Give Us All The Courage To Be Mad.

Why hello guys. Hope you like that story there. It's directly inspired by Eisley's Laughing City, and I'd always wanted to write about a laughing city, but never knew how to. Suddenly after hearing The Cure's Boys Don't Cry (a perennial favourite) with the lines: "And I just keep on laughing / hiding the tears in my eyes" I decided I'd just do a short little story.

Worth a listen though, Laughing City sounds somehow beautifully sad. Anw I've been listening to both You Are A Tourist (oh that video, oh those light-up suits, oh how I wish I owned one) and Lover Lover's Freebirds rather obsessively of late. I really like that song, so much understated emotion in there. Also I re-discovered The Carpenter's Close To You. Eliza would say, Lurvely!

So these few days have been pretty happening (for me that is, could very well be par for the course for you.) Haha okay I momentarily forgot what I did on Friday, but thankfully the moment in the momentarily didn't last too long. Here goes.

I went down to Marina Square to collect my race pack, and pleasantly enough, I got a free cap! Cuz the singlet was out of stock, they gave me that as goodwill, and promised to mail the singlet over to me! That's what I call service. On that note, I find that service standards in Singapore in general has improved a fair bit, so I don't see why singaporeans should be griping anymore!

So that was that, and the fact that I was wandering around marina square like a lost child looking for the shop. Then, because we were supposed to have dinner at home with the brand new grill & steamboat gadgets we got, I decided to go and look for dear mom and dad at orchard. Not before stopping over at the esplanade though, haha.

So I explored the esplanade for a bit (since it was just opposite marina) which isn't something I'd ever done before. Somehow it's the more famous (and hence more touristy?) things and places in singapore that I've never been to. Which makes me a bit of a mountain tortoise, and a frog in the well. (We have been frogs in a well with a lid on it and a fat man was sitting on the lid. I actually quite like this phrase of mine haha.) Exemplified most definitively by the fact that I'd never been to the library@esplanade.

What a most pleasant place it is indeed. Along with the rooftop (which I also visited) they offer you a most agreeable tranquility in the heart of the city. And I realized all the different artforms I have left undiscovered. Dance, drama, theatre, film. All those foreign films! Like neglected goldmines. That's why I'm going to retire early and be a metaphorical miner, and maybe a literal farmer (a notion inspired by my brother's plan to bugger off to scotland or sth and live out his life with sheep.)

So along the way, I read a few noteworthy quotes or lines that caught my eye.

If this thought is madness, God! Give us all the courage to be mad. (From the poster of a play called A Madwoman's Diary)

Stories are the fabric of life. (Saw it in the window of a shop, and which I certainly believe to be true.)

At the melancholic string concert. (I just thought that this sounded really good. Like it could mean so much or sth, I dunno how to put it.)

So, that was literally (literarily) a very fruitful trip! (I'm quite pleased with that bit of cleverness there HAHA.) Oh and that rooftop bar certainly looks very agreeable.

Then I took the bus down to orchard (taking a bus has unfortunately become a rather rare occasion now, despite that I much prefer buses over MRTs.) I headed to Borders to squander my money, as usual. Officially the reason is cause I have a voucher expiring this month. So I bought 2 new books! Numbers 6 and 7, all in the span of 8days since returning here. Well this is getting absurd!

It's not fair that Borders unleashed this new short story galore on us. I couldn't resist, and I'd have bought more if I didn't have iron self-control. P.G. Wodehouse's The Crime Wave at Blandings and H.G. Wells' The Door in the Wall. I've heard of wodehouse somewhere, so I decided to purchase the book, plus of course the fact that the blurb seemed interesting enough. And short stories by the father of sci-fi, who was I to refuse?

There was Ian Fleming, Angela Carter and more. And I also saw at least another 5 books that I intend to buy, including Pigeon English, A Confederacy of Dunces and Everything is Illuminated. Sigh. Nevermind, bulging pockets are overrated anyways.

Then I waited outside NAC (a most horrible looking acronym for Ngee Ann City, apparently, aka Takashimaya, which sounds waaaaaaaay better.) There was this... oldish (of indeterminate but most definitely unable to be labelled as young) couple busking which was really nice! They seemed so happy to be there performing, so I stuck around for a listen. A few oldies, the overplayed I'm Yours, and finally the clincher, Close To You.

I went to 'tong' my money into their bag, and told the nice lady that I loved the song, which I hope brightened up her day as she did mine. There was also this group (possibly foreigners, maybe cause I can't picture singaporeans doing that) who stopped and gave money, and were acting quite loopy. Dancing in the streets to I'm Yours and happily taking pictures with the lady. Most of us are much too dour and dull to do stuff like that. Pity.

