Pi in the sky, and a broken heart.

from the cloud appreciation society site

Aren't they beautiful?

I hear crickets in my room. They're asking me to close my eyes, and be calm.

No Worries lemongrass tea

Working hours, but my mind is drifting and I fail to take this seriously. What did people use to do at work when there was no computer to give them access to an entire universe while being physically around their colleagues, around printers, files, the boss? Why, they wrote on paper, with pens! Or clacked away on typewriters! And pushed their cateye glasses up if the un-air-conditioned room was making them sweat.

A photo of death-eaters is on my desktop ready for tomorrow. (23 hours to Harry Potter!!!!!!!! -gnaws madly at handkerchief-)

I went to craigslist to see what it's about, and found-

If you like pinacoladas - m4w - 45 (Singapore)

In search of a lonely married woman longing for spice and adventure.

I am a Singapore male chinese, 45, married and lonely.

Completely discreet and no commitments expected. Just warmth and friendship as and when you are available.

Write to discuss what we can do together in or out of Singapore.

Write to me and escape.


and

Bus 100 - m4w - 28 (Singapore)

I want to talk to you but I don't have the courage yet. I always see you at bus stop 62139. We always ride the same Bus 100, we alight at the same bus stop. It's just that we go on opposite direction. You never failed to mesmirized my day. I hope we can talk.

Rhyming Ode To Swing

i wish i could

oh yes i would

swing everyday

i'd be so gay

in a polkadot skirt

that would happily flirt

with the bowtie of

my charming partner.

And stripey lollipop socks!

(matching clothes are bollocks)

They'd put on some swing

my heart and synapses ring

we would do eight-count:

one two

three and four

five six

seven and eight

sweetheart

catapult

suzie-q

crazy legs

the trouble starts at six

count, i look at our feet

it's like our hearts don't meet

my mary-janes are

half a beat behind

i hope he doesn't mind

i just started learning

my heart is burning

can't square-off right yet

my kick-pumps aren't set

and mama said you must wear a bra

when dancing with men.

i like the orange dim

looking at her and him

twenties charleston flaps

jockey hip-to-hip gaps

grammophone dreams

floral armchair beams

papa said dance-floor love is a deception

a rosy musk-perception

but 2010 doesn't quite matter

-is he the mad hatter?-

on a rainy ol' swing sunday

while waiting for the next song to start.

If ya ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends.

penny lane, Almost Famous

You know that other girls have never been my style

Suzie-Q

Catapult

Sweetheart

Crazy legs

Falling-off-a-log

Around-the-world

The Swim

And the bright, all-wonderful Charleston!

pineapple calluses

It was the last time I would see him in my life. Going to India meant that. He was my grandfather's elder brother, fourth in line to kong kong's fifth and last. Actually he was the only one remaining of those five, five whom I would like to investigate someday because I see them as some sort of legend in my head, the five brothers, one of whom I've heard was deathly handsome like my grandfather and whose motorcycle-and-mint looks live on in his eldest son, who tries too hard to be charming. The fourth brother would not be thought of as a legend though, the way people imagine legends, because he was soft, and quiet, and kind and simple. I saw him at least once a year, every year of my life, at Chinese New Year (we always had homemade cookies by his daughter-in-law, the kind that is a swirl with a pink dot on top, and yeo's chrysanthemum tea), in his small, neat hdb home that seemed a different world from his younger brother's green marble floors and red carpets. He had a big belly always nestled behind the uncle white cotton singlet. He had calm, sad little eyes, did not want much or need much. He was my father's favourite uncle, and my father once got them a big tv because they couldn't quite splurge on it, and it would make his uncle's days happier at home. My father never told anyone else about it. Sometimes he would come and visit (not at Chinese New Year), sitting around unassumedly, with his oldest nephew (another remarkable man of cigarettes and rough lines) who is incidentally my grandmother's age, and we would all have dinner together. At my grandfather's funeral, my father bought the famous yong tau foo from outside and he slurped up the mucusy gravy before my eyes. This was when the house was still old, and we sat at the sticky outdoor kitchen table, surrounded by fried vegetables in thick translucent gravy and surrounded by the empty smell of funeral incense. The last visit to him was something I'd suggested because I knew it would be the last time. He had some stomach problems or cancer, I don't know anymore, and had a few months left. One Sunday afternoon we trudged there after lunch. When I entered his room, he lay on the bed, emaciated, looking at the ceiling. His big belly was almost no more, his legs were skinny bones and his dark construction skin was yellowish. There was a tube from his nose. The bed was very neat, the sheets smooth, and cotton blankets that had little regular holes in them (my brother had a pink one from childhood that smelt very nice). The room was dark, only light from a window. It was old and dusty but orderly. I started tearing while everyone stood around not knowing what to do. He seemed a bit happy to see us. After they all said something they went out to the living room to sit awkwardly, while my grandmother and I remained. My grandmother asked if he'd eaten and spoke to him very normally. I wondered how she did that. I wondered how he felt lying there everyday, death coming, and if my grandfather came to talk to him. After a while my grandmother went out and I was left alone and he asked me to sit down so I did. I held his hand for my own sake and started crying and he said hoarsely, like he feared the end, 'ah liap, ask her to stop crying or I will cry too....' but my grandmother was outside and couldn't hear him.

