food for thought

geez. i'm stuffed. i only had one meal for the day and i'm still full. u would be, too, if u were fed platefuls and platefuls of food at seoul garden, with roughly seven different kinds of meat, squid, fish, prawn, maybe five kinds of vege, ice cream, etc... Leaves me groaning just to recall. It was good, really. I ate roughly a week's amount of food in one sitting and felt kinda sick for hours afterwards, but it was good.

And there were some novel signature dishes, too, that's guaranteed either to fully turn on your appetite, or put u off food for the rest of the, well, day. (for me it was a bit of both). vegetables stewed with orange slices, for one. tomyam flavoured tunghoon with straw mushrooms. stir fry vege with kimchi and chilli. yummy. get the pic? and u thought table barbeque food is monotonous and boring.

anyway, the gist of it was J & I ate at Seoul Garden for lunch, and it was my first time there. (yes, go ahead, laugh.) First J fried the meat(all five varities of it). I discovered i'm a lousy cook, i lose interest after about five seconds. As a result, his side of the pan was cleared efficiently and routinely, while my side held the debris of charcoal black bits of food that i'd left burning while staring into space. Luckily, he was nice enough to keep placing morsels on my plate (when i tried to do the same, my arm was too short and my food, as I said, was burnt half the time.) Unluckily, that meant I was unwittingly fed a lot more than I'd ever have eaten on my own... (I can't have beef for the rest of the week. I figured that's about how long it'd take me to digest what I had today.)

Wonderful personal chef service aside, it was great value for money, if not so great for the body. So the next time you're depressed and wanna cheer yourself up, go get some soul food, enjoy the good company and have a great laugh (I grinned so much that my cheek muscles were as toned from smiling as chewing.) Trust me, it'll work. And it's a whole lot cheaper than a visit to your friendly neighbourhood shrink.

On a lighter note, I read Oscar Wilde this morning, and I'm delighted to discover that witty turns of phrase still delight me. I'll leave u chewing (chewing, haha, geddit, ok not funny) on a few Wilde lines... til the next banal entry, adieu.

"Yes, the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."
(Repeat this everytime u feel alienated and misunderstood.)

"Why should the artist be troubled by the shrill clamour of criticism? Why should those who cannot create take upon themselves to estimate the value of creative work? ... If a man's work is easy to understand, an explanation is unnecessary... And if his work is incomprehensible, and explanation is wicked."
(Opening statement in court, for a libel case to do with free comment)

"There is something in what you say, but there is not everything in what you say. In some points you are unjust."
(Ah, if our courts of law used such poetic arguments, I'd take a seat and enjoy the show for the day.)

toodles~*

why, why, tell me why

"A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all." -Georges Bernanos.

i act without thinking and think without acting. so what does that make me? nothing? ... nothing but a fool, perhaps.

on the other hand, i have done the things i needed to do. paid my $100 library fine. got all my notes and most readings. went for social work class and pondered the injustice pervasive in our society. exercised. had directing class and tripped over camera wires. talked to my friends. strummed the guitar. called suicide's anoynymous helpline. (kidding... not.)

yet i still feel like a robot. with faulty wires and vials of wrongly mixed chemicals and a melted fused brainchip. why do i still feel so empty???

because i haven't eaten... i'm hungry. toodles.

reflections

until a week ago, i was suicidally depressed. i was looking at the world with eyes that felt gritty and dry, finding faults in the littlest thing, belittling most of all myself. i looked at the river and saw trash; looked at the floor and saw the gutter. my nose wrinkled at offensive odours in the air, which were present everywhere. everything felt odious to me, and i was retreating into a world of my own, where only pain and suffering and emotions swirled into a never ending whirlpool, sucking me deeper and deeper into the depths of self pitying melancholy. i knew i was going off the edge but there was nothing i could do to help myself.

and then i fell in love.

all of a sudden, i came alive. it was as if i've been going around with my eyes wide shut; i saw but didn't see, knew but didn't know.I've been told so many times; i heard, but didn't listen. "Don't assume; assumption is the mother of all f**k ups!" said my boss @ Nick. "But, but.. i thought..." "You thought, you think, who confirm?!!" yelled my English teacher. Apparently i'm of the thick skinned variety who, like the proverbial elephant, needs a switch bigger than a banana tree trunk.

Apparently, too, i'm a member of that particular strain of the human species, who can't live with people, can't live without people, can't die unless it's around people, and will die if around too many people.

Don't blame me for being messed up.

And now, I'm going to rub my eyes, pinch my cheeks, take a deep breath, and go out with my head up high.

Because I'm not alone in this world, and I never was. I just forgot it. God really works in mysterious ways; let me be one of his thicker suspense novels, the kind u absolutely can't put down and breathlessly devour until you come to the unexpected twist in the ending, then gasp and sigh and close with a smile of relief, and whose story stays forever in your mind.

The End.

