Where The Streets Have No Name

That night, we find ourselves at a hostel nestled between two mountains. Without an address, we'd gotten here only by plugging geographic coordinates into the navigation system on our rental car. The thought of travelling to a single point reducible to numbers without knowing where you're really going to end up has never lost its magic. There are no street lamps, no road signs and no markings. When we find the place, it is by spotting a yellow flag. Entering the hostel, we lay out our bed sheets, and, needy for dinner, we walk back out into the cold, then the car. There is a faint glow over the lower sides of the mountain to the right. We drive in its direction, and arrive at a point when the glow morphs into a ray, and then looking down from the edge are rows upon rows of city lights. A labyrinth of life stirs and its ordinariness stirs further. It looks like an hour's drive away, and yet it's the closest we've been to civilisation thus far. In the dark, our trusty Toyota Fielder works its way down, and with the heaters blasting, the alpines hide shadows - of monsters, of men, Of Monsters and Men on CD playing in the background. As the wind whispers warnings through the valley, there we are, like wide-eyed neanderthals coming out of a cave, with only the light to follow.


--
"Still building, then burning down love"

Chrimbo Fever, and Trent

As you may find out yourself if and when I post more of these, stuff I write about sport is rarely about the games. So much of sport is contained in the stands and in culture and context that you will never be able to do justice to the significance of a sporting moment with a play-by-play elucidation of the event.

And so much of why I've always looked forward to Christmas is because of sport.

From a young age, I've long associated this time of the year with sport. For football, fixtures in the Premier League come thick and fast in mid-late December, leading up to the New Year. The action mostly culminates in the Boxing Day fixtures (which I absolutely love) and the New Year's Day games. It means that - thanks to the difference in time zones - my Boxing Day often lasts 8 hours longer. Following basketball slightly later on, the Christmas Day tip-offs became an actual thing in my family, living miles away from home then but finding warmth in huddling together before a television screen; the 2008 classic between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics was everything we needed (besides the turkey we eventually burnt).

The excitement is so feverish, the need to watch men kick and throw balls around so pressing it's as if all the sporting action could emancipate psyches and souls hardened by a year of tedious afternoons and numbing nights. On The Anfield Wrap, this award-winning podcast/blog managed by Liverpool supporters from the city itself, there's talk of Christmas in most pieces. This one - which I'd recommend to even those who don't watch football, since it's hardly about the match and all about the people - had me hooked. It ends movingly and rather poetically:

"Stand Reds. Stand tall. The bells are ringing out for us. Happy Christmas, Mike. Happy Christmas all."

There's this idea of sport as a mass of ruffians, men high on testosterone with their chests out and voices loud. That piece shows that, but it also shows men at their most sensitive, softest versions of themselves. It's from watching sport that I've seen men reduced to tears on hearing a song belted out, and it's from playing sport that I've seen teenage boys acting tough and all suddenly breaking down and banking on every little ounce of courage left in them. The piece handles it beautifully; one reader even compared it to Yeats.

"I like to think that in my darkest, most cowardly hour that night at Highbury that the boy/man to my left side, the first lad to link me, my Gabriel, was Michael. That we stumbled and rose together in that Red front. And that maybe in some way he kept me safe."

My friend Caleb and I have this inside joke that he's "Ben" (Benjamin Woodburn) and I'm "Trent" (Trent Alexander-Arnold). We are both Reds, and both the real life Ben and Trent have been at Liverpool since they were 6, and now, as 18 and 19 year-olds, they've enjoyed a great year with the first team thanks to opportunities that the manager has showered on youth. They also happen to be really good mates, and there's this instance in November 2016 after Woodburn scores his first ever senior goal for Liverpool when Alexander-Arnold comes up to him after the final whistle, puts his arm around him and altogether seems more excited than his friend about that immense personal breakthrough moment.

I'm writing this now also because Alexander-Arnold just scored his first Premier League goal for the club he's grown up playing for on Boxing Day a few days ago. It felt special when that ball was smashed in, not so much because I might have internalised being "Trent" a bit, but more so because there's always this indescribable feeling every time a local boy who's actually born and bred in Liverpool scores in front of The Kop (which is the section of the crowd at Anfield, Liverpool's home ground, where the most fanatical fans sit - or, for the most part, stand).

I'm relieved that we've known each other for four-five years but started this joke only six months ago or else I'd really have completely internalised being "Trent" by now...

After Woodburn's goal last year someone pieced together the graphic below, showing how the local boys always seem to celebrate the same, distinct way - regardless of what year they're playing in; maybe it's a tap on the crest over the heart, or maybe with a fist bump at the end, but always, always, running to the corner flag completely hysterical with arms outstretched and looking to the stands as if it means that something more to them, more than to any other player on the pitch. Because it does, I think, if you score for your city and your people.

From left to right: Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard, and Benjamin Woodburn.

I did look out for Alexander-Arnold's celebration on Boxing Day. Uncanny, huh?

In an age when sport deals in ridiculous wads of cash and borders are blurred, few clubs in the Premier League have this - this thing that we're fortunate to see and hold, witnessing a young lad come through the ranks at the Academy and finally play on the big stage for us. I know Liverpool fans might sound a bit self-righteous when we talk about this but it's this club that's all about roots and history.

And we like it that way.

Stuff We're Made Of

In a planetarium near Mt. Aso, nightfall


What Are We

but a spectacular series of births and deaths,
a monument to psyche psyched-out,
the nightmare of the nothing from nowhere;
no one lived
to tell the story.


