March is cow

I must admit - after watching Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva just for kicks, I'm getting hooked on the soundtrack. *shock and horror* Sigh, I want to visit Ambrosia too! ;)

March is cod

Thank God because I'm getting used to my mum's trips to the NCC for chemotherapy.
Thank God because my grandma isn't resurrecting the TB fears from the 1960's.
Thank God because yellow blossoms have covered the sidewalks with the golden yolk of sunshine.
Thank God because poetry dances before us even with our eyes closed.
Thank God because death is not an end in itself.
Thank God because He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

It is inevitable that I will feel crappy after receiving my results, but such is life - we get hit in the face with a giant lemon (I wouldn't mind, I need it to make hummus for tomorrow) and reach new lows, but we bounce back anyway.
Look, I've already bounced back.

It isn't time to worry yet!

Was there! Look at the sleeves on Annie's dress.

March is cud

So objectively speaking, I've Been Through A Lot during my time in JC and years from now I will continue to look back and marvel at the number of things that have transpired within two very short years.

Anyway I'll be taking over the reigns of Keeper of the Kitchen now that my mum is starting chemotherapy tomorrow and my grandmother is, in age, becoming less perceptive. The household will now be incorporating 3 servings of whole grains everyday (yes dad - learn to love cous cous before you get sick of brown rice), saturated fats will only make guest appearances at the dinner table (ah kong: you're not supposed to be eating copious amounts of butter at your age anyway) and we will all enjoy wholesome foods not containing preservatives or chemical additives (dear grandma, powdered soup will now be banished from your culinary vocabulary). This event has unleashed the inner Mark Bittman in me, after feeding it episode after episode of The Minimalist and vegan cooking podcasts.

Tomorrow: literature. I'm going to do groceries in the morning (talk about filling gaps that cross the gender divide) while listening to Julie Ruin (third wave feminism ftw).

I'm having visions of making homemade nut milk.

March is mud

Hello everyone, thanks for your kind words and prayers :) Not exactly sure what's going on now, but apparently lung cancer in non-smokers is linked to a gene ergo guess I'm a cancer risk too. Would write more but market failure beckons!

Also, KI and International History today were disasters and I can picture my tutors reading my scripts with their eyes widening in shock, spilling their coffee/coke all over my paper, tearing it in front of me when they give it back, calling my parents, consigning me to the corner of shame for the rest of my academic life, writing letters of warning to prospective employers, burning my SGC in front of my eyes etc. etc. But at least I didn't give up and run out of the exam venue wailing in a dramatic manner a la channel 8 family tragedies.

Anyway if you haven't heard, Alex Chilton of Big Star died. I like Big Star. I listened to Thirteen all the time during the Gilmore Girls phase that I went through, in which I made up my mind to move to a town like Stars Hollow and make my kid attend Yale and fantasize about rebelling against my rich domineering parents all the time. Yeah. I loved the soundtrack tho'.



This is in memorial of Alex Chilton, whose voice has been stuck in my head for the past few years and continues provide the music for the photo album-slideshows of my daydreams. You're an extremely cool person if you like this.

There are no words left.

It was mentioned that it's not supposed to affect my MCT preparations, but you'll need a heart of stone to feel nothing, and I'm glad I'm still flesh pulsating wild. There are many ways to cope but I'll just pray and pray and pray because it's all I can do.

Normally I can do lit essays in one sitting, but after writing the introduction everything feels so half-assed that I am sitting around feeling so mindfucked that I can't even read a dumb magazine properly. This is a stupid crummy post, but please know this: I'm OK but also not OK, I've forgotten how it felt like to be happy without feeling pain, I have discovered how ill-prepared I am to deal with grief, and I don't want to be consoled I just need people to be There.

And if I truly believe that there's no fear in death because we're saved through Christ, what's there to be upset about? I'm supremely thankful for the family I have but they are the only constants I love love love in my life everything else used to be only temporal. Call me selfish but I don't want to lose them, I want to be the one who goes first because I cannot fully comprehend life with one missing like men cannot fully comprehend eternity.

