your glassy eyes betray you

a strange lunch

2007-07-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

the rave

2007-07-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

the rave

2007-07-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

the rave

2007-07-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

the rave

2007-07-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

the crash

2007-07-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

the lighthouse

2007-07-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

the lighthouse

2007-07-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

2007-07-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

sunrise

2007-07-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

sunrise

2007-07-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

byron at night

2007-07-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

the road to byron

2007-07-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

winter break

2007-07-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

I went to the airport to pick morgan up. we spent a few days before byron bay staying at my new place at sids. a few days later, after sid got back. i went to byron bay with him, pei, sid , ted and ludwig. we rented a camper van and got there in 2 days, travelling up the eastern coast, stopping for a night at port macquarie. Byron bay was amazing. we camped near a beach that stretched on for miles. walked for hours at night without reaching the end . rested for an hour and watched the sunrise. the next day we travelled to the byron lighthouse, and watched dolphins and turtles and prepared to head to nimbin and then home.

along the way we passed a coastal ridge that was a ridiculous wind trap. the caravan got blown off the road, and we flipped. i thought pei died when she flew forward and stopped moving and i screamed her name. meanwhile sid and ted were dangling from seatbelted positions and ludwig had smashed into a cupboard. Morgan who had been sleeping with his beanie over his head at an odd angle , landed nicely on his feet and began to look for his shoes. amazingly no one was really hurt . we climbed out the back of the caravan in a daze, and were confronted by an annoying news crew who started badgering us. the farmer whose fence we brought down started asking us for compensation. thankfully NRMA and the local police showed up and really helped us out of that muck. The cops gave us a ride in the back of their cars to the nearest town, bangalow. thru the grilles and bars , we must have looked like criminals cos me and pei started getting heckled by a motorcyclist riding behind us. at bangalow we really didnt have the spirit to do much. we parked ourselves on a bench and drank the goon of wine sid salvaged from the vehicle. a few hours later with badly worded clauses in our rental agreement threatening huge financial liablities, we got on the bus to casino where we collapsed in exhaustion on the night train back to sydney.

i turned 23 a few days later, without much fanfare, but i had a really nice day with pei and morgan, and took a walk from coogee to bondi. found out we were not liable for any damages. in the evening, we went to tony's house at newtown, popped and watched viddies.

pei left for singapore, the next day. i realised very quickly how much i missed her. zom left sydney that thursday. we bade him farewell the night before. on the way to the regent pub , we saw some arsehole who was well off his rockers, kicking the shit out of his girlfriend who c0uldnt have been more than 17. we stopped him and called the cops after he ran off. had to encounter the NSW police for the 4th time.

moved into sids soon after that day. gallavanted with morgan around sydney the next couple of days, but felt a little heavy cos i knew he was due back in perth in a couple of days. on the last weekend , we went to newcastle for a rave. got into yimings car, what was meant to be a 2 hour ride soon became 4 not that i was complaining. acid had turned the road journey into a night time phantasmagoria. stars dancing in the freezing night air, streaking lights on dark roads, nightime clouds swirling in brownian motion. the branches of trees became the limbs of ancient things, reaching out for the car, having a go at the young and fleeting.

soon we got off the main road, and had to travel 20 or so km or so , on sand and dirt country roads. in the pitch dark the stars suddenly multiplied, as we steadily gained height above sea level. Richard had swapped cars after wilson got pulled over by the cops. I struggled to focus my eyes on the map and summon up the clarity required to help yiming navigate. at 4am in the morning, we finally arrived at the end of strike a light road, and got to the rave. it was freezing cold, with fog pouring out of our mouths and out the exhaust pipes of the cars sullied by dust and dirt from the journey. we wore flourescent wrist bands so we wouldnt get lost in the dark. i tried to make sense of the swirly floor as we followed the music to the main stage. there were fire jugglers and strange performance artists. spent more time getting wood to stoke a fire than actually dancing. We watched the sun creep up on us and we left back for sydney in the afternoon. everyone was coming down. the deafening silence during our lunch stop was rather uncomfortable, i tried to avoid eye contact with anyone while shoving soggy chips down my throat.

The last few days, me and morgan just hung out and saw more of sydney. i felt really sad after i sent him off at the airport for his flight back to perth.
i guess this holiday was really good, but i cant believe its drawing to a close so soon. back to school next week.

sometime in june

2007-06-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

The semester is over. i just have one more essay to turn in today. a badly written short story for creative writing.

My current house is starting to resemble mile end which is a pity cos the house itself is rather nice. My housemates on the other hand put barnyard animals to shame. One semester on and the rose tinted glasses have definitely worn away like my toothbrush which i found being used by one of my housemates.The sink is blocked with dirt and grit from the stacks of plates and crockery that have been left for weeks. the kitchen floor is teeming with various generations of cockroaches in different sizes. They leisurely nibble away at food and trash left thoughtfully out on tabel tops and around the floor. the kitchen shelves have turned into nurseries and have small stockpiles of roach eggs that i initially thought were seeds or spices, but thankfully did not sample in my cooking. The living room is littered with... well litter really, your street corner variety. empty cans, food wrappers, bottles. Amongst discarded shoes and female underwear.
My last hope is the cold. Someone smashed the sliding glass of the balcony, and it has since been replaced with a big piece of flimsy cardboard. im hoping that the approaching winter will plunge the living room into a deep freeze and slow down bacterial growth and make the place inhospitable for roaches. That way i can invite people over without fear of them contracting some horrible infection and dying.

