listening to: this

despite occasionally hearing not so nice comments passed about the composers of the above song, I really like it when the kids sing this song. i like how they do not think of the song and go ‘hey that statement is illogical in our poststructural world because how do you know if the whale really existed and we all know that texts are socially constructed realities’. ok i don’t think it is a whale… in any case, if my 9 yr olds did that, that’d be kinda freakkky. but really, they just sing it and believe it, that God’s word is well, the word of God.

sigh. so why don’t you believe it, my friend?

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today, i typed a total of three words for the thesis. if this continues, in another 9999 days i’d be done. incidentally, it didn’t strike me what ‘those three words’ the song chasingcars was referring to until today. gee. facepalm moment.

sigh. finishing this is going to be much harder than i thought.

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sigh.

in the midst of getting my act together to fabricate write the next three chapter outlines (do you know how difficult it is? huhhuhhuhuhuhuh? lemme hazard a guess..NOOOOO), i have decided that if i get a dog, it shall be named fitzypuffs. such earth-shattering findings one makes whilst staring at blank word documents.

cretinuni’s library has just informed me that the book they were in the process of ordering, and on which i had placed a request, will not be making its presence in our hallowed shelves. reason being, the book will only be published in 2023.

something tells me they’ve been hoodwinked either by a lazy author (who at his current age will realistically not live till then) or a publisher who doesn’t give two hoots.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

reading: this

as the website says on tips for avoiding undercurrent ‘Usually rip tides exist in patches, and if you can swim out of the patch you may be able to return to shore unassisted’

quilts are interesting fabric projects. you hem things in around the border, connect the borders, and then go on to the next border. and quilts are always sewn in patches.

it is the undercurrent, always the undercurrent. the (in)escapable undercurrent.

listening to: this

I always wondered why people would enjoy songs in languages they can’t understand. Doesn’t the beauty reside in the way each line is crafted and how the melody entwines itself around it? well, that song’s different. it’s in nihongo and even though watashiwa nihongo wakarimasen (at least there were english subtitles when the movie aired on tv! excellent movie too), the title says it all.

several saturdays ago, whilst luxuriating in the lush surroundings of sentosa, four foolhardy girls decided to rent kayaks. foolhardy because who on earth in their right minds would kayak at 11.30am on a hot sunny day with blue skies. i was so severely sunburnt that i had hives for the next week. but we are only young once.

anyhow, so C and W took one kayak and F and I took the other. and as we were bobbing along, i saw a life buoy and then it was no more. thinking nothing of a disappearing life buoy, i told C and W, ‘hey, let’s race to the boundary line’. so F and I paddled in sync but we got no where. and then we realised we were paddling in circles! while that may be taken as a sign of extreme powress in some religious cults that worship crop (or in this case, algae) circles, we were seriously clueless.

and then C realised that not only was the lifebuoy nicely lodged in the middle of our kayak, our desparate attempts at rowing in a linear fashion (hey, a circle is an unending line!) had managed to entangle heaps of barnacles onto the life buoy. now i know why the captain in Tintin goes ‘blistering barnacles!’ after more than 30 minutes of struggling (in the hot sun) by heroic C and W, the life buoy was finally dislodged and we had salt crystals on our arms as an added bonus.

not many people get to tell the ridiculous story of being stuck in a lagoon on top of a lifebuoy mangled with barnacles. but it made me pause for thought. sometimes things that appear to give us security and act as safety markers, when caught in inappropriate situtations, may just make matters worse. and they cause you to be stuck and (literally) going in circles. what you need are friends to come alongside, prod those security blankets, declare them mangled with unspeakable botanical features, prise those veggies apart, and help you get along with life.

when i was young. i distinctly remember mummy cautioning me to never look back in life, always walk on. otherwise i’d be like Lot’s wife. her clinging on to the safety nets led her to becoming the greatest saltshaker known to humankind.

so here’s to abandoning life buoys in inappropriate situations, to friends who get you out of barnacle-infested waters, to walking on without looking back.

listening to: this (so ah lian, so good)

18 weeks to write 30,000 words. for the mathematically disinclined, that would be about 1700 words a week. as much as I like the number 17, this does not bode well. sitting between two depressed phd students who say ‘just don’t sleep’ (pearls of wisdom coupled with peals of thundering sighing) does not maketh a happy writer, either.

current word count: zero.

houston we have a problem. we’re down to one engine. i am dazed and confused. mayday, mayday! dude, are we there yet? mufpliesfsdmcoisoidadl (jabba the hut).