What We Are:

Fleeing fleas flying
Skies catching the light
Grimacing pangs
Cliff-hanging ends
Beginnings that promise
Journeys taken
Laps and leaps.


Magisterial might of light, you do not
go out. Celestial, incomprehensible,
with fate up in the air,

you

find your place in the sky.

December the 24th: Living Eve

My family is spending our last two nights in Japan in a city, having lost ourselves to the vastness of Kyushu's volcanoes, mountains and rural towns over the past week and a half. It takes some reminding, but there are actual street lamps now, actual inner city train systems and actual youngsters with glasses too big for their faces, iPhone 8s in one hand and overpriced coffee in the other.

There is something to be said about Christmas in cities across the world, something about it all being the same, even when there are thousands of ways to say "Merry Christmas". Malls try to outdo one another with their trees but none shall be grander than the big ass one in the city centre. Shops slash prices. Supermarkets play those more than likeable Yuletide tunes. People wish one another, back and forth. There's a familiar feeling in the air, a collective and albeit unspoken recognition that the year is fast drawing to a close and maybe this - like all endings supposedly ought to - calls for celebration.

In larger countries, humans get in touch with their inner animal and also begin The Great Migration. On the streets of this city we are in, people lug luggage across streets and into cross-country trains, buses, and ferries which will see them into the countryside. To have come to the city for  work is to leave a lifestyle and a community. To then go home to people who keep your name tucked under their tongues is to learn that there is probably nothing quite like it.

Tonight is our final night here, and we are at an izakaya - one of those cramped little restaurants serving skewered foods. This one appears to be a family business; the greying man working the grill is flanked by a lady, and two servers bear a striking resemblance to the both of them. For the first time since we've been in this city, there aren't any other tourists eating here. In fact, the street that this izakaya is on was not particularly quiet, but occupied by only locals. The table beside us seats a family of six - grandparents retired, parents rosy, kids rambunctious. It is a Japanese custom for families to have fried chicken on Christmas Eve, and, sure enough, they share a plate of crisp, blistering Hakata chicken. Above the squeals of mischief and sizzles on the grill, a radio station playing Japanese pop triumphs over the speakers and a guy at the table for two behind me pipes along; he seems to know the lyrics to every single song that station puts out. "Eve" has its origins in the Hebrew word for "life." This is very much a snapshot, but still, life is in flux.

Around here there isn't a Shibuya-type insanity. Around here there are few Singaporeans. Crows perch on branches above Shinto shrines and go helter skelter when visitors enter, but then there is a silence as they suddenly pause to take stock. There is an honesty here. This is not Tokyo. Neither is it Kyoto, nor is it Osaka. This is the capital of a lesser known cousin, along this proud strip of rising sun. This is Fukuoka. Between the giggling of a girl on her grandpa's lap, the charred pieces of meat, the gleeful 'clink' of glasses and my own father's bad jokes, I already know - this is Christmas Eve.

Peel Street

We walk ten thousand paces

of life; in the claustrophobia,

we all come face to face.

Faces, walls, façades:

face of a wall, another brick

in the wall, another shop

in a mall, and the

peace, and the

pieces

- they come together.

But all the paint, and all the

scaffolding that wore;

all the words that people left

for the photographs, home or away

- there must be, there must be 

a way, some

way.

Where once "we go again" rang true,

but now you can't put a finger

on where you're going to;

not again, never a gain,

all ways, always

loss.

Update: It's a drought

It's nearing a week since I changed up the site and laid out all these grand plans, but nothing's actually coming to fruition. That's even when I've tried working on five different ideas. 

I think the problem is:

a) The ideas for these pieces came to me when I wasn't sitting in front of my laptop so I had to jot down some basic notations on my phone/try to keep it in my head, but going back to them at night found that the inspiration was absent

b) My past week has been more packed and exhausting than I previously imagined

c) I've become lazy

d) Any idea I have at the moment is sort of being overshadowed by this overpowering feeling I'm having about where stuff (life) is headed. Which means nothing else gets dissected, concretised, or developed.

Terribly sorry...

It's a proper drought.

Update: Changes to this blog

"Something is changing, changing, changing"

It's been some time...

I first started out this blog back in March 2016 largely thanks to the encouragement of my friend Kim (whose writing is really worth checking out), and while I did write poetry/prose before then, I don't think I've written as much of this sort of stuff than in the last (nearly) two years. Writing little bits of poetry and prose inspired by things I saw and felt from the otherwise quotidian aspects of life and putting them together on here was actually one of the big ups from a 2016 that I thought went pretty shit overall.

Some time ago, another friend of mine, Kieran, suggested I should start a blog. I told him I already have one, but he doesn't exactly enjoy poetry very much. His suggestion was more about a platform where I could pen my thoughts on current issues (the likes of which he too often hears me rant about). A bit of time has freed up since he last made that suggestion and I think I should be more considerate by sparing my friends from too many long social media posts/captions from now on. Those pieces will feature on the "bread & butter" page.



Poetry and prose will still feature here (on the "write" page).



Content similar to that which used to be on the "left" page - mostly ramblings about music, friends, and life in general - will now have a place in "people & places", "music", and "film & comedy". I used to review a bit of music and film for a previous publication and I think it'd be cool to explore that again.