I may not have to though. Zom's departure from sydney might mean that i'll move into his room. i'll miss the communal toilets with unpleasant sounds and no queues.

Went to genolan caves with tony, adam pei and sid last weekend. all the while i kept trying fantasising about sneaking away from the main group and exploring the caves on my own, which would have probably resulted in a rather spectacular death. still the caves were amazing along the the beaten path.

morgan is visiting next week. im really looking forward to seeing him, but am bracing myself for incessant grumbling and hyperchondria.

The day after he arrives, six of us are going to rent a camper van and drive up to byron bay and nimbin.

sydney

2007-02-28T23:37:00.000-08:00

this morning i finally killed all the mosquitos in my room by drinking too much at kath's party and giving them alcohol poisoning. stumbled out of bed for class and almost left my house before realising i was only wearing one shoe.

yes Im back in sydney. this time i brought photos of people and singapore to stick up on my wall. the past few months back home were really trying but i realised how lucky i am to be surrounded by such good friends. i'll remember racing down the highway while slipping off the back of jared's motorbike during a rainstorm, with my bag flapping open in the wind and the constant fear of its contents being left behind in a hansel and gretel trail along the highway. performing at the prince of wales with ying and guru. nearly sending my hand thru a thousand dollar painting while working at an art gallery with norman. having a bad episode with a pack of murderous monkeys and swollen jackfruits in the jungle with morgan. listening to jonathan rattle of linaen species and genus names and getting shocked by the extent of his zoological knowledge while gazing at a leviathan of a crocodile called kaiser at the zoo. hanging out with my sister. rain, rain and more rain, i thought we would all drown that december. jeremy and kent, andre, cedric and ina. cain and bes. watching muse or rather watching myself watch muse at fort canning.

my new house is alot better than the previous crack den i used to inhabit. i actually have a balcony. most of my housemates are girls and its rather weird brushing my teeth in a communal toilet in the morning to the soundtrack of a chick having a go on the lavy. that aside , i have a strong feeling in my bones thats it going to be a good year one way or another.

from a balance beam

2007-01-09T21:41:00.000-08:00

There is a man holding a megaphone, so he must have been the voice of God.The bystanders claimed they saw angels flying up and down the block.Well, they must have been attached to wires. I saw one laying in the lawn with a broken arm,so I called 911. So that is one less founded opinion. One more cause for a dispute.So the street filled, like a basin, up with cameras and their crewsand they washed away the rumors leaving just the concrete truth. It was a spectacle.No, I mean a miracle. So then I fell like that girl from a balance beam.A gymnasium of eyes were all holding on to me. I lifted one foot to cross the otherand I felt myself slipping. It was a small mistake. Sometimes that is all it takes.Now I'm staring at my wrist, hoping that the timing is right. When the planets will align.There will be no planets to align. Just the carcass of the sunand those little painted marbles spinning senseless through an endless black sky.(and so it never started and it will never stop just like I am and you are)It was in a foreign hotel's bathtub I baptized myself in change.And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been.I emerged to find the parallels were fewer. I was cleansed. I looked in the mirrorand someone new was there. Still, I was as helpless as a chess piecewhen I was lifted up by someone's hand and delivered from the corner my enemies had got me in.But in all of my salvation I still felt imprisoned inside that holding cell that is myself.So I wait for the day when I'll hear the key as it turns in the lockand the guard will say to me, "Oh my patient prisoner you have waited for this dayand finally you are free! You are free! You are freezing."Now I'm staring at the sun, waiting for it to explode. Because a day is gonna come,don't know when but it will come and then we will finally know the way out of here.And I will throw away this wrinkled map and my chart of stars and compass, cracked.And I'll climb out that tree all wet with sap to avoid the hungry beasts below.I'll cut out my lover's tongue and sing of a graveyard gray and a garden greenand we won't have to worry no more. No we won't have to wonder again abouthow this song or story ends about how this song and story will end.

pixie

2006-12-15T08:45:00.000-08:00

your glassy eyes betray you

I twirled a ripple on the surface of my grief and winced. My eyes followed her as she got up and left. Watching that familiar gait disappear into the crowd and get consumed by the city that i have grown to despise. maybe oneday il forget that gait altogether. i just sat there for a long time staring off, and when i finally got up something died. the bad aftertaste of disappointment on my tongue was like a month old massacre festering in the height of summer. i tried so hard. but i cant do this anymore. it no longer makes sense. its such a shame.