Then I walked away and I saw this adorable angmoh girl throwing popcorn on the floor to feed the pidgeons (or wtv fauna orchard has to offer) which flocked all around her and her brother and sister. Such a delight to watch children at play.

To be a child again. When everything we do isn't carefully considered, isn't all measured and weighed. Unrestrained. Somehow I'm at this topic again, which was totally unplanned for really.

So I met my mama and went home, to a grand dinner of shabu shabu and sukiyaki. The rest of the food is irrelevant, really, except for the unimpeachable (doesn't mean they don't contain peaches HAHA) meat balls. It was nice, but I suspect I had an overload of meat, based on how I didn't really enjoy my iEat Superburger at Aston's the next day :(

Which I ate at City Square Mall, which apparently turns one this year, another random useless fact for the day.

Which I went after going rockclimbing with my brother and his friends at climbasia again. I sucked. Truly madly deeply. Sexy naughty bitchy. It seems all the strength have seeped out of my fingers, and all the climbing I did before have been for naught. I felt ridiculously pathetic back there, and I'm sure my brother too was aghast and ashamed of me. I was a disgrace, :(

I thought I was getting somewhere before sailing, like I was getting to be a decent climber. That's all gone down the drain now though, sigh. I guess it's now a time for rebuilding! Should buy one of those clenchy thingies or sth.

Also, there were these pretty little alliance de francaise (idk why I immediately thought of that) girls learning how to rockclimb (that surely sounds much better than learning how to climb rocks) too! Super adorable. Actually it's not that angmoh kids are cuter (at least in my opinion, I know some people think so) than singaporean ones. But they do seem to do more fun things don't they? A singaporean parent would probably scold his/her kid if they threw popcorn on the floor or sth, and are more likely to be too afraid to send their kids to learn rockclimbing.

And I felt like a.. balle. Yesterday I was wondering what a male ballerina is called, and on the grounds that santarina is the female version of santa, I concluded that he must be called a balle. Although I guess a smarter guess would have been ballerino, but some handy research I just did tells me that this too is not correct cause there's no such word. The correct word apparently is danseur. Anyway as I was saying, I felt like a balle because my feet were being squashed into those rockclimbing shoes and my toes were in agony, and I stupidly forgot to cut my toenails too.

After all that, I went to the 80/10 comms parade. In a nutshell, bittersweet. All my batchboys there. My buddy matthew (I somehow forgot he was called wei shuen too haha!) and my mates luther, zhi wen, tiny, lester, brian, james, the Raven Warriors. My dear classmate benny, OG mate how sun, ex-classmate junyang, and many others. And of course swoonshin doing his thang, making all the girlfriends and sisters (and I heard, even some mothers and though a little impossible to believe, grandmothers even) swoon and fall head over heels for him. Please ask me about the story about the old lady HAHA.

I was really thinking, dang, that should be me down there too. Ohwell! Just another 3 more months sigh. So I saw many familiar faces from BBSS/JJ which was quite a pleasant surprise. Didn't think I'd see many people I know. But I was kinda.. tongue-tied? HAHA. Debonair De is a myth, I fear.

And today there was the run. Not too shabby I guess, even though I really must give myself a good kicking for not training at all haha. I think I let only around 5 people run past me, which I think is quite an achievement, even though I did start near the back haha! Have no idea how long I took, but hopefully it was under 55mins! Highly doubtful though. Had a stitch from 1.5km onwards, which was nasty, and an almost-cramp on the final 500m.

I couldn't let myself cramp up though, it would have been so paiseh! All the onlookers and finishers would be watching me writhing and twitching all over the floor or sth haha. So I had to pull off some limp/dance/stunt in that final stretch to not trigger the cramp. Phew.

Very much thanks to yeemin who fetched me there (and whom I abandoned at the start haha!) and there were also more pleasant surprises abounding too. Saw a few friends there like joel (that madman, way too fast for his own good) and cheryl, whom I've not seen for ageeeeeees. And more, of course. Didn't think there were so many runners around.

So here I am now and I refuse to dota, and I'm just waiting to book in basically. Maybe I'll take a nap, sounds like the most awesome of plans duznnit!

I shall end here then, on a non-note. (It is neither a happy note or a sad note or a death note you see.)

EDIT: Oh oh I forgot to add that I want to stay at someplace like Mt. Pleasant or sth. You'd be so happy to return home from work everyday and all! Or like when you tell the taxi driver your address he'd be happy too. Ohwell random thought as I passed by Mt. Pleasant flyover on a cab, that it sounded so awesome, have no idea what it actually is like though!