sometimes i wish i can be easily contented in life. but i guess that day will come. for now, i just have to keep fighting.

as i stepped out of the lift on my way to her clinic, you have no idea how shocked i was when i saw that she was still in her cast. and she’s holding on to a month-long MC too. i don’t think i can survive staying at home all day for 4 damn weeks.

on the bright side, she gets to watch the olympics all day, uninterrupted.

i’m addicted to Estelle’s American Boy. it’s even more awesome that zouk plays it at mambo ever so often. it’s sung by a Brit nonetheless, but what about a song about Brits? apparently Chris Moyles did a spoof, filled with non-American humour no doubt. check it out plus all the (better quality) spoofs available online:

Somerset Boy (lyrics in the “description”)

Canadian Boy (in a place where all say eh~)

and my personal favorite, Chinese Boy (technically, it should be Chinese-American Boy, PRC boys ride their bicycles, not Civics)

yet unlike all the times i’ve been to IKEA, this time i’m going alone. how did things ended up like this.

on the not-so-dark side, plans were made, plans that make weeks and months of waiting seem menial. but can i, really? i always needed an emotional anchor, always relied on someone, to know that someone’s there to catch me, so that i dare to risk to venture out to become a greater person in life. it’s not about whether you’ll be there when i need you. i simply just need you.

falling in love with a girl that’s not really yours isn’t all that foreign. incidentally, they were showing this afternoon the Jacky Wu’s Super Fun Club episode in which (i commented) Ruby looked like that girl of the past. so i still remember.

maybe it’s more fun if you blog anonymously. but then again, it’s not like i feel better after sharing dark secrets. 

sometimes love is like that. it’s not about winning. it’s about surviving, rather than giving up.

for those who did wonder, yes i was at mambo’s 16th anniversary celebration.

blogging takes a backseat for now, as i try to catch up on work. my fellow PhD-mate has already submitted his first-year report! sheesh!

on another note, it’s really refreshing to hear R&B artistes experimenting with other genres. the last time i remembered, Outkast, or more accurately, Andre 3000, came up with Hey Ya (you know, shake it like a polaroid picture), and that was definitely an experimental hit. oh wait there’s also Rihanna’s retro-ish Please Don’t Stop The Music. now we have Chris Brown doing Forever, as well as Ne-Yo’s Closer. i wonder if it’s just an industry ritual, or have they finally realized that R&B ain’t all that musical after all.

yes, SQ is not that big a fan of R&B / Hip Hop. Rap on the other hand is artistic, especially if it’s locally-flavored.

it’s still being composed, but do check it out now and then as i try my best to finish it fast.

dedicated to julie price. =)

you can’t imagine how fast the rage came to me when i heard that quote from CNA’s 360 just recently on tv. it’s not new though, since it was first mentioned by UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Food, Jean Ziegler sometime during October 2007. he claims that biofuel is produced at the expense of growing regular agriculture, which can be fed to millions of third-world starving folks.

of course, oil prices in 2007 never shot beyond US$100 per barrel. a check on today’s price showed an average of US$130 per barrel. that’s nearly double the price when Jean first made that comment.

the world needs renewable energy source, and biofuels are one of the most, if not the most promising options around right now. with biofuels, ANY COUNTRY can establish their own sustainable fuel source and not be forced onto their knees before OPEC as a decision on crude oil supply is being made. biofuels, food grown for energy and not for food, need not be edible. with chemistry and biology, these foods can be genetically-modified to enhance their fuel-producing characteristics. they can be ladened with chemicals, grown underground or in multi-storey facilities, never have to see the light of day, and you don’t have to eat them because they’d be process into fuel for your combustion engines. this process can repeat itself with no worries of limited supply, and with technological advancement, can only get more efficient and economical.

on the other hand, biofuels WILL reduce food prices. years back when singapore banned malaysian pork (still is banned, possibly until 2011), your neighoborhood food stalls did not immediately and drastically jack up its pork prices. the singapore AVA started sourcing for pork to be exported in to ensure constant supply of pork to singaporeans. and these imports definitely benefited from the cheap fuel prices and lower transportation costs then, as these dead pigs traveled across oceans in order to end up on your dining table. today with increased diesel costs, even your regular green leafy cai xin imported from across the straits cost more to be delivered. and since then most eateries have reviewed their prices accordingly, and quickly.

agrifuel will be detrimental towards regular food agriculture, if there’s no control and farmers just want to make big dollars producing energy. surely regulation and control aren’t all that hard to implement. let licensing limit the number of producers. let these producers bid amongst themselve to see who offers the cheapest fuel. the once-dying agricultural industry will see another boom, and technology in this area will advance both edible and non-edible crop production.