2006-12-14T03:01:00.000-08:00

2006-12-14T02:53:00.000-08:00

greece and turkey 5

2006-12-14T02:46:00.000-08:00

greece turkey 4

2006-12-14T02:38:00.000-08:00

greece and turkey 3

2006-12-14T02:27:00.000-08:00

greece and turkey 2

2006-12-14T02:16:00.000-08:00

king leonidas of the spartans. he led 300 spartans against 2 million persian soliders under xerxes. held them at bay for days. im dead he had trousers on at the time.

greece and turkey 1

2006-12-14T02:08:00.000-08:00

melbourne in november 4

2006-12-13T23:33:00.000-08:00

twas the most ridiculous supermarket Q i had ever seen. the withered elderly people near the front were young when the line began, some of the younger ones had never known a time before the line. empires rose and fell in the time it took to pay that lousy bottle of orange juice.
last night in melbourne, i ditch my nazi u-boat fishmonger look, for the sleazy lebanese rapper number. that backpackers was an awful lot like cuscaden patio, a place i would like to see burnt to the ground due to recent events.
i think this one pretty much speaks for itself
R2B2

melbourne in november 3

2006-12-13T23:25:00.000-08:00

franky and peiwen at a strange goth club which featured a torture wrack, naked women, and the worst band in the world.
to raise money to call home, poor ET has been reduced to doing the glory-hole circuit in the slummier victorian backstreets
caught in the rain
practicing my levitation
i found this one particularly sad and very poignant

melbourne in november 2

2006-12-13T23:18:00.000-08:00

yes this gutter trash is in fact your biological brother sharlyn
cedric takes a walk in a big to small optic illusion room
pier
the band photo that never was
melbournian mary

melbourne in november1

2006-12-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

sidney is one lucky cock
panic on the streets of melbourne
as much as the man was a friend, i despised cedrics penchant for farting on trams and other means of public transportation
i told sidney green wouldnt be good for the security cameras, but his flamboyance persisted
we found a back alley with beautiful graffitti

bandits3

2006-10-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

Been spending the week, re-doing my essays. piling misfortune apon misfortune, i found it really hard to concentrate in school. it all culminated in a boiling point during another one of amitavo's philosophy lectures, when i suddenly realised i was in a violent and unhappy rage. i fantasised about running up to the front and burying my pen deep into his jugular, putting an abrupt and permanent end to his incoherent ramblings about the knowability of knowledge. i took another look at the poor man, and regretted contemplating his death, pulling the plug and letting all the vitriol disappear to wherever my vitriol magically disappears to. All this in preparation for a fantastic fireworks display in the future.

People i was once close to, are drifting away. i reckon it takes about a decade to go from former best friend to absolute stranger. every subsequent time u see them, all u really see is an epitaph for former closeness. Its so easy to promise forever and believe it before u know what forever really means.

went to bandits on friday, and danced for hours to grinding distorted electro, trying to outrace that growing shitball of rejection, sadness, bitterness, fear and disappointment by trying my level best to resemble a malfunctioned robot. By 4 in the morning, i reckon i was largely successful.

Today i went to the beach with zom, sid and simon. It was blazing hot, and i was sure id become a shade of wesley snipes by the end of the day. The water was icy though. Had childlike fun tossing and tumbling thru foam and salt from tall relentless breakers. at night me and mark, followed sid on a dodgy errand in a dodgy part of town, before i went home. i guess that about brings us to the present.

hiuiuvfyub

2006-10-09T00:16:00.000-07:00

there was an armed robbery in my house on sat afternoon. prob a syndicate cos its the third house on my neighbourhood in a week. my laptop was taken along with all my major essays that are due soon. dont know what im going to do. lost a novel i was working on as well.

dawn

2006-09-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

I havnt been able to sleep properly for over a week, whenever im on the verge, i start hearing radio static and then a man screaming, and it tears me back into waking life. im exhausted.

I went to canberra on saturday. The place is a dull, boring shitehole surrounded by mountains that give u a horrible sense of being hemmed in. There is a city plan with the location, species and age of every single plant on public property. whenever one plant gets the shaft, another almost identical one from an extensive nursery is inserted in its place, giving you an idea of just how micromanaged the place is. Because of strict bulding codes, the city hasnt really expanded. The dull characterless buildings and random monuments in well manicured gardens, make the whole city seem like a well tended war cemetry. to make up for the cultural vacuum, marijuana and pornography are legal within the state.

Made it back to sydney, and uni in the evening in time to catch the dresden dolls. They were amazing. definitely the best gig ive ever been to. the band before them, the red painters, featured a singer dressed as an octopus, geishas playing electric violins , and two people drenched in black paint getting painted over during the set.

My family left on monday morning, leaving me to turn to a pile of undone work, that lay dormant and menacing. I tried to prepare for a presentation in school, but i was waylaid by a pair of christian evengelicals who refused to leave me alone. One of them was trying to explain to me his concept of the separation of the mind, body and soul. He encouraged me to use my soul to give god a collect call. He said ," once you do so, and get to that level, Oh ! Oh BOy ! you touch things you never