The "sport" page will consist of features and commentaries on personalities and major events in the world of sport, as well as two series which I hope will come to fruition: one, a series called "This Thing Of Ours" which is essentially a compilation of short post-match thoughts following Liverpool FC's 2017/18 season as a fan. I got the idea for it having been awed by The Anfield Wrap's Facebook match review posts after every Liverpool game. The second series is "Terrace View", featuring the "live" match experiences from when I do go down to watch football games in person (mostly through following the national team). There's just so much about watching sport live that somehow compels me to write that I think could be tapped on even more.



I am not sure how many of these ideas will actually be fulfilled, and how often I will actually be writing on here, but I want to give it a shot at the very least, so....

Here goes nothing!

The Economics of Emotion

26 October, 2017
More shorts

--

On the bus

With two classmates:

one tiny, the other toxic;

We barrel our way to the top,

a wobble before a plonk, a

day after another 

- bags know these backs,

but for now,

weightlessness.

--

At a stop

A deluge of indifference

pitter-pattering like nobody's business

subsumes the already weathered faces

of men and women in jackets,

hands in pockets, eyed-out sockets...

A man holds a tennis racket 

he will not need this evening;

A cleaner looks across

the floor she was mopping;

And all is awash with the washing away.

A deluge of indifference

pitter-pattering like nobody's business

tacks white noise onto the soundtrack

of the day at a close, earpieces unwound,

the clouds frown - and I am out of nouns.

The Biology of Being

24 October, 2017
A series of shorts
Snapshots, potshots, that sort of lot

--
The lackadaisical lighting of the consultation area

descends upon hushed rushes at a mock paper.

Fans stir with sentimentality but still the air is 

still. Cupping the contours of glossy battlegrounds

drab in navy blue - hard, backless benches. 

They proselytise posture, aggrieve spines and 

demand more backbone; toughen up, I hear 

the sound of rain.

--

Math as portrayed in music is grossly oversimplified; The Proclaimers seem to take a lot of pride in being able to deduce that if they were to "walk five hundred miles" and "walk five hundred more", they would have walked a grand total of "a thousand miles". Bravo, guys - no wonder there is sunshine on Leith.

--

I leave later than usual and it is dark. My friend - one of those privileged to be reminded by an examination board that what they study is "Practical" - spent a few hours in a lab today doing just that - practical stuff. "Bio" somehow sounds very right when he says it. He speaks of moles and concentration. I only know of Holes and the lack thereof.

"Consult" is not yet bare on departure. We walk out and into the open, the white light behind us. Following a round path that leads down the hill, only the luminescent glow of activity from the school hall in the distance shows the way. The basketball team is training; I see scenes I know all too well, yet ones I have not known for long. If there is a biology of being and a chemistry of caring, then there must be a physics of fucking up. But I guess only biology can explain things that eat at you.

--

At the bus stop, a girl - probably nine or thereabouts - shows a sudden interest in something on the gravel, and bends down to pick it up.

"Mom, I found a nail. Someone might accidentally step on it." She dutifully drops the specimen into her mother's hand, which appears to be open only because it was compelled by the girl's voice. Before the grace could grow, however, a snide remark.

"Then maybe you should screw yourself" is the hilarious take-down out of the mouth of a boy who is at least half a head shorter than her, and presumably the brother. Having managed to suppress laughter, I revel in the unexpected wit just witnessed. The boy has a smirk on his face. The mom's is disapproving. Their bus comes, and so goes their nails and screws.

But then there was the lightning. And then there were the bolts from blue.

Simple Song

.

"And this is a song, song for someone

This is a song, song for someone." 

- U2, "Song For Someone"

"A song for no one's in my hand

A song they'll never understand." 

- Ian Broudie, "Song For No One"

.
And we take all of it.

Oktoberfest

Unlike September, October does not err on the side of caution when you want it to. Numbering the days almost seems pointless at this point, and if we lose count it does not count, so maybe letting them slip and slide makes it easier. As things come to a close, we speak of the hypothetical - funny, when the certainty of endings is what leaves us with "ifs". We may stand under lanterns that offer brief respite, but the déjà vu of the moment hits us to confirm that no one outlasts the "lasts". You whinge at the sound of curtains being drawn, but finality never shares your sentiments and soon it feels like light must be dug from crevices of consciousness - hard to do, even with the tint of all the things you held and helped.

In Germany they sing a song, "Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit", which translates into "a toast to good times." We could do without all that Bavarian booze, but all the same, let us lock arms and cheer: "Here's to, here's to. I am better for having met you."

--
"We're circles, we're circles you see / We go 'round 'round the sun / In and out like the sea / I'll circle round you / You will circle round me..."

Anything and everything under the sun

- this backdated post has been shifted here from the now-defunct "left" page as an idea of what's to be expected on the "people & places" page! -

I was locked (literally - the sadistic beings we call teachers locked the doors) into a Lecture Theatre this evening whilst sat next to Yinn Ray to do a Math mock paper that was as mockingly imitative of actual examination conditions as you'd think it to be (except for the stupid swivel tables that are darn right discriminatory to left handers like myself).

My new strategy for Math now is to do every question as if I were in the exam - the same intensity of thought, focus and determination to get things right (though mostly wrong) even if I still don't get how numbers mean anything. My old basketball coach told me that one of my strengths was that I train as if I am in an actual game, and that I play every game like it is my last. Now when I do Math I have an image of myself hustling, diving, yelling - basically just take-no-prisoners like it was on the court - and instead of 'let's play like savages and sort them out boys' it's 'let's show these Math questions who's boss'; essentially though, it's the same idea.

