pray,
That someday,
Ill be the vision of your
Happiness
Earth angel,
Earth angel
Please you be mine
My darling dear
Love you all the time
Im just a fool,
A fool in love, with you
I fell for you
And I knew
The vision of your lovliness
I hope and I pray,
That someday,
Ill be the vision of your
Happiness
Earth angel,
Earth angel
Please you be mine
My darling dear
Love you all the time
Im just a fool,
A fool in love, with you
seventy years down the road, you and me, by the jukebox, hand in hand.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
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