The DeBeers Delusion

Love the woman you marry or marry the woman you love. - Heard that one before? Its fucking popular with the aunties. I guess ideally, you marry the woman you love and then you learn to love her after the fireworks are over.

But I've come to figure that emotionally I'm incredibly volatile, and as much as I hate it, I find myself completely ruled by my emotions. It's a bit of a debacle when you realise that unlike the marriage that should last as long as a DeBeers diamond, being in love doesn't. And what if you cannot or don't want to be in a relationship where you're not in love? Some people call it dealing with life or growing up or getting real... but I wonder if it's just people getting jaded with the ideals they once lived for.

And its strange when you realise that the masses are more comfortable with husbands and wives having affairs while fronting a happy union, than with divorce, if only marginally. It's about having love, not being in love. they'll say... But I think being in love's important, even if it has me quickly sorted into the meat pile that is "young, foolish & idealistic".

What to do? There's alot of merit to dying young.

I've been trying to digest this concept for years and all I've got from it is diarhoea and serial monogamy.

I've been in love in a relationship for a few months now. It's fantastic, if a little inconvenient because time moves at warp speed when we're together and between work and sleep there's so little time left...and I wouldn't have it any other way. But... if only by statistic I know that being in love doesn't last a lifetime, which means that at some point I'll have to decide if I'm still young, foolish & idealistic or if I've grown up.

To tell the truth, I don't ever want to grow up.

But I don't want to fall out of love either.

Kiwi is a vodka

I find myself stumbling about the room after just half a glass of that delightful 42 Below we picked up on the way back from Phuket. Those college drinking days are clearly a thing of the past.

Lots has been happening lately, yet I can't write about any of it for all the usual reasons that one maintains an anonymous blog, and because I'm a lazy fucker. A potentially disastrous week has, however, turned out pretty damn well. The relationship is A*, I haven't killed my boss, things with Dad are pally, and generally the people who are important to me are pretty happy with me (man - what a libran thing to say).

Big cheers to life and to being happy

Mars darshan

I got an email to tell me that I'm pretty lucky I'm not dead right now because Mars is making that uber-rare trip so close to our Planet and that sometime after midnight tonight, it's going to appear to be as big as our full moon. I was psyched, thinking how we'd make cocktails, climb up onto the roof and graze under two moons, one yellow, one red.

It turns out that a guy really can't do 2 moons at the same time: the dream is nothing nothing more than an e-mail hoax.

Nice bitta lyric from Amos Lee's debut album

I'm in love with a girl
who's in love with the world
though i can't help but follow...

Though i know someday
she is bound to go away
and stay over the rainbow...

Gotta learn how to let her go...
Over the rainbow...

But sometimes
we forget
who we got...
who they are

There is so much more in love than black and white
keep it loose child.. gotta keep it tight.

K.L

KL with the company was fun!

Got plenty drunk.
Both nights.
Got into a little bit of trouble.
But not too much.

I hope.
*gulp*

Nomads got gonads

Travel must be in the stars this month. So soon after our return from Phuket I'm off to Kuala Lumpur on a company retreat this weekend! While I have underlying fears that the chartered bus could actually be ferrying us off to concentration-camp hell, travel is still a lovely thing for stretching our attachments to home. Fresh soil is both a refresher and a reminder that - all together now - We're part of the human tribe of planet Earth!

That's the statement that always strokes me into believing that I could travel and live all over the planet - not as a tourist but to live, work and make real friends on new soil - that's actually the same soil - if you dig deep enough.

- Pause for lunch -
I just drank a herbal soup so strong and dark that when I held it close to take in the smell, I worried that it'd reach out and grab me.

I have a friend who's recently moved to Hong Kong for work. He's been trotting all over the planet for years now - going solo. I take my hat off to him for the world truly is his oyster, as it is all of ours, if we dare claim it. Satyen - respect to you buddy. Thank you for believing in the tribe... may you never be lonely.