Except midway through the Math mock paper the choir group that had already been working on their vocals in the adjacent lecture theatre - and was already a cause for some giggling in the 'simulation room' - suddenly start singing the school's conduct songs. The conduct songs were only sung in high school, and they've always enjoyed a sort of special place amongst the high school guys which means that the last level assembly we had in Sec Four - when we last belted out the lyrics to these songs - was the only time I have seen many of my friends so sentimental about something, anything. We'd always end each conduct song with a resounding '嘿’ even though for four years straight the teacher assigned to our level reprimanded us for embellishing the song with self-created lyrics, but then only smiled and seemed like he was about to tear when we shouted out ‘嘿’ that one last time, after boys in shorts turned into boys in long pants, and didn't tell us off for it.

When the conduct songs came on in the next room and the choir voiced out those all-too-familiar words, I turned to Yinn Ray beside me, but he was busy punching shit into his calculator and didn't notice. The both of us sometimes speak about how it's a pity we only met in JC, and I realise that's also how I feel about a lot of the people I have met these past 1 and 3/4 years. But really, this lad's been pretty special, and it'd have been great stuff if we both knew each other prior to "A Levels-or-else" days.

And then there's Caleb and that high school friendship that I'm truly glad we somehow rekindled over the last four-five months. Yesterday beneath rain-cleared skies we marvelled at how it is that we were never in the same class in our four years at high school despite both being from Ortus (which is essentially a house/faculty except that it's only three-four classes per level). There was a good one in three chance across all four years that we could have been classmates but never were; and then again I slip back into talking about “ifs” and "lasts" - maybe (another one) I should stop.

But maybe I shouldn't. Screw the maybes. Because in recent weeks I've thought about how some people come into your lives and leave their mark. Reflecting on my pseudo-writing journey landed me deeper into that thought, especially when I think about how everything that's come my way has been helped along by people around me. When I had my writing published in the student newspaper for the first time, my lower sec classmates would grab copies of The Straits Times more hurriedly than ever, and, week in week out, 30 kids in shorts made it a point to flip through the entirety of the paper to find my piece. I wasn't - and still am not - quite adept enough at showing just how much I appreciated all that, mostly because the attention is always somewhat embarrassing, but I've come to think about how little things like that go a very, very long way.

I was in fact foolishly working at Math even before that three hour mad Math mistake, and this is proof that my new strategy really makes me more crazily 'in the zone' as ever, because this guy called Bryan managed to creep up behind and hunch over me for a good thirty seconds, before making his presence known with a bellow that terrorised me more than I admitted it did. Four years in the same class, and yet I'm never guarded against his dumb-ass pranks. These days he tells me, "Bye, I'm going to look for my girlfriend." But still the same.

Jian Yan, who forces me to return his Gatsby reference book, in between my quips about Malaysia. Jonathan, who I meet for lunch a few days ago, but then two other guys we both half-know sit with us because they would have otherwise been eating alone, and we don't actually bring ourselves to tell them we'd meant to be catching up. Brandon, who warns himself and the basketball he's holding about my erm, hands. When I tell him "You remember..." he replies, "Of course, we're on the same team", and there's that thing about him saying those words in the present tense that let me know - still the same.

Edwin, Edwin-who-almost-makes-me-late-for-History-to-talk-about-history; he sits with his arms clutching his bag but holds nothing back - always open and sharing, and I'm always learning. Shaun Ang, aka Shang, who I somehow keep running into this week while walking down the slope until the days we used to fake sneezes in the auditorium don't seem so far away. Trexel, who has been hanging out with his class at the benches outside the printing shop, of which I walk pass frequently, and so I still have to endure all that trash-talking about Liverpool being a "shitty team". That lad is still perpetually grinning. The same, the same.

"What are friends for?" is Check King's way of saying "you're welcome" in a half-clowning fashion. He - like that k and that a in the Math mock paper - is a constant.

I know the guys don't ever read this site - that is probably a good thing, because if there's one thing about friendships between lads - or what I think should be called "lads-ship" - it's that it does without the mawkish word-infested outwardly declarations and displays of care and gratitude. It's the same reason why I get a lot of shit from guys for being a creature of sentiment (and not logic or reason, which probably explains my mathematical ineptitude, because there is absolutely no sentimentality or human emotions contained in the rigidity of numbers).

The guys who I've found to be almost as sentimental are actually the fellow Liverpool fans. It's no coincidence, honestly. We care the most about things. The other day I saw Caleb's reaction to the thunder and lightning that almost threatened to stop us from playing footy, and it struck me that it is the very same, obsessive and quick-to-being-depressed-but-still-with-some-deluded-hope-that-the-rain-will-stop-even-though-it's-raining-bollocks state of mind that Shaun Lee and I were in far too often earlier this year, when our class was supposed to have football, but that period coincided with the rainy season. Dylan would also kick up a big fuss every time the lightning alert came on at the school's football pitch. Harn Ern would despair. I guess it seems a tad childish that we'd get so upset about something as 'trivial' as not being able to play ("You can always play another time, guys"), but it shows the wanting and the caring above all. I know it comes down to growing up watching a team that's all about belief and hope and passion.

