Chasing-Thoth

U2: "Sometimes You Can't Make It Own Your Own"

2012-01-07T18:04:00.011+08:00

I vividly remember the happiness I felt on that sultry summer day, when you finally bought me a strawberry ice-cream after I had been nagging for it for hours. Or the rebellion we shared, when I was sitting at the back seat of our car, then you opened the side window while casting me a cheeky glance, and turned the music loud for all to hear. Sometimes, you would put me on the saddle of your lap and shake me up and down on your knee. For a while, you would find peace with yourself, simply by looking at me through your own encouraging eyes. A mere glimpse of your sincere attention, and I truly believed that I was a famous jockey on the way to victory, biting my tongue amidst the deafening cheers of an imaginary crowd on the stands surrounding the racetrack. I disarmed you with my giggles of innocent excitement. At the age of a child, we are still young and unafraid, and our laughs are uninhibited and contagious. In those rare but precious moments with you, I inhaled the confidence that only a dad can give, for no form of love is more pure, reliable and unconditional than that of a parent for his child. Unnoticeably, you became the standard I set for myself, when I seek to love and be loved in return. I miss the umbilical cord we never really had, but felt we had. We silently promised each other to never cut it loose. You guided me without uttering all too many words, by simply being who you were, and by accepting me for who I truly was.

Nobody is perfect. We were each other’s mirror. I would forgive you all, if only I could see you one more time. In fact, I had forgiven you all long time ago already, once my understanding of life in general ripened as the season changed from spring to summer in my own. I just regret that I never used the chance to tell you. There’s no day I don’t think of you, wondering where you’d be now. I look up at the clouds; they cast their shadows over me. In their stubborn silence, they refuse to give me any clue. Are you watching me, or at least watching over me? You gave me the sense of freedom and the belief that everything was possible, and took it away from me when you passed away and left me behind. Yet now I am afraid to find it back, as if I doubt my ability to make it on my own. I want a new you. You had the gift to inspire me, the power to guide me without using reins, to give me confidence and understanding for the choices I made, even though some must have caused you sleepless nights without me even knowing it. But you lived life yourself so you knew how it often has other plans in store for us than what we expect it to bring. Sometimes only when we find it, do we finally know what we have been searching for. You must have known this long time ago already, maybe even before I was riding horse on your lap.

PRINCE: "When Doves Cry"

2012-01-07T14:43:00.001+08:00

Love is not about finding someone who you can live with, but finding someone who you can not live without.

BARRY WHITE: "Practice What You Preach"

2012-01-05T13:30:00.002+08:00

己所不欲，勿施於人。(jǐ suǒ bù yù, wù shī yú rén)

"Do not do to others what you don't want to be done to you." (Confucius)

FAITHLESS: "God Is A DJ"

2011-12-28T13:41:00.008+08:00

“Choose Your God”. It’s a mysterious advertisement that sneaked in without invitation; a not so random combination of coloured pixels that spreads onto my laptop screen with the pretention of an ostentatious artwork of a never-to-be-discovered genius. It’s endless and tiring, how numerous commercial messages fight for our attention these days. No matter where we surf to or browse through, no matter what we listen to or look at, there are countless virtual crooks hiding in cyberspace, setting up an ambush and patiently waiting to spoil our online broth with their verbal and visual harassment.

It’s frightening also, at times, when the nature of those advertisements as if by miracle seems to match with the contents of the e-mail you just received, or the blog you are reading… ;-)

That always reminds me of a popular picture frame that left a lasting impression on me when I was a little boy. It hang at my grandma’s house, where it was strategically positioned on the living room wall: a triangle that contained a stern, human eye squeezed in between its three sides, and then the chilly sentence: “God is watching you – don’t curse here”. No doubt that scared the hell out of me back then. I hardly dared to utter a word when my grandma asked me if I wanted a glass of lemonade. I didn't trust him, that god of hers, and even when I did not nervously peek at that hollow eye from the corner of my own eye, I felt it was staring at me all the time, ever-present. I sincerely believed that there was a tiny camera hidden in there, oblivious that such cameras would only be invented two decades later. At that innocent age, our fantasy toys with us as if it’s a playful dog and we are a softball; we tend to get carried away easily by our imagination, and all scary things risk being magnified and totally blown out of proportion. Shadows become monsters; the cracking of the stairs is the sound of a thief on his way to your bedroom. Utter horror, sheer terror, a child’s demons crawl over incomprehensible paths.

But there it is, brightly lit on my screen: an ingenious sentence that teases me to click through. “Choose Your God”. As if religion is something you can pick like a dish from a restaurant menu, depending on your mood, your craving, your whim of the day. Regrettably many consider it to be this way, a product on the supermarket shelf for them to use as they please and dispose of it when it no longer serves them. They pray to their god only when they are in need, thereby asking him a favour when they are faced with an earthly problem. Then when that issue gets resolved, at most some will have the courtesy to thank him still, before going on with their lives again, as if their spiritual appetite has subsided. It’s remarkable how most religions have created different gods for different purposes, even those religions that claim there is one god only. They creatively circumvented their conceptual limitations by creating saints, for instance, mortals with exceptional qualities, almost divine, who became the symbol of certain human aspirations: a saint to protect the farmers, a saint for fertility, a saint to worship if you lost something and who’s supposed to bring that item back to you…

Clever marketing guys, those religious people, trying to increase their market share by designing custom-made saints or gods. And now they discovered the world wide web even.

“Choose Your God”. I can’t resist. After all, I am very much interested in all things spiritual; I am a searching soul wandering the worldly paths to find some truth and enlightenment. “Curiosity is the source of all knowledge”, I ponder, and I click on the banner, not worrying about the viruses I may invite into my computer by doing so, or the spam mail I will probably have to endure for some time to come. I sit up straight, focused, in upper concentration, expecting some interesting, new spiritual insight to appear on the screen. A blink, some flickering, a window pops up. “GAME LOADING”…

I sigh. Amen.

TEARS FOR FEARS: "Shout"

2011-12-28T00:48:00.000+08:00

"Timendi causa est nescire."

(The cause of fear is ignorance - Seneca)

JASON MRAZ: "Unfold"

2011-12-22T13:25:00.000+08:00

I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.

(Ranier Maria Rilke)

CLAWFINGER: "When Everything Crumbles"

2011-12-06T06:11:00.001+08:00

I’d wish my words had wings. They’d fly to you and whirl around your head, like a butterfly on a sun-soaked afternoon. They’d make you dizzy and knock you down, spinning stories that would both awaken you and make you slumber. Then after a while, you’d slowly open your eyes, and embalmed in a scent of honey and freshly-cut grass, you’d bring your finger to your eyes and would wipe the crumbles of rapidly-forgotten dreams away. You’d gently come back tiptoeing into this world, and you’d gain clarity with the growing confidence of a painter’s brush.

TLC: "Waterfalls"

2011-12-02T11:54:00.003+08:00

Before setting foot in a men’s restroom, you’d better be aware of both the practices and the unwritten rules that govern these establishments which are exclusively reserved for the male species. Even if you’d feel discriminated now for belonging to the other, female half of the world’s population, it's worhtwhile to continue reading. For it would not be the first time that a woman ends up in a men’s restroom one day, either deliberately or by mistake. To cut the long queue in the women’s restroom, or to engage in some kinky, behind-closed-door activity in the first case. Or because she's simply too tipsy to distinguish between the male and female signboards on the door in the latter case.

Just like any other man, I have accumulated vast experience with public restrooms in my life already. And I guarantee you, they come in all sizes and shapes, as if they want to reassure their male visitors that they need not worry about that particular body part which they come and relieve in those restrooms in the first place: for those parts come in all sizes and shapes too.

