Kleptomaniac's Dream.

That's what I'm calling my mega shopping bag. Probably none of you has ever seen me carrying it but I can tell you one thing, it is a grocery shopper's dream come true. Ever since I discovered Wilkinson offers a student discount (OF 15% NO LESS!!)#!) I've been going there much too often to be healthy.. for my manhood that is. I think I've become domesticated. I have just proudly returned from a shopping expedition where I bought a baking tray, a roasting tray, a wok, and some tea towels.. Well now.

But one other day as I was leaving one of the supermarkets I was stopped by one of the cashiers who sheepishly asked to take a look inside my bag. He probably thought he was being quite rude or something but on the inside I was thinking: What a fine young man! Doing his job with mettle and panache! Cause I could see that clearly, I looked pretty suspicious. It's so easy to slip things into this megabag, hence what I've christened it.

Been reading the (thus far) excellent City of Small Blessings by Simon Tay, and will hopefully proceed to complete it today cause I've decided not to let such a glorious day go to waste! Gonna hit the park later for some sun-on-boy action before I get all pasty again.

I also bought a lampshade the other day. A mother bleeding lampshade. What devious spirit hath possessed me so?? It is a gorgeous piece of work, handmade (because I am a total sucker for all such things, as I might have mentioned once or twice before) and the result of a little chat with the delightful maker of the Kitsch Attic one-off pieces, and learning about the new (I presume, if only because of an appalling assumption that it has to be cause I've never heard of it) and cool and environmentally conscious practice/trend of upcycling.

I'd like to think that most of the things I purchase has some sort of meaning or story behind them. (Not all of them, cause that would be atrociously pretentious.) Because, as I tried to explain one of my pricier purchases to my sister once, what are you willing to pay for if not for a certain human experience? Is that not the point (or at least one of the points) of art anyway? A connection; with somethings or someones, often in a surprising or unexpected way? So when I stumble upon a quaint little shop or something somewhere, and find myself in conversation with someone so completely apart (or foreign) to me, it is an unexpected connection, so I am willing to spend (sometimes exorbitant amounts of) money in order that I may have a keepsake of such connections.

Of course, there are the completely random things, like my 10 euro clock, or my cheap wall hanging, random postcards etc which happen to catch my fancy and I just like, and there's nothing deeper about that. But still, it soothes my aching soul (and ravaged wallet) to think that there is some meaning behind some of the things I buy. That they are not just random pieces of worthless junk I have a fetish for (okay I admit maybe to a little of that.)

I read this article about this 24 year old guy who's been to every single country in the world. Every single one of them. What in the world?! (and I guess he's the youngest and one of the only persons to be qualified to actually use that term.) It's pretty inspiring. And the way he got about it, from part-time jobs, hooking up with locals etc, it's truly admirable. But I was just thinking that some people collect countries the way they do badges. Oh, this list says I have to go to Paris before I die? Check. Cinque Terre one of the you-wouldn't-believe-it-exists-must-see-to-believe places to go? Check. Without any genuine interest, if you know what I mean, instead just leaning on other people's hype?


And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.


Truly what would we be without the internet, I wonder. I stumbled upon this most sublime poem by Pablo Neruda through complete accidence (coincidence? more like incidence than coincidence I guess) which really makes you wonder how different life would be had we not have had so much information at our literal fingertips almost all our lives. I wikipedia-ed Pablo Neruda and found out he lived in Valparaiso, which sounded familiar so I googled and confirmed that yes, it was from the story of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. And the way sometimes we find answers to the questions we didn't even know we were asking. Well, I guess it's not just the internet that offers that, but anyhow.

I had this random thought about us millenials the other day. I'm not certain what exactly the proper definition for that term is but I'm gonna appropriate it and use it to mean us folks who grew up (or were forced to) at or around the turn of the new millenium. Probably including most of you reading this I assume. Weaned on a diet of TV and games as we were growing up, most likely (at the risk of over-simplifying and generalizing a whole host of people, which you'll notice in most commentaries on Gen Y or the Strawberry Generation, it is hard not to I guess). The world was pretty much our oysters, the world was our classroom, etc etc. I was just thinking about this the other day and I came up with this thought: That we are interested, but not interesting.