I've observed that our ability to care extends beyond the action on the pitch. Shaun Lee debating, or Shaun Lee with debating withdrawal symptoms when he almost seems like he's lost a whole part of himself - he cares more than anyone. Caleb, for the people around him. Harn Ern, for his music. As for me, I hope the caring comes through in the verve for whatever work I've done. For Pub Soc, I guess we could have just did the work within our purview, which is to simply edit writing and coordinate all the pieces, but the caring meant that it always had to be more than that, that from the start I told the team that we're going to create a lot, a lot of work for ourselves pushing through new plans and ideas. It is no coincidence that Shaun is the guy who played a crucial role in the debating team successfully advancing a proposal to organise a tournament, raising their own money to hire Hwa Chong Debate's first ever coach, since their club was not allocated sufficient funds by the school.

Even beyond the work, there's that nagging sentimentality about place and people that I've seen in every Red. I can't tell you how many times Shaun and I have spoken about things ending - more than I have done with anyone, and it's not as if we have that many one-on-one talks. Caleb and I sat on the side of the street football court, chatting about everything under the Sun (which had triumphantly emerged as clouds dissipated). He then tells me all of a sudden, perhaps with the possibility that this could be one of the last times we sit here before As at the back of his mind, "I'm gonna miss this place."

"The street football court?"

"No, this place."

I want to tell him that we've spoken about that before, because when we had our last ever PE lesson two months or so ago, the rain had forced us to stop and we eventually took a walk around the new Block D, and then the canteen and benches. It seems like my conversations with other Liverpool fans always slip back into glances at days of yesteryear, and there's probably some joke about Liverpool fans living in the past there. I think to myself how unhealthy near constant reminiscence must seem, and so I don't tell him. I also don't tell him that we've thrice spoken about that one time in Sec 4 when the Ortus football lads Chetwin, Zhiying, Haowei, Chester, Oliver, Dylan, Zach, Caleb and I skipped a combined Chinese class in the lead-up to Higher Chinese Os to play at the International School court; that is, until Zach Wu rolled down the side of a hill when retrieving the ball and ripped a hole in the back of his pants. The two of us remember it very well. Minor details might differ each time we tell that story, but ultimately, all the same.

It's Shaun who pointed out that next week, we'll actually get to sing the conduct songs when they are played at our Graduation. Over the years I've tried to curb my tendency to build things up in my head, and nonetheless, when that piano accompaniment accompanies us to mark this final lap next Friday, it will all be the same - Liverpool fan or not - always, forever, in some way, or another.

Aubade to Attap Chee

Before dropping by Bishan Library to return Loh Guan Liang's "Transparent Strangers" today I had lunch with my father at the Junction 8 food court: Double Beef Pepper Rice 加蛋, Ice Kachang afterwards.

It's close to a year since the food court had its renovation works completed (*poof* went the hidden arcade within). I can't keep track of the number of Double Beef Pepper Rice meals I've had in this place, but I know that it's here where my brother swore never to eat the attap chee in a bowl of ice kachang ever again; that's after my father told an edifying tale of how attap chee is transported on trucks without boxes or any sort of protective layer to keep it from direct contact with the grimy surface of the truck. Gullible, but he was 6.

It was just my father and I today, though, because my brother had lessons while my mother was at work. After I very thoughtfully pointed out that his oversized t-shirt made him look rather foolish, he took an interest in the book I was about to return and flipped through it, before landing on the "About the Author" page. By the end of Loh Guan Liang's admittedly contrived self-composed author bio, my father laid down a damning judgement.

"Fucker."

When your parent swears it should take you by surprise (supposedly). I sniggered, though mindful that the bio hardly did justice to the guy's writing. I'm immensely fond of writing that has an acute awareness of people and places - "Transparent Strangers" did the trick. The collection is interspersed with verse on transit, transport; times of the day when we are transfixed by the crowd that envelops us, a sea of strange, transparent people. Loh's writing may be characterised by romanticised rumination, but the simplicity and candour of his words belie any sense of pretence (unlike his author bio).

So, in tribute to attap chee days of yore, and this book that was really good to have around during the Prelims period:

at lunches peppered with quips,

the same attap chee affliction;

no just desserts suffered, for those

not transparent about transportation.

--

Is attap chee translucent or opaque? (Not a PSLE science question)

Also realised this post is more like those on the "left" page but I'm too lazy to do the formatting again.

Why John is such a twat

Why John is such a twat / 12 Years a (Math) Slave

I don't enjoy doing math

but math just seems to love doing me...

I get that numbers may be a tool of some world without
sentiment, that one imperfection in the human make-up
that means we grief over love and life lost.
It should make things easier.

But really, Math, though:

Teach us to divide but then tell us we are more than a sum of our parts;
that we are more than uniformed hypotheses to be tested and
tested on; maybe we should let you convince us that
equality only exists in equations, that integration requires differentiation
but race, class, and borders do anything but unite.

Come on, who honestly cares about the number of ways "John" can sit
at a table of people without sitting next to those dressed in blue?
If John wasn't such a twat he'd sit with people regardless of colour and
save us all that trouble. But John is a twat after all.

Now, calculate the distance from A to B,
or S
or U
or you from me;
give us a figure to figure out and hinge our self worth upon
- who doesn't like another number
to remind me them how much they suck at numbers?

I once interviewed a maths prodigy; took us three tries
to finally meet - my very own 三顾茅庐 tale. Told me his
love for math stems from its freedom from language, culture,
politics - all of which complicate the real world - as well as its,
and I quote, "completely logical and systematic nature".
Gödel too believed mathematical truths to be self-evident,
but if that's the case, why does it all read like Greek to me？

Whatever happened to those who live
between the whats and ifs and buts and maybes,
not the Xs and Ys and Zs and GCs; tell us
Orion wouldn't have a belt if it were not for geometry,
and that we are all here in constellations,
in perfect equations, in little sequences and series that
make it seem as though everything happens in the same, deductible way;
as though everything can and must be explained...

