heart

time can take its toll on the best of us
look at you you're growing old so young
traffic lights blink at you in the evening
tilt your head and turn it to the sun
sometimes the tv is like a lover
singing softly as you fall asleep
you wake up in the morning and it's still there
adding up the things you'll never be

i think i saw your airplane in the sky tonight
through my window, lying on the kitchen floor

mucking around

the girls (including mimi) and i had dinner
at the paragon soba place on saturday
before wandering into coffee bean
coz we're old aunties who have to sit down
and there wasn't anywhere else to go


until a little bird called and said he was back in his studio
so we went on up to play with great wheelie chairs,
loungy music, swiss miss, russian maomao hats,
and i turned pro with his slr.


it's a night of total camera slutting,
both in front and behind the lens.


for whatever reason,
or maybe mark just has a weird russian fetish,
we discovered a maomao hat
that we just had to put on our heads,
and i starred in a video
that i hope will never see light of day (or dark of night).



yah, we are very easily amused.


plenty of random moments were captured,
coz i am a paparazzo-in-serious-training.


then butts came into the picture(s)...


as did cups of hot chocolate, dissolving marshmellows,
shiny coins, real mccoy chips, and trannies.


it was also the night we discovered
that some guys like to stand like this:


these two people don't know each other,
but somehow struck the same pose while waiting to place their orders,
and also later, while waiting for their drinks.
uncanny.


i think i might be getting a canon slr soon *grin*

one of the boys

minmin, being the ever competent event organizer,
got a bunch of us old friends to meet up.
we had dinner with mun at curry favor,


then headed over to holland with hung and joel.

this led to a nasi padang lunch the next day,
in swanky shenton area,
after which mun and i (the only ones with nothing better to do)
hung out about town, played psp at his place, went to the hospital,
had his mum's yummy roast for dinner,
watched teenage mutant ninja turtles with joel,
went home all tired out to change,
then ran out again to spend the night in zouk.


2 many djs was great,
as was the company i had that night.
from my crazy model friends who had guys panting after them,
to the boys drinking water and getting drunk,
it's 5 great hours of dancing, mingling and going deaf,
before terrorizing the boon tong kee aunties at river valley.

i just got back from sydney,
and managed to catch up with glenny boy when i was there.
long talks and reminiscing in my hotel room,
dinner at meat & wine co.,
followed by pancakes on the rocks,
mojitos at my hotel bar with a fantastic view,
and more late-night talk that meant i only got 2hrs' rest before flight.


glenn owes me a sun jar muahaha =P

stop.rewind.play.

a bunch of us filled loon's house on the third of march
to celebrate the end of chinese new year
with a lot of catching up


sad faces after manchester united scored in the closing minutes
a rather massive lou hei session


featuring noolnai and his gigantic chopsticks


greedy pigs looking through grass for pieces of salmon
(that were still in the fridge)
and five hours of non-stop blackjack


where i ban-lucked a million times
ban-baned once
and won a grand total of $12.


the survivors (and their loony host), at nearly 6 in the morning.

*thanks to loon's mum the banker for the photos!

boring auckland

ok, i think i finally got the indian pictures figured out.
they became mysterious question marks/crosses
but i THINK they are loading all right now.

i'm in auckland at the moment
and thank goodness i'm gona be heading back tomorrow
because it is SO BORING here.

i've been a complete couch potato
watching movies on the only movie channel here
and cnn whenever there isn't a movie available.

one exciting thing happened though:
i went out yesterday and walked into the huge dfs in town
and succumbed to a gucci evening bag.
MUAHAHA such evilness.

shopping is good for the soul, i feel,
even though it's not too healthy on the wallet.
with several things not going on too well these weeks,
it's nice to take a walk and breathe in some fresh air,
spend time away from singapore where there're bad memories everywhere,
and get excited over a new purchase.

think the old throat is getting a tad sore though
and i've been drinking loads of honey lemon to try soothe it.
righty-o, there's a chick flick on now
so i'm gona go snuggle in bed and glue my eyes to the telly.
see you all back home =)

barrage of photos - part I

was supposed to do a KL turn on sunday,
but got a call in the morning and didn't have to go for it.
my half day standby then became a melbourne flight on sunday night,
and for the first time, i'm upset with a melbourne
because it disrupted my osaka flight.
no more osaka =(

anyway, i spent a better part of the afternoon sorting out
the hundreds of photos we took on my indian trip.
ladies and gentlemen, velcome to ahmedabad...