Do you think yourself an interesting person? What is it about you that is interesting? I tried to cough up something and came up rather empty-handed. I could go on at length about what interests me, but interesting? It is, of course, rather an exercise in futility cause I don't expect most people go about thinking what makes them interesting, or have (sensibly) too much humility not to. But is it our fascination in things that makes us fascinating as people? Possibly it is. But I was thinking of how likely it is that we have grown up to be a generation of vaguely interested, ultimately vapid people. Chock full of one-liners taken verbatim off of 9GAG, ever-ready with references to books and movies and TV series, in all their banality. A generation of reproducers (not in that sense. you know, the biological one) instead of producing anything of real value ourselves. Random Access Memory (also that awesome album by Daft Punk) as apt a term as any to describe us (and all our random references).

It is, of course, easy to condemn one's own generation, because it is a well-known fact that people oftentimes do take to self-indulgent self-bashing in order that they may feel better about themselves (that they are so self-aware perhaps) or whatever other reason they do. And it is easy for an older generation, perhaps even natural, to condemn a new generation of young punks, much in the way you'd deride your cui-looking/acting/pimply juniors in school. Usurpers, the lot of them. So perhaps alot of the flak that Gen Y receives is unwarranted, merely an echo of the bitterness and resentment of a fading generation, a generation long past its glorious heydays. But how much of it actually rings true?

Our lofty expectations. The way we cling on to that incredible belief that despite everything, everything's somehow gonna end up all right, because that's what we were brought up to believe (laying the blame on TV series and movies of course, in exactly the same way violence can be traced definitively to video games)(I'm not actually serious here.) That we are special and that we deserve better. That love will magically happen in random coffee shops around town. That it happens just like that, you just know, and requires no effort whatsoever. A generation of hopeless dreamers, if you will, except in this sense it is not "romantic", it is just sad.

Not that I'm knocking hopeless dreamers (oh that tired cliché), surely at some point most or all of us has identified with exactly that state, or still do even. The world needs its share of dreamers. But it needs its realists too. What I'm afraid of is that we have far too many of the former, and inexplicably, far too many of the latter too. 

Too many dreamers who will never see their beautiful dreams realized, who will wind up bitter and resentful and unable to fully grasp the providence of their realities. So keen on chasing down only the most beautiful of dreams they are unable to appreciate the smaller littler things life has to offer, the serendipity of minor occurrences.

Too many realists who see the world based solely on their own pragmatic views of it. Chasing the tangibles, going after only the definites and the unshakeables, like their 1st class degrees, the 5-digit salaries, all the while not realizing why exactly, or what exactly it is they are working for. Instead just vague ideas of stability and "progress", social mobility, and whatnot. Never asking the question: and then what? Or they do, and it's answered unfortunately by that black hole of an answer: More.

Okay so I kinda got caught up with yet another verbose (and pretentious, as the usage of the word verbose clearly demonstrates) post and the sun is going down and I am slowly getting chilled in my room so I really don't think I'm heading to the park now... Meh. Baking an apple cake tonight though, and was gonna do a baked rice too but I forgot to buy cheese while on my expedition just now sigh. Well, what do you know, even DomesticDe isn't perfect..

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper is my newest soundworm, and she seems so young too! Definitely not what I was associating with that voice. Okay then, see ya later guys.

Unique.

Tiny flickering lights in a million windows
The hopes and dreams of a million different people
But they do not hope and dream
The way I hope and dream
Surely?

What Comes With Opposable Thumbs.

Got like a million and four thousand stuff shoved away in random little drafts and notebooks all over the place, so I'll take this opportunity to clear them all out of the way. Will be pretty random, I expect, so hang on to your hats.


An old friend
Made new again
What machinations or monstrous mind
Can explain what one now finds?

From easy familiarity
To anonymity
Only we can unfriend
Unlove
Did this come with opposable thumbs?

The capacity to love
Hate
Two sides of a coin
Third series
Do we get to choose
Which side it lands
Which face it shows
Is it so easily flipped?

Just the twitch of ones fingers
In the blink of ones eyes
Do we fall in hate
So recklessly too?

我们的过去, 并不属于我们

I just had this random thought a long time ago that our pasts don't belong just to each of us alone, that we can't be so selfish as to think that all the time. That other people have a stake and play a part in our pasts too, and sometimes maybe we owe it to them to not covet our pasts like that. Not sure where this stemmed from but I think it was some reflection about my reticence and how I find it almost impossible to share anything about myself and my past at all.