Now I'm back it's odd that he is in an urn in the columbarium and his old flesh is no more. Like a mould that melted into space, disintegrating into tiny little sparkly parts, like a scene from a low-effects space movie. It's a weird thought to get around. I'm glad I wasn't around for his funeral; I would have cried embarrassingly too much and maybe more than his own grandchildren. Everyone dies out and Chinese New Year will never be the same again. Sugus and Van Houten are from the swollen heady past, and now the first thing on Chinese New Year morning are the bright yellow chrysanthemums at my grandfather's grave, twin-decorating the photo my grandmother doesn't like (because of the expression of the mouth) but which I think embodies him perfectly.

floating away on a cloud

"So...have you been dating any boys recently?"

"Nope."

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

"Nope."

"You must get a boyfriend!!!"

"Give me some advice lah."

"Hmmmm. First you must get a makeover, like put makeup, cover all your pimples...Then must be like, like, very funny, very smart."

"Okay."

"If you don't have long hair it's okay, because in the shows right, short hair also can. Also got boys like. Just that the most important thing is you must be like very funny, very fun."

"What shows?"
"Like those drama lah."

"But those stupid korean dramas are just silly shows."

"Yah I know, but you can also learn from them."

kong kong kong, kong kong kong kong, kong kong gong gong

If you say the above with hokkien intonation, it means-

"grandfather said, container hit grandfather, grandfather blur-blur/concussion/silly-silly"

It's 7pm- half an hour to end-of-work but my brain is frozen from replying trickling mucus-poop-trails of work emails in friendly tones, researching for shows and dealing with lists. My work pal, who shaved off his mohawk this morning due to an accidental slight of the hand, has gone off for Deepavali. But not before we huddled together when everyone else was out of the room, used the office's navy-blue-and-lime-green brother sticker machine that I've been addicted to and secretly using far too much of, and made french phrase stickers for the girl he is in love with right now. Then he went off to see her, happily. I need to strategically put the sticker machine not on my table or it will seem like I use it all the time, which I want to, hug it and make endless stickers- Coeur qui soupire n'a pas ce qu'il desire. The trees beckon us tomorrow and I simply can't wait. No trees that say wisha-wisha-wisha! but I think they say ho-ho-hum-hum-bloom-bloom-bloom.

To be a hip cat, you gotta practise- plenty.

swing it, spiffy cat!

bob, i've missed you

your breath is sweet your eyes are like two jewels in the sky Cardamom flavoured floss! It's not the thin, cutting translucent sort but made of soft but tough thin cotton and it's super shiok. Cardamom explodes like stars in my mouth so everytime I floss I am reminded of India, the possibilities of being there and the impossibilities of being here. I'm exaggerating but add a semi- in front of possibilities and impossibilities. They're building a kampong here. (http://www.kampungtemasek.org/) * Email from Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Founder-- Dear Mary-Jane Leo Salty Thunder Bindi Galaxy-Ladybird Smithereens (Member No. 22588),

I'm sending this quick email out to members of the Cloud Appreciation Society based in Singapore to tell you about a new 'cloudspotting area' that will be opening there soon, and to ask if you might be interested in speaking to The Straits Times about why you like clouds. .....

