bike dreams
bike dreams
Originally uploaded by bentann.looking at this reminds me of that time when we did a long cycle ride in amsterdam. 'twas a most enjoyable journey, and boy, do i miss that city!
(image by a friend - love that sunlight streaming through, and the green reflected off the frame of the door. would love to have myself some bike dreams...)
the haha's today
this P4 kid at the Learning Centre is usually damn annoying. but today, he made everyone laugh a lot. he usually can't stop talking (loudly, for that matter), and he is the sort who thinks aloud. this pisses the hell out of everyone. earlier, he was being his usual self, except that at one point, this long stream of saliva fell out of his mouth.
and then later, when he was trying to get my attention, he accidentally called me "mummy!" gosh, i don't know what goes on in this kid's head.
also, when we were taking a walk at the Macritchie Reservoir earlier, instead of "Brokeback Mountain", my dear friend R said "Backbroke Mountain"!
my sister's wedding
i actually wrote a rather long post about this, but to cut the long story short, i thought it was going to be another one of those family things, but i guess i was wrong.
most of all, for the first time, i genuinely missed my (maternal) grandmother.
...
then came the shock of hearing someone call you "sister" (in teochew - don't know how to "spell" it,) for the first time, and then realising that, shit, he's really part of family now!
and when my sister gave her "thank you" speech, and talked about how our (paternal) grandmother "fussed over" her when she had chicken pox, and how she is the sort of grandmother anyone can ever hope for, i thought about how we would all say that about our grandmothers.
but i just want to say this again, cos i know that you've all probably heard this before - my (paternal) grandmother is damn
garang (cigarette smoking and all). she is so fucking cool, and i hope i have inherited all her
garang-ness.
ampulets wedding shoes
Derek Walcott's "Tomorrow, Tomorrow"
I remember the cities I have never seen
exactly. Silver-veined Venice, Leningrad
with its toffee-twisted minarets. Paris. Soon
the Impressionists will be making sunshine of out shade.
Oh! and the uncoiling cobra alleys of Hyderabad.
To have loved one horizon is insularity;
it blindfolds vision, it narrows experience.
The spirit is willing, but the mind is dirty.
The flesh wastes itself under crumb-sprinkled linens,
widening the
Weltanschauung with magazines.
A world's outside the door, but how upsetting
to stand by your bags on a cold step as dawn
roses the brickwork and before you start regretting,
your taxi's coming with one beep of its horn,
sidling to the curb like a hearse - so you get in.
what my friend said to me 11 years ago on this day:
"for us (the French), it's Valentine's Day everyday!"
getting the bus
today i decided to get the bus to work because i got fed up with trying to
flag down a bloody taxi in the morning. (nevermind that there seems to be tons of empty ones around. maybe they are ghost taxis.)
anyway, the bus that i took was not air-conditioned, and really, it was a pleasant ride. 'twas kind of nostalgic. it made me think of nice long (empty)bus-rides from a long time ago.
the best part is that i didn't leave home any earlier today, and i still made it to work on time.