We men are expected to be quite open-minded and versatile when going the toilet. Yes, we do use trees, ditches, grass fields, rocks and all kinds of artefacts which nature provides us. So not necessarily do we even bother to enter the man-made restrooms in the first place. We men therefore better admit it: we are not much different than the primitive mammals with which women compare us sometimes.

But the artificial restrooms which the human species invented for us are sometimes just as varied as those imaginary ones we find in nature. We are made to pee against brick walls, metal plates (gosh that sound…), marble tiles. They ask us to aim at a hole in the floor; at a sticker of a fly (assuming that we will hit the target better); at mothballs (to disguise the smell of the drains)…We have to pee in oval bowls, in squares, triangles and circles. No wonder many men are good at mathematics and geometry.

Urinals come at different heights too. I have observed that they are often lower in Asian countries. This implies that, for one and the same person, there’s a longer distance between the centre of his body and the urinal bowl at which he’s supposed to aim. A macho Caucasian would straight away declare that the average length of their member is different (read: longer) than their Asian friends, requiring more available ‘hanging space’ above the bowl for them than for Asian guys.

I wouldn’t put it in such a way myself. I am probably not a macho. Rather I believe that the higher or lower positioning is simply based on the assumption that the average Asian male (as a whole) is not as tall as their Caucasian fellow. To avoid too much splashing outside of the bowl, the distance for the urine to drop is therefore reduced by hanging the bowl lower. Personally I don't think it matters much, thanks to Newton and his gravity. Whatever liquid that falls from a height goes down anyway; only the height of the waterfall will be different.

But what about the other way around? What if you are a short guy and the urinal hangs relatively high? What if a short Asian guy goes to Europe on a holiday, for instance? Let’s put it this way: shorter guys would probably make great fire fighters.

Oh, there’s so much to share about restrooms interiors and design. What kind of crazy idea did that creative architect have in mind, who installed a mirror on the wall to which a series of urinals were attached? Not only is it confronting to see your own private parts double (“Am I drunk or what?”), even worse is that you almost have no choice but to watch your neighbour’s piece of equipment being projected on that wall also. Trust me, the view is not always very nice. It’s awkward even, especially since we men are bound by some secret code that prescribes how we should behave when another man is doing his business while standing next to us.

While we do what we have to do, we sometimes talk to our neighbour, which proves that contrary to common misconception, men are effectively capable of doing two different things at the same time. And regardless whether there’s a divider between the two urinals or not, it’s a fine line for us to walk when chitchatting casually with our neighbour while releasing our bladder. It requires the same kind of mental discipline not to intuitively glance down as when we talk to a big-breasted girl exposing her cleavage in all its glory.

We therefore often chose to simply meditate and stare at the wall in front of us, ignoring our neighbour altogether, yet consciously aware of each other’s presence. Because nonetheless, as relaxed as we may seem while standing there, still there is this unspoken, hidden tension that hangs between us. We smell this stubborn stain of competiveness, which is just as ever-present among men as it is among women, and it riles us as if it were the smell of urine itself lingering in the restroom. Our silent game is very childish: who will stop peeing last? As if we believe that the longer you pee, the bigger your water tank must be.

Victory is yours when the waterfall sound next to you finally stops and your neighbour starts the closing ceremony, commonly referred to as the “shaking ritual”. Female readers probably frown their eyebrows now. Because essentially you are faced with the same issue, but I doubt that you deal with it in the same manner as we men do. I can not imagine that any of you wiggles her body after finishing, while still seated on the toilet cover, for instance. But we men do have something called the “shaking ritual” indeed, to solve that similar problem which a waiter has when pouring wine into a wine glass: he doesn’t want any drops to fall onto the table cloth after he finishes pouring. So how about that “shaking ritual” then? Well, we do what smokers do: by tapping the cigarette, a smoker will ensure that the last few crumbs of ashes fall neatly into the ash tray. Drink, smoke...aiya, men...

(very likely to be continued)

METALLICA: "Eye Of The Beholder"

2011-10-27T00:00:00.000+08:00

Fairness is in the eye of the beholder.

PEARL JAM: "I Believe In Miracles"

2011-10-21T21:42:00.000+08:00

I believe in miracles.

EDITORS: "No Sound But The Wind"

2011-09-02T09:05:00.000+08:00

You are free like the winds, and you roam across unseen landscapes while tickling leafs and trees; you carry the seagulls to greater heights, and accompany them over boisterous oceans while playing hide-and-seek with the clouds, as you chase them forward over skies that resemble a blue prairie where you gallop ferociously like an untamed horse on the loose. You aren’t trespassing any property when you rise up above those tiny patches of land below, for there simply ain’t no borders up there. You howl and trash, rage and sooth, and revolve unfollowably into unpredictable orbits, with a speed that liberates you from anything you left behind.

EVANESCENCE: "Field of Innocence"

2011-08-30T05:23:00.000+08:00

"Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." (Rumi)

EVANESCENCE: "My Immortal"

2011-08-27T17:34:00.000+08:00

It’s a brave new world out there, but the bizarre species called “humans” that populates it is still the same as it has ever been. Yes, we rose and started walking up straight. We stopped roaming the lands in search of food and we traded caves for concrete shelters. We divested body parts that no longer served a purpose and our skins got all sorts of colours, as if invisible painters blended an endless variety of tones onto their palette and inseminated them into the human kind. But unlike bodies, souls are much more reliable. They don’t change by any external factors; they only change by their inherent power to better themselves, or by other souls. They are undisturbed, untouchable, for they are not bound by any form or shape. Only matter bends and breaks, and without exception each body constantly grows while at the same time it degenerates as well. In the finitude of our bodily life, we are all equal, and this awareness of equality not only helps us to accept our physical temporality, but also to liberate our soul simultaneously.

EMINEM: "Infinite"

2011-08-23T22:28:00.000+08:00

I read myself and flip to the next page. I may be a tome, but in no way am I an encyclopedia, which by definition becomes obsolete and outdated immediately after it has been published and released to the public. Besides, I know little, so I could never pretend to know it all. Yet there are plenty of terms and phrases behind that glossy cover already. In any case, I fancy the idea of a human Wikipedia more: to be some infinite, never-ending work-in-progress, with undefined boundaries, that thrives in anarchy and changes along the way based on input and corrections made by many. We become who we are through our contact with others, and we get to know ourselves better through the conversations we have. The word carries a lot of weight, and our ears see more clearly than our eyes ever will. For often we start with little but end up with a lot, while seldom we start with a lot to end up with even more. Life becomes so much more fulfilling if it’s based on exploration rather than expectation. Precisely like relationships, which flourish more if they are based on connection in stead of a quest for perfection. Perfection is not of this world anyway, for if it were to be found, ever, then it would be lost at once.

THE BEE GEES: "Be Who You Are"

2011-08-23T20:52:00.000+08:00

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” (Joseph Campbell)

FOO FIGHTERS: "For All The Cows"

2011-08-15T18:34:00.000+08:00

How pointless is it to offer a juicy piece of meat to a cow, if all it wants to devour is a heap of lush green grass.

BLISS N ESO: "Split Soul"

2011-08-12T08:04:00.001+08:00

For those of us who are fortunate enough to be spared from blindness, we all have one pair of eyes. But why does one person notice something which another person overlooks? Perhaps I see beauty in all too insignificant things. Photographers see art where anybody else sees trash; a blind man hears sadness where others see a smile. He’s a free man who uses his gifts to give to others, while those who expect to receive only, are prisoners who lock themselves up behind their own bars.

