Porcelain/box
The porcelain statue lay in her velvet case, warm and safe. She had but one desire: to stay in that soft, comfortable box till the end of time. Yet as the days passed, another desire grew within her. The desire to see more, know more, than just her little case. Yet if she dared move but one step out of her box, she risked being broken into a million fragments. If she wasn’t broken, she would be chipped, and if she wasn’t chipped, she would…. well, something bad would happen. It just wasn’t like the box, where she knew she was safe, where nothing surprising ever happened. the box was always warm, and soft, and smooth… So very comfortable… One day she would be taken out of her box, she knew, and as her fellow dolls got sold one by one, she knew it wouldn’t be long before the decision would be made for her. She would leave the box, and be put somewhere else, perhaps high up on the mantelpiece (such a dangerous place to be!). But from there, she could see so much more! She would hear the humans talking, see the children play, perhaps even see the seasons, spring through winter! And she knew she would miss the box… very much, very much indeed. Would the box miss her, she wondered. What if the humans threw it away? She’d never see the box again! Never be able to feel its comforting warmth around her, never be able to feel the same safety and security anymore. And one day, when the humans grew bored of her, they might throw her away too! It was all just… so… depressing… It made her want to cry, and cry she did, little porcelain tears rolling down and melting back into her clothes. And the box spoke, for the first time since she’d been in it. The box said, “Little porcelain doll, dear little porcelain doll, don’t you worry, not a bit. The world out there may have its dangers, but chances are, you won’t be harmed. How do I know this? I believe. I may see you, and I may not, but no matter what happens to me, know this: I’ll never hold any doll but you. Believe in the best, and forget the rest. My porcelain princess, don’t cry, don’t fret. I love you. Be strong. Be strong…”
Titiwangsa, then some pasta
Ah. Almost forgot. Day before yesterday was my birthday. Big thank you goes out to all the people who wish(ed) me well! Love the CD!! AND my new wallet!!! Especially my new wallet…. Aaaanyway, after class was done and wishes too, Me and J went off… Few days ago she’d asked me where I wanted to go on my birthday… Stumped me a while, because I’d never really thought about it. Birthday only what… =P But suddenly I thought of the huge attraction I’d never seen… The humongous Ferris wheel at Taman Tasik Titiwangsa, the Malay name for a park which translates to “Titiwangsa Lake Park” in English. I thought it would be great to take a ride on it with her… nice and romantic, yeah? So we decided we’d go to Titiwangsa. Which was why we took a bus down to the KTM station, then got off at KL Central, and took the monorail. At the monorail, a very amazing thing happened. A piece of orchestral music i’d been hearing in my head the whole day started playing from the station’s speakers. O_O wow. WOW. I’m God. haha alright i’m not, but it was nice to feel that way for a while. Ok, so we get off at titiwangsa, and find that the lake is… not exactly there. Oh…….shit. Nevermind! walk la!! J can walk, so can I, so we can just walk there…… Where? We couldn’t see the wheel from ground level, so we set off in its general direction that we saw it from the monorail. Rather, I saw. =P Quite a long way, you know… so halfway she saw her school and we very happily made a short detour. It was raining anyway, and we needed some shelter! Mainly because I guessed it would put a smile on her face, though. (It did!) So that went well. At last, we managed to find our way to the park.. (Note to Jessy: please don’t ever mention my terrible Malay) And we went to the wheel… and I stopped. Bloody nutcases want RM15 per person! Not even 2 minutes on the thing, for RM 15? Nooooooooooo…. So we admired the thing, and left. Hungry, obviously. Walking all day, you see. Didn’t really know where to go for dinner… But we went back to KL Central…and there we happened to see T60, which goes to midvalley and then puchong! so we went to midvalley… first place we saw was piccolo mondo, so there we ate. I believe the translation is “small world”, but thats just our guess, based on other facts, not babelfish. Nice pasta! She was still talking about the excellent sauce earlier today. But pricey. “Paying for atmosphere”, as she put it.. And after that I accompanied her home… which concludes my birthday activities. Twas a very pleasant day…
Definition
Smile: a curve that can set many things straight.
Love that. Play on words, and still true! Wit counts for lots in my book. personal admired quality. What i’m better at is writing stories.