The society has just agreed that the new observation deck on the 56th floor above the ION Orchard shopping centre, Orchard Road, which is going to open to the public in January 2011, should be recognized as a Cloud Appreciation Society 'Official Cloudspotting Area'. This is because it is going to be a great location from which to enjoy the cloudscapes over Singapore. The observation deck will be called ION Sky and will include a Cloud Appreciation Society diagram illustrating the 10 main cloud types, to help viewers identify the beautiful skies that they are looking out at. ION Sky will, in fact, be the second official C.A.S. clouspotting area in the world. * This is bewildering. I don't blame them, but if they had done more research by living in Singapore for a bit, those innocent dreamy cloud-lovers may realise that ION is a symbol of the materialistic sickness that kills good things and via the infinite links of the world endangers the loving of clouds. Luce you said you understand, maybe I'm trying not to because it's HALLOWEEN. I get so vehement I scare myself. Today it can be blamed on the chunks of blood falling out of me, but when it's gone there's nothing but to live outside the descending fog with a bunion aid splint. I'm going to have to get used to the frustration and bewilderment in my father's eyes everytime he looks at me. *

Pet Sounds

Every night now I say this: 'The night was quiet and nature was resting and I was at peace.' And then I can sleep. I made it up myself. Isn't that great? Saying it now my eyes feel a little tired.

Big Brian isn't scared of anybody and Little Brian is scared of everybody.

-Brian Wilson

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/24/popandrock)

*

Synesthesia- possibly the only scientifically chronicled magical power of today

a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied toanother modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound inducesthe visualization of a certain color.

In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia or color-graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities.

Over 60 types of synesthesia have been reported by people, but only a fraction have been evaluated by scientific research.

Synesthesia runs strongly in families, but the precise mode of inheritance has yet to be ascertained.

Synesthetes often report that they were unaware their experiences were unusual until they realized other people did not have them, while others report feeling as if they had been keeping a secret their entire lives, as has been documented in interviews with synesthetes on how they discovered synesthesia in their childhood.

To the contrary, most report it as a gift—an additional "hidden" sense.

As a child, Pat Duffy told her Dad, "I realized that to make an R all I had to do was first write a P and draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line."

already october,vermillion hearts near the 169 busstop

Final Performance
by Cynthia Cruz

I crawl along the wet floor
Of my mother's childhood,

A serpent, or a long-buried secret,
In my mother's bisque
Chiffon gown with small stars

Stitched in silver, a crown
Of tinsel pinned into the dark
Blonde knots and dreads of my hair.

I follow a sequin thread of dead
Things, stop when the moon clocks out,
Polish my long nails in the sun.

*

I'm drugged again having given up on lovely bitter powder potions (which i've concluded are better for treating long term illnesses slowly) but not having the heart to tell my white-bearded neighbour traditional chinese medicine doctor (who just called) that i switched to pills though i rejected the antibiotics from my adorably stern teletubby family doctor and i feel like Chief trying to beat the fog, beat the combine, run out into the salty night like the dog, the more i research on comic history jumping from one tab to another luce now i know how it feels but i never got to your level of tab madness google chrome is very good doesn't hang like internet explorer and you can STAR your favourites i chose the theme with mushrooms and elves in a woody forest and why are there so few female comic artists maybe i could meet lily lau and lat and kenfoo who hates facebook so much been rerereading Boy they went ISLAND HOPPING with their fearless mother during all their norway summer holidays oh roald you and quentin are my heros and quentin apparently has never married! i have been sleeping alone more than i ever did my entire life as grandmother is accompanying cousin in his house i found out that opening the windows at night lets you really feel the night and its orange darkness and the sounds of crickets in the forest nearby and feel the soft weight of the black tar outside and know of the possibilities of things while aircon suffocates you inside i can't breathe anymore aircon or the green phelgm tickles and my little baby cut her hair short yesterday as she bounded down the stairs she had a thick shiny chin length bob with a straight fringe (just like i had when i was my auntie's flower girl many years ago and they took that awful pouty photo in the living room) and her crazy violet plastic glasses and she was wearing her old mustard-and-navyblue spaghetti strap from giordano kids, a hand-me-down and her butterfly-thick eyelashes, a hand-me-down too that i have some of, and her silver-capped bad tooth, and it was like magic exploded before my drowsy brain but with my last bit of coherence let me describe what this cough-syrup feeling is like, like when the titanic hit a crazy huge iceberg in nowhere and you are falling, tumbling, nodding off to a place where it doesn't matter...

