30 April, 2004

It's been a trying week.

But I thank God for friends and family.

And I've learnt to appreciate all of them better.

Cause you'll never know when their time is up.

22 April, 2004

I'm utterly out of ideas as to what to write these days so I'll probably leave that to Boony.
School's been pretty hectic. Assignments are piling up and exams are coming soon.
My creativity (or what's left of it) is choked.

Other than that I'm just surprised that many Australians still think that Mandarin is the first language in Singapore. But then again I don't blame them. The way some of the Singaporeans speak over here is extremely appalling. I mean it's like they have some kinda of fucking lesion to the left hemisphere of their brain; either that or they have brains the size of aphids. A true apogee of embarassment for Singaporeans. I mean even if you can't speak proper english, at least lose the singlish when you're speaking to an Australian or some other white/black/non-Singaporean dude.

Bah. Anyway, I've started reading Shakespeare again. Don't know why but I'm suddenly feeling very "sonnety" and have this insatiable desire to drown myself in his soliloquies.

Either that or I'm just a sad fuck. But even if i was a sad fuck or a sad fucker, at least I will never ever be a mother fucker.


Fair thee well O sweet night,
May your summer winds
Blow away my restless plights
.

20 April, 2004

Just a quick one, in a series of upcoming quick ones narrating the various ways in which these FUCKING SINGAPOREANS PISS ME OFF.

The Singaporean idea of humour is, typically, crude and fucking UNfunny enough to validate the systematic elimination of the species, with a few good looking young women put aside. Hell, just tell them they have to get into that gas chamber or 'face possible fines and a jail term', and watch them fall over themselves to get in. This brought on by my being in a Gunbound game. Err well for those of you who don't know, just imagine this cybernetic, video-gamy room where people can go into. Mine was for six, divided into two sides of 3 - 3. My side was full. There is one guy on the other side. Suddenly, this new person comes in and says,

"-name of the guy who was alone at first- is a cb kia".

"haha"

But lo, they were friends who knew each other, and those, to me, fighting words, were actually a cordial greeting of sorts. Brings to mind the comments of this Singaporean author I read, where she notes that Singaporeans are practically the ONLY people, who, whereupon seeing someone they haven't for a long period of time, will find SOMETHING bad to say about the much-missed party. "eh y u so dark liao." "wah you put on weight issit?" It's something I ashamedly realize myself to be guilty of, and while I mumble things about years of ingrained culturing, am consciously trying to rectify. But don't worry, if I finally see you again after all this time and I say you look wonderful, it's because I mean it. Well, probably.


Sorry. Been reading the papers too much. It's just too damned ridiculous, the way the people here place their priorities. Allow me my last refrain - Guess what the papers, Straits Time, no less, decided to publish from their indubitably large pool of letters with concerns? Some guy with TOO DAMNED MUCH TIME ON HIS HANDS AND A SENSE OF SELF-IMPORTANCE GROTESQUELY OUT OF PROPORTION TO HIS POND-SCUM GENES noted strongly that it is the law to wear your seatbelt, and in this advertisement of some sort, artiste Chew Chor Meng was portrayed getting into a taxi WITHOUT HIS SEATBELT ON! MY GODS! The audacity of these unlawful, youth-seducing media icons! He expressed the genuine concern that he 'hopes the authorities can do something about it.' .

I hate this place. I really do. Tell me, besides getting shitfaced enough so the world is awash with pretty colours and reality doesn't bite so bad, is there any other way to keep my sanity?


-Drake

19 April, 2004

back in brissie.

very very homesick.

17 April, 2004

No, this is not a hostile takeover, and I'm sure my bruddah dearest will
return with a vengeance soon, with prose to move mountains and shake
martinis with, in all probability with some degree of allusion to my
sexuality but, well. For now, I speak once more, and on an entirely
different note from previous flippancy and frivilousities. Verbosity,
however, is rather too deeply ingrained to shrug off at will, and apologies
are made well in advance. On the metaphorical other, it quite has its place
in this piece, which is meant to be a humble tribute of sorts to someone I
consider an amazing person who has since tragically passed on, and to which
words are, as so painfully is usually the case, all I have to give.

It doesn't take much time with me to infer the degree of cynicism that has
slowly, over years of nurturing, taken root in this one particular
uneducated barbarian. Basically, it takes quite a bit to intrigue or impress
me, but when it happens, I often give over to it unconditionally. Being born
and bred in Singapore has contributed a fair bit towards this unsavoury
characteristic, I fear, for as a whole, Singaporeans are just so stupid,
uninspired, rude and general jackasses that when someone comes along that
speaks well, has depth of thought beyond -Sian today go where aiyoh I need
money to buy ting wah that girl so chio-, and is actually funny, I tend to
get all classically head over heels.