An expert on being stubborn and full of pride. Was writing a letter to a friend when I stumbled upon this as quite the apt description of myself, if only because I wanted to warn her against being any of those.


Took for a twirl
Another girl
Told her that
She was his world
Another day
Another play
So says the art
of modern manliness.

You're eating alone
You look at your phone
It won't ring
No
It will not.

Scattered failings where doubt lurked. That when push comes to shove, you'd fold.

A mediocrity imposed on each of us. And yet within our personal, mediocre worlds, did not there spring forth decidedly unfutile acts, emotions?

A happiness contingent on others. Emotions not belonging just to me, nor my life, cause my emotions affect others too. Just the way other people affect me.

War is not war until a man on a hill says so. Fighting not-a-war.

If you could see me now.

Solitude with no purpose?
With no audience.
And end in itself.

Lost in a crowd
Looking for the meaning in art that no one knows.

Guns the great equalizer.

Foreign is to be apart.


Yep that's kinda all of my backlog. Ranging from reflections on re-acquainting myself with an old, old friend to snippets of self-doubt and ruminations on being alone (and your phone offers you no respite.) How soldiers can fight all they want but if the politicians decide that no, this does not qualify as war, then we'd be fighting nothing at all. That no one actually knows what they're looking for when they peruse the Arts, that we're all going at it blind. How so much of what we feel are our best faces, the most important people in our lives will never get to see. This straight from le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor, where one of the spies rues how his children will never appreciate fully what he does. How to be foreign is merely to be apart, and how easy it is for each of us to be foreigners in our own countries.

Ehm I shall end here actually, not quite in much of a mood to continue much further even if I could and want to elaborate on quite a lot of those few topics above. So many existential issues.. Pains of being human I guess, the price to pay for opposable thumbs. Well good night fellas!

Sweater Weather.

The Neighbourhood's Sweater Weather has been one of my favourite songs recently, which I discovered just before arriving on these dreary shores, since I have had nary the chance nor ability to do any discovering since, what with no WiFi and all UNTIL TODAY YAY!

I thought it was an apt song to bring into autumn (my favourite season as some of you may know) but it is scarcely true. As sad as it makes me to say this, I have to declare that this is parka weather instead. It's been raining every single day (or it sure feels like it has) since I've got back. Masigh.

Today I wore a shirt to class. This sounds like just about the most mundane and meaningless statement in the world. Or so I would have thought. Instead, what I got were comments like these. "Why are you wearing a shirt today?" "Did you run out of clothes?" "I thought you had some kind of wardrobe malfunction or something." DO YOU GUYS EVEN KNOW WHAT THE WORD FRIEND MEANS GUYS? I mean, how depressing is that?! Admittedly my wardrobe has needed a little sprucing up for a while now (incidentally I bought myself a fancy new plant flower shrub thing because spruce refers to some coniferous tree apparently) but frank astonishment I did not expect, not from people I had heretofore (what a lawyer I am) called "friends".

So. Been pretty busy these few weeks, largely with church related activities, and I am pleased to note that my first week at children's church went well and without injury nor tears nor mucus et al! (Wow totally didn't realize it at first but that's a phonetic pun right there. i.e. at all. Must be the Law and Literature module I'm doing, also a fantastic one!) Sure there were only 2 kids there but still it was a roaring success in my books! The adorablerestness kids of the whole world I assure you.

Been attending lectures with almost near perfect faithfulness (yes I just skipped my first lecture yesterday sigh. I am disappoint.) like the aforementioned Law and Lit as well as Forensic Speech, which are fascinating just on the strength of them being the minor modules which arise purely out of their own interest and are the professor's brainchildren I guess, the kinda things they themselves are passionate about, so it's been mighty good. Just attended a reading of Where The Wild Things Are which was fab, so I am only expecting greater and better things from here on out. Apparently saying things like greater and better is a linguistic tool called a doublet, and there's your random piece of education you never were expecting. The wonders of the internet hey.

And meeting friends and other people, not actually had much free time of late and what time I do I have spent on FFX. Didn't quite like the game initially but man am I hooked now. It really is quite bad.. Yuna looks terrible when not in CGI form though, i.e. normal gameplay, but ohwell I really shouldn't be trying to notice fictional characters should I?