Just like laws of physics remain valid for centuries, one should not take away what works in their life. You can not go against nature, for its forces are way beyond our control. A house can be painted in a different colour, you can chose another brick, another interior, and change whatever you want. Anything is possible as long as the foundation remains untouched. We inherit our main traits from our past lives, and build upon them in our current life. The patterns that determine our life arise from the ruins of what came earlier. Birds will fly, and fishes will swim. We shall roam the globe in search of our soul mate, for both originate from one single cell that was split into two before. Just as fate separated them earlier, it’s fate that will reunite them eventually.

PATSY CLINE: "Crazy"

2011-08-11T13:16:00.000+08:00

To be a bit crazy is normal. To be normal is crazy.

BRIAN ENO & JOHN CALE: "Cordoba"

2011-08-06T21:31:00.000+08:00

Córdoba (Spain)

NIGHT RANGER: "The Secret Of My Success"

2011-08-05T22:32:00.000+08:00

No one has any merit in another person's success, except perhaps for making that person see and believe that he or she is succesful.

FRANK SINATRA: "Granada"

2011-08-02T03:54:00.000+08:00

Granada (Spain)

STATUS QUO: "Hold You Back"

2011-08-01T13:39:00.000+08:00

All too often self-doubt and self-criticism hold people back. They tempt us to stay on the safe side, to stick to who, what and the places we know, and sometimes lead us not to undertake any of our little plans at all, for fear of failure. They subtly divert our focus to the imperfections, to what could possibly go wrong, as such clouding our imagination about what could come out of our dreams and aspirations. They make it hard to picture ourselves in the person who we could possibly be, if only we are willing to take a plunge. One need not resort to recklessness though, for this would be an all too hefty drugs. But a small dose of audacity is always worth taking, as if it were a daily health supplement.

DAVID SYLVIAN: "Before The Bullfight"

2011-07-31T01:08:00.000+08:00

Ronda - Sevilla (Spain)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: "I'm On Fire"

2011-07-30T16:24:00.001+08:00

To admire, to desire, to aspire, to inspire. I am born with fire.

LUZ CASAL: "Piensa En Mi"

2011-07-30T00:12:00.006+08:00

Nerja - Frigiliana - Málaga (Spain)

NOE VENABLE: "Prettiness"

2011-07-29T13:52:00.000+08:00

The prettiness of pettiness. Or vice-versa.

FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS: "Don't Look Back"

2011-07-18T17:22:00.001+08:00

Don’t look around; don’t look forward. Just do good and don’t look back.

BARBARA STREISAND: "Lost Inside Of You"

2011-07-16T15:27:00.000+08:00

I wasn’t searching but the day found me. It’s a beautiful day. I smell like morning and the morning smells like roses. I slowly open my eye lid and you enter in all your beauty. The curve of your hip waves at me like a palm tree in the winds. Careless, inviting. An open door. The sultry night conspired to unveil your naked body: the bed sheet slid off from your thighs while you were sleeping and it is wrapped around your chest and upper body. I can’t see your face, as you have curled up and turned yourself away to the other side, but I hear your slow and steady breath that caresses your silky hair with each exhalation. I stroke some strings unnoticeably and tuck a tuft away behind your ear, carefully yet full of care. I don’t want to wake you, at least not yet, and silently slide closer. I cradle your back without moving and hug one arm around you. I close my eyes and dream the dreams you’re dreaming. I hear the sea singing in the shell of your ear and start licking it devotedly. I worship your neck with a thousand tiny kisses, each one teasingly tender, and bring my mouth slightly lower with each pressing of my lips. My hand glides beneath the sheet, and without hesitation it finds your warm breasts. They feel familiar and new at the same time. I rub their velvet surface and circle around the honey-glazed cherry on top of that creamy skin. You greet me with suspiration and stretch yourself out on your back, as such giving me free reign to explore your undiscovered territories with longing eyes and a greedy smile. The tip of my finger descends to your belly button like a hungry lion approaches its prey in the savannah. Our lips find each other, blindly, and they speak the same language without uttering a word. Your mouth is an irresistible piece of fruit, ripe and juicy, and I nibble at it with an insatiable desire. The kissing arouses me and my tongue wanders from your mouth to your ear and back again. I play piano with my fingers in between your thighs and you get enchanted by the divine melody of the lustful notes they produce. You are a willing audience and moan from exaltation. You crawl encouragingly and I feel your desire welling up from within. I repeat the refrain in ever-changing rhythms and you pant in unison. I lift myself up and hang over you, circling like a hungry vulture that is about to strike from above; my fingers linger inside. I bring my head down, with eyes closed, and indulge into the sweetness of your breasts. My lips spiral relentlessly and my tongue roams the landscape of your skin. We get dizzy from excitement and lose ourselves in the corridors of our fantasies. The pace quickens, our breath shortens. My left hand no longer knows what the right hand is holding. I am a ferocious hunting animal, filled with adrenalin. With my knees resting on the mattress, I curl my back and tighten my butt to the ceiling, as if I instinctively withdraw for a split second, just to attack immediately again and devour the feast of your body. My tongue chases my hand away and plunges into the darkest caves in between your legs, in search for the heavenly manna that lies within. You coo with consent. I suck in an endless number of combinations, as if I purposely postpone finding the right code to unlock the depths of your imagination. I tease you without mercy, repeatedly abandoning and resuming my mission. You heave even more, and I go on eternally. Testosterone is pumping atrociously in each and every blood vessel and there’s no choice but to give in and surrender to the deepest of all drifts. We look into each other’s eyes, as two silent accomplices. We crave for more, to become totally one. I tie myself to your sweaty palms, and push myself up again. You stroke my arm, as you draw a painting on my veins; they pop out like swollen blue rivers, eagerly turbulent, and your finger floats downstream along their meandering shores to the vast open oceans of my hands. I am bound by invisible shackles and melt inside of you. We both shiver from sheer titillation. I twist and turn my compass in the valley that divides north, east, south and west of your body. You grab the cheeks of my bottom and pull me even closer. Our lips are entangled; our souls inter-twined. Our hearts pulse frantically on the beat of each thrust and any dimension of time and space becomes meaningless as we make love with all six senses, just the way it was meant to be. We sow seeds of love and they blossom at once; time stands still as body and mind unite.

DON Mc LEAN: "Starry Starry Night"

2011-07-10T11:42:00.002+08:00

It must be dark first, for even the brightest star to become visible.

SOUL II SOUL: "Move Me No Mountain"

2011-07-09T13:15:00.002+08:00

Although we never studied it, we practise emotional archaeology in the warmth of each other’s arms. We dig for hidden treasures in the sandy desert of each other’s past. We reveal long-forgotten objects from another era that have not been exposed to sunlight for many centuries and turn them in our hands. They look deformed, over time their original shape became altered. The essence of this planet is energy and material, and they determine any earthly appearance. The objects may have lost their original purpose; their only purpose left is to remind us of what else replaced them later. We frown our eyebrows, look puzzled; ultimately we decipher the code by looking into each other’s eyes, without uttering a word even. We wipe the dust off from each other, and for lack of mirror, we describe to each other how the other one looks like. Feelings and emotions are in flux, but ultimately they always solidify into a stronger soul. Soul-deep. A bond that feels like “since forever”. One single soul in two different bodies, equal to each other like communicating vessels. Soul-high. Move me no mountain. Just whisper me a simple tale. The essence of our existence is captured in stories that are shared around the bonfire. In the past we understand the present and sense the future. Nothing is new, it’s new to ourselves at most.

DUFFY: "Well Well Well"

2011-07-08T21:22:00.000+08:00

喝水不忘掘井人 (hē shuǐ bú wàng jué jǐng rén)

"When you drink water, think of those who dug the well."

