Old friends, old friends. Sat on their park bench like bookends.

(Art Garfunkel recorded old people in various locations in New York and Los Angeles over a period of several months. These voices were taken from those tapes.)

Voices of Old People, from the album Bookends.

Man 1: I got little in this world. I give honesty without regret. One hundred dollars for that picture. I remember taking a picture with...

Woman 1: Ooh! Let me show you. Let me show you our picture. This was me and my husband when we were first married.

Woman 2: I always slept on one side, left room for my husband.

Woman 1: And that's me when we were sixteen.

Woman 2: But this, this, this, this is not the case. I still do it. I still lay on the half of the bed. (pause) We used to sneak in...

Man 2: Still haven't seen the doctor I was seein'; there's been blood for the last, eh, forty-eight hours, and I can't get up the mucus for the last, eh, two, three months... oh yes, and I maintain, I maintain strongly, to this minute, I don't think it's an ordinary cold.

Woman 3: God forgive me, but an old person without money is pathetic.

Woman 4: Children, and mothers, that's the way we have it. A mother-- they are--

Woman 5: 'Cause mothers do too much.

Woman 4: That is mother's life, to live for your child. (pause) Yes, my dear.

Man 3: I couldn't get younger. I have to be an old man. That's all. Well...

Woman 6: Are you happy here, honey? Are you happy living with us?

Man 3: So anytime I walk with Lou and... that's all.

Woman 6: Mr. Singer? Are you happy living with us here?

Woman 7: But we don't do that, dear.

Woman 6: But are you happy?

Woman 7: If you mean, if, if you could say, yes, and I thought, and I was so happy, and everybody, "What is this? What is it?"

Woman 8: It just is, beautiful. Like, just a room. Your own room, in your own home.



Can you imagine us years from today,
sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy.

'Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'

-The White Queen, Alice Through the Looking-Glass

You know how you listen to your favourite music and singers for so long and it becomes less special than it once was, and then one day you find yourself rediscovering them again? I can't count how many times i've rediscovered the beatles. The Anthology is one big heavy book in my bedside drawer, for sleepless nights, just in case, and they will be there. But mostly to read before sleeping. Beatles dreams. Tee hee.

Today I was supposed to meet Elfie for dinner, and was walking to meet him, and dreaming of fish and chips for dinner, and before that I had told him that we might have to cancel if news crops up at the last moment and I have to go take photos- and happen it did. I went to a convention hall where people and followers of an Indian woman were seated and listening to her. It was the closest thing to a hippie convention that I've been to. I spoke to an Irish woman who is following the Indian woman around on her travels. She (the irish woman with silvery and gray hair and specs that magnified her blue eyes) wore a soft white sari and her breath smelt of the sweetest herbs. Or was it her hair which was close to her breath?

I'm off tomorrow and looking forward to the morning sunshine, slow breakfast, repairing my watch, collecting photos developed from film (a few which might've been exposed and ruined because I opened the compartment), my sister's birthday, Kali class. There's nothing like the shen2 mi4 gan3 (as the shop auntie says) of using film to take photos and waiting for it to be developed, especially after I take hundreds of shots a day at work. Nothing beats taking one precious shot and waiting to see the photograph on a summer afternoon.

13 hearts autumn

Life at the New Job has been challenging. And everyday I find myself somewhere absurd, like outside a factory in an industrial estate as it is raining, or all alone at some part of the turf club, or at a super ulu country club literally at the end of Singapore, or with someone I've seen on television growing up, calling me ke ai because I asked him to do kicks for the photoshoot. I LIKE THIS ABSURDITY. My heavy backpack sometimes cuts off circulation to my arms, now I know what NS boys feel like on long marches.

p

Little things that make me happy:

My father helping me carry my bag from the car to the house

My uncle doing the same <:-)

My grandmother steaming broccoli for me. Smells like farts but has pure natural sweetness.

Having dinner with my family at the end of the work day

Snuggling in bed to read a bedtime story

p

They (cousins, sister, grandmother, auntie) went for Disney on Ice today. I called Little Gingercat up about it, and she said the little mermaid segment wasn't much though my sister said they did tell the story of Ariel and sing songs. But here's what Gingercat said: "they just...ski about and make some noise and then happily ever after."

sea blanket

Have a magical Friday the 13th <*:-)

Alone Again, Naturally

Ever heard the song? I love this song. My father has liked it since he was in jc (three decades ago) but that day I asked him the lyrics and he had no idea, he liked the tune. When I first heard it I thought it was John Lennon singing, but it was Gilbert O'Sullivan. Alone Again, Naturally album covers:

Dark Friday