Un Chien Andalou

Because a razor cuts across a frame of film,

I wince, squinting my eye,

and because my day needs assembly

to make sense of the scenes anyway,

making a story from some pieces of truth, I go

outside to gather those pieces. 

Thousands of moments spooling out

frames of mistakes in my day.

As if anyone's to blame,

as if anyone could interpret the colliding

images, again and again, dragging

my imagination behind me, 

I begin assembling.  

I don't know anything, so I seek 

directions, following the path  

of ants from your palm, out  

the apartment door to  

a beach. Is this where I'm  

supposed to ask if my hands on you 

bend some light around shade? Maybe 

I'm not ready for the answer. They say 

art imitates what we can sculpt or write  

or just see when we turn ourselves  

inside out. I can't turn my eye away 

from the sight of failure. The rain pelts rooftops. 

I listen to the song, thinking  

when the sun comes back, 

beating down the door 

in my head, I'll salvage whatever sits 

still long enough for me to render, 

before anyone knows what really happened.

A. Van Jordan

just like little girls and boys

Happy Birthday.

"Reality leaves a lot up to the imagination."

les trois mousquetaires: sin, cos, tan

2xy + 3z = 9

I miss the minute mint-green squares of graph paper, equations that mean nothing, jabbing the calculator with vigour, combining fat and thin strands of eraser dust into grime balls, the sound of a pencil drawing a long line, the dizzying blank cosmic world of (a + b)², numbers, letters, pi the eternal amount, models please, three significant figures and if Ahmad took 3 hours from point A to B at 70km/h, how long did Devi take at 54 km/h?

(Not the end, obviously! The uncontrollable sentimentality of a cancerian knows no bounds!)

I miss the pious share-the-love chime of the school bell, ice milo, the deep right-hand-side pocket of the pinafore to hide ham-and-cheese sandwiches from prefects, the warm chewey sandwich that mists the plastic and warms the thigh, the crazy feeling of Romeo and Juliet in a classroom, the long classic denim skirt of Mrs Sushilla, 听写, blanco mounds on hard tables, highlighted fingernails, crawling spidery ink on soft skin, the scrawl of the gray classroom chair if you scratch it, the long indent at the head of your square table, chalkboards and the floaty migration of fairy chalkdust clusters before they were arrested too, physics, chemistry, biology (xylem and phloem), trigonometry, the romance of a dark orange classroom, the sleepy soft whirring of the ceiling fan after recess, awkward bodies at PE, the dank saliva smell of the band room, bubbling test tubes of crimson and forest-blue, hijinks, laughing till we keeled everyday, the warmth of the OHP, the possibility of your entire, awaiting life.

I think OHPs have been replaced with visualizers.

Sukiyaki tears crash on...pubescent eyelashes!

x= [-b±√(b^2-4ac)] / 2a

leave me to the abyss

half of what i say is meaningless, but i say it just to reach you

I march into school at 7.20 as the speakers blare a warbly, sorrowful, heavenly instrumental version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. People, including me, smile with their mouths but seldom their eyes. Off-white, gray and emerald.

**

Last week:

"Mervin!"

"HO YEAH." (intonation: HO4 YEAH3)

"Can you read the cloze passage?"

"HO YEAH HO YEAH"

"Ok, go"

"....SDU....Sexual Development Unit....sex parties..."

**

(girl raises hand during exams)

(me bringing her extra paper)

"can you ask gregory to stop shaking his leg? it's very distracting..."