RUSH: "A Passage To Bangkok"

2011-06-28T09:16:00.000+08:00

Bangkok (Thailand)

THE BEATLES: "I Want To Hold Your Hand"

2011-06-28T09:01:00.000+08:00

Point your hands to heaven, and they will show you the way. Hold them in front of your heart, and they will protect it. Give them to someone else, and they will guide you.

NICK CAVE: "There Is A Kingdom"

2011-06-27T13:56:00.008+08:00

Ayutthaya (Thailand)

BRYAN ADAMS: "Cloud Number Nine"

2011-06-08T18:48:00.000+08:00

I shape the future with my index finger, touching an invisible hand with my imagination. It’s leading me into different directions, welcoming me on more solid grounds, as reed I can grasp to pull myself up onto the muddy shore of the swamps I waded through. I am a cloud-painter, reaching to ever-changing skies and colouring ever-brighter days. Each day is a new step of my scaffolding.

BILLY JOEL: "Goodnight Saigon"

2011-05-29T09:09:00.001+08:00

Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam)

KRIS ALLEN: "Truth"

2011-05-27T18:19:00.000+08:00

The truth can only be heard by those who are able to accept it. All of us are deaf.

MICHAEL BUBLÉ: "Home"

2011-05-16T21:34:00.004+08:00

The day has a hole in it and it leaks seconds that grow into minutes and minutes that turn hours and hours that become the day. Some days pass swift as a swallow flying over; others drag and crawl disobediently towards the liberating strike of midnight, announcing the changing of the guard. She flips a page of the book but already forgot what she read on the previous one. Her eyes glance left and right but her heart beats up and down. The bright departure hall casts dark shadows over her troubled thoughts. A tear slides down from under her sunglasses. She feels lonelier in this crowd of a thousand people than if she were to be alone right now. But being alone is not an option. Grief is a dreadful dish at a family dinner: it’s shared among others without anyone saying or pretending anything first, but the food itself must be bitten, chewed, swallowed and spit out again all by oneself.

The boarding announcement will be made any time soon. In a few hours, she will step into the house that harbours her forgotten and remembered childhood memories. That place was the beginning of all her beginnings, and will forever be that place, also now. When we go home, we don’t go to a house but we actually go to the place where our parents live. They are the invisible mortar that holds the bricks of the walls together under the roof called “home”, and for as long as they live in that house, we keep calling it “home”, even long after we moved out ourselves.

She is on the way home. And home is a long way. Less than 12 hours have lapsed since her sister called her with the news that her mom had passed away. Whatever happened since then has fled from her memory, as if she were a myopic without glasses dashing into nowhere, or a drunk who forgot what happened the night before. The power to choose the timing for the unexpected is one of life’s unfair cruelties. No one is ever totally prepared to deal with the acceptance of our own mortality. Against all odds, we nourish hope and cling to the illusion that we can at least control time, albeit not postpone the inevitable for ever.

A rainbow-coloured ball hits her shoe. She looks up into the giggling face of a blonde-haired toddler. He’s unarmed in his playfulness, but no weapon is more powerful than pure innocence and goodness. She can’t help but smile back at him. He wiggles a few steps, bends forward as if he’s almost going to fall, and then picks up the ball. He walks back, turns around and then throws the ball mischievously back in the direction of her feet. Never mind he misses the target. He warbles infectiously. She picks his colourful toy from the floor and rolls it back to him. The boy thanks her with his enthusiasm when he jumps up from joy without getting his feet off from the carpet even. She nods understandingly at the lady behind him, which she assumes must be his mom. The woman cheers encouragingly at him. And then - of course - there is no more stopping him. The scene is repeated, and she plays her part benevolently. She teases him, by holding the ball longer in her hands before giving it back to him. She makes him laugh, by pretending he hurt her leg by hitting her. She makes him cry almost, when she hides the ball behind her back and makes him think she lost it. For a few minutes, just like the little boy, she forgets where she is and what brought her there. And they exchange a thousand words without speaking a single one.

RADIOHEAD: "Lotus Flower"

2011-05-14T09:05:00.000+08:00

Out of mud, the lovely lotus blossoms.

周杰伦 : 稻香 (Jay Chou : "Fragrant Rice")

2011-05-09T06:17:00.003+08:00

There’s no shame in dying; there’s only shame in not living. Make love to life as if all you will ever have, will be a one life stand. Be a child without being childish and seek the unknown, only to find out later that it contains much of what you know already.

The old man waves at me like a palm tree in the winds. Careless. Inviting. An open door. The smile to a stranger is the beginning of a new lesson. Don’t look away, but look him into the eyes and strike a conversation. Be daring, you will be rewarded. We teach as much by listening as we learn by talking.

You will find happiness if you can live in a manner that is close to who you really are. There won’t be any discrepancy between what you say and what you do; there won’t be any difference between what you want and what you need; there won’t be any deception for not achieving what you expected. Taking part in life means to part from where you come from, just to go back from where you started. Life is a circle, not an infinite line going nowhere. Happiness is not an ever-ascending line on a chart. It’s a moment of vibration in the wind. And it is only real when it’s shared. Unions are lasting, only when they are connected.

“Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting”, I read somewhere. And today luck is a bundle of sunlight on a silver lake, filled with water that has splashed for centuries, in which emperors have bathed and warriors perished, from which birds sipped and flew off again to shelter in the shades of cypresses. I smell like morning and the morning smells like roses. An empress squeezes my hand. She came in without knocking. I read a poem in her eyes and write promises in black ink with a brush on the tiles. When you hear the truth, your soul recognises it to be so. And when you feel it, you pinch also.

ENRIQUE IGLESIAS: "I Can Feel Your Heartbeat"

2011-05-01T07:38:00.002+08:00

We write our testimony for the world each day, not in the final stages of our life. Our legacy is made of memories; and our own memories ultimately become memories of others to ourselves. We build up a capital of memorable moments throughout the years and our good deeds yield interests that do not appear on a bank statement. Time is short so you better use it wisely. Life is nothing more but a series of heartbeats, an ending sequence of breaths, so inhale each single one of them for a cause that’s worth it, exhale each single one of them for someone who deserves it.

FRANK SINATRA: "Moon River"

2011-04-25T18:44:00.000+08:00

Even the winds lack the courage to howl at the skies. I stare into the distance, out of sync, out of focus. The city sleeps at my feet, and I sleep with it.

MILEY CYRUS: "From The Very Start"

2011-04-19T21:47:00.000+08:00

The swishing of your hands
Balms my bruised thoughts
Scarless are the lands
Far the ghosts I fought
Take one little step to love
And love takes a hundred steps to you
For the distance to the heart
Is measured from the very start

LADY & BIRD: "Blue Skies"

2011-04-17T17:31:00.001+08:00

I must look like a grazing cow, my face only ten centimetres away from the grass in this lush hotel garden. It’s early morning, and there’s not much human cattle around, let alone other mammals performing arm balance poses like me in the chilly zephyr that rolls over Manila Bay. I smell the green, where my nostrils inhaled the salty blue of waves just now. The ladybird that strolls over my mat does not even bother to look up as I gaze at him, as if it were a tall slender princess parading along Sunset Boulevard. My morning mind is an unspoilt beach, pleasantly pristine before the noisy crowds will flock to its warm sandy skin. In silent sincerity, we talk to ourselves. We can talk many words, but only the true ones will be remembered. A breeze caresses my hair, but goes unnoticed.