(of course not, my life is a saga a la Robert Jordan, with sequels thick and seemingly neverending. Would that I wish it were so. Amen.)

sick

1. I'm sick of school
2. I'm sick of stress
3. I'm sick of this f*****g country
4. I'm sick of being sick
5. I'm sick of being stressed out over everything
6. I'm sick of being stressed out over everything, thus ending up doing nothing
7. I'm sick of life, and I haven't even begun living


bottom word? Singapore is a sick place. Stress drops people like flies. You've been warned. Either get out while you still can, or go weave a web.

along came a spider...

i was trying to choose a blogskin

and i realised all the sample skins came with entries written in latin. wtf?

the only latin i know is my ex school motto, learned by rote and disregarded completely for four years.

Moribus Modestus

meaning, Demure and Resolute.

four years? Make that nine. I'm still ignoring it.

the only other latin I know is a phrase that struck me powerful when i found out what it meant.

De profundis de mortuis nil nissi bonum

meaning, Out of the depths I cry to you, O [lord].

i'm sure i got the latin wrong somewhere. So sue me. It's from Sixth Sense. It's the line that was heard when the tape recorder was turned up to full volume and a man's hoarse whisper recited this over and over in the background, when there was supposed to be nobody else in the room except for a tormented child.

Last birthday, I was given an Oscar Wilde volume, De Profundis. I've not finished the last part of it. Each of the stories, essays, commentaries in it that I read, had such impact on me that I'd just read one and muse on it for weeks afterwards.

This comes of being too gullible. I take words very seriously. Graphically, sometimes. Soul-strikingly, at other times. Revelations.

I can't help feeling odd and fey. Maybe I'm really an alien. Who knows?

There are a number of volumes that have impacted the way I think so much, I can safely say they in part made me who I am. When next I'm able, I shall list them down. I feel a great reluctance to do so by the way, as if I'm sharing the innermost essense of what it means to be me, Raudaa.

At this moment, however, my ears prick at some odious sound. It's my mobile doing some strange beeping. What's it trying to say??

You're late for school, moron.

something happened to me yesterday

but i'm not sure what it was.

a lot of things happen to me everyday,

and i'm not sure what they are.

sometimes i feel barely human

and i'm not sure what i am.

most times - - -

- i pause -

- and i don't know -

how to restart





_____________________________________________________________________
being

weird sick

SUCKS
_____________________________________________________________________

i met an angel
and all i could do was stare
when i tried to look again
it was no longer there

On Lies and Lies, by RR

When I was young, I lied a lot. To my mom, my dad, my teacher, my sister, my younger brother, my friends at school, the uncle in my provision shop... u name 'em, i got 'em. And got 'em good. I dunno why i did it, but i think telling lies was much more fun than telling the truth. Mind u, it's no mean feat to tell a good lie. You had to make it sound plausible enough to sound true, not too fantastic to be real, and as irrefutable a fact as the sun rising from the east. Trust me, it's easy. Or hard, depending on what kind of liar you were. In this world, there are only three kinds of people. The liars, the suckers, and the liars who suck. The liars who're good, however, are actually the invisible fourth group. They're as sneaky as a team of black belt ninja assassins who're so good, you won't even notice you're dead until you trip over your own head and go, "What the...???!! Bbbbbbsshhzzzzzh." (That’s how blood gushing from a jugular sounds, moron.)

Me? I was the best. I still am. (Kidding.) (Or maybe I really am... not) (Nah, I'm so over it; why else will I be sharing my trade secrets? It's taboo in this line, ya know. Like magicians never, NEVER tell their secret? That's us, the liars. We gotta protect what's ours by practise; how else are we gonna make a living out of you suckers? Of course, if you believe anything I say, I’m lying. (Can't tell, can you? Darn I'm good.)

The best lie is either the exact truth that's so horrific that nobody believes it's the truth. Or a lie that has just that right ratio of truth to fiction, with a good dose of speculation and common-sensical sounding stuff mixed in. At these times, be as honest as possibly. As in, "I AM (not) telling the truth, honest!" [Note: Mentally add "not", but be careful that it doesn't sound out as an obvious pause in the sentence. Practise it, you'll get it. The way I do it is, stress on AM and HONEST. That gives u a split second to mind-mouth NOT and distracts the sucker with that honest.]

This method is perfect especially when you're trying to get out a great big whopper of a lie. That the sun rises from the west, for instance. Make as bold a statement as possible, as if nothing in the world could ever refute that fact. Like, duh, everyone knows the sun rises from the west! What are u, stupid? Dumbo... Nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh, NYEH. Then stick out your tongue and run off looking as smug as if you've just been made vice-head prefect of the whole school.

The next best way is what I like to call, the 'double or nothing' method. Personally, this is one of my favourites; it's like a game I tried to play at least once everyday. This is how you do it. First, prepare two lies; Lie One has to be a lousy lie, and Lie Two has to be a good lie. While telling Lie one, the flawed lie, you lie. And lie badly. When you’re caught, as you will be if you know how to lie badly goodly, sigh and present the truth, which is not. Get it? Must I spell it out to you? Alright, it’s Lie T-W-O two, your flawless lie. That light of recognition always makes me happy.

Now get out of here, you liar.