Been reading City Of Small Blessings, the book kinonn kidnapped for weeks back in Singapore, which has been pretty good so far. Also finished this epic book called Sleepwalkers, a non-fiction account of the shenanigans that lead up to the First World War and changed forever the world, leading as it did to the Second World War etc etc. Really quite a fantastically researched and articulated narrative, and it's definitely going to add some colour and knowledge when I go and my Eastern European adventures this winter (I hope!) And Emeritus Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew's One Man's View of the World, which was good as well. The breadth of knowledge and insights that this one man has, it's not even funny man. For some reason it's cool to like LKY and it's cool to hate on the PAP too. Weird singaporeans. I guess it is hard to deny his influence, the same way I've probably never heard anyone complain about the late Dr Goh Keng Swee.

Cool in Singapore is really weird nowzadayz cause I just found the new Navy advert on youtube and it is pretty awesome, especially that tagline: We may be out of sight but you will always be on our minds. Or something like that. And just about 90% of the comments are from SGAG-gers (okay I might be wrong for taking that as the standard for "cool" cause most of those people make me want to gag.) who were lured there by the promise of a pretty female officer, and they're split between professing their unending ardour and desire for her, and deploring her upsetting unattractiveness. As my friend jess would surely say, kill me lah.

I do have a friend though, who seems rather ashamed of being Singaporean, or possibly just Singlish, and has this overwhelming sense that he wants to be British with the best of them. It's pretty disturbing really. Not that he doesn't like singapore or anything, it's just this sort of sense of inferiority. Which is kinda easy to fall into sometimes I guess. My uncle told me the first time I voyaged to Hong Kong at the tender young age of 14 that one of the key things he wanted to tell me was that: Never to feel inferior to anyone, especially Westerners. And I guess that extends to everything exterior as well. So I find it odd when I meet someone who does, a little.

I just had my wisdom tooth extraction a week before I was due to fly, which saddened me greatly cause I wanted to indulge in all da food before leaving. And I did! Because I suffered almost not at all from any pain or swelling at all, thank God! KTP Hospital is my new third home I think. The staff there are fantastic, and I am 159% pleased with my entire experience there. Visiting dentists has never been this painless.

Which leads me to this next question I shall pose the universe. Must all dentists possess fine eyes? I went to the medical centre in base (of all places) for my dental assessment (which I failed miserably apparently thanks to my wise but uglily grown tooth) and the first thing (indeed the only thing I could) I noticed was the dentists' eyes. If eyes could launch ships the way faces do (see: Helen of Troy) then surely she belongs rightly to a naval base. Okay I did notice the engagement ring too after, but those eyes! Haha that's been one of the things I've been meaning to say for a while now, because it was one of the bright spots of my stint back home (as lecherous as that sounds..)

Erm, have also done up my room so it looks a lot more presentable now than it did when I first arrived, which was quite an unmitigated disaster of a first encounter! Sparse, sad-looking, shelve-less, wires sticking out of walls. Managed to bum a (shaky) shelf off my street-mates (also the aforementioned jessica) so my room is at least serviceable now. As long as I don't rumble the floor too much and send all my books sprawling. For some reason I had like 30 books leftover from last year, which frankly is shocking given that I purposefully tried not to make any big purchases from amazon or bookdepository.. Well that number does include statute books and law revision texts, but they are so overwhelmingly in the minority I am ashamed even to mention them.

What else. My life does seem so sparse everytime I attempt to encapsulate it in words. But what do when life is average. As the Kaiser Chiefs say, #everythingisaveragenowadays. How they tried to charge 30 or 40 or even 50 plus for a performance at my uni is still baffling to me. I paid 50 for MUSE IN LONDON BUDDIES. Oh in other cool news heading up to Manc in november for Imagine Dragons, imagine that! Thinking if I should go for TNAF again cause it's just 2 days away.... Don't see why not really, unless I truly overspend which I am quite in danger of doing unfortunately. Too much going out and pizzas over the last few weeks, and not enough cooking sadly.. Have only cooked once since getting back although I do make the excuse that I have no idea how to use this gas oven..

Well that as they say, is that. Not quite got that much to say, so bye. (Probably my most parentheses filled post in months as well, although I'm not sure if they mean anything, or if this signifies anything in the greater scheme of things at all, or maybe it's just one of those meaningless observations which serve no purpose but to fill space and frustrate minds.)