The table lamp swayed with the table as it gave in to the furious scribbling being done on it. Well, not exactly on it. On a piece of paper, to be exact. A piece exactly 15.4 centimeters by 71.26 centimeters large. The man doing the scribbling was a mathematician, of sorts. Edward P. Lincolnsham was never cut out for much. He tired easily, so sports was out. He considered doing experiments ‘a hassle’ and never bothered much with the sciences in general. He always thought there was too much randomness everywhere. “Even all the laws of physics could not predict which path a raindrop would take down a window,” he always said. English was his first, and only, language, but he wasn’t one to dream up stories of any sort. Stuck to the facts every time. Facts were dependable. Like mathematics. 1 + 1 always equaled 2. Even if a tsunami struck and washed every single person in the world into the sea, 1 + 1 would still equal 2. Exactly. Solid, dependable stuff, mathematics. So he made that his hobby, doing odd jobs on the side to keep his life running. At present, he was preoccupied… no, frustrated, by a simple problem. How was he to plot the perfect curve exactly? Plotting every point would men an infinite number of points, and obviously he couldn’t manage that. But 500 points later, he still wasn’t satisfied. His ‘curve’ was much, much too angular! So he had set himself to work on plotting even more points. 1000, 5000, 9000… And still he wasn’t satisfied. Exhausted for the day, he laid his head on the table to rest, and he dreamed. He dreamed of lines, straight, wavy, jagged, curved….CURVES, infuriating curves! One point to another, like stepping stones, always having to jump from one to the other, never being able to slide across… then a little girl appeared, and said to him with a sweet sweet smile, “Forget it, just be satisfied with what you’ve done.” That smile… the perfect curve… He’d found it at last. As he slept on, Edward secretly made his own perfect curve….
yes, a hurried story, simple, childish, but whatever. It’s a good definition!
Fantasy
I reach inside, and find myself
in a field. A wide open
field.
Rain is falling, but it is not water.
Not even a liquid. I try putting my hand out…………touch the rain
Petals! I inhale……..ahh, rose.
Soft, like babies’ skin, lightly brushing mine
as they fall
in spirals downwards
the petals on the fields.
La vie en rose.
The rain of rose petals falls mainly in the field.
I turn my face to the sky, orange like fire
and stretch my arms to the side,
i want to take in everything.
i spin, wild, joyous, irrational, caught in the moment
and tired, i fall down
on my back
I close my eyes, and feel my heart thumping.
my blood runs swift like the river.
i rest, content, and open my eyes.
I see…
Rain of rose petals in an open field.
I lie on my back, watching the clouds of
pink and blue.
They go together, each incomplete without the other
Floating, wherever they go…
Forever…
Curry Rice
The growls had long since stopped. Rather, he had stopped paying attention to them. As he did the usual rounds, he thought of mathematics, philosophy, his leaky roof, watched the clouds, anything but his stomach. His oh-so-empty stomach. The sergeant had cut his pay again. The miser always complained that he was paying the patrolman too much. Recently, he’d started to act on his long-time threats. Poor patrolman. He never said a word against the sergeant, though. 17 long years under his service, almost 18 now, and he’d learnt, the hard way, that the sergeant was a heartless fool who counted every cent like a pound. But some days, the patrolman could understand. The sergeant had had a hard childhood, or so he’d often reminded the force, which wasn’t a large one anyway, in such a small town. All the police they had were two officers and the patrolman. Still, the sergeant never missed a chance to share his valuable experience. So they all knew just what sort of life he’d led. Like steel, was how the patrolman would sometimes put it. Never bent an inch. Never broke, either. But a pain to work with, a real pain indeed. He pitied the sergeant’s wife. No wonder she was always shouting. Venting her frustrations at the pigs, most likely. Never at the sergeant. The smell of rice brought the patrolman back to the present moment. Ahh… good old rice. Proper Chinese food. Hmm. 3 dollars left. Sure, he could afford rice, with curry on top. Nothing more. Strictly a dollar a day. He was slowly becoming as steely as the sergeant, he felt. whatever. Rice. Hungry. Eat.
To the sun
They parted, last night, in a small explosion of static. To draw their minds then would have been easy. A one year old scrawling in circles could do it. Scrambled, like the static that he kept hearing, feeling reluctant to hang up. Morning came. A cloudy morning, he noted without much enthusiasm. What would she be like… all mask of smiles and nothing’s wrongs? Monosyllabic, uninterested, hurting inside… When was she coming, he asked. The familiar, yet strange, voice told him, then hung up. Apart from the crowd, a table to himself, he waited.
He never saw her come in. He raised his head from his book and felt a stab as he noticed the familiar silhouette, the bag, the hair… pointedly ignoring him. Eventually he walked over, and they went out.
