Saturday, July 26, 2008

Last Dance.



On that humid summer night we danced.

To the muffled squeaks from the whirling antique fan

Beethoven's Moonlight sonata playing in the background.


You held me tight as we twirled

the faint breeze barely dissipating the clammy heat.

But still we danced on, round and round.

In silence for things need not be spoken.


Till the street lights winked out, one by one.

And night drew its last shuddering breath

In the languid light of breaking dawn.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Facelift.

So unless you're blind, deaf or simply dropping in for the first time, you'd have noticed certain substantial changes to the blog.

We all like a little change once in a while, tweak what we have, junk the crap, add a little spice. I'm no different. Besides certain individuals have always been bemoaning about the auto playlist. "I always get a heart attack when I visit your blog you know!" I must confess it appeared to be a highly novel and attractive idea when I first dumped it in sometime early last year.

The novelty did wear out after a while especially yours truly was too lazy to upload new songs/weed out old links and left the same song on the list for months even when we all know some days our mood dictates that certain songs are not suitable.

So that got axed (celebrate now Aileen) along with a whole slew of dead widgets and unnecessary links. And got replaced with the embedded Youtube playlist which is infinitely more useful (no heart-attack inducing auto starts) since I happen to be a rather Rabid Youtube viewer now and sharing videos is now that much easier.

But I must admit that the most tedious but gratifying part of the blog renovation was stitching together the background with a decidedly primitive Irfanview. I like Irfanview for simple no brainer stuff like batch converting files and resizing them.. but stitching together a decent background took a torturous one hour. Still the end result, embossed on impulse with the apt 'Pieces of Me' was better than I'd expected. Junking the boring ole Waterfall was something I did with great glee.

I did toy with the idea of changing the blog name. But somethings like the proverbial baby and the bath water should not be discarded. I'm still gay and I still say things the way I see it. Besides the blog won't be quite the same if it wasn't so unashamedly gay, would it. But for now I'm happy with the changes.

On a wholly unrelated note, today was an absolute nightmare at work. Client wanting to change agreed position before hearing then refusing to provide further monies to account despite work not being billed since May. Client screaming on the phone. Informing stark raving mad woman we will be discharging ourselves. Cue more screaming. Bapok lawyer forgetting about hearing.

Judge annoyed at our application to discharge. Client screaming. Other side panicking over perfectly justified letter and the need to cover own ass then screaming over the phone. Yours truly screaming on the phone. Damnit just drop dead already.

Shut Up & Drive



Joy oh joys, one of the few times I post a video that is decidedly attractive to my straight male readers. Lots of hip thrusting, skimpy attire, sultry looks and killer heels from a member of the correct gender.

I can see why some of my heterosexual male friends are quite hung up over Rihanna. That woman knows how to strut her stuff and she oozes sex appeal. In fact, in her 'Shut up & Drive' Music Video, she practically drips sex appeal, like the rivulets of sweat that streak down the faces of many a hot-blooded virile heterosexual male as they watch the said video and coalesce in little pools of sweat and drool on the keyboard.

No I'm not turning straight nor am I seized by any particular urge to wank off when watching Rihanna's steamy MV. Just a neutral observation from an amused bystander. If I were straight though, I doubt I'd be able to make such dispassionate rationalisations.

I must admit this song is very catchy and yet witty in the naughty and almost raunchy sense. Fast Cars, Hot chicks servicing those cars. What could send a male heterosexual into seventh heaven faster than this deadly combo? Unless perhaps of course the hot chicks necessarily end up serving them. That would be a nose bleed of epic proportions.

Shut up and Drive is naughty, rude and provocative. It's all about wanting to be driven and she promises to be a hell of a ride. Plus it's the kind of song you just want to dance to. The kind of song you'd possibly want a chick you really dig to sing to you. "So you wanna drive the Lamborghini, Ferrari or Meee?" Shut Up and Drive! *Cue screeching tires*

Shut Up and Drive by Rihanna



Rihanna Lyrics
Shut Up and Drive Lyrics

Yes and if you've already noticed, I'm in the process of revamping the layout of the blog, clearing out the trash and the boring old background proposed by someone long ago (who as far as I am concerned has died) while updating certain things. More on that soon.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Separate Lives- forever.

"We live our separate lives
And go our different ways
Cause we don't see eye to eye
And we can't stand face to face." - Separate Lives by The Alan Parsons Project.