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE: "Quick And To The Pointless"

2011-04-16T12:33:00.000+08:00

In forgiving closeness
We fondle our memories
And cuddle fun-filled pillows
Of undefined horizons
Time points to pointlessness
As we escape from it -
Flying fishes through the net

OWL CITY: "To The Sky"

2011-04-11T19:55:00.003+08:00

Marina Bay Sands (Singapore)

BON JOVI: "Bad Medicine"

2011-04-10T11:23:00.000+08:00

Quod medicina aliis, aliis est acre venenum.
("What is medicine to some, is bitter poison to others.")

HUEY LEWIS: "Power Of Love"

2011-04-02T16:13:00.004+08:00

“When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.”
(Honoré de Balzac)

CLIFF RICHARD: "Ocean Deep"

2011-03-28T18:21:00.000+08:00

I am not so pretentious wanting to be a missionary, wandering around with the purpose of converting others into my beliefs, or finding disciples for my own philosophy. The best teacher is a student. And of all that I stand for, I value humbleness very much. Therefore I don’t judge, for right and wrong has never existed. Judgement is an illusion, a sand castle vested on the foundations of the views of those who grant themselves the power to judge. That’s why I shy away from gossip too, for its only merit is that it reveals more about the person talking, than about the person who’s talked about. I have no idols, but still I admire others. For, strangely enough, sometimes it’s harder to have faith in oneself, than to have trust in others. We may lack the confidence, the self-worth, the self-esteem, and we tend to look at an old image of ourselves, as if it were a framed picture on the wall. We thread on paths that we have walked upon before; we sing songs that we have sung, on and on. We believe that we are who others tell us to be. But pictures get dusty and it takes courage to look with sincerity into even our own eyes in the mirror. We blurt out the answers that we know, without realising that the question has changed. We find comfort in the clothes we have worn before, but overlook that a new fashion season made them outdated. It’s human to rely on a false sense of security that past patterns give. Think of a little boy who learns how to swim. He’s actually long able to swim already before he finally dares to release the grip on the swim board. There’s no need to be afraid of the depth of the water. We just stay adrift, whether there’s one meter or one hundred meter of water below our floating body. History may tell us where we come from, but it doesn’t tell us where we going. A compass always points to the north, but yet we can swim into any direction. As long as you swim forward, you will get somewhere. Re-invent yourself and you will feel brand new.

BON JOVI: "Bed Of Roses"

2011-03-27T21:34:00.000+08:00

Love is a delicate red rose, with petals that unfold a myriad of mysteries. A few thorns may scare us off at first, but its innate beauty draws curious admiration and desire fills our nostrils and irises. It does take some bravery to reach out and grab its stem, to twist and turn it carefully between the fingers, close the eyes, lose control and inhale the intoxicating smell of freshness; then open the eyes again, and immerse into its sensuous splendour.

We have no choice but to accept that sometimes we don’t have a choice. Lighting doesn’t care whether it’s day or night, nor do the waves of the ocean stop rolling when the sun sets. Time does not rule all. Therefore love is art, for it can not be explained with sense or reason. It can not be clearly described why a rose is so intriguing and we’d all use different words to do so. It’s always interpreted differently than it was created or ever meant to be.

Love is the verb, the subject and the object of one and the same sentence. And we are all a writer. Yet grammar never matters; nor does vocabulary, punctuation, or style even. The only thing which is truly important is the intention, which is in the act, much more than in the word. We find love, then love finds us.

GLEN FREY: "The Heat Is On"

2011-03-07T12:48:00.004+08:00

"Love is an electric blanket with somebody else in control of the switch."

(Cathy Carlyle)

TOM JONES: "Sex Bomb"

2011-03-05T11:48:00.006+08:00

“Do you have any laptop?” That’s what they ask when you are at the security screening of an airport nowadays, just before entering the gate where you will be boarding the plane. The same here in Jakarta. The girl in front of me answers negatively: “No, I don’t have a laptop”. But she definitely wears another, less sophisticated “top”…

In countries with a colder climate, passengers are requested to take off their jacket for security screening. In hot and humid Indonesia, they don’t need to ask that, since people seldom wear one. Orchards don’t have fence here, to put it with a plastic comparison. No wonder that the security officer can’t keep his eyes off her chest, where some overripe fruits scream for help, desperate for fresh air in their all too tight wrapping. Do some girls really think that they do nature a favour by using less fabric than what they actually need to cover up properly? And what’s his scrutiny for? Does he suspect that she’s smuggling silicone bags out of the country? He seems puzzled. Does he need to call the squat team to detonate these bombs? The only potentially hazardous items she’s carrying are clearly visible, but until further notice they are not on the list of items that are prohibited on board. And where to hide any other lethal item in this skimpy, flashy-pink dress of hers? The long heels of her shoes in even colour clearly do not help him to focus.

She walks through the metal detector. This must be his lucky day: the buzzer goes off. His female and male colleague who are monitoring the screen of the X-ray machine giggle like teenagers, and you don’t need to understand a single word of Bahasa to understand why all of a sudden they become so excited. In many airports, you have a male security officer to perform a body search on the male passengers and a female security officer to search the female passengers. But this country is known to be a very liberal society where they don’t bother so much about this kind of petty privacy considerations. Female emancipation and gender equality are no hollow words here: female passengers are treated in exactly the same manner like men...So the male officer starts doing what he’s supposed to do: he moves around her; touches her; he sniffles like a dog while wagging his security stick eagerly all over her body. Front and back, and vice-versa. Yet all good things come to an end. He has no choice but to tell her she can go in. She walks further, and he glances at his colleagues with a smile that tells it all.

Then it’s my turn. “Do you have any laptop?” Is this a trick question? Unlike my predecessor, I don’t have any impressive top. But he’s not going to stare at my lap, is he? I take my laptop out of my bag, put it through the X-ray machine and walk through the gate of the metal detector. This must be my unlucky day: the buzzer goes off. But no drooling on his part this time. He’s searching my body in a very efficient and definitely faster manner than the way he did with the previous passenger. And I can be mistaken, but I sincerely have the impression that my search is far less thorough also…

OLIVIA ONG: "I'll Move On"

2011-03-04T18:46:00.006+08:00

At times, we feel too brave for this world. We laugh at its mockeries, swiftly jump over the muddy troughs in the road and don’t bother about the stains on our pants nor the soaking wet shoes. Showered by raindrops of glitz and glamour, we carry big sunglasses on our nose and plugs of music players in our ears. We walk with giant steps, and feel grand just by doing so.

But at times, we feel too small for this world too. We sulk and sob tearlessly, a tiny heap of human insecurity, sitting with shrugged shoulders near Atlas’ feet, unable to carry the weight of the globe on our own shoulders like he could.

Seeing is believing, they say, but perhaps you need to hear it too, before you become painfully aware that a fire had been sizzling inside all along. Words have the power of revelation, while silence feeds imagination. When you voice some-thing out loud, some-thing some-times becomes a reality, as if it were a mysterious, ancient formula spoken by a magician. A-bra-ca-da-bra...We can split-up words in as many syllables as we wish, albeit only to discover that there is much long’ing in long-distance, and little sing’ing in missing.

ELTON JOHN: "Healing Hands"

2011-02-27T20:29:00.001+08:00

We felt invincible in those days, with a naivety that was more persistent than weed in a neglected garden. Age is forgiving, and luckily there are helpful hands for all of us. They reach out to ours, to overcome our shame, guilt, regret, and resent that have been dripping like stalactites in the caves of our past. They are the hands of lovers; the fingers of a parent who’s more like a friend than a biological ancestor; the grip of a new friend, who shatters your old beliefs with the knock of one odd sentence. Hands heal, words steal. They wake us up from the daze that the past wraps around us like fresh linen on a canopy bed. Sad memories tempt us to forego the possibility of novelty. We embed ourselves in laziness and inertia, and refuse to step out while the morning sun knocks unhearably on the blinds. It’s a long day before the night falls.

