i love my rotten, ungrateful children

The above words were on my brash family doctor's fridge magnet.

Yesterday was a historic day; I took my first injection in ten years.

Pickering Padma

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my dream dining set which is being rightfully dusty in a sungei kadut rattan warehouse

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Upper Thomson's Neverland

forty light years away

If I'd been born in 1947 in another world, I would have watched stardust 50s in amazement and mary-janes. Adults dancing to Frank Sinatra, girls going mad over Elvis' pelvis, gleaming grammophones, nina simone. When the 60s hit, I would have been 13. The Beatles would have been a kaleidoscopic explosion in my pubescent life. I would have saved every penny to buy their records, discovered Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, cried for Simon and Garfunkel, admired Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. I would have been 20 the year Sgt. Pepper was released, and 23 by the end of the decade. I'm not sure where I would have been. And if it was Singapore I was born in, I would have listened to my records from home in a kampong, tried to explain the english lyrics to my parents (if we shift back a couple of generations they may have spoken mainly hokkien and mandarin), cycled into town to buy records, and gone to sewing school, daydreaming with every
stitch. The songs of August 1965 would have been I've Just Seen A Face and Majulah Singapura. A camera would have been a piece of magic. In the Summer of Love, we may have had to leave our kampong for expressway-construction and move into queenstown, where we could go to Queenstown Cinema for late-night new movies, and a television to watch man's voyage to the moon.
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What are we doing in 2010?

frequent flyer miles

Watching an old movie is like visiting an old friend and discovering how you've changed. I remember so well how I felt about my favourite movies; the feelings are felt in embedded images and heart-squeezes that cannot be articulated. So when watching those movies again after sometime, you are watching not just the movie, but also yourself and re-feeling, as if an intimate observer, your intense feelings and associations to those movies. Do you feel that too? Is it strange? Punch-drunk love was, to me, dark frosty nights being the only one awake, red and blue, magic shifting landscapes, intrigue and strength. It is much the same.

making up for lost time

¿dondé es tu chubasquero verde?

Cuando tenia siete años, querré ser actriz, escritora o ilustradora. Pues, ¿no me he caedo demasiado lejos, no? Padma y mi iremos a Indio dentro de un mes. Quizas me encontraré mi primero profesor de japonesa allí. Dijo a la clase un día: ¨Siempre he querido ir a Indio a pie.¨ Irá a hacerlo eso verano, pero por fin, su amigo no pudo y pienso que Sensei no lo hizo. Despues, volví a Japon. Era un hombre maravillo que tenía sueños. Espero verlo otra vez. Me pregunto, ¿quien interesante vamos a conocer en Indio, y qué haremos padma y mi? Me siento que este viaje va a cambiar todo.