**

Invigilation puts one in a daze. Up, down, up, down, stand, sit, lean, watch. Nervous students glancing at the clock. Someone has two correction tapes. Someone else has 6 similar pencils (maroon with gold words), and 4 similar black pens. I've found my invigilation calling. It's hard to daydream and be present, so I've taken to peeking at handwritings as I walk past the tables. How does she do her 'a's, why are his letters so long and skinny, nice prawny words.

**

After the first day of exams (english compo) I walked to the school gate to leave. In front of me were a group of boiz from my sec one english class. (I call them the kopitiam gang because during class they talk non-stop like chatty uncles of different shapes, sizes and lengths) Finally one of them noticed me as they passed the gate, started murmuring/exclaiming, "Miss Ng, Miss Ng" and the rest followed suit and suddenly, all but one of them were screaming like little girls and running away. The only one who stayed, the coolest of the gang, with a semi-mohawk on his tiny, pre-pubescent head, came up to me and coolly but sincerely said, "Hi Cher" and started discussing the compo topics. In a year he'll be taller and will melt the hearts of girls. For now, I'm glad the rest behaved like such silly poo-poos.

Presenting...

Fishie the Jailfish!

and...

Oliver Paul the Octopus!

mostly created and glued together themselves

Me: "Yay, they can be friends!"

Them: "NO."

they forgot to meet Sharkie!

"Cher, chill."

1. (having returned from the toilet where I chased him to because he had a stomachache after recess and just sat there groaning) "Cher! I go toilet ah, then pooooot, then no more already. Nothing come out. Inside got wind only..."
"Why are you telling me this?!"
"Cher can I eat lollipop? Please?"

2. "Cher you know what's fetish?"
"Yes."
"You got fetish?"
"I'm not about to tell you what it is."
"OH means you got lah!"
"Everyone has fetishes."

3. "Cher, so you going to join SDU lah?"

4. "Wah Cher who taught you to write cursive?"
"No one! Do people not write cursive anymore?"
"Yah. But I write cursive."
"I like cursive."
"Yeah...!" (with cool rocker hand signs)

He-who-everyone-fears. "I want everyone to take out a book and be doing something meaningful in the next minute! Do you know how many of you can be promoted from Normal Technical to Normal Academic at the end of the year?! Do you know you need an average of 70 marks for your CA? By the looks of it, none of you will make it."

(I nearly burst out laughing, the boys were making faces behind his back)

Oliver James, lost in the rain...

I want to surprise myself

If a person feels that he hasn't really lived, but this person has incredible dreams every night that take him to impossible places, and if life is what we perceive of it, and memory is what we wish to feel and remember, then has this person lived?

I marked about thirty comprehension passages today and felt so sick calculating the marks (8/45, 33/65...), scrawling them big and red, cross cross cross cross my heart that I dislike comprehension and sorry I would rather let you read your love letter with orange highlighter hearts the girl from the neighbouring class gave you. I felt like I let them down by caring about comprehension and what it stands for (part of a chain effect that will possibly eventually repress them and prevent them from realising how great they are as people), but then I thought about it and realised it was (mostly) Singapore that has let them down. Just like it lets all of us down (the razing of Green Meadow is enough to make me throw myself at a wall AND MY FAMILY HEIRLOOM ROSEWOOD DINING TABLE SET WITH OPAL FLOWERS SPRINKLED-SET-IN HOW DID I LET THAT HAPPEN) but we may eventually stay here forever because we believe in something though people like possibly your own brother that you love and grew up with drives and honks with hatred and anger, and wants to be rich, and thinks a perhaps certain way about those students and those prcs and you can't help the fact that you love him and grew up with him though the days of toasted-bread-with-peanut-butter-and-sugar-and-milo are nothing more than a saccharine memory that glows in a space of broken teeth and unscrubbed smelly tongue.

But I'm glad I did not try hard enough to get a job and am going to wake up early to go to school tomorrow.

Everyone here is mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My grandmother cannot stop asking if the lights are turned off at midnight and the new maid brought her up empty bottles and thermos of no-water because she forgot.