BEACH HOUSE: "Walk In The Park"

2011-02-27T18:56:00.020+08:00

Southern Ridges (Singapore)

WOLFMOTHER: "Joker And The Thief"

2011-02-13T19:05:00.002+08:00

"The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief,
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief."

(Shakespeare, "Othello", Act 1-Scene 3)

SNOOP DOGG: "Serial Killa"

2011-02-12T15:52:00.005+08:00

I put the corn flakes in a bowl, pour some milk, take a spoon and start nibbling. The breakfast routine of a cereal killer...

NEIL YOUNG: "Eldorado"

2011-02-05T07:12:00.025+08:00

Port Moresby
(Papua New Guinea)

JAY SEAN: "One Minute"

2011-02-04T08:15:00.003+08:00

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."

(Albert Einstein)

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE: "White Rabbit"

2011-02-03T06:18:00.001+08:00

Happy Chinese New Year!

年年有鱼 (nián nián yǒu yú)

R.E.M. : “Orange Crush”

2011-02-01T17:14:00.000+08:00

Before I first came to Singapore, it was nothing more than a 90 seconds item in the TV news, yearly repeated with the imprecise regularity of the monsoon season. I’d frown my eye brows again, without giving it more thought than just realising that in other parts of the world, people would have their second new year’s party of the year. At least, the Chinese New Year was a cheerful flake of news in the daily avalanche of dark gloomy messages, albeit pressed like a cheap gossip magazine between two heavy book holders, swept away by the devastating passage of a North American hurricane in the news item before, and immediately convicted to oblivion by the more shocking news of yet another tax increase in my own country after. They would typically broadcast a predictable video clip that contained the stereotype images of fireworks lighting some random Asian skyline, a colourful dragon head and moving legs, and some street shots of pedestrians crossing the road in a sub-urban Chinatown, not even bothering to dig their archives in a quest to find images of a true Asian city. It was an all too easy bet: the last shot would unavoidably be one of a bunch of animals, cosily cuddling and flocking together, and – oh what a coincidence – they happened to be the live version of the zodiac sign of the new lunar year, filmed a few hours earlier at a nearby Belgian farm or zoo. You can imagine the challenge for the TV station in the years of the dragon; the news item then simply became 15 seconds shorter even.

No wonder that the real Chinese New Year experience turned out to be totally different than my own pre-conceived expectations; looking at a person’s silhouette always reveals so much more than watching his shadow Once more the TV news had proven to be merely a black-and-white comic book that shamelessly summarizes a more colourful novel.

By now, I have smelled the sweat of the young lion dancers performing a few metres away from me. I have heard the ruffling of their drums, their chitchatting as they climb into the pickup truck that will bring them to yet another place. I have learnt about fire crackers and what they mean apart from the mere noise they produce. I got skilful at tossing food at round tables. I have pushed my trolley in the supermarket, while hearing long forgotten Chinese tunes that are beautiful in their ugliness; and I know that unlike any other week, the usual Chinese cashier won’t be smiling from behind the counter on Chinese New Year’s day. I filled red packets, but only after asking around, in all discretion, which colour of Singapore dollar notes you are supposed to put in. And I found out about so much more, learning that you can’t make someone else’s traditions your own, but they can make them yours. You should not adopt them, but adapt to them.

Our conversations had been limited to wordless greetings and smiles when we saw each other in the street, until my neighbour rung the doorbell. She stood in the gate opening with a broad smile and gave me a box of oranges. I couldn’t come up with anything more creative to murmur but a simple “thank you” when she wished me “Gong Xi Fa Cai”. She disappeared, just as unnoticeably and mysteriously as she had shown up, only to re-appear again the following year for our annual one-minute date. Gong Xi Fa Cai… I didn’t even know what it meant, back then. But I read those same words on a lonely signboard that hung over the deserted expressway the morning after the reunion dinners. Only because those dinners are so incredibly sumptuous, abundant and take days to digest, can it be reasonably explained that even food courts in food-loving Singapore are equally empty on those days...

MEN AT WORK: "Land Down Under"

2011-01-30T17:11:00.030+08:00

Brisbane (Australia)

INCUBUS: "Here In My Room"

2011-01-26T23:15:00.006+08:00

Bianca is her name. My lover for the night. I didn’t even know her until today. She came out of nowhere, and will lead me to nowhere. She’s dangerous, unpredictable, ruthless and destructive, but some of us are attracted to risks, and we love what we fear most sometimes. She locked me up in my hotel room, will keep me caged here until the morning comes. There’s no escape from her merciless whims. She turns left, she turns right, her endless moves make me crazy. I am a little David fighting against her centrifugal Goliath forces, swelling above me and getting stronger every minute. She makes the blood in my veins pump harder; I am restless as I surrender to the randomness of her will and desires. She moans, howls like a wolf on the loose. Raindrops splash against the window. She’s a goddess of wind, water and heaven; I’m her devotee, bound to earth and fire. My clothes are a mess on the floor. I took them all off, hours ago already. I won’t go out from here anyway, not as long as she’s around, for I know that there’s no escape until she allows it to. I sink into the mattress, turn my body once again, and close my eyes .

Bianca. “White girl”. It’s a beautiful name for the first cyclone of the year that rages over Western Australia today and places all living creatures , including this “white boy”, under house arrest until the alert is over.

SHAKIRA: “Sale El Sol”

2011-01-25T11:53:00.000+08:00

I step onto the shore like a dog after a swim in the river, shaking the water off from its fur. I am ready for some happy times. The best plans are those you don’t think through but straight away put into practice. Peel yourself like an onion, show your different layers and discover what you find inside. Don’t worry too much about some tears in your eyes while doing it.

SCORPIONS: "Still Loving You"

2011-01-24T20:35:00.000+08:00

At first, when we start loving someone, we fear that our love won’t be answered, and that we’ll hear nothing more but the echo of our own voice, sarcastically resounding in the vast mountains. Then, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. But what we should fear and dread as much, is that we won’t stop loving them, even after they are dead or gone. Perhaps it’s more bearable to live without any answer at all, than to know the answer yet not being able to ask another question.

TASADI & NHATO: "Time Ticks Away"

2011-01-17T05:51:00.002+08:00

There are time zones, rather than miles between the country I left and the country I came back to. We step in a plane at night, these days, simply to step out the next morning on the other side of the world. It comes at a price, though. A persistent jetlag is the culprit of my nightly activities. I open a door and breathe a coolness that lives in this city like a night creature. The dark silence outside is comforting and it feels that I am the only dwelling soul that is awake at this impossible hour. I fell in a deep comatose sleep very early in the evening, yet came back from it before the clock struck midnight. The haunted hour, they say, but the only things that are haunting me are thoughts that emerge with intuitive clarity like the sun rising in a desert. You can do the wrong thing, for the right reason. Or the right thing, for the wrong reason. It’s too late to invite the sandman over by a glass of red wine, and too early for a cup of coffee to fully wake up, at least if I want to keep my chances open to catch some sleep still. Time ticks away, while it still can, for its ticking gets increasingly rare in this digital age. It blinks, nowadays. Cheap electronics have banned the dignity of roman signs and gracious hands on golden watches. Time is just as steadfast as before. But we now measure it with a stopwatch, where we used to pace our day by the hourly jingle-jangle of bombastic tower bells or an ugly yet cheerful cuckoo clock. You need to waste time, to find it.