Going for another sweltering, strength sapping and mildly torturous 90 mins hot yoga session after a two week hiatus was on hindsight not the best way to kickstart the flagging exercise regime. But as everyone knows, sometimes one simply needs a good shock to jump start the engine or risk succumbing to the eternally attractive 'Oh maybe just next week' excuse.

So while the rapid sequence of postures in the hot house left me a little light headed and totally baked towards the end of the class, the feeling after taking a shower was pure bliss. There is truth after all to the age old observation of that feel-good sensation and utter satisfaction after a good hard work out. Pleasure after the pain.

Exercise like sex, which of course is in itself a most pleasurable form of exercise, does work up a healthy appetite. Which is where one needs to curb the craving to stuff your face silly with all that horribly tempting and artery clogging fried stuff or perhaps the odd dessert or two. Kinda stupid to detox and burn calories then retox and pile on more calories faster than you can say 'cake'.

Thankfully, the only eateries open at a very ulu Valley Point were Starbucks and a small family Japanese restaurant. No brainer about dinner. I had a Tekka Don, raw tuna on sushi rice with pickles, roe and a generous serving of pink ginger and a salmon skin temaki. The Tekka Don was passable, not half as fatty as I would have liked it to be and the rice was just a tad too clumpy but the food was on average, well above average. That and possibly because I was positively famished.

Sitting there and trying my darn best to chew through each mouthful, not out of any particular need to appreciate the food but rather the more pragmatic and mundane reason of filling the stomach, I pondered just how in the short span of a few months, how used and comfortable I was to being alone. Having a quiet meal, savouring the food, watching the world go by.

Sure sometimes the conversation, the company is missed. A heartfelt conversation, the ripostes and parries as both parties interact and simply enjoy the company. But these days solitude is a familiar solace, not one that is actively sought out as a panacea for any perceived loneliness from being alone but a solace that has become comforting in its familiarity. You observe more, you think more, you do what you want, when you want, you impose less. Of course the very same reason for the aforesaid benefits is also a necessary downside, you remain alone.

And when one realises that irrefutable fact, one can either choose to remain wretchedly single or recognise that fact and make the best of things. Or you can, anti-social as it may sound, enjoy the solitude while remaining cognizant of the fact that the occasional fleeting pangs of loneliness are natural and by no way indicative of a need to rush into a relationship with someone else. A nice warm body in bed undeniably tempting yes, but to enter into a relationship or seek solace in the company of friends, no.

So now I've gotten quite hooked on cedele lunches and other decidedly less 'manly' (as termed by a few dear colleagues at work on the account that lunches which involve copious amounts of meat and preferably half of it nicely fried are substantial and manly) lunches at sandwich bars and ramen shops while trooping about the central area for lunch if I'm not forced to lunch in due to work.

Which means I haven't been joining the gang for lunch for a while but all's good because lunch doesn't have to be a give or take kind of decision and it's not nice to expect people to have sandwiches, salads and other decidedly unmanly food on a regular basis. Making and/or expecting them fork out the amount you're willing to fork out for the aforesaid grub is certainly unacceptable.

But really, despite the rambling diversion, the focus of this entry was never meant to be about Yoga, sex or food. Not even solitude as solace though that is certainly a necessary incidental. It's to explain to a certain once beloved individual in very clear, unadulterated terms just exactly why the prospect of convenient amnesia and maintaining the masquerade of a 'friendship', emotionless and superficial is not an option for yours truly. And to lay bare just exactly why I think your random off the wall shot that your 'heart has been hurt once more' is just a load of horse shit.

You knew things were coming to a head. Ever since that utterly disastrous Bangkok trip ("I know you didn't enjoy yourself" must have been the biggest understatement of the year), with the oh-let's-all-move-on-I-fucked-my-colleague-so-I-made-my-choice-but-let's-still-be-friends-cause-I-really-care-give-it-thirty-years-and-we might-be-together crap. So yes you made your choice didn't you, you wanted to move on didn't you but we still have to be friends, cause really I want you to know who I'm fucking cause I care for you.

And you wonder why I remained so cold and distant after you had so brutally told me to move on, the lies you tell with a smile and in the same breath profess care and concern while extending what you undoubtedly perceived to be a very sensible and generous offer of friendship. One that remains utterly superficial, that veneer of artificiality glaring without the need to scrutinize, a blase emotionless friendship of endless small talk and superficial concern but never lancing the festering boil beneath.