our first day in the city saw us peering out the back of our hotel,
amazed with the sights of the slums by the river.
the income disparity here is so great,
with the very rich living a life of luxury and extravagance,
the very poor setting up cardboard homes by drains and roads,
and very few in betweens.


we made use of the free hotel transport
that brought us on a personalized tour of the city.
braving the scary traffic conditions and the locals' crazy driving,
we visited a temple made of intricately carved marble,
followed by a stop at the gandhi ashram.


ahmedabad is gandhi's birthplace
and thus, out of respect for him, is a dry state
i.e. alcohol's not sold here.
it was very peaceful in the ashram,
in contrast to the hustle and bustle just outside its gates.
there were many rooms showcasing different stages of gandhi's life,
and playful squirrels leapt from one tree to another.

we headed off to a mustafa-like shopping centre thereafter,
where i hunted for indian knickknacks and tried on some sarees.


checked out a flea market nearby,
but it turned out to be a disppointing stretch of make-shift stalls
selling more or less the same items by the road.

turning into lore garden,
we were surprised to see a whole lot of people
spending their sundays with extended families,
talking and tumbling on the garden grounds.


there was one of the busiest playgrounds i've ever come across,
and many little tots rolling down gentle slopes.
the kids were so adorable,
and many of them came up to us to shake hands.
one cheeky one even went, "hello, what is your name?"
i guess it's not often they see fair-skinned asians walking amongst them.

barrage of photos - part II

we got up bright and early the next day
to start off our road trip to mount abu, rajasthan.
at 4am, the streets were deathly quiet,
a stark contrast to the incessant honking that goes on in the day.
the people here don't believe in using indicator lights.
instead, they honk to turn, honk to overtake,
honk to road rage, honk to everything.

two thirds through our six-hour journey,
we stopped by hotel way wait
which turned out to be a roadside cafeteria
that served the longest thosai i've ever seen.


i ate a quarter of it and was full.

we drove through dusty little towns,
and up windy mountain tracks
until we finally reached our hotel for the night - hotel hilltone.
a hilton it definitely wasn't,
but the rooms were spacious enough
and we didn't have to share our beds with any bugs.
i fished out a heart-shaped chip while snacking.

we had lunch at king's food
and found out that kings are vegetarian.
in fact, 99% of the restaurants in mount abu
serve only vegetarian food.
i should have brought along my own chicken a la borat.


we went up to the highest peak after lunch,
and climbed many flights of stairs
to reach the top.
en route, we saw never-before-seen things like a stall selling dodgy grass juice,
a man roasting corn with an old-school fanning machine,
and an old dude who lives in a hole in a wall.


the view was magnificent at the peak.
we met a bunch of locals who put one of their orange turbans on my head
and took a photo with me at the bell.
but my colleague has not sent me that photo. hrmph.
i do have one with a lady dressed in a colorful saree though -
she was tickled to see me posing at the bell
and volunteered to be in the picture!


there was a holy man in a little cave at the top,
and i was blessed by him and he gave me a super sweet sesame candy.
we were blessed by other holy men a little futher down the mountain
when we ventured into a temple.
there, they gave us enough sugar crystals to cause diabetes
(and we had to eat them all because you know, they're given by holy men!)
and i left with blessings and an orange dot between my eyebrows.

barrage of photos - part III

we stopped by the peace park after leaving the peak,
where brahma kumarie followers told us about om shanti.
we walked through the peaceful gardens filled with gorgeous blooms,
did some quiet time in various meditation rooms,
and had masala tea in one of the courtyards.


after that, we popped by a massive marble temple
that we weren't allowed to take photos in,
and gazed in awe at the amazing marble carvings
done thousands of years ago.
there were a group of workers cleaning a section of the temple,
and we chipped in, learning how to scrub a wet stone against the marble,
to get it all white and gleaming again.
it was tough work indeed.

it was time to head over to sunset point by then,
so as to get there early to get a good spot.
we were greeted by mounts and man-pushed carts
that were all ready to transport us up the hill to sunset point.