CITY TO CITY: ”The Road Ahead”

2011-01-15T20:17:00.003+08:00

The new year unfolds like a roadmap in our hands. There are endless itineraries to be followed, the meanderings of which are determined by unsolvable algorithms of junctions, dots and lines on a large sheet of paper. It contains colours, symbols and letters that all have an obvious or sometimes less obvious meaning. There are speedy expressways and slow walking paths, kerbs, shortcuts, dead ends, U-turns. Hills to be climbed or descended, boundaries waiting to be crossed or respected, bridges that will bring us to either side of rivers we do not wish to swim in. There’s a scale to put things in perspective too, for not all is as big or small as it seems at first. All we need to do is to get moving, for to stand still is not an option. Just throw away the map before you go. We are better off without it. Walk freely. Discover.

JOSHUA RADIN: "Don't Look Away"

2011-01-13T14:52:00.000+08:00

“Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way around.”

(from “Shantaram”, by Gregory David Roberts)

MIKA: "We Are Young"

2011-01-08T18:27:00.001+08:00

Youthfulness is a quality, not an age.

FLOWER: "Strike While The Iron Is Hot"

2011-01-03T22:56:00.002+08:00

趁热打铁 (chèn rè dǎ tiě)

"Strike while the iron is hot."

COLDPLAY: "Till Kingdom Come"

2011-01-03T22:49:00.003+08:00

The day is a white sandy beach, and I make a castle of your body, dig my fingers in your white curves and let the silky grains slip through. I slake the shores of your thighs and take edacious sips from the salty canal that connects rivers with oceans. There are thousand ways to breath, but there’s only one in which my inhalation finds your exhalation like two unknowns of one and the same equation. Acceleration; exaltation. Your lips are a bellows that fumes desire into the heated fireplace of my body. I indulge in the crisp crowns on your royal hills¸ with an unstoppable eagerness to surrender to the powers of your mountain kingdom. My hands draw circles on your skin, they spin on either side of your chest, no longer knowing what left or right is. Our tongues are allies on this linen battlefield, and I send mine on an exploratory mission before the troops march in. Where eyes meet, they hold, and their depth is deeper than the dark black ocean in which I am drowning.

FRANK SINATRA: "Let It Snow"

2010-12-31T16:31:00.022+08:00

Hautes Fagnes (Belgium)

JADIEL: “La Cucaracha”

2010-12-26T15:10:00.004+08:00

I open the curtains of my hotel room and look outside, where the early morning Vietnamese village life is a bustling scene of an unrecorded mute movie. I do have to go now, duty is calling, so I will have to watch this episode some other day.

I button my shirt, glance in the mirror to adjust what needs to be adjusted and take a seat on the sofa. I put my socks on, first left and then right. Left and right foot, I mean, because there’s no such thing as left and right socks. There’s no green or red colour mark on the soles of socks, like they used to put on children’s shoes to indicate which one is left and which one is right. Socks are neutral, they don’t chose sides. You can put them on either foot, left or right. So let me rephrase: I put my socks on, first on the left foot and then on the right foot. Right and then left would have been possible as well. By contrast, twice left or twice right would have been rather odd, though to my knowledge, there is no law in any jurisdiction in the world which prohibits doing so.

I put my shoes on also, for it would have felt like an uncompleted procedure not to do so after putting the socks on. I stand up, take my luggage and step towards the door. But there’s something not quite right. I feel something bugging me in my right shoe. Something presses my toes slightly. For a second, I wonder whether I should just ignore it and step out, or take my shoes off again. I chose to sit down, and unlace my shoes. Well, I unlace one actually, the right one, for it is pointless to unlace the left one as well, when I only need to find out what is hidden inside the right one. I take my shoe off, hold it upside down, and shake it like a bartender would shake a cocktail shaker. Something lands on the carpet. I look down and see a tiny creature, on its back, waving its little arms in despair, crying for help. A cockroach! “Goooooooooood Morning, Vietnam…”. Now that’s a real movie.

NICKY MINAJ: “Envy”

2010-12-25T19:46:00.000+08:00

Jealousy sizzles like a coal in warm ashes; it creeps like oil in the hinges of a relationship. A little bit of it is necessary, but too much of it is a waste, just like any other liquid that is spilled.

THE COOKS:"See The Sun"

2010-12-24T12:56:00.006+08:00

撥雲見日 (bō yún jiàn rì)

"Dispel the clouds to see the sun."

YIRUMA: "Dream"

2010-12-21T21:41:00.002+08:00

Little dreams. They come in small packages. And never with a warning. They catch you by surprise, like a storm that blows the hat off the head of a lonesome man, who walks under the miserable, hanging arms of a naked winter tree. A fragile thought lingers in me, and I imagine smelling a hint of fire enfolded in the misty morning haze that halts with hesitation over the frozen fields. There’s a night to remember, and a little dream in the break of dawn.

ADAM LAMBERT: "What Do You Want From Me?"

2010-12-15T23:56:00.022+08:00

Pekanbaru (Indonesia)

FALL OUT BOY: "Thanks For The Memories"

2010-12-14T23:36:00.000+08:00

I had heard no more, and had buried any further thoughts in a place I had forgotten before I even remembered. It’s strange, how our memory works. It decides for us, holds tight what we felt was slipping away, and loosens its grip on what we desperately hold on to. What else can we do but to surrender to the whims of our own randomness. It’s a sick kind of revenge, and it feels uncomfortable to be betrayed by our own reason, but life is an architect who draws different sketches on his table than what we asked for.

JOHN COLTRANE and MILES DAVIS: "So What"

2010-12-12T17:50:00.000+08:00

It took no more than a second, but it was a second with a long history before, and an irreversible future after it. History is a long time, yet it’s decided by moments rather than centuries.

NILS PETTER MOLVAER: "Hurry Slowly"

2010-12-04T15:05:00.003+08:00

Festina lente.

"Hurry slowly." (quote by Suetonius)

LIL' KIM (Feat. Sisqo): "How Many Licks"

2010-11-30T21:27:00.001+08:00

He never heard of her thereafter. She drifted away like a piece of wood on the ocean and surrendered to the wills of nature, in stead of her own, for it requires more effort to swim than to float. Moreover, it assumes a destination, a vague idea at least of where you are heading to. And all too plenty of ideas she had, yet none of it encompassed it all. She had no master plan, no perseverance also to complete even one of the many things she ever started. Many frantically juggle with an ever-increasing number of cones in the circus of life; she chooses to put them down and give up. Patience was a virtue she had never sought to acquire.

Perhaps he had been nothing more to her than a tree to sniffle on, with the curiosity of an unleashed dog that wags its tail happily while wandering aimlessly in the park on a lazy summer Sunday. He turns his head to the pond; the sound of children’s drama and acted tears. He realised that his fate was just as randomly determined as that of an ice-cream by the whims of a spoilt child, who bans a scoop to the trash bin after just one lick, after having begged for it relentlessly first.

PEARL JAM: "Long Road"

2010-11-25T23:32:00.001+08:00

The night is pregnant of brilliant ideas. The horizon brims with a sweaty anxiety. An odour of desire looms into a shadow that is mistaken for darkness. It’s a long road from the heart to the mouth.

AEROSMITH: "Crazy"

2010-11-19T09:55:00.001+08:00

We are only crazy through the eyes of others.

Cartel: "The Perfect Mistake"

2010-11-09T06:53:00.002+08:00

I discovered yoga by chance, by mistake almost. I had been doing long-distance running for a number of years, until I ultimately ran a 42.195 km distance never to repeat it again in this lifetime. Only humans are a species crazy enough to focus on a random number like that, and to spend a few years of their life cultivating it. After reaching that self-imposed goal, I felt a bit disoriented and turned to the gym for a change. But it takes bravery to keep visiting a fitness centre. Most of us start fanatically, but when the enthusiasm of the new year’s resolutions fade, it’s very hard to stay motivated by the cold metal sound of weights falling down, or the view in the mirror of oneself lifting dumbbells.