I don't know how anyone who ever felt a fraction of what you claim to have felt for the relationship, towards the other party, could readily just release it all and adopt this convenient amnesia, flash your idiotic grin and presume we could ever be 'just' friends as if that phrase of life, those years never existed. I don't even know if you genuinely feel that way or it's your way of coping. I don't care now. But if you ever genuinely did feel that way, I can only say it has to be your biggest blessing or foulest curse.

Suffice to say, I am not blessed with such a delusional view of things. For the only logical conclusion I can come to, if you do not indeed possess the aforementioned unfathomable mindset, is that you surely never cared, never loved like you said you did. To be able to release so callously, to be able to settle for a friendship as superficial as it is unsatisfying, to be able to sleep with a colleague 'you think is nice' and speak of your 'concern' for me in the same breath is an irrefutable indication of the depth and strength of your purported feelings.

None. Zilch. Zero. An utter and complete fallacy. And I'm sure the part about how you never really forgot your first ex too was meant to be comforting in your warped sense of logic which fails me. Something about moving on and remaining friends I believe. But perhaps the idea that if you loved a person so much, so desperately, so consumingly, there will always remain that underlying tension of unspoken emotions especially when the breakup was never due to cheating or a fatal disinterest so much so that remaining 'just' friends is all the more untenable, never ever crossed your mind? Perhaps not on that halcyonic, delusional world of yours.

So when finally unable to bear the constant, frivolous attempts at initiating superficial small talk about work and weather despite my numerous indications that I was not in the least inclined to do so (conveniently ignored as usual), I lambasted you on Thursday, telling you in no uncertain precisely what I thought about your ludicrous and downright unwelcome attempts at remaining 'friends', you went dead silent then played the part of the maligned virtuous hero, the wronged, long suffering been-dumped-boyfriend. 'But I tot we can be frens...'

No we can't. Not the kind of compartmentalised GI Joe you can take out from your toybox when the mood for some company comes on you and which can be shut away when you please friendship you envisage. Not some cheap, plastic bauble. Unlike you I cannot forget the past six plus years, better you be an eternal stranger, dead to the heart, those years a monument,a chapter of my life, testament to my folly, than have some pseudo- half-baked- superficial- acquaintance when I don't want to know who you're screwing now and you think it's good I should know.

And then you went " Once again you have cut deep into my heart." There is nothing to cut, I have no wish or will, nothing to cut it with and with you so brutally declaring to move on and spewing copious crap about releasing and remaining friends, what is there to cut when your heart has already died on this relationship when you uttered those accursed words in Bangkok. "I made my choice when I slept with him, you should make yours." Then live with it. YOU made YOUR choice.

Or was your heart hurt because you thought you could release yet still remain as friends, superficial though it may be, which you found to be gratifying and acceptable and I flatly rejected that? Then it can bleed dry because I have no intention of being a party to your deluded scheme.

I will not wish you well, because I have no inclination to do so. Neither will I wish you ill, because I'm not going to waste my karma on someone who is totally not worth it. In fact I will be very honest and state for the record that right now, I really dislike you. But I will remember the times past, how you used to be, not the you now or whatever you may be in the future.

Because as far as I'm concerned, you've died to me and the next time (if ever) we pass by on the streets, it shall be as strangers, oblivious, uncaring, indifferent. Goodbye Mr Ho.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Rain & Respite

It's one of those less coherent entries but I make no apologies for the lack of prose or seeming sloth.

I like it when it rains and I'm at home, when night's fallen and the rain comes down hard and fast. The gusts of wind that flail the curtains, the occasional blast of fresh dampness cool on the face. As the symphony unfolds, rain drumming against the roof tiles, the erratic percussion of droplets on asphalt, skittering across the road like a drunken snake, the breathy sighs as the trees sway in the wind, leaves rustling and falling, torn from their branches to litter the ground like green confetti.

I like it when it rains in the morning, the sky grey and overcast, the insistent patter of rain, comforting and soothing. When all one wants to do is to snuggle deeper under the sheets, to bask in the warm coziness as the cool air caresses one's face, the clean smell of rain fresh in the cold morning air.

I like it when it rains like now.

A little lost bird flew into the parent's room, a little wet and disoriented from the downpour, seeking shelter perhaps though it may well have regretted its choice. Greeted by loud shrieks from the mother and strident shrieks of potential diseases and feathers over her newly changed bedsheets while that woman attempted to trap the poor thing with all things, a pail.