To cut a long story short, he finally saw that he was in the darkness, and turned to face the sun again. Thank you… No wonder they call it ‘taking the plunge’.
weird dream
I can still remember it, even though it happened this morning.. like 9 hours ago… I was doing my suicide assignment, and i got stuck, so i fell asleep.. and i dreamt. I dreamt that I was on an island resort, along with jessy, maryanne, chris, hao shaun, chong, justin, kenneth, li sha and this angmoh fella… somehow we all knew each other… and the dream started in the middle of the sea… island resort, so swim in the sea la! very nice… blue water, clear sky, green hills… dolphins!! then i did one powerful stroke, which carried me far, far away from the island…first thing i felt was fear, because it was highly likely that there were sharks there, since it was far from the resort.. so i looked into the water… yep, 3 of them, coming for me. using my amazing powerful stroke again, i managed to escape, and along the way i saw puffins! strangely, these were actually flying, hovering in mid air and diving into the water for fish.. its a dream, come on! and then i passed them, and saw something like a jetty up ahead. crashed into it, of course, and came out of it unhurt. apparently this jetty belonged to another resort which was somehow linked to my island resort, so i ran back, avoiding the main areas.. didn’t want to get caught trespassing, even for a good reason. and along the way, i tried jumping, for some reason apparently in this dream, jumping enabled me to hover… if i built up enough momentum, i could just glide through he air… but a couple of times, i jumped too far off the edge of the island, and almost fell back into the sea… caught a tree branch and floated back down… then it was evening… we’re all sitting in the common area, some lounge i think… i float in, and take my time drifting down… forgot what we were talking about though.. and thats it, after that i woke up… weird, huh?
Loving you
“Loving you is easy ’cause you’re beautiful…”
Beautiful outside, beautiful inside. When I first saw you, I fell. Fate, I guess, kept us apart. And I found another. But it didn’t work out. She fell for another, and I, lost, looked for a friend. We clicked, unexpectedly. I would like to think that you did something, but I don’t know what. You draw me ever closer, just by being there, being you. Nobody’s perfect, not me, not you. You probably don’t like everything I do, and neither do I, but like moths to each others’ flames, we spiral at the edges of the flame, loving the warmth, tryig to find the balance… Love is many a mysterious thing. Life is great.
Concert (11/2/07)
The concert I went to attend was held in the hall at KLCC and performed by the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO). It was titled “Leningrad”, the nickname for Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C, but they also performed Beethoven’s Egmont overture. First of all, what impressed me was the size of the concert hall. It was only the second or third time I had entered one, and the sight of the organ pipes set into the wall, coupled with the immense height of the hall itself, was truly grand to behold. Unfortunately, we had not been able to secure very good seats, and were forced to take the seats closest to the stage. I think that the worst part of that was not being able to actually see some of the performers, such as the woodwind and brass sections. We were able to see the strings section, however, and during one of the movements of the “Leningrad” symphony, they were playing so furiously that quite a number of bowstrings snapped.
The orchestra performed Beethoven’s overture first. According to the programme booklet, Beethoven’s Egmont overture was written as incidental music to accompany Goethe’s heroic play of the same name, which is a story of heroism and the triumph of good over evil. It was difficult for me to visualize the scenes and relate to the music, as I was not at all familiar with the play. However, the booklet did provide some additional information which helped me to appreciate the music more. Nonetheless, many of my fellow concert-goers fell asleep halfway.
After the intermission came Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7. It was a very rousing symphony, in my opinion. Again, the booklet proved useful by providing us with historical background and guiding us on the interpretation of the music. Being a piece inspired by wartime events, the theme of suffering and oppression was clearly expressed throughout. Moreover, Shostakovich composed in a very typical Middle Eastern style, mostly minor keys, which conveyed a very solemn and sad feeling to me. I was also impressed by the ability of the drummer to keep up a regular beat on the snare drum for what i believe was an entire movement. The percussionist was also very skilful with the timpani, which earned him a bouquet of flowers from the conductor himself.
The conductor for the afternoon, Kees Bakels, was very energetic throughout both the overture and the symphony. He did not use a baton, but was very clear with his gestures. The only thing I found unsatisfactory was his tendency to grunt whenever he jerked his arm, which was quite often. Sitting right in front of the stage, it sounded very clear to me, and interfered with the music.
The performers themselves were well rehearsed, and the execution of the pieces was perfect. Overall, I would rate the concert at 7 out of 10.
Heart Drizzle 