Juice

By an incredibly adventurous rollerblading stunt, I managed to put a hole in my knee - to match the one in my head in fact. And for a squirm, here's the pic.



I leak knee-juice constantly - it's disgusting. Why cut so deep, you ask. Typically one breaks fall with one's hands -

but I was holding treasure.

My grandfather once say

"Small wealth comes from dilligence. Large wealth comes from heaven."

Phuket Day 4

8/8/5 Monday

11.30 am - It's always a consolation when there's an Internet kiosk at the departure gate and your flight's been delayed. It's even more of a consolation to have an iPod with you, and perhaps I'm forgetting that the most blessed fortune is that of fantastic company.

Originally scheduled for 9.00 this morning, Tiger Airways flight 153 has been delayed until noon without any given excuse, completely wasting this morning's Operation Wake-Up which successfully got our asses to the airport by 7.45 am. We were picked up by a guy with a red Toyota Corona with which he derived great pleasure from on the winding hillside roads, passing other traffic with the aplomb that dad and me would usually head up to Mersing with. Cowboy-town traffic never fails to excite.

Regretfully it wasn't until our journey to the airport that we got around to seeing the other beaches of Phuket like Kamala & Kata. The few that we passed were each set differently against the hills and coconut palms, and didn't seem quite as overwhelming when it came to the sale of useless but no doubt tempting stuff as Patong. A pity to tear through these beach towns in a rocket rather than the breezy back seat of a little red tut-tut.


The breezy back seat of a little red tut-tut, of course.

12.45 pm - Amazingly, despite waiting at the departure gate for three hours, the only thing we bought was canned coffee, an hour of Internet useage and a pack of Kinder Bueno - unscathed by a very decent duty free shop. I even managed to prevent myself from putting together a pretty pearl necklace at the shop that declaring it had the cheapest pearls in Thailand. What would we do without those?!

It won't be long till we touchdown on home shores, along with the 20 white dudes and their pretty Thai girlfriends on this flight. I suspect they fell in love with Thailand during their stay and wanted to take a little part of her home - though I'm not sure if Singapore is home to them as it is to me. I guess it's a little like how I fell in love in Singapore and want to take a little bit of her everywhere I go as well.

Thanks for reading, my name is Paul and I'm rested, relaxed and ready to face the world again.


That said,
Thank God tomorrow's a public holiday.

Phuket Day 3

8/7/5 Sunday

11.00 am - Sometimes it feels like music is my only true love. And that love is the only drug I need... and it seems like Ray LaMontagne is the only crooner I've ever been able to listen to while writing - now that's all pretty strange to me.


Soda, Ray & smokes in the sun. Summer vacation :)

But life is strange... maybe Linda is right and I have to go out there - see, do, fuck everything (eww right? hah. yeea) - but all I can ever do is what I want to, right here and right now. How else?

My greatest challenge in life has always been stepping out of my own head. And when I do, it's always a celebration.

Last day in Phuket. Better get a tan.

Thank you for 3 days of delightful weather.

Phuket Day 2

8/6/5 Saturday

12.00 pm - Outside out hotel room balcony is an voltage transformer tower that zaps and crackles nonstop - I had earlier thought the sound to be rain in the distance. I'm sitting out here trying to catch a little of the midday sun while the magnetic radiation negotiates with my cells to form a malignant mutiny. No worries. I've got Ray LaMontagne on the iPod to wallow me through the shallow troubles of my heart and this sufficiently mitigates any negative impact from the Tesla Tower.


Crackle zing zang

When I'm in places like Phuket and other third-world, tourist-overrun paradise lands, there's always this pain for the place and her natives. Unlike a BigMac, the price of human dignity does change significantly around the world. The disparities on our planet are beyond understanding - how is one to believe that all humankind is equal unless the ways in which we perceive and measure ourselves now are... insignificant?