So although I'm screwed for next week, I'm going to place all my trust in God to sustain me through despite seeing her weaken in hospital and seeing everyone progress steadily crazily cuz all this is immaterial to me now and I don't know why it feels vulgar to revise with this going on it's supposed to be fine.

ok so I guess there are still some words left in me, such relief.

March is mad

So anyway, the St. Vincent gig yesterday with Andrea and Esther was a blast and I saw many people with asymmetric haircuts and drainpipe jeans wearing Wayfareresque spectacles and cosmopolitan scowls. Annie Clark wore a grey (?) dress with sculptured sleeves, black tights and awesome flats-that-look-kinda-like-boots-as-well. Daniel Hart (on the violin) wore equally cool shoes and had a fringe like a misused tassel. But during the noise-driven climax of the opening song "The Strangers", I quietly decided there and then, in the uncomfortably upholstered seating, that a falling spotlight could strike me dead but my happiness would be eternal. What was also excellent was the live looping on stage, which I thought was beyond cool. Finally, the night ended with a cover of "These Days", with Clark cracking a joke about doing a "sober" version unlike the heroin-induced haze that often accompanies the version sung by Nico. And then she disappeared into the curtains, and I swore that I'll come back again. Having said that, I wish I could stay longer to beg for an autograph. I had even packed in my Sharpie and everything... too bad my sister's Chinese exam sent the both of us packing in an expensive taxi ride.

In other news, I dropped by Mt. E today to accompany my mum for her bronchoscope and we looked at gross pictures of the scan together. It's not TB but it's not a normal tumour either, which means more expensive testing and more pictures to come. The corridors of that place really belong to the set of a bad 80's medical drama involving the sickly and their old money and I don't want to go back (unless bribed). So that's what has been happening for the past few days and Thank You for your concern and prayers. I'm OK; just wanting to duct tape my grandmother's sagging jowls shut for reasons that I won't delve into here. She's just a regular Mrs Dubose, grumpy and in pain. We're looking forward to more trips to the hospital and more mysterious ailments. Such adventures await us.

By the way, I have decided that ethically, I should not be having spawn in the future since my family's medical history is plagued by all kinds of diseases – so far, I have diabetes, heart disease, cancer and hypertension within 3 filial generations (and I sound like I'm introducing my antique stamp collection). SICKNESS RUNS AMOK IN MY BLOOD. I AM A CARRIER OF DISEASES. RUN, CHILDREN, RUN.

OK it'll be a challenge to study right now but I'll try to anyway.

March is mat

I WAS IN THE SAME ROOM AS ST VINCENT SLASH ANNIE CLARK AND AND AND AND AND AND AND I WILL WRITE MORE ONCE I GET OVER THIS HELPZSXX

March is fat

Yesterday, while disinterestedly contemplating the aesthetics of the Jack Neo scandal (nope, there's nothing to speak of), I learnt that the man who fell on my 3 year old self at the Exit B escalator of City Hall MRT station has passed away. As my grandfather erases the name of the last living friend on his address book, I recall going out with both of them — endearing little tot entertaining two old gentlemen with a resurgence of youth and vitality etc. — and I wouldn't say I had fun, but those occasions did leave a lasting impression on my young mind.

Today, I screwed up my meals structure by having kimchi soup and bad ice cream at 10 am. Now I feel like shit, although this feeling is made worse by hearing ominous news and chewing on a char siew pastry at the same time. So I am leafing through the doctor's report, and his choice of diction reveals some alarm masked by an apparent clinical tone. The words "nodule" and "cluster" recur several times, hinting at an unnatural state of affairs, while "collapse" takes on several layers of meaning in this newer context, underscoring the severity of the status quo while suggesting the breakdown of other structures, both physical and metaphysical. The writer offers a nuanced take on the situation by the deliberate absence of emotive language, preferring instead to suppress the cerebral aspects with what is objective and independent of feeling; yet there is a slant towards acknowledging the unknown, highlighting the fragility of women's inner states in connection to what is corporeal and ineluctable.

