Month: April 2004

I had a coupla conversations lately relating to depression.

I can’t write about depression properly. If I could form coherent thoughts about it, I wouldn’t be doing it justice.

To describe it would be too twee.

The conversations I had with friends dealt with reactive depression, that is, the conversation revolved around the situational circumstances (as opposed to say, biological) that directly caused their depressive states.

Exempli gratia:

“I don’t know if I should hang on or let him go”

I don’t know either. The person that cares has left the room. Go outside, make a left, and then a right, then straight on to the median strip and play in traffic.

I’m harsh because I know what I’d do given the same thing to face. Bleeding obvious.

If, for example, the situation were something I haven’t faced, or have faced but crumpled in the face of it, my reaction might be something different.

E.g.:

“I don’t know if anyone would accept me for this “thing” that I have”.

Stumped. Stone motherless silent. Make lame joke and change subject, such as, did you hear about so-and-so and her silly boyfriend problem?

And then there is Death.

The deepest, darkest and most desolate place to be, is to lose someone to death. Your history with that person is erased (and don’t tell me you have memories, they count for fuck-all). That person does not exist. Has not existed. Will not exist. That is the gravity of this kind of loss.

And I will still make lame jokes, change subjects a hundred times, talking about so-and-so’s and their silly bf problem, because you’re still here.

$100 for the cheapest tix to Andrea Bocelli’s 2004 Tour! And the ticketing page (sistic lah) adds this instructional blurb: Please add to above price $2 SISTIC Fee for tickets above $20 and $1 SISTIC Fee for tickets below $20. Charges include GST.

Pay me $100, I sing the entire La Boheme for you er!

After a particularly uneventful day doing adminstrative tasks (phone calls, web updates et cete-fucking-ra), me and the boys went and tortured ourselves in the gym. It was a particularly long workout, which made us real hungry, so we decided to ‘grab a bite’ before going home.

Grab a bite we did, at this restaurant on Jalan Pisang, near the Arab quarter, near Arab Street (duh), called Hajah Maimunah Restaurant & Catering.

Hajah Maimunah’s is one of those Nasi Padang type restaurants, where you order rice per person, then pick the dishes which you will eat to your death.

It definitely isn’t fine dining, and Hajah Maimunah herself wasn’t there (she probably just supervises the cooking), but I’m quite she wouldn’t have disapproved our ‘whacking’ the food the way we did, even if she’s the pious woman her title suggests.

While we would’ve liked to have tasted every dish on offer, we settled for beef rendang (probably better at lunch, so you don’t get the bottom of the pot hard bits), panggang chicken in sweet gravy (wurl best), goreng chicken, (very) spicy sauteed clams, and a generous helping of sambal (wurl best), and we ate ourselves to death. (I died a second time later, owing to my delicately balanced digestive system – you know what they say – it ain’t a good curry unless it burns twice).

We’re gonna go back there for seconds someday soon, probably just before normal lunchtime. And order some vegetables too.

It is a nice area to browse around, the Kampong Glam Conservation area. Just that the buildings and streets are a little tricky to navigate around because they’re mostly in the process of being Conserved. So Kandahar and Baghdad Streets do, at this moment, look a little like the places they’re named for, I’m sure. There’s the magnificent Masjid Sultan to look at and take pictures of, and the lesser looking Masjid Malabar down the road (nice in it’s own blue bathroom mozaic tile sort of way).

Also probably worth a look at is the Istana Kampong Glam, once home to Singapore’s only royal family (ah so desu ne area called Kampong Glam?). Now about to be turned into a museum, apparently. Will visit once the dust settles.

In all, not a bad evening. Got exercise, got food, got kulcha!

I haven’t embraced texting shortforms as much as other people have. I think I am a stickler for more formal forms of language. Even my mother can text ‘Sup’? and ‘cmg hm 4 dnr?’, which, although easy for the texter to text, is a bit of a pain for me to decrypt. Even worse when I’m hiccupping and having a severe migraine.

Not that I’m deadset against txtg. C? I cn do it 2!

Hiccups can come on at any time, so says this article, which I was hoping would tell me how to stop this fit I am having now.

As I write, I am still hiccking and cupping. It’s gone on for the best part of the hour, and I’m afraid it might destroy any chances of a reasonable night’s sleep.

Still here.

I hope it doesn’t break my long-standing personal best of 2 days, which happened in ’91 while kayaking to Tioman. A long bout of seasickness related vomiting triggered the phrenic nerve to convulse, and I think the body couldn’t find the ‘off’ switch. I kept hiccuping till we reached Tioman, and continued to do so for half a day after that. It was the most tiring physical exertion I’ve ever experienced.

Loud one. Still here.

I hiccupped till I cried then, much to the amusement of my kayaking buddy, who found it really funny until he was kept awake by my sporadic whoops.

Goddammit.

The other uncomfortable effect of hiccupping is that you tend to swallow more air than you should (assuming you should even be swallowing any). So you bloat. And then you try to burp but while you do you hiccup again, and that’s pretty painful on the throat.

Fuck I can’t take it anymore.

Have you tried taking a business call while you’re having a rapid hiccupping fit? Hope I don’t have to do that in the morning.