I read a fair bit. Less, and more genre-restrictively than I would like, but
I do nonetheless. Elucidating the process of a literary diet, and to detail
mine would be another entry altogether - suffice, for the purposes of this
exposition, that I say I rarely, if ever, read anything indigenous to
Singapore. Admittedly, I haven't done any degree of research into available
local literature that can begin to be called extensive, but take a look on
the local shelves at the bookstore.

Ghost stories. That about sums it up. True Singapore Ghost Stories, volumes
1 through 3275, and this one I saw imaginatively titled "Tunnels of Blood".
Some collection of maritial scandals written by private investigators, and minor
other assortments of refreshing poetry and other odds/ends. I
was, and mostly remain, unmoved by the -creative- efforts of my...fellow
men. It in fact takes an expatriate, Neil Humphrey, to whip something up
that piqued me sufficiently to make the purchase. Lamentable, but
unsurprising. The fact, that is. Not the book. The 'Notes' series by Neil
Humphrey is rather excellent light reading. I refuse to disclose how much he
paid me.

Can one be blamed, then, for judging a book by its cover? 'Excuse Me, Are
You a Model?', by Bonny Hicks, was just another title dismissed...almost
disdained by your dear barbarian. Recently however, having entertained
illusions of grandeur about writing a book, I determined it would first be
prudent to see what actually got published locally. Still shunning the critical
acclaim of True Singapore Ghosties (Russell can kiss my...), I eventually
gravitated to the aforementioned, together with her only other work,
'Discuss Disgust', and, swallowing apprehension, pride and other
misgivings, picked them both up.

Allow me mild digression here. I used to be a huge advocate of the whole
-Looks are a facade, inner beauty is da bomb- shitznat, but scattered,
pointed comments by meh bruddah dearestest had led to a reassessment.
Looks do matter.

If Bonny was a Pamela Tang (I hope to various omniscient deities she never
reads this.), besides the point that the book would never have happened,
much less a modelling career, I may have been less intrigued. Yes, -may-.
She did happen, however, to be just mildy short of gorgeous, with those
cliched eyes that spoke of a thousand stories to tell. As I slowly ingested
the book 'Excuse Me... ' , I could help myself not, but to stare at the many
pictures of herself in the book an keep asking myself - She looks this good,
she writes this well, and she's born-bred local? It was objective aesthetic
appreciation, mind. If she was alive today she'd be old enough to be my mother.
CONTRARY TO WHATEVER THE GUYS MAY TELL YOU, I DO
NOT HAVE A FASCINATION WITH MOTHERS.

There is power in the sweet, simple, and succinct. Having Googled her name,
I stumbled upon an entry in this Singaporean dude's blog, who interestingly
enough had a vocabulary remarkable even by my pompous standards, but a sense
of grammar bad enough to cause me mild migraines and develop a nervous
twitch in my eye from all that wincing. To the chase - He says Bonny Hicks
wrote a bestseller by stringing simple sentences together, which is amazing, and
that while one can develop a vocabulary, one cannot be taught the ability to write.
I'd have asked him to take his own advice but hey, we're all critics. His
observation was, however, most astute. You'd seldom find a word of more
than three syllables in "Excuse Me...", and perish the thought of combing it for
hidden social criticisms and analogies. It's simply to be taken at face value -
an in-your-face, talk-over-coffee kind of sincerity and the telling of a story
unembellished yet breathtaking in its natural complexity. Few people will ever
live the kind of life that, for its own sake, makes for the telling of a good story.
I know I wish I do. A story of my life, however, would be along the lines of a
one paragraph entry, with the subsequent pages being "Refer - Page one." .
The life of the late Bonny Hicks made for bestseller material, and her
powerfully personal tone is something I wish I could adopt in its cutting
simplicity.


Having modelled for three years, she found herself financially independent,
and henceforth moved to Indonesia to take up with a publishing company,
of which the details I am uncertain. As some of you might know,
she subsequently perished in a plane crash on the way back to
Singapore, with her body never being found. That was in 1997, and she
was, I believe, in her late twenties then.


