Sunday morning

I got all my housework done yesterday, so today was a little more relaxed. And after 4 frustrating days of the wireless network not working (made worse by not being able to check gmail at work), the sudden allowance of internet access by the God of our linksys router was worth doing an extra sun-pose and downward dog with pure gratitude in mind.

I packed Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (yes its taking me awhile, but a 600 page novel tends to do that) and set off on my bike to the beach to do a little yoga and a few hours of reading. It was great and I didn't return until closing the book after my sixth chapter, when it started raining.

Murakami's characters make me feel so comfortable with being a misfit - and I guess we all feel that way sometimes. I'm absolutely sure I am (a misfit).

From reading about Toru Okada and Creta Kano and May Kasahara, I'm not sure if I'm more inspired to sit at the bottom of an empty well for a few days to do some thinking, or to just pack up and disappear - go travelling for awhile. Both would be a great idea. I'd probably take my bicycle up north and aim for Thailand... and when I got there, I'd just keep going and see where that'd take me. I need a change of environment to for a clearer definition of myself.

I tossed with this idea over and over... still tossing in fact. I could do it. Money would be no problem - after speaking with my mum again last Thursday, I'm sure money wouldn't be an issue, and it wouldn't cost a lot just to sustain myself. I'd just focus on being a human and surviving in this planet. Just like that.

Father's day dinner is tonight

I need to make a father's day card, and I don't know what to put in it.

Last Thursday I had dinner with mum, during which we had a convenient re-cap of the history between her and dad. The story of their lives together then, but this time in a little more detail than before, just as the last time. This genre of dialogue always leaves my mother in tears, and I'll be moody for a while after as well. Likewise with my dad, although he is not one to cry as much as one who turns angry.

It's father's day today and I don't know what to write in my card, nor do I have the energy to make one. All the atrocities committed that I am usually able to stow away in the lesser viewed galleries of my brain are now in full view, vivid before me.

It wasn't too long ago when I would often lament to myself about how I was never going to be as great a man as my father. Today I wonder if I ever want to be like him at all.

This is probably exacerbated by the last week not having passed very well.

Linda has been under my skin. I never really know what she is really on about.

Now it seems its about my deep-rooted psychological issues. Yes, I have tons.

Watch out.

Ubin trip

Over lunch hour yesterday I took a taxi out to pick up the car from the mechanic's. I made a joke with Billy that he'd transformed my Toyota into an M3 that now crouched where I'd left the car Thursday morning, and I found my lame joke funny.

On my way back to the office I listened to John Mayer's Breakaway, and as I sung along to familiar phrases the tears starting streaming down my face along with spasms I could only imagine a heart attack to feel like, and I knew that this was just the beginning of missing Linda.



The afternoon in the office went by too slowly, and then too quickly as the work piled up and the hours raced forward to my long scheduled double date. The date was experimentally interesting at best... for awhile there, the tension in the air was as thick as peanut butter and I wanted to breathe it, choke on it and be sent to Gleneagles Hospital around the corner.

After listlessly roaming the streets all night, I drove home and promptly fell asleep in the car downstairs making a big wetspot on my t-shirt. I woke up about 6, came up to my room, and fell asleep again before figuring out how best to remove any articles of clothing from my body.

I reek now. Its making me ick as I type. Linda calls it the baobei smell - she used to like to knock herself out with it - I'd best describe it as the waft of dead skin making molecular bonds with sweat & oil.

Today I shall ride like hell down the park, read more of the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and have lunch at yogihub, my new favourite eating house. Its dry today, but maybe the rains will come soon, and maybe I'll see a rainbow.

Staying home

My flatmates returned to India on Thursday night. They'll be there about 2 months. So I spent the last 4 hours scrubbing the toilet and giving the kitchen its maiden cleanup. Housework can be very therapeutic.



Maybe its also good to record an entry that we broke up Monday night. Monday was the 15th.

Post-cleansing in Samui

I’ve been in Thailand the last 7 days. I fasted, drank coconuts, had massages, and read Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Although it’s hard to say exactly how, it was a truly absorbing read, and kept me lost in its pages throughout my week of hunger.

Here in Ko Samui, it is a fairly human infested place, not too different from the tourist-packed towns of Phuket, not really suitable for my next beach chill-out destination.

I’m well impressed by how my body was able to survive so well without food for 7 days, and still feel alive and energetic, with the exception of a dizzy spell every time I got up after sitting or lying for awhile. It was a dizziness that rivaled the effects of a giant bong hit.

The week away gave me enough time to reflect over my life, pondering over the current state of my relationship, my career, family ties and purposefulness in the world. I found satisfaction in these avenues of life, even while I was dissatisfied with most of them in their status quo – it was still, strangely satisfying, as if I had a glimpse of the future where the mess would settle and fall neatly into place.

Here I sit in Samui Airport, waiting for my Bangkok Airways flight to take me home in a half hour. Over the last week I have been fantasizing of all sorts of food – chocolate, brownies, ice cream, katsudon and 2 hours of dinner at Brazil on 6^th Ave, the succulent cuts of beef and roasted pineapple. Yet, I have just broken fast with a single honey mango and I find myself full and content. Strange… as if the wildest brewing storm came to a halt with a single drop of rain.

The announcer just said that we’ll be boarding in 5 minutes. That’s great because the waiting area is full of people standing already. I see many people that look like their anxious to get home. They have the deflated end-of-holiday look and they seem tired to travel. It makes me wonder a while what home means to me these days. I guess I’ll know in a few hours… at the point where I’ll actually feel I’m there.

Get some perspective on Singapore's misunderstood Dr Chee Soon Juan.

Video.Google link to Martyn See's video

Pre-Monday Merry

Welcome to paulatwork.blogspot.com, where the author can't process a thought without first blabbering it out to the world. Does your mind work like that too?

It's Sunday night and where I'm usually busy dreading the first morning of the work week, tonight I am grateful for a fabulous weekend of spending quality time with my favourite little missy. Funny why I call it quality time. Clearly my definition of quality is an abundance of sleep and mucking around with in bed - much like the life of a pig. This makes sense...pork is quality meat.

Ok - so it wasn't all lazing around. Out of respect for the pain that Linda's arms & quadraceps now endure, over an hour of smackdown on the badminton court made for some enthusiastically applied time over the weekend as well.

And I noticed I also had yearnings for
- a fast car
- a new macho skin for my bongo
- superhuman guitar shredding skills
- a Callaway 10" driver...and a utility wood to go
- accelerated gym results
How do I get these?

At various points over the weekend I also looked at Linda in her raw sleeping glory and I beamed to myself and thought, how did I get her?

Strange, tempting and delightful life is... all at once, without ever a need for any of it to make sense.