Sure, I had peeked through the classroom window occasionally, and I had noticed that bunch of disciples performing all kinds of silly poses in front of their instructor, but “yoga is for girls, right?” and “it can’t be that hard”. Nonetheless, one day I joined the centre’s yoga class that I had inconspicuously been observing for a number of weeks already, and I felt like an intruding duckling in a group of graceful swans. But to my surprise, the swans accepted me, and they didn’t notice that I suffered so hard during my very first hour of yoga ever. Perhaps it was courtesy of them pretending not to be aware of my legs trembling like an erupting volcano. Perhaps it was their good manners not to hear my choking, as if I were fuming like that same cursed volcano. In any case, something changed inside of me. Beyond my prejudice, I felt I belonged there, in that very moment, when all thoughts seemed to escape like ashes in the air. And when I closed my eyes after that one hour of intense yoga practice, I felt peaceful, silent, yet invigorated. I was immovable, but moved. It was love at first fight, but a fight I loved to lose.

CAT STEVENS: "Morning Has Broken"

2010-11-07T10:20:00.001+08:00

The night evaporates in the morning dew; a long shadow that stretches itself out behind me like a lazy cat. The lion city roars rather like a sleepy kitty at this merciless early time of the day. A bird tweets for attention, happy to be noticed before the increasing swell of street sounds will drown his melody in a whirlpool of noise. The carpet trader is struggling to open the padlock of his shophouse; some aunties are cutting fresh vegetables in an empty restaurant. Every open window frames an enchanting painting. A city is beautiful in its ugliness. My pace is light, as I walk through colourful Haji Lane. The stench of some cigarettes, the foul smell of beer. Odorous remains of late night troops on the loose, who wandered on the roads in quest for companionship. When we seek thrills, it’s actually the sense of belonging we are after. It’s easier to betray oneself in search of recognition by others, than to recognize yourself. The escape to inner freedom starts when we break the chains that others impose on us. That’s what makes yoga so appealing. Forget about the wary smiles, the raised eyebrows. In yoga, you don’t have to adopt a pose, you become the pose. I step in for my today’s yoga teacher’s class. I crave for coffee.

NOOR E KHUDA: "My Name Is Khan"

2010-10-31T17:31:00.008+08:00

"My name is Khan. Khan. From the epiglottis". I can't recall the last time I had watched a movie on the plane, despite the frequent flying. But it was even longer ago since a movie brought tears to my eyes. And more than just once. Simply impressive, and me impressed.

EDDIE VEDDER: "Better Days"

2010-10-24T16:16:00.039+08:00

Bali (Indonesia)

BAND OF HORSES: "Infinite Arms"

2010-10-17T17:44:00.001+08:00

Two arms to lean into, trustworthy as boulders near the shoreline. Two arms that lift you up in the air, gracefully, that let you overlook the beauty of the world in three hundred and sixty and more degrees. Two arms to hold you, warm your back and press you in his chest. Two arms to make you feel like a princess, and anyone else you thought you never were. A couple of arms, arms a couple. Two, yet one. Good things come in pairs.

DELUGE: "Open Up The Sky"

2010-10-17T17:24:00.001+08:00

Alta alatis patent.

"The sky is open for those who have wings."

MIDLAKE: "Acts Of Man"

2010-10-13T21:39:00.002+08:00

"In daily life we see people around who are happier than we are, people who are less happy. Some may be doing praiseworthy things and others causing problems. Whatever may be our usual attitude toward such people and their actions, if we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate toward those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our minds will be very tranquil.”

(Yoga Sutra of Patanjali 1.33)

KEITH URBAN:l "My Heart Is Open"

2010-10-06T18:52:00.000+08:00

It was an unsuspicious day, when you were still liquid and I tried to grab you. You held my look, and I became a hostage of my own dreams. Something died, like an unknown soldier who perished on the battlefield and left no name, for he had none. We remember the fallen, without ever having known them. We identify ourselves with what they represent, not with who they really were. I look at you, and see myself through the peephole of your open heart.

FEIST:"Past In Present"

2010-10-06T06:44:00.000+08:00

Born in ancient times, alive today, yoga is eternal yet exists only in the present.

(author unknown)

BOB SCHNEIDER: "Gold In The Sunset"

2010-10-05T08:36:00.032+08:00

Yangon (Myanmar)

FRANK SINATRA: "Night And Day"

2010-09-24T06:01:00.000+08:00

Life smiles at me, and I smile back, as if it were a big-eyed girl in a white-lucent skirt in the glistering sun. I open unopened doors and step into new days with the flair of a catwalk model. My raft’s afloat, peacefully on a gently meandering river towards greater oceans. Happiness comes like a tan, effortlessly, by the mere exposure to natural elements. The sun is my ruler, the moon is my accomplice. They take turns in silent understanding, with the regularity of night and day, and neither of them gets exhausted. Learn from the elements, and you will be in your element.

王菲 : 紅豆 (FAYE WONG: "Red Bean")

2010-09-16T09:06:00.006+08:00

相思

紅豆生南國，
春來發幾枝。
勸君多採擷，
此物最相思。

Yearning

In southern lands the red bean tree grows.
It sprouts when the vernal breeze blows.
Pick the red beans with your hands filled.
Your yearning for love will be fulfilled.

(王維 - Wang Wei, 699-761 AD, China)

WANG CHUNG: "Dance Hall Days"

2010-09-15T18:32:00.003+08:00

The streets are a deserted dance hall, reminiscing the previous night. All guests have disappeared and noise has turned to silence. The concrete breathes the morning chill. A sparrow hops cautiously, seemingly unbelieving that the coast is clear again. The night holds expectations; the morning brims with revelations. There’s silence after the storm, and sunshine before the rain. Her heels click in a steady pace. The coffee is hot, too hot still. She’s cool. Time goes fast, but she walks faster.

A suit-dressed man walks past her in the opposite direction. A breeze of fragrance enters her nostrils, and instantly it all comes back to her. That’s the smell. His smell. The same perfume that mesmerised her from the very first time she inhaled it. There he is, vividly, she feels his touch, his strong arms, a cheeky laugh etched in a half-open mouth. Her eyes blink franticly behind the dark-coloured sunglasses. The present is a memory of a distant future. She turns her neck, yet knows that the back disappearing behind the corner is not the one she used to kiss with half-closed eyes. She walks faster, but her heart beats fastest.

LUZ CASAL: "Mar Y Cielo"

2010-09-08T21:24:00.031+08:00

Labuan (Malaysia)

DEEP PURPLE: “Truth Hurts”

2010-09-07T17:20:00.000+08:00

They say “the truth hurts”. Now that’s a lie. The truth soothes, it heals, it reveals. The truth conquers all, for it has time on its side, a patient and reliable ally. Deny the truth, and you deny your self. If someone means well for you, then listen to what they tell you about yourself. If you mean well for yourself, then listen to yourself. Your truth is inside already anyway. You know the answer. Just dare to ask the question.

SWANS: "Breathing Water"

2010-09-06T17:05:00.001+08:00

Birth, death, and some stuff in between. Some writhe like fish in despair, biting air where they expect water, breathing through useless gills when they actually need nostrils. Knowing what you need is the hardest part. But part from what you know, for a start.

TELEPOPMUSIK: "Breathe"

2010-09-05T16:17:00.001+08:00

A boy and his girlfriend are enjoying the summer sun near the poolside. “What swimming style you prefer most?”, he asks. “Breast stroke”, she says. “Hmm…I like that too!”, he drools.