Looking back at what I've written, here and otherwise, I cannot help but
feel a sense of inadequacy. I come nowhere near to expressing the
myriad of emotion that coursed, unaccustomed and the more intense
for it, through me as I read the story of her life. The superficial intrigue
at a pretty face. The deepening of interest as I realized that she had
something to say, and was saying it all too well. The peculiar blend
of envy and camaraderie - The former of her having truly lived life, where
I do but lose myself in speculation, and the latter in that, like myself, she
was somewhat of an anomaly in the family; the one outstanding link
in a morass of otherwise unimpressive mundanity. The peaks and
trenches of sentiment, carelessly but not callously manipulated at will by a
will unwillingly willed out of existence. And the regret - the at-once sour,
bitter and empty feeling of yearning to have somehow corresponded with
her. Of the two of us, though I arrogantly claim similarity, she was the one
who made it. Not to mention the better looking one.

I leave you then, fellow consciousnesses, with a chillingly nostradamic
quip from one too-early gone.

"The heavens can wait, but I cannot. Time is not on my side." .

Simple. Cutting. Deeper than she ever would know.


"Too early seen unknown and known too late." Farewell then,
Bonny Hicks. Too late, and yet far, far
too early.


-Drake

12 April, 2004

I was going to give a bit of an insight into something else entirely but well, I decided against it. Too particular to myself and my life-induced melancholia. So let's instead look at something else entirely. Something more mainstream and sensational.

Porn! Good old audio-visual sexual stimulation. I'm not sure about the rest of you out there but I'm particular about my porn. It has to be of a certain standard, aye? Having seen a good very much of what the internet has to share in the way of pornography, some things just stand out across all racial and genre platforms and are, I feel, comment-worthy. Let's just take a minute here to establish that the below observations are detached and hopefully more of a clinical analysis than a lewd proposition. =o

You can easily distinguish good porn from bad, I feel, by what kind of mindset the participants in the particular film have toward the act. Generally, the professional acts lack that raw edge of excitement and enjoyment the so-called amateurs have. Then there are the...sad ones. Girls that, for attention or otherwise, just want to get into it and are exploited relentlessly. I can't help but wince at some of them. There was this one girl in particular. Like...ugh. She had these horrible acne swellings pasted over with cheap foundation and was anything BUT attractive. Then she forced this rather impressively large member down her throat and gagged, and subsequently vomitted. It's close to funny, the sight of vomit spewing from around the edges of the phallus in her mouth. The guy seemed otherwise unaffected, though. Maybe the different texture did it for him.

It's also rather interesting to observe the differences between Asian and Western porn. I mean, ok, you don't really normally look for cultural identifiers in porn but they're very much there! Asian porn is typically all about male domination. The role of the girl is just to sit/lie there and make squeaky noises with her eyes closed. Emphasis on that last bit - throughout the enitre however long the flick might be, the girl has her eyes closed. Yes, you do tend to close your eyes almost instinctively as that shiver of pleasure runs through you but these people don't look at -anything-. From the moment her breasts start getting massaged, she falls into a trance-like state where all she does is squeal, including when they shift positions. In Asian pornography, the female is seriously reduced to a piece of meat, there to be fucked. It's...well...placid might be the word. Not at all very exciting.

Western porn, on the other hand, generally has this vibrance about it, where the woman gets into the action as well. She moves in ways the Asian woman never does. After taking the initiative to seduce, she follows it up, holding the man much in the same way he does her during fellatio and touching herself for her own pleasure during intercourse, where she also stares right at the male with the flame of desire shining evidently through. Foreplay and actual act-wise, all Asian porn can do if sniff her Western sister's collective soiled panties when it comes to the allure factor.

My main gripes, though, are semen-swallowing and anal intercourse. With a few exceptions, of course, these are things that evidently even the seasoned ones still find distasteful, and in the case of the former, very painful. It's kind of cute, the whole getting down and "Oooh yeahhh baby give it to me!" thing, and the slight start they give when the man actually ejaculates. In the cases where they open their mouths really wide as if anticipating some great treat, it's rather amusing how some actually start tearing and gagging, but still try to make those Mmmmm noises. The seasoned ones seem to have a nice system going where they allow ejaculate, good aim permitting, into their mouths, collect a pool of the stuff in there and then in the Mmmmming process sort of expel it from their mouths again. Respect. But really, c'mon...it's not THAT vile. =/

The case of anal sex is even more amusing. Jenna Haze, up and coming new blood in the industry, proclaimed in the prelude of one of her videos that she absolutely LOVED anal sex and it made her just SO horny and felt REALLY good. Look woman. Men have prostrate glands to massage up in there. You don't have zilch. Anal sex is, to the best of my knowledge, an excercise in mild to extreme pain for the woman, and it's once again amusing to watch some of them try to disguise their discomfort and yelps of pain as ones of pleasure. Well, yes, the distinction is very thin, but you're not fooling anybody. Hmmm. Ok, not me, at least.

