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Rurouni Kenshin

Woah! I must say that this is really good stuff! Watched 10 episodes straight even though I am dead beat after a full day of work and school. My colleague from nj, who is super into canto pop music, has been giving me exposure modules to jap anime over canteen breaks, and lent me all 4 dvds of rurouni kenshin. The plot is a bit predictable because kenshin ALWAYS beats the bad guys in every single episode. But wad I really like is his tormented guilt complex, whenever he tries to reconcile his past as a Battousai during the meiji revolution, with the present as a redemptive simple wanderer. The one thing that is pretty awesome is Kenshin's defensive reverse-bladed sword, or the 'sakabato'. I wonder if he will ever reverse his sakabato to go into offensive mode in the future. Oh well, I still got 50 odd episodes to find out! =p

Cherish the good times

It has been a while since I've stoned properly - eating ice cream, reading a book and people watching. It is hard to do that in Singapore. This photo was taken in Paris, I think Daniel was walking in Louvre while I was stoning at St Germain. I think I'll do some proper stoning soon. These days I try to space out my 'starbucks money' - one bucks per week - so that I won't over spend. I need to find cheaper and less crowded places to stone, away from the west or central part of sg. My life will be quite transformed next month when the new car arrives. Mom says bro doesn't want to drive, which means I get to colonize the old car... hur hur. But I'm still working out on my petrol bills. Even one starbucks per month won't really help. Argh. Still, I think I'll drive up north to hunt for places to stone come next month, heh.

a new morning

Jesus, don't cry
you can rely on me honey
you can combine anything you want
I'll be around
you were right about the stars
each one is a setting sun

tall buildings shake
voices escape singing sad sad songs
tuned to chords strung down your cheeks
bitter melodies turning your orbit around

'Jesus, etc' Wilco (from another album)

old friends

met up with my council friends today cos one of us is flying to the states this saturday. wow, you can really sense people ageing together. 2 of them are looking for a hdb flat together, 1 of them is engaged, 2 are married, and many are going to the states over the next 2 years. they are all doing their GRE and GMAT now, except me. chun chia told me to stop daydreaming and join him in the states. aiyah.. i still think 6 years to get a phd is toooo long. i might as well stay there since I'll probably be so used to the life there after 6 years. my prof told me that the fall out rate is pretty high though to do phd in some unis, cos the the mental loneliness can be quite a killer, so it is very common to spend 6 years there without getting certified, plus you are living from hand to mouth everyday. sometimes i ask myself, what in the world am I in for in this academic business thingy? i should simplify and de-idealize things a bit. i'll probably be a happier person that way.

Life and Simplicity

Listen to what Thomas Mann has to say about simplicity, in this novella titled 'Tonio Kroger'.

"Listen to me. I love life - that is a confession. I present it to you for safe keeping; you are the first person to whom I have made it... 'Life' confronts intellect and art as their eternal opposite - but not as a vision of bloodstained greatness and savage beauty. We who are exceptions do not see life as something exceptional; on the contrary! Normality, respectability, decency - these are our heart's desire, this to us is life, life in its seductive banality! No one, my dear, has a right to call himself an artist if his profoundest craving is for the refined, the eccentric and the satanic - if his heart knows no longing for innocence, simplicity and living warmth, for a little friendship and self-surrender and familiarity and human happiness - if he is not secretly devoured, Lisaveta, by this longing for the bliss of the commonplace..."

It was nice playing settlers with the whole motley gang today. Maybe because I won with my longest road once again. I like last night too, even though we missed itchy and scratchy on the moon. I guess I'm drawn to the sense of familiarity, laughing at silly things together. I'm not really looking forward to tmr's tea session for grad students. Loathing intellectual talk quite a bit for now. Oh well... need to snap out of it soon to start preparing for a new season of essay typing.

July and August

Oh, the band marched on in formation
The brass was phasing
Tunes I couldn't place
Windows open and
Raining in
Maroon, yellow, blue, gold and gray

With a sky blue sky
I should be satisfied
I survived
That's good enough for now

'Sky Blue Sky', Wilco

Friday

Went to catch a pay-as-you-wish iranian film, "The Willow Tree" by Majid Majidi, with daniel and his friend at national museum today. Pretty existentialist stuff as it is about a blind man's experience of regaining his sight and losing it again towards the end. Think of words like 'being', 'becoming' and 'awakening' and you get a sense of the film's narrative as the protagonist wrestles with his God for more compassion, as well as overcoming his inability to cope with the new freedom in experiencing colors.

I was pretty attracted to this whole existentialist philosophy when I was first starting out in social science. It kind of got a bit too airy fairy for me along the way. Then, Soren Kierkegaard was quite a philo hero for me, though I could never really comprehend his either/or book, or why he has to get rid of his wife to proof his love for her. Kind of got a renewed interest in existentialism after visiting different art museums in europe, as I think that such meta-theories seem to make more sense in the realm of art. Think of the works of magritte, dali and dadaists and maybe those are what I feel, are ways, where we can, in the words of kierkegaard, start to explore the pardoxical attempt of 'discovering things that thought cannot think'. I don't know, I kind of believe in that philosophy as a way to approach life... sometimes.

Anyway, the above photo has nothing to do with existentialism. I was just kind of fascinated by the crack lines in the wall. Wondering where in Singapore can I find such authentic walls???

Frozen in Time

Maybe photography is magical because it heightens the awareness of the subject's mortality; any indecisive moment would have created much absence rather than presence.

It has been a nua-ing, salty and enjoyable day at jb today. Time to sleep to prepare for a busy weekend of school admin, research reading and ministry stuff =p

jb

"Hilly downtown JB is undeniably scruffy, a fact born out by a stroll through the claustrophobic alleys of the sprawling market, below the KOMTAR building on Jalan Wong Ah Fook, where machetes, silk and one-thousand-year-old eggs (actually preserved for a year in lime, ash and tea leaves) are sold... A little further south, the Sri Mariammam Temple lends a welcome splash of primary colours to the cityscape. Underneath its gopuram, and beyond the two gatekeepers on horseback who guard the temple, is the usual collection of vividly depicted figures from the Hindu pantheon..." (The roughguide to Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei)

Heh, it is quite interesting to read guidebooks on your own region. Small facets of everyday local life are illuminated with travel-savvy insights. Even the not-so-interesting nooks and crannies are painted with a sense of rowdiness and vibrancy that gives it character and cultural vibes. Maybe I should backpack in Southeast Asia soon, once I have saved enough. Going to JB tmr for a day of shoot-out and pigging out :)