if we’re having a hard time feeding our own selves, how do we really, really care about the starving third-world? leech on the rich and developed so that you goodie-two-shoes can help the poor, go ahead, but first you got to keep the rich and developed rich, right? 

truth is, combustion engines will not disappear overnight. crude oil is a natural resource that’s running low on supply and is polluting our environment. oil prices will never go down–basic supply and demand. agricultural crops are quite the opposite.

so for all you sugar-cane-hugging humanitarians out there, i’d like to see you cycle across africa delivering rations to starving children. diesel for your landrovers don’t come cheap, assholes.

last sunday i finally met up with caleb and jason to do some mountain biking offroad at the Tampines trail. it’s a roughly 40min road cycle from my place to the fields, sort of a warm up to the dirt riding i suppose. eventually we got together at the carpark and set off first to the outer trail. caleb was all excited at how the weather was perfect–cloudy with no signs of rain.

as they have warned, the outer trail was technical. i actually went fairly slow up and down the narrow strip of gravel path. the track was probably ten inches wide, with grass and bushes on either side sticking out fiercely at you warning you not to fall on them or face imminent pain. the uphills were fine, and heckler (my bike) made quick work of them despite the loose gravel. the downhills were the ones that gave me goosebumps. i think at the end of every downhill was always a sharp 90 degrees turn or even a switchback. i love going downhill, but having to break at such narrow space on loose gravel would definitely cause me to skid. riding a Santa Cruz, you can fall, but the falls have got to be spectacular. losing yourself at the corners aren’t spectacular. i need more practise.

what shook me wasn’t the technical trail. in fact the whole riding experience was fine. heckler was in his element all day. it was halfway deep in the jungle trail while i was trailing behind caleb, and realizing that he had fallen off his bike onto wooden bridge. initially i’d thought he missed the turn on the bridge, grazing himself near the shin. no, he was in pain. he knew he had a deep puncture just underneath his left knee and it was bleeding profusely. and SQ fears blood.

immediately within proximity i could smell his blood. that traumatized me. caleb knew he was down, and told us to get an ambulance. jason began to attend to his wound while i dug my bag for my cellphone. i dialed 995 and handed it over to jason. if caleb wasn’t going into shock, maybe i was. eventually someone had to stay with caleb while the other reversed out to guide the ambulance in. i was definitely ready to avoid any contact with blood, so i volunteered to ride.

usually i’d faired better at such situations, really. the adrenalin would kick in and i’d focus on attending to the wounds and practising my first aid skills, but the smell of human blood, the musk of raw life-bearing iron, that totally threw my off. what a weakness.

[damnit, can’t seem to do the picture layout right]

well it’s the first time i dialed 995 on my phone, for a real cause.

i’m sorry, but this post goes to ying chiang. i’m sorry.

there’s this saying that your first fuck is special. you end up getting really sticky to the partner. after much hesitation you present your virginity to your partner with full belief that this person deserves it, that this person is the one who will “physically” change your life forever. and soon you start to devote everything else to keep this relationship going. as she puts it, you give everything until there’s nothing left to give. yet even at the end, you know this person means something to you, somehow.

ying chiang is like that, except that this definition did not come from the bedroom. she was the first girl i made marriage plans with. we talked about income, dreamt about our first home and its decor, bickered about having boys or girls, imagined how beautiful they’d be. she was the first girl i’ve ever went home-viewing with, and in Singapore that was the primary symptom for marriage. she was the only girl i introduced to my extended family, which was a cue to the relatives that she’s the one. i calculated how we first met on sept. 9th, and that getting married on 09.09.09 would be so apt.

she was the one girl that settled me down. yes i’ve played. yes i did talk about the future with others before. but she was the one girl i did stuff about the future with. talk is cheap. do is like vintage airplanes, which requires more than just cash, but also careful maintenance, exceptional piloting skills, and the willingness to accept imminent death. parachutes are for wussies. she was the girl i would die for if it was what i eventually had to do to keep her. she was like the girl i actually gave my virginity to, my emotional virginity, the one event which would change my life forever.

now all that’s left is probably a lame exchange of blogposts between two devastated ex-lovers, one more bitter than the other. yet another skeleton in my closet, i suppose. it is after all my failure, and there’s not much of a reason for me to defend myself. i’m only human, and on a lighter note i guess i should be glad that i’m not alone, and that there are people close by who care. maybe life goes on, maybe we’ll cross paths again, maybe by then things will be different. we’ll both forget the breeze, most of the time.

(did i say that i loath you? did i say that i want to leave this all behind?)

so this is probably an attempt for closure to something in my heart, a self-help solution to stabilize the emotional wreck in me. life goes on, abeit very differently now.