Watch Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story.

Those 127 minutes completely turned what I’ve been slogging the past 3 1/2 years, 6 1/2 if you include my JC years, and murdering millions of precious brain cells for into a whole load of crock. His views might be a bit biased, but I feel it’s very true and reflective of today’s society, especially what’s happened/happening in America.

I’m just surprised he hasn’t been sued. You think it’s because if those corporations sued him, there’ll be more such skeletons popping out of their closets?

Very sobering movie indeed. Thanks Mike. Don’t be mistaken. The movie’s fab, I just hate economics. Always have. Comforting to know that someone other than me thinks it’s all bullshit. (:

What do you think will happen if I wrote “free markets only make inequality worse” for every economics exam I have from now on? I now feel slightly better about not doing as well in school as I should bahaha.

I’ve been pretty much drugged out by muscle relaxant, flu medicine and antibiotics all day since I woke up for lunch. I watch The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 1 and 2 in the afternoon and conked out on the sofa. Basically, I spent all day couch potato-ing and I must say it’s been one of my best Saturdays. Feels great staying in once in a while. I save money and I don’t have to feel people steamrolling me from all directions. Besides, I’m no good to anyone under the influence of drugs. I slurr, I mumble, no one can hear me and I take 20 seconds to respond.

So anyway, I’m turning 23, much much older than when I last felt excited about my birthday. How true is this older and wiser thing anyway. And there are so many things that I wish could be wished on birthdays and then because they’re made on birthdays, they come true.

What I want for my birthday:

1. Become smarter. Like study smart, street smart, stuff like that.
2. Become wiser. Because I just have to be. You know, cos of my age. 23 IS OLD.
3. Have direction sense. As in in life, not street directions. Google map was invented for a reason. Less than a year to graduation and I still have no idea what to do. Not that I really mind, but people keep bugging me about it, I need another answer besides “I don’t know”.
4. Many, many more travel opportunities. I would make a living out of it if I could.
5. One rugby boy for my birthday please. Just because.
   

   Taken from The Sartorialist.

6. Ooh one more thing.  Two, actually.
   

   From Mr. Kate

   

   From Mr. Kate too

   Okay, I think I am now ready for 24.

Been watching the news for the past few nights with my mum, and reading BBC almost everyday, but I only really felt tonight the impact of the typhoon that hit Taiwan last weekend. I keep hearing and reading about rising death tolls, mudslides burying houses, watching rescue workers ferrying people to safety etc, and the newscasters’ voices usually just go in one ear and out the other. It sounds really heartless, I know, but it just didn’t strike me as being particularly serious because, you know, there was the Boxing Day tsunami which did so much more damage.

Then I watched the Ch U news just now, like WATCHED the news. Rescue workers were being carried away by the rushing waters, and this guy died even though they managed to save him and take him to a hospital. I can’t really remember much, they were trying to squeeze too much information into too short a period of time. Anyway, the scene changed and this rescue worker was being interviewed in Hsiaolin, which is probably the worst hit place because of the mudslide, and there was just nothing in the background anymore. He was talking about how there used to be a road and houses along both sides of the road, but it was really quite difficult picturing the scene he was describing. I could only see brown in his background, which looked like a riverbed with all the water gone. The devastation is such that I can’t even begin to imagine what the place used to look like as a village.

That’s the not the worst bit, though, I think. The scene changes again and it became some gritty footage of this man struggling through alot of mud and I heard the newscaster saying something about him trying to look for his parents, and then the guy suddenly just fell to his knees and started weeping. It’s damn freaking sad lah. He looked so forlorn and defeated, I don’t even know how to describe it. If I still have a heart, I think it broke for the poor man. This image has now been forever burned into my brain.

I was just in Taiwan not so long ago and thank God I came home safe and sound, which is much more than I can say for the people who are suffering there right now. I now finally understand how fragile life can be. I may not be as kind and friendly and nice as I always wanted to be, but I hope people will only have good things to say about me at my funeral. Made me think alot, which I usually do in the shower anyway but  what I saw really hit me hard. Must be getting old, turning into a sentimental old fool.

Sigh, goodnight.

You can’t even begin to imagine how sorely disappointed I am.

So, I was bored and I googled my name. There’s a man who works in the Hong Kong Customs who has the exact same name. I really am a man.

Blood Diamond.

I fall a little bit more in love with Danny Archer/Leonardo DiCaprio everytime I watch this movie.

A side note.

I need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and old songs and new songs. A living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.

The darkness wins too often. Broken things build themselves in silence. People feel alone. People give up. People talk about this stuff like it’s math or they don’t talk about it at all.

The story doesn’t end here, the air in your lungs is there for a reason. Perhaps we’re all in the business of better endings,  the business of redemption. [From TWLOHA.]

Museum of Broken Relationships

They were on tour and the exhibition was held at the Esplanade, so I went with Jo yesterday to see it on its last day here in Singapore.

You should know by now how I’m a sucker for happily-ever-afters, and it was very emotionally draining, looking at mementoes of love lost and love forgotten. The place reeked of pain, and there weren’t too many happy endings in the history of the exhibits. It reminded me of so many things I never want to forget and too many things I do not want to think of, now.

outside.

Look what we saw when we stepped out, the bluest and most beautiful skies I’ve seen in a long while. It was warm and windy, and I became a little happier. (:

You be my princess
I’ll be your toad
I’ll follow behind you
on rainbow road
Protect you from red shells
wherever we go
I promise.

No one will touch us
if we pick up a star
If you spin out
you can ride in my car
When we slide together
we generate sparks
in our wheels and our hearts

Chorus:
The finish line
is just around the bend
I’ll pause this game
so our love will never end
Let’s go again

The blue shell is coming
so I’ll go ahead
If you hang behind
it’ll hit me instead
but never look back
cause I’m down but not dead
I’ll catch up to you

Bridge:
Don’t worry about
Bowser or DK
Eat this glowing mushroom
and they’ll all fade away

Chorus

to the mushroom cup
and the flower cup
and the star cup
and the reverse cup

walalalalala
walalalalalawaluigiiiiii

very cute. (:

But even the sturdiest ground
Can shift and can tremble and let us fall down…

Kindly unspoken
You show your emotion
And silence speaks louder than words
It’s lucky I’m clever
Cause if I didn’t know better
I’d believe only that which I’d heard

In the days of my folly
I followed your rules
Did what Simon Says to do
But I won’t let melancholy
Play me for a fool
Oh, no I’m on my way somewhere new

And as far as your lack of something to say
Well, to tell me goodbye there was no better way

Kindly unspoken
You show your emotion
And silence speaks louder than words
It’s lucky I’m clever
Cause if I didn’t know better
I’d believe only that which I’d heard

Bridge:

So don’t keep me up till the dawn
With words that’ll keep leading me on
I know much better than to wait for an answer from you

-Kate Voegele

One of my current favourites. She’s a relative unknown outside of North America. I think she has a song on the One Tree Hill soundtrack.

Going somewhere, and missing that place thereafter.

It’s because of the people we meet there, and not the scenery. The connections we feel to a place, to a city, comes from the connections we share with the people we meet, people that we cannot and will never forget.

Maybe some things are better left unsaid.