I turned off the ceiling fan, to avoid the wholly unpleasant and albeit gruesome prospect of the poor frenzied bird getting decapitated and bits of bird all over the room. She'd trapped the poor thing meanwhile. Flapping frantically in the pail, it sounded plaintive, stricken with fear no doubt. But she wanted to leave it there. Even though it'll suffocate? I don't care, leave iiiiiitttt.

So I let it out. Whereupon she shrieked and ran out of the room. This coming from the woman who previously bashed roaches with her bare hands. Gack. The poor thing had by this time perched itself on the armchair, looking quite dazed and traumatized.


Armed with a wad of kitchen towels, I gingerly plucked it from the seat. Warm and soft, I could still feel that small bundle of feathers trembling gently even as I wrapped the papery blanket round it. It remained immobile and for a fleeting moment, I was cognizant of this overwhelming sense of vulnerability. For a creature so soft and fragile to be so hapless and at the mercy of this ..thing now enveloping it in what must have seemed like a vice like grip.

So gently, I went downstairs, opened the door, and as it was still pouring, set it down slowly on the shoe cabinet beside the fern. If anything, just to leave the bird beside something vaguely familiar besides the alien and traumatic environment it had just been escorted from.

It stirred slightly but made no attempt to flee, settling beside the potted fern. head slightly cocked, feathers fluffed out. An hour later it was gone, flying off to familiarity and home, amidst the dying rain.

I leave you now with the very apt full version of Blue Bird by Ikimono Gakari. Best known as the most recent OP song for Naruto Shippudden. But I told you before didn't I. This entry was meant to be incoherent.

Blue Bird by Ikimono Gakari




飛翔(はばた)いたら 戻らないと言って
目指したのは 蒼い 蒼い あの空

You say if you could fly, you would never come back down
You aimed for that blue, blue sky

“悲しみ”はまだ覚えられず
”切なさ”は今つかみはじめた
あなたへと抱く この感情も
今”言葉”に変わっていく

You've yet to remember "sadness"
Just now began to grasp "pain"
Even the feelings I held onto for you
Are just now changing into words

未知なる世界の 遊迷(ゆめ)から目覚めて
この羽根を広げ 飛び立つ

As you awaken from the dream of an unknown world
Spread your wings and take off

飛翔(はばた)いたら 戻らないと言って
目指したのは 白い 白い あの雲

You say if you could fly, you would never come back down
You aimed for those white, white clouds

突き抜けたら みつかると知って

If you break through, you know you'll find it


振り切るほど 蒼い 蒼い あの空
蒼い 蒼い あの空
蒼い 蒼い あの空

So try until you break free to that blue, blue sky
That blue, blue sky
That blue, blue sky

愛想尽きたような音で 錆びれた古い窓は壊れた

With a sound like all civility was gone
The rusted, old window broke

見飽きたカゴは ほら捨てていく
振り返ることはもうない
高鳴る鼓動に 呼吸を共鳴(あず)けて
この窓を蹴って 飛び立つ

Look, you're so sick of looking at that cage that you're throwing it away
Without ever looking back again
That throbbing beat takes your breath away
And you kick open that window and take off

駆け出したら 手にできると言って
いざなうのは 遠い 遠い あの声
眩しすぎた あなたの手も握って
求めるほど 蒼い 蒼い あの空

You said if you could run, you would obtain it
You're tempted by that distant, distant voice
It grasps your far too dazzling hand
Until you pursue that blue, blue sky

墜ちていくと わかっていた それでも 光を追い続けていくよ

I understand that you are falling
But still, continue to follow the light

飛翔(はばた)いたら 戻らないと言って
探したのは 白い 白い あの雲
突き抜けたら みつかると知って

You say if you could fly, you would never come back down
You searched for those white, white clouds
If you break through, you know you'll find it

振り切るほど 蒼い 蒼い あの空

So try until you break free to that blue, blue sky

蒼い 蒼い あの空
蒼い 蒼い あの空

That blue, blue sky
That blue, blue sky

Sunday, July 6, 2008

The Chimney

Heavy iron grill, rusted with age. Long dead embers, crushed and cold. Remnants left, tales of better days.

Peer up if you will, past the hardened soot calcified on ancient bricks, past the finely enmeshed cracks racing ever upward, past the blackened bricks leading the way, to that square of clear cerulean blue, framed in black. The gentle patter of a passing shower.

What do you see?

A frame frozen in time, the juxtaposition of soot and sky or a glimpse of hidden horizons,the unknown waiting to be explored as the occasional cloud drifts by?

All I see is the death of a rainbow, the dwindling drops of water cool on the face as the sun climbs its inexorable arch.