I wish that the MCTs were the only things worth worrying about this week; I'm dying to know how that would feel.

March is fan

I want to write a poem, and the first line will read something like "Loving you through a collapsed lung" because this is a recurrent motif that's been cropping up lately, and as I stare at the x-ray films left (deliberately) on the table, the only thing running through my mind is how I am going to get through the this year knowing that every time I here my mum cough, it's going to remind me of why life sucks and why escapism exists.

The only thing worse than being chronically sick is seeing someone you love waste away. I don't want to observe the gradual decay and the slow, painful descent. I shall waltz with a cliché now because I Dammit, I'd rather be the one who's sick because I deserve ill-health and I just want to take that place.

It rained today I'm glad it did.

Also, I want to go Bunburying because I need a day of retreat and introspection (no irony here guys) but I can't seem to fit this into my schedule.

End of term 1 is sucking quite badly. :(

Funny:



Ian McKellen on Ricky Gervais' Extras.
"WIZARD, YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

March is fun

I think this blog might die a natural death soon (just like how people and animals usually die of old age) — there's a little too much on my plate at the moment and I might choke on something too large for me to swallow. But enough with food metaphors, it feels like I'm always knee-deep in a pool of excrement. Not a pleasant feeling I've got to admit, but I'll just bite the proverbial bullet and deal with the mediocrity one steaming turd at a time.

Anyway, in-between the Crappy Constants in my life, some actually interesting and meaningful things have occurred! For one, I have passed H1 Chinese, ergo I don't have to take it anymore and this makes me one step closer to forgetting how to write my Chinese name. Also, Lit Night 2010 was wonderful, despite me missing the middle bits because of choir practice. I had fun being one half of The Jambu Daddies with Bertram and singing and reciting bad songs and poetry, and then pigging out on chicken pie. And, we're learning our last Poland Tour piece in choir, which is a nice song incorporating a poem by D.H. Lawrence. The journey is arduous but we'll soon find that it was worth the tears. (But let's not go into the problem of certainty shall we.) I'm also glad for the short Sanity Outing to Ion with sassy bitch Jamie (I mean that in affectionate terms of course) and I hope she finds her sassy gay friend soon!

Speaking of sassy gay friends,



Lists

DVDs to get (before the June holidays)
1. Where The Wild Things Are (I still hold a grudge against GV)
2. The Virgin Suicides
3. The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly
4. Persepolis
5. Not really a DVD, but THIS FILM BY MY HIPSTER IDOL, SPIKE JONZE:


Things to bake:
1. That cookie dough log I that's still in my fridge
2. Vampire cupcakes (in preparation for Halloween and the exam madness that will fill the air)
3. Compost Cookies
4. Hamanstaschen
5. Cookie Dough Cupcakes (for bribes)

Words I like:
1. thrush
2. ascent
3. sententious
4. crumb
5. Kahlua

Books I bought because of their cover:
1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (that I am now enjoying)
2. The Invisible Hand by Adam Smith
3. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
4. The Complete Saki by Saki (has an awesome green cover with a frightening red face staring back with stuck-out tongue)
5. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

Songs I listen to that make me feel smug about my music choices:
1. Elliott Smith, who is like the David Foster Wallace figure of the indie rock scene.
2. The entire album 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields
3. Mazzy Star and now, Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions
4. Songs from Painful and I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One by Yo La Tengo
5. Listening to Rocketship during thunderstorms, but of course this might never happen now.

Favourite MRT stations:
1. Changi Airport
2. Kembangan
3. The Old Bishan Station which still exists in my childhood recollections
4. Tanah Merah
5. Raffles Place