i decided to hop onto a horse!
the local guided the horse at first,
until i asked him how to work the reins.
it was a very exciting five minutes.
i want to be a jockey!


it was still an hour before sunset,
but many people had already taken their seats
on the many rock formations.
we were lucky enough to squeeze into front row seats.
i had a refreshing corn on the cob
which tasted superb especially since it wasn't curried and mashed,
and we munched on peanuts while waiting for the show to start.

the sun got smaller and more orange gradually,
and once it began dipping down,
its size and color changed rapidly.
one moment it was a fifty cent dot in the sky,
the next, it was barely visible.


we acted like suaku mountain turtles who hadn't seen sunsets before.

the throngs made their way back down to the foot
after the performance ended.
two of us chose not to leg it with the rest
and got away from the crowd and horse shit
on a cart pushed by one of the locals.
there were times when we went free-wheeling down the hill
and it was exhilarating to zoom past the people and horses.


the moon even made a special appearance for me.

barrage of photos - part IV
we walked to the city centre after dinner near the hotel
and i looked at tons of materials that could be made into punjabi suits.
one thing about shopping here,
the storekeepers always pull out the bags of cloth
and lay them out so that within a few minutes,
there's a mountain of material at your feet,
90% of which were hideous creations you had not even asked to see.

that was what happened in the first store we went in to
and i had to refuse and walk out slightly shamed-faced
for causing them to have to refold everything.
but i got over it once i found out that the prices they quoted me
were cut-throat tourist prices!
i got a much better deal and much better service in the next shop.

woke up a tad later the next morning,
and went off to the city centre to collect
the punjabi suit i had tailored the night before.
a funeral procession happened to go past the shop
just as i was about to leave
and i saw a sea of people dressed in white,
some leading, some following a body totally camouflaged by flowers
on a stretcher hoisted high above everybody's heads.

after a respectful silence, the shopkeeper told me
that the person who'd just passed on
was a partner of the founder of the brahma kumarie,
which explained the number of people
and the familiar white getup that i'd seen at the peace park the day before.


after i rejoined the group, we visited the nakki lake,
were amused by a boy who did some simple magic tricks
before asking us for money,
and we went for a boat ride round the lake,
just coz we're there.


it wasn't too big a lake, so the ride was over in twenty minutes,
but it was quite nice soaking up the rays
and gazing out at the surrounding greenery.


we had some ice cream before leaving mount abu,
and bread and tuna spread that one of my colleagues
had had the foresight to bring.
it was so good to not have to eat something vegetarian and/or curried.
on the way back down the mountain,
we stopped by the peace hall for a last bit of om shanti.

back in ahmedabad,
the station manager brought us out for a meat-filled dinner
and we checked out a cafe called mocha.
it had yummy dessert like tiramisu and lava chocolate cake,
and sheesha to go with the lot.


i even had time on the trip to buy books
from a place named crosswords,
that's almost like borders
except that the books are half-priced.

i also sourced for a saree
and ended up with a nearly SGD400 saree
that i was told was "designer" and "one of a kind" and "very nice".
it was by far the most extravagant and gorgeous saree i saw.
ah well, i'll ebay it if i don't ever wear it.
or maybe i'll organize an indian housewarming party!

phew. so that's it. my week in india.
boy was i glad to be back
but it didn't turn out to be all that bad after all.
=)

the final straw

enough is enough
it's time to quit fooling myself

i give up.

stolen time

to wake up to an unexpected sms,
to dash out for a quick lunch together on a busy work day,
to go for an evening jog by the sea,
to talk, to listen, to get annoyed, to make each other laugh,
to close with a cold dessert and a lingering kiss.

the simple things.

back from the land of the black

a week of curry, naan and dust,
an exciting road trip to mount abu,
and a SGD400 saree!
heaps of photos to sort out,
so here are the pics from lou's birthday do first:


ruffy is so cute =)
lou's newly-renovated home's spacious and gorgeous.
we spent most of our time in the kitchen,
eating the crabs that pecked bought.
feng brought me to check out haji lane before that,
and we got lou her birthday present from one of the boutiques there.



and here's a glimpse of what i got up to in ahmedabad:


heh more to come!
-----

nabnab is such a smartypanties.
4 As, A1 for GP, and a distinction and a merit for her special papers.
so intelligent a sister, where to find?! =)