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Out of sorts (please send some)

Out of sorts
Maybe I should look at the world through rose-tinted lenses or something

There are days bad enough when you’re not only not sure what day it is, you’re also wishing it were another day altogether, wishing you could turn back time (or bend space and time), re-do something you did wrong or just do the right thing again, or simply wishing you were someone else somewhere else.

I’ve been having many of these days lately. And by lately, I mean, a long, long time. And that partially explains why this blog has been so quiet.

As much as I loathe being introspective and gazing at my navel, I don’t have much else to blog about, and I’ll leave discussions about American Idol, Heroes , Rise of the Ministers’ Pays and other significant television events to others who’ve been paying much more attention than I.

But I know I (and this blog) will be back, and I know I’ll pay more attention to paying attention, just like I did while driving the other day, glum-faced as a um… glum-faced driver, when I saw a Army NSMan by the side of the road, waiting for a taxi, only for empty taxis to whizz past him because he was in his nice, new No.4 camouflage green uniform, standing on the pavement, next to a whole bunch of trees, which happened to be like, you know, camouflage green colour too?

So I laughed.

Out of sorts
Because sometimes the news really, really, really gets you down

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Oops, happy belated birthday, Curiosa Felicitas!

This blog is now 3 years old!

From when it first started in April 2004, till now, it’s seen many, many facelifts. Mostly because I’m easily bored and like to tinker around without any thought whatsoever as to whether I’d break the template and have to call for help. Thank you those who’ve helped me when my template has been broken.

But seriously, thank you very much, all of you who are reading, and all of you who have read, enjoyed, left comments, emailed, congratulated and encouraged. It is humbling, and very, very much appreciated.

Facelifts:

July04
Wayback to July 04

Aug05
August 05

Sep05
September 05

April06
April 06

Previous birthdays:
2005
2006

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What weddings are about

Style Weddings Mar 07 - Real Weddings
Ours – Style Weddings March 2007

I’ve mentioned previously about the record number of weddings we’ve attended the past year, and how each of them was beautiful in their own way – which is like saying nothing, really, if you think about it.

But I know there’d be some among you who’d know what I mean when I say, there are these glimpses of moments at weddings (especially your own) – glimpses of when no words will do the moment justice, glimpses of when nothing else in this whole wide world matters.

And so, congratulations to Mika and Gary, on your wedding last Wednesday, and for inviting us to be involved in the preparations, where we saw more of these moments. And we know exactly what to tell you – like it’s ok if you don’t recall a single thing at your own wedding apart from each other’s faces, that’s what the videographer’s for.

And no matter how many times everyone tells you ‘everything will be ok on the day’, you’ll still feel like throwing up just before you get to the venue;

A million and one things can and do go wrong. Like what? Like the waiters not knowing when to stop using the ice-pick when the ceremony is under way; Like the music being piped in from downstairs is a bit hard to control; Like the boutonnieres swivelling on their pins because the centre of gravity is salah

But the things that mattered, mattered. You held your wedding at where you had your first date; You got married; You love each other tremendously.

Nothing else matters in this whole wide world.

Congratulations again.

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Always bring the weather

Brownie for a buck

It was really cold one morning last week, and I mean, like 24 degrees celsius type of cold. The type that makes you want to head out to a coffee kiosk and have a comforting cuppa coffee and an equally comforting piece of confection. Like a brownie or something, because they were going for $1. And that’s cheap.

You know how it is when you wake up some mornings and the weather’s dreary, and you find yourself telling yourself, ‘Man, what a gloomy morning, and man, do I feel gloomy too’?

Yah, so it was that kind of morning, cold, 24 degrees, hands in pockets, shuffling to the coffee kiosk, hair tousled by a stiff breeze. I ordered a black coffee from the kiosk for seventy cents, and contemplated buying the dollar brownie. But three sips into my beverage, a few beads of sweat formed on my nose, and it was no longer that kind of morning, but warm, stifling and uncomfortable.

It gets warmer as the day goes on, and next thing you know, you’re complaining about the heat, and wondering to yourself how people still order hot coffees and teas at the coffee stall across the street, and eat mee siam and mee rebus that you can no longer describe as steaming, because in this weather, if your bowl of noodles still steams, it’s gonna probably melt the bowl.

Gloomy in the morning, uncomfortable in the afternoon (or from late morning onwards), wishing for a late afternoon shower. These are things that one shouldn’t feel, unless one were a farmer or something and one really needed that thundery shower (isn’t that a great term for heavy rain?).

I mean, the weather really shouldn’t affect you otherwise, unless it caused flash floods, like the time I had a classmate in secondary school arrive really really late for his ‘O’ Level Mathematics paper, with still the best excuse ever: “I was swept into the Bukit Timah canal and had to walk back from Jalan Besar”.

Or like when my uni mates and I slept in fear of further hailstorms after the one that ripped through our suburb was classified as the most expensive natural disaster on record. Then again, that provided more of a perverse pleasure than any gloomy disposition, with weeks of stories that went like, ‘hey didja hear about that idiot Singaporean who went out with an umbrella because he hadn’t seen a hailstorm before and wanted to take a look?’ (he almost had parts of the umbrella embedded in his head, but was otherwise unscathed save for some bruises).

Yah, that was fun. In fact, we had further fun off that, because all you needed to do to freak a car-owning uni mate out was to pour a bag of marbles outside his apartment window, and count how long before he rushed out to cover his car with a blanket to protect it from the killer hailstones.

Yah.

OK, what was it I saying about the weather?

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9/11

It’s been five years since I watched in astonishment on my mother’s television set the destruction of the twin towers.

That night, on the 11th of September 2001, I had just come home from I can’t remember what (this blog didn’t exist yet), and my mum’s study door was ajar, and she was sitting and watching CNN. Then, it had already been a tumultuous year as it was for my family, what with my sister having a long convalescence from childbirth-related illness, my leaving my much-envied job as a talent agent after almost a year of doing little inconsequential things like arguing over whether Fiona Xie should take up the Chinese sitcom role she eventually made her own.

The first plane had already hit one of the towers, and I remember wondering how ‘zhun’ the plane had been, to hit right into the tower as I watched the top few floors burn with the most acrid black smoke. Then the second plane, a flying black shadow, crashed into the other tower.

“The world is going to end”, said my mother, while I stood, transfixed, wondering if any more planes were gonna zoom in and hit any other building.

So many things have happened since then. So few things have changed.

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