1.00 am - We're just back from strolling through the party areas of Patong Beach. Its true, what they say about sex & Phuket - there's ALOT of it, and in more forms that I'm used to seeing. It's as if Patong's entire population only comes out at night to party and hook up, and spend their sunny hours locked up in their rooms having sex. No wonder the tut-tut drivers best spend their time following skanks like us around on the streets. They want to take us home to have sex. I think they need to go home and have sex, man.

Phuket Day 1

8/5/5 Friday

7.35 am - After a long and fretful trek to gate C18 we've found our seats aboard Tiger Airways 152. Window seats, sorta next to the engine. We'll be ready to take off soon. Ready to take her clothes off already.

And mine.
For some sun, of course.


8.55 am - Pilot just said its a beautiful day in Phuket! I've also found Donavon Frankenreiter and sounds like he's the perfect beach holiday soundtrack. The plane's begun its descent and both of our sinuses are hurting us. That's cos we're a little fluey and everyone else is in beachwear but I look like I'm going snowboarding.


In my hoodie outside Changi Airport

10.38 am - This li'l van is rippin' down to Patong town!

Following some talk about plugged sinuses and painful ear canals, I think its the curse of our society that the odds of someone like Linda becoming a doctor is very low. She's fiendishly curious about everything (especially the human body), genuinely cares for other people well beyond making bucks and has a rather brilliant mind - which is more than can be said for many of our doctors. Pity she was bored in school, then.


Midnite - Seems like there's no personal problem in the world that being on holiday can't solve - I'm either wrong or just have really easy problems...well, both really.

We got back from Central Festival near Phuket town a little while ago, and literally the second after stepping into the hotel (from checking out the pool and curling a giant millepede), the rain came down as if reminding me to toast to being in the right place at the right time.

Being in the right place at the right time. That's what its all about isn't it...

Came out of the shower and Linda was asleep already. She's exhausted. She's been keeping me on edge for months.

Monster truck ambulances

Been exactly eleven months since I've returned home. I've long stopped converting back to USD, but I'm not fully immersed yet, and I guess I don't really want to be either. I was on my way to the Paragon today (haha but not to shit), waiting to cross at the lights and observed an ambulance - lights flashing, sirens blarring - trying to squirm past a bunch of cars. Not that the cars hadn't moved aside - they had. But were still speeding along and making lane changes thus making for a very wary ambulance driver. (Who wouldn't beware the taxi driver who crosses 3 lanes in front of a wailing ambulance to tag the other side of the pavement?)

You're supposed to pull-over. That means STOP you FUCK HEADS.

Then again, maybe you're not all that dumb. You recognize that if you did stop, guy in the WRX behind you who can't decide whether to ride the ambulance's wake or overtake it will probably make a high speed accident of himself, yourself, and the retarded black bird (mynahs...) on the road, resulting in the need for another 2 ambulances to endure a similar ordeal and a probable road kill.

Ambulances should use monster trucks. Maybe they could burn regular gasoline instead of that lethal nitro-methane dragster fuel but, you see, its a cultural thing and other drivers won't fuck off unless you're riding on rubbers as tall as a bus.
Not to say this place is all bad. Amidst our breed of courtesy campaigners we managed to build a place as cool as the Esplanade. And you can still find love :)

Sigh yet another angsty post from me that highlights more than ever the need for me to go on holiday - which I am doing very soon. The reflection of today's sizzling sun was so pretty against shiny spiny leaves in the wind on Orchard Road, flickering light; flaunting life. So dazzling that if my da jie was looking I'd worry that she'd get a migraine.
The same sight has a different impact on me - almost instantly I feel like I'm in Phuket already, playing Bob the Builder sand edition with my toes and getting solicited by banana sellers.

Beach bliss must be good for banana sales.

I fly off Friday and its becoming the case that my mind's linking everything somehow to this upcoming horleeedaye. I've got a song in my head and its well fused to that horleeedaye feeling. Strangely enough, however, its called Earthquake Weather. Anybody like Beck?