CPF CUT?!

Woe. sniffle. sniff. I can’t do this.

Filed under: cringes, daily grind

the highway

It must be that I am rather weak, for the wind, water, assorted (dubious) gods are testing my resilience. They unplug my coping mechanisms. The dust settles since I’ve left my life in Melbourne, cling-wrapped neutral in a box, saved for behind-the-shoulder glances. The events of the past two weeks have unnerved me abit, sometimes dismal disaster after disaster dropping like overhead air bombs. The air raid shelters offer little.

Recouping old relationships and meeting old faces- for a first time since ‘in transition’, now without excuse, without holding back for some other life that supposedly continued on some other planet. This is your entire basket, don’t divide your eggs. Recounting old stories, the exchanging of anecdotes with old-new friends of a trusty entourage makes me humble: it is in their kindness I dwell. Noticing how they’ve changed in little ways I appreciate, I re-evaluate friendships and try to fit into the new scheme of things. The world revolves, this is what happen when you leave a shell behind for sometime, like a garden that needs tending too.

Challenges abound on a daily basis. The bridget-jones moments: the two broken heels (two separate pairs), the losing of vital right contact lense. The waiting. Waiting for a cab that went to Changi instead of Clementi, for the morning bus-train-bus. For the tasks to flood, for lunch, for the day to end, for tomorrow. The exasperation. Of making dozens of foolish mistakes while performing simple menial tasks. Of Getting rebuked, my pride hurts and regenerates, emotional baggage weighs down my heart.

O work. The logistical operations, the minor requests and the nitty gritty details. The protocol, ’standard operating procedures’, the plans to save your own ass. All Clarissa Dalloway wanted to do, was to throw a dinner party. All my department wants to do, is to ensure the party runs smooth. How mundane, and then how arrogant to declare it mundane. And then I go. WTF, wtf, wtf. What am I doing here? Surely the experience pays the voice of rationality advises. Oh suffer the fool, says my weary heart. Work. The one-hour lunch break that comes and go, the journeying to and fro this little western corner of the island that requires ridiculously long copious amounts of energy, patience and time. With the new job, I find new questions to ask myself, and new answers are popping up- some not always invited. I’ve burst into tired, angry tears this week. No ways it is going to happen again.

Time with family is best. Petty disagreements about space, about method and opinion. Cheerful teasing and bantering and overspilling amounts of family jokes. The quiet recesses between nine to eleven in the evening spent unwinding in an occupied living room. Presence. Perhaps this is what life is about, sharing life itself. All this I have taken to, most gladly.

And of course hanging like a dark looming cloud in the background, a cloud I wish to harness nonetheless- is Nepal. How am I going to gather my sensibilities to fundraise, how am I going to garner the energies? The procrastinating thoughts, come side by side my questions. Do you really know what you are in for? Or do you just lack the foresight to anticipate? The voice of reason rebukes.

And now, the weekend is gone again. The week, the exact one I have trundled across, faces me again, like some arch-nemesis for Round 2, mocking. It promises: the ditches, the potholes, the sickening revelations, the shit shit non-work. Tiring. How you stare at me, you governing gods of heavenly departments, how you work me to my limits. I am so, so spent. You better know that.

Filed under: daily grind

Insidious dark under a breast pocket

Unpeel your heart. Notice the left valve: tepid as spring and nuanced as a pacemaker should be. The right valve you put your ear to, hear its voluminous ruminations- as steadily passionate as a hot air balloon entering dusk. Slip your fingers lightly to the back of this fine carriage- finger the bumps of uncertainty, the strong veins of spirit. Your heart- warm, moist, thriving.

But lo and behold- sight the dark capillaries nudging in at the bottom; their rust stains the purest of red, their unknowing dark casts a shadow over your X-ray card. Cure your heart, the doc advises.

Filed under: moronics, quirks, written word

pocket fears

I am afraid of the deep deep dark. These fears I have tried to assuage by hastening my steps, by singing, by groping around for tactile comfort- but still the long recesses of the dark haunts- the dark multiplies distance, it is oppressive, it is deafening.

I have been back home for three days. Last night before I turned in, I noticed Mum’s room door was wide open, despite the lights having been turned off, and her having turned in. My parents usually shut their room door at night. But Dad is away in China this week. Her opened door reveals to me a vulnerability my mother owns but never flashes. She is afraid.

For the first time since wanting to go to Nepal, since wanting to spend yet another long stint away from home, I find myself guilty for being insensitive and inconsiderate. The door ajar was a gentle but disheartening reminder of a mother’s dislike for loneliness. A mother mothers, and it is only natural her imagination runs amok when her children are not close by. She might protest in the day, and you might retort and call foul to all her claims of danger and risk theories. But in the night, when she says not a word but goes to sleep with this painful door wide open, I cannot shut her feelings outpouring from the room. It is like her dreams are on offensive, and I am besieged.

I’ve always had a night light when I was younger. And my mother always left her door wide open for me to run through to her arms- nightmare or no nightmare. Those years, my fear lived next to my comfort, co-existing in harmony. Neither went away.

I only learnt to face this fear of the dark recently,when suddenly thrown in adulthood I stumble in the dark, when I have no choice but to run headfirst into it- without a night light, and without an open door. But I find the switch eventually. If it scares me too much.

Filed under: heartaches, musings

debbie tagged me…

8 random things about me:

1. I have a model family. I’m certain its the living example of some prototype plan of the PAP. We are nuclear, wholesome and conventional- and most of the time very happy.

2. I am a conscientious omnivore. No factory farmed meat and dairy. Yes seafood and veggies. Yes. seafood. Still ethically flawed.

3. I don’t like wearing socks, much. Okay, ewww-ed. whatever.

4. I am a binge eater. Emotional food swings.

5. One of my greatest fears is to pierce my ears.

6. I have never been in a relationship, not even close.

7. I think I am going to find love on the train. Deluded, I know. Nevermind me. 

8. I can’t think of the 8th thing. Oh I just graduated. I’m back in Singapore. For good… for a bit.

And i tag…  Deborah, WeeJian and Leo!

Filed under: quirks