(runs out of movie cliches) what did I get myself into, again?

i think i need some inspiration. maybe a drink of “orange juice” and a “jello”. some chocolate, perhaps. to stop swimming in people’s verbal diarrhoea and my own mental constipation. AND TO GET THOSE ENGINES GOING, BUSTERS!

edited to add: this punctuation sign is the best symbol of my life right about now. how awesome is that?

listening to: this

ohmygoodness. i have not had a weekend (by my definition) in more than a month. is so confuzzlingly stressed. but the pockets in between have been pretty excellente. like, planning on being a FONSTER (or as Dr S says, a FONSTERFE). and meeting old old jc friends, where the conversation evokes the same feeling as sinking under the covers with a good novel and it’s all rainy outside.

but garrhs. *spasms out*

dear conceptual framework: please, conceptualise yourself into existence.

dear excel spreadsheets of minion labour: please, get your act together.

dear lit review of doom: please, learn how to read and write.

dear potential participants: please, stop ignoring me. you no lowe me but i lowe you deepdeep.

dear life: please, come back to me.

dear christmas: i really wish you were white and cold this year. but unfortunately that’s not panning out. but it’s ok, a low carbon footprint holiday is defintely better than none. just make sure all the above gets done by then. that would be the best present.

*twitch*

watching: this (well, it is pure parisian macaroony ad-vice!)

one of the best pearls of wisdom i’ve ever read in those random ‘pieces of advice for my kids’ blog is: don’t decline a party invitation even if you were invited alone. and i must say, this advice is golden. it has created many happy pockets of random fun this year and i believe many more in the future. sometimes, there is no need for the security of holding someone’s hand, or dripping from some guy’s arm,just to be socially acceptable at a party. just go and have fun, rather than stay at home mooping that you didn’t have someone to bring along! *woowoo*

listening to: this

I always thought ’sweet dreams’ was the perfect phrase to end the day. A day, spent in all its fullness, should end with the immaterialness of a sweet dream. And the next day has a sweet beginning, an overflowing from the dream that just passed. But what’s so sweet about a dream, if you wake up?  A dream, no matter how sweet, is just that.

————-

and it stops.

in some rare and sacred dead time, sandwiched between the late sleepers and the early risers, there is a miracle of silence.

Everything has stopped.

And silence drops down from out of the night, into this city, the briefest of silences, like a falter between heartbeats, like a darkness between blinks. Secretly, there is always this moment, an unexpected pause, a hesitation as one day is left behind and a new one begins.
—Jon McGregor, If no one speaks of remarkable things (such a beautiful title, innit?)

———–

Yet, the reality we wake up to every morning, can be good as well. As the good people who write my QT material on Exodus say, ‘God dd not send Israel on her way with freezers filled with a forty years’ supply of food. Who needs God when cupboards are full? … The believer’s vision receives each day, each precious, precious unrepeatable day as a gift from God’s hand; and with it our life and salvation, our calling and work, with all necessary enabling resources to be pleasing to God on this day. … Utterly dependent upon the Father, with empty larders and empty hands we go out to him again today’.

So I guess that’s why we wake up from our dreams. To know that it was just that, an empty, immaterial thing. And to face each morning not as a letdown -  that the dream was just a dream – but to look forward in expectation for the day that is just unfolding.

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but sometimes it is tough to live through those liminal hours, when the heartbeat falters, when you live life in hesitation.