Before someone starts getting all riled up and gathers the lynching mob, no, the above does not extend to the victimized women forced into things. They are merely observations of choreographed pornographical productions where the women know very well what they're getting into. I has teh respect for women!

Seriously, though, I think the least of a passing flirt is immensely more stimulating than the best pornographic film. Maybe people are starting to realize it. Unless it's just me, spam these days tend to be more along the lines of "Tim, get guranteed added inches now!!!11" or "Tim, find out how to have bigger, firmer breasts!!11" to all the varied dating, "meet attractive singles from your area" ones. Porn is still there, of course. It's something that always will be there, and what that says about the human race in general in open to debate...

But catching and holding the wandering gaze of an attractive stranger, followed by that excruciating, heart-thumping first shy half-smile is worth any number of Jenna Hazes, Jenna Jamesons, Kobe Tais, Sylvia Saints, Aurora Snows...

Um. Ok. So I don't catch that many looks from attractive strangers. Or get out much.

Bah.


-Drake

09 April, 2004

"Bearing children." .

I don't know...is it just me, or does that phrase conjure up a totally different set of images of what the act is supposed to?

Images of mind numbing pain. Of red and blood and regulated breathing. Of anxiety and anticipation and drug-tinged hysteria.

And at the end, glittering facets of tears, joy and accomplishment, sparkling under the radiance just as newly-wet motherhood.

I mean, sure, I'm male. Never will I experience the (dubious) delight of giving birth. Not for me the oft-homicidal swing of mood at a stipulated period of the month. Kinda curious about what it's be like to have breasts, really, but though that -can- be arranged, really, it's all right.

In spite of, and despite, however; I have naught but the utmost of respect for the sacred task and process of childbirth women undertake. Nothing. But. I had an anal probe once. It was roughly the size of a laboratory test tube and it HURT. For all you men out there wanting to experience a fraction of the child-birthing experience, get an anal probe. =)

Half-jests aside, though, it's just downright weird, hearing the Prime Minister talk to the latest batch of (hopefully) soon-to-be parents in the hopes of fostering and encouraging some 'child-bearing'. I mean, it's not like plants and shit, y'know? That's pretty much what the phrase conveys, at least to me. Bear children. Let em sorta grow on you till they're nice and ripe and juicy and drop right off ya.

-plop-

You've just beared a child!


Sorry. One of...those things.

-Drake

07 April, 2004

The moon the moon
It captivates me
It makes me a prison
Where my sorrows lay
Brightness that shines from another
But a silence that always stay

The stars the stars
How they comfort me
For a while
Happiness is reflected
As they twinkle infinitely
Till day awakes and steals them from me

06 April, 2004

Sleep your sleep, good sir, and know
That daylight waits your presence
'An you so choose, your day shall light
In ordained incandescence


Wail not, hide not, gentle thing
For never would you wake late.
Rather, stir, and lament those

For whom darkness does not abate.


-Hey, it's cheemer than I thought it'd be.

Drake.

03 April, 2004

Honestly.

I'm out of things to write.

So help me God.

The morning sun is up you see
But I slept
It did not wait for me

It nudged me with prodding beams
But I hid my head under blankets and dreams

I reckoned I’d awake in time
To blend in to Life’s rhetoric rhymes

02 April, 2004

What is being over confident?
This is being over confident...

Exam results.
PSY1020: 15/24
PSY1030: 20/24

I think i should study more.
Methinks i should really start.

Well, hello.

In the latest random effort to stir myself off my increasingly rotund behind, banish apathy and disavow procrastination, I have negotiated a share process of sorts with my bruddah dearest, who readily acquiesced, and will henceforth occasionally pop in with random cynical insights into life. A rather fitting paradox of sorts, I feel, with one impeccably in tune with his One of choice, and the other, a devout Timist, that basest of religions. No prizes for guessing who's doing better in life (hint: Working in a LAN shop has Zero career prospects and pays shit. Fortunately I like to abuse kids.). That creative muscle sorely needs flexing, and so...shall we?


Wouldst thou leave me so unsatisfied tonight;
And have me fend myself in this bleak, starless night?

For Caesar's slaves resigned, in his weighted circus hath
Not as unsmiling and ominous an opponent
That doth stroke for stroke, and blow for blow
The sense of self circumvent
As the gilded silver of that
Sweet, innocuous foe
That doth reflect
And so effects
A most wretched, piteous plight.



It gets lonely sometimes, all by oneself, with the voices in the head.


-Drake