But maybe there was a Jackson Pollock of the universe,
splattered the stars across the sky in some
sweeping act of rambunctious artistry, laid them bare in
nude nirvana; You see, not everything subscribes to your formulas;
which, you may say, is an art, and yet I'm pretty sure that
only things of the heart have art in them.

Even then, can your math - your fashionably flawless,
wonderfully water-tight math - explain how it is
that this was written in math class,
that the stars were written in math,
that all this was written in the stars?

That if we had to one day tell the story of the stars
we'd just speak of shapes and patterns
- not of hoping, coping, losing, then finding,
nor the weight of things that were and will be, but
just specks of significance, 3 s.f. and shit like that,
dots on lines on maps, finding their way around this place
without coordinates to the heart, or a compass pointing to okay,

forever thinking we had made sense of the world,
living the illusion that our trip around the Sun
was always a perfect circle.

--
This is an accumulation of lines from over a few months that I've only just managed to mash together very poorly but more importantly - an utterly relatable moment from one of my favourite shows: 0:21.

Jake Bugg: feeling Buggsy

- this backdated post has been shifted here from the now-defunct "left" page as an idea of what's to be expected on the "music" page! -

It's a Bugg-sy day because this lad just released his latest album.

"Broken" is one of his folksy tunes - not everyone's cup of tea, admittedly, folk, but when you listen to this a couple times more the tones and the words somewhat rub off on you. The first time I watched the video above was in 2013, though it was "Two Fingers" and "Seen It All" that I first came across (as with most people who listen to him). As much as I was won over by those two songs I think it was only after listening to this one and watching the clip for it that I paused and thought, "This guy's different."

At 18, he received a Mercury Prize nomination. At 20, he had a gig at The Royal Albert Hall. It's been a while since then but he hasn't quite reached the world-storming heights that those who hailed him as a "prodigious" Bob Dylan of my generation said he probably would.  Regardless - he has built himself an audience, and that audience listens.

There's actually quite some stuff written on Jake Bugg - such was (and to a slight extent, still is) the interest in him - but there is this one review on his debut album that I was brought to by a post rightly titled "Jake Bugg explains his poetry":

"There's a great story about Jake Bugg that illustrates just how different he is from your average British teenager. Shortly after playing his first gig, Bugg's friends, suitably impressed, implored him to audition for Britain's Got Talent. In their defence, it's no stretch to imagine Amanda Holden violently weeping all the fluid out of her body to the strains of 'Country Song' or 'Someone Told Me', but Bugg was having none of it. "I never would have done that," he told one interviewer, "because it doesn't seem genuine, it doesn't feel natural."

"...his scowling anger is just a front, a carefully erected facade that shields a vulnerable and contemplative soul...'Broken' is a song of such towering beauty and elegance, it boggles the mind that a scruffy teenager barely old enough to shave could have written it. On 'Two Fingers', Bugg talks wistfully of scheming on the streets of Clifton, where he and his mates would "skin up a fat one, hide from the feds", as though life held no nobler pursuit. You can tell that, up until now, his world has been small, and he might well have spiralled down the sinkhole that swallows so many marginalised estate kids. Eventually, however, Bugg comes to the same conclusion that we do: "Something is changing, changing, changing." If this debut album - rife with uncommon wit, insight and melody - is a testament to anything, it's that his small, unremarkable world is about to get a whole lot bigger."

write ride

At the back of the bus alone - ready for 50 minutes of start, stop, up, down; all around. 

A fire engine wails past with men we never thank enough at the wheel, its red rage reminiscent of my favourite football team, but that's no proper comparison - there are lives to be saved here.

The lives on the bus, on the other hand, are ones I will never touch; commuters may very easily pass the same person more than once yet never know of it. Two strangers like parallel lines - together, but hopelessly apart at the same time - à la the wisdom of Dire Straits' "Hand in Hand".

The beauty of bus rides is that the windows give you an excuse to look someplace else, whereas the train leaves your eyes hopelessly darting and looking for somewhere to land. Then I realise I've already used "hopelessly" in the paragraph above, but I'm tired and I just listened to "Let It Be" on my phone. I let it be.

Some guy yawns above the tinny music being savaged off his earphones. Some lady sneezes a while later and jolts everyone out of their dated daydreams. In that curious moment alone, all on the bus are one - until three blows of a nose later, and we retreat back into our cocoons.

Two rows in front, two men sit faced towards me. Both with their heads tipped back, eyes shut like all our mouths that dare not make a sound. The younger one in a polo tee with his hands clutching a duffel bag; the slightly older guy has his belongings resting on his lap, arms crossed like Raffles. I look across to the other side of the bus and their counterparts in the same row conveniently strike an identical pose. One is evidently a nurse - the kind our politicians degrade as 'low-skilled', but I look at her hands - layered with the folds of age, and still looking very steady, very sure. The other is hard to make out and hard to describe, though he has every potential to be that jack-in-a-box my end of the week needs. 

I think how nice it'd be if they were all dreaming and each of their dreams appeared as holograms above their heads, so I could watch; different dreams for people with different lives, and yet asleep on a bus there is something remarkably similar about that purity of their exhaustion, that they are all now on the journey to loved ones, that in a few days time they will do this again, maybe even together, with a resounding tap of a card that linked us easy. It's not nice to intrude, even if it's a great joy to hear or learn about people's dreams, though, so I just pretend they're all dreaming the same thing.

I haven't got a clue what that dream could be. Still, in some not-so-distant place in their heads, I know there is a message, a call, a string of words - one they know in so many ways - tucked under tongues for this time of the day:

"I'm coming home."

Roger Federer: The ageing dancer

- this backdated post has been shifted here from Facebook as an idea of what's to be expected on the "sport" page! -

Wimbledon 2017 - Final
Roger Federer v Marin Cilic
(6-3, 6-1, 6-4)

Tonight his ageing feet remembered a dance step - and dance he did.

In recent years Federer has borne the image of a tired hero riding off into the sunset. Except this year, at 35, he fought his way into the Wimbledon final for the 11th time, having earlier stunned fans by winning the Australian Open back in January. He has challenged the assumed narrative; he has found the dawn in the dusk; he ensures this piece is not so much one on sport as much as it is about a man defying Time.

Poets have long made the trope of Time one of their greatest fascinations. At the onset of his decline Federer was himself dubbed the 'misspelling poet'. For periods, he has looked like the perennial frustrated artist. Yet in 2017 he has done all but passively accept mortality like Dickinson - no, in every one-handed backhand gift of a spectacle he's like Thomas raging against the dying of the light.

I watch and play football, basketball, and (sometimes) table tennis, but tennis is that sport I watch but have never played. That means my awe may be overstated - like that of a tourist marveling at the sight of the Merlion, which isn't actually that majestic. Conversely, it could be understated, since I have absolutely no idea just how difficult it is for Federer to execute those deft flicks (that's if it's possible to comprehend at all).

What I do know, is that some of the best writing I've ever read have appeared in columns on Federer's exploits - written for print or online by the likes of Phillips, Wallace, Shekhar, and locally, Brijnath. These writers are legends themselves, but sometimes I wonder if the beauty of their writing is merely a corollary of the man's craft, which alone ensures that any piece written on him automatically summons the best words and transposes them into the best order. When I watch him, this seems highly probable. Writing about Federer isn't hard. Not when he plays with such embroidery and such invention. Not when he graces us all with an eternal elegance that privileges our very existence. Not when he inflicts to afflict. Not when he affects to effect.

Teachers or editors that I've worked with often said that sometimes my writing meanders its way about, and that it's a lot of passion but no point. I've very consciously tried to work on that ever since, but for this one time, I've not edited anything above, I've not set out to be concise - these words are all raw, and so is the emotion with which Federer plays.

The paradox of Wimbledon (and of Federer at Wimbledon), is that the craft, his craft - for those moments between services - commands a silence that honours the genius at play, and yet it is the same craft that sets the stands alight in raging applause when the point has been won. Wimbledon, where he has arguably been at his most successful in a 19-year career, is where an all-white dress code already lands players in a certain position of poise. Federer goes one further, and with an artistry of nerve and sinew, lands himself in the imagination of all who watch. Such is the capacity of his style to inspire and move that I'm very sure he must have made Theresa May - sat there in the stands today - feel, for the first time ever, what it's like to be human.

There comes a point when we will run out of tomorrows - that much we must accept - but then Federer has shown us that he still lives, aging feet and all, even if just today.

(Photo by AFP)

干杯

like cups inverted,

like sides of a coin; like hay-

stacks hiding needles.

Veerasamy Road

A billion faces in tandem with a hundred different tongues 

in a thousand different towns; India was never so little that it could fit

into the map of my mind.

At the foot of my grandma's flat are 

dozens of bare feet treading the pavements, 

the asphalt, the double yellow lines whose homes

we could never name; sole on plain Earth,

soul in plain sight - telephone lines thousands of 

miles away offer a voice to cling onto,

because a loquacity not quite localised is the way

to rise above all that foreignness of a land

that hides you away in its folded corners,

as if pages look better with creases. For every 

road kerb romance, street side slow dance and tales 

tall as that multi-storied carpark, there are men not alone

but lonely, men wistfully wishful, men

with garlands of grace but then confined

by race - they should have known:

their feet would not keep up.

--

"Tell them to return to their leeches and floods / but not before they have raised our buildings and children" - The Marooned Island by Alfian Sa'at

Note to younger self

Inspired by Ernie Johnson's (one of my favourite people) "Advice For His Younger Self".

Weather forecasts are like promises that were never meant to be kept. There are days you feel more rain than sunshine - even if it's only supposed to be partly cloudy. Age serves to tell us that no one actually takes pinky swears seriously. The weather man only looks at pictures, anyway - which is a problem, because a thousand words often isn't quite enough.

You love finding the words for things, especially if it's something that you can feel, but sometimes you either can't, or you don't actually have to. Is there a word for when you've so much to say to someone, and yet so little you can deliver? Is there a word for that feeling when you're running after a bus, and it finally stops, but you get on and it isn't actually going anywhere? If we had the words for everything - the right words - then there would not be anymore spaces in between to fill. Or feel.

You can't win all the time - no one ever does. There are times you feel like you've lost even though you've won, and when you feel like you've won even as you've lost.

Humans are sometimes more rants and rockets so if hatred consumes, people take a call to arms, and nobody is doing the work of love - go do it. Because this world is divided along lines and borders but we all share the same lines on our skin.

Beyond the night sky is a spectacular series of births and deaths that we will never see. The world is also a spectacular series of births and deaths that we will never see. When someone's light goes out, millions across the globe will not even know of it - do not accord yourself too much of an importance, and yet know that we all still existed spectacularly, but only as a series.

The most beautiful thing around here is the human smile - that's why you should always make people laugh. The greatest gift of comedy is the smile.

You will find yourself performing autopsies on conversations you've had and yet there are some silences that you'll be happy to be familiar with. Learn to remember them, and maybe, you'll put the coroner out of a job.

Many a time it's the people who make it all worth the trouble. There are those who stand on stilts and walk on water but there are also those who will pull you over the line; the ones that will be the little pick-me-ups when you're nothing but a get-you-down. These people will tell you remarkable things in remarkable ways - they make the best of days.

Keep writing, because it's the only way you know how.

--
It's easy to do all this "Note to Younger Self"  kind of thing sounding like you're wiser and clearer about things. The truth is, 18 years hardly gives you all the answers - and perhaps even 80 years won't either. I guess if we had the answers then there would be no need for questions, and no need to do the all the living that could be done.

He shoots, he scores (but sometimes he misses)

They are in the Final. Year on year we went back to that same sports hall in that same far-flung place with the same people and their same antics, thinking hoping willing that in time to come, it would be our turn. For them, now a six-year-old dream is now a reality.

And like all six-year-olds, it tells me the darned'est things. I am not sure how, throughout this period of watching them compete on that stage, this six-year-old - in its wondrous capacity for questions people may never be able to answer - asks me how I feel. 

There are parts of you that obviously wish you could be there, running, screaming, fighting - diving into every single loose ball. But there is also that all-consuming, immense thing inside when you see those guys you went to the same sports hall in that same far-flung place with, doing what they do in that same sports hall in that same far-flung place six years later - some kind of overwhelming glow of light that comes on and gets you thinking, "These are the same guys. This is how far they've come." You cheer, you get up on your feet, you endure some nail-biting moments and if push comes to shove - if push comes to shove you clench your fists and pummel them through the air; a boxer running out of things to hit, and still giving it the fight.

To be injured is to set it in stone that the hurt is never all that simple. Too often I have found myself following the cadences of a bouncing basketball - I always have - except this past year it has taken on an illusory nature, and as the sound fades, you can almost make out the surface that it is bouncing on from the little inflexions and metres; how it feels its way around, how it absorbs the shock, how - despite your best intentions - its direction may sometimes be unpredictable, no matter how masterful your control.

It is hard to think that people were not made to move, or that this court was not made to be a stage. People were made to move in all its 28 by 15 metres of glory; for four - sometimes five - times a week, we would feint, slide, leap, roll, pirouette - run, with that reckless abandon which comes with space. To be your very self.

Evanescence is best served cold but you would think I could deal with it; the same guys you've made at least a thousand passes to at the same training sessions at the same court, the same one that was built to be a home - you've seen them at their best and their worst, as they have seen you too. The intensity ensures that for four hours of up and down, up and down - just as the ball bounces we go up and down the lengths of the court - people are on the brink of breaking apart; you, are on the brink of breaking apart. When people feel at their lowest, when they think they haven't got anything left inside, they're tempted to cheat tempted to blame tempted to yell at everyone in their way

please, only your mind needs to know there is in fact so much left - so often that's proven true; when that knee feels like it's about to collapse but you want to make that last lap, when you are no longer sure about the air in your lungs but you are sure of the shared mettle in your minds

No - sometimes the mind is not enough. Sometimes you can only watch from the side, helpless but hopeful, as six-year-olds grow up before you.

--

I recently performed a piece at a spoken word event - and it's all still rather surreal - with my friend Kim. You can check out the transcript here.

Ground Control to Major Tom

He peeked at his watch - not that he needed to; no, he just wanted to be sure he knew something.

She took a glance at the mirror - not like she had not done so a thousand times before; she just needed to believe it was still her.

They checked out the lyrics of a song - not that they had forgotten the words; they just had to know whether they meant what they sang.

We looked up at the sky - not because we weren't sure if it was there, but because we wondered
we really wondered
what was holding it all up.

--
Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Wasteland

Sometimes I wish for the Earth to stop spinning
for the sheer madness to hold
for people to give less of a fuck
and give more
more

of themselves

We're all more or less
                                           dying

初一

Once a year, there are as many shoes as there are people.

Once a year, life is caught in a postulating pause. It's as if the passage of time is more pronounced, less subtle; more effect and less cause.

I still remember the days when my brother, cousin and I would be playing in our aunt's 'Lego Room' at these yearly affairs. 太婆 would walk in, her smile so nurturing it punishes the austere face of the wall, before sitting down and telling us in Cantonese, "Xiu peng yao, tai po kar lei mon hong bao."

On this day, however, 太婆 merely sits up and wonders aloud, "Erng ji bin gor da bin gor" ("I've forgotten who's who"). When we pay her our respects, we introduce ourselves. She remembers little.

Today, we aren't in the play room. 太婆 can no longer walk at will. Perhaps ninety-four 'yearly affairs' later one seeks, in watching people go about their own ways, an odd assurance.

So let me assure you, 太婆, let me assure you and your daughter, our grandmother - who tears when she realises that it's exactly thirty years ago that her two sons were taking their A and O Levels, just as my brother and I are this year - let me assure you that when you both have long forgotten, that when your memory is lost to age, I will introduce 'us' to you again and again, for as many times as it takes; that when the past tempts you, eludes you, forsakes you - I will weave coherence into your confusion.

There will be as much sense as there are shoes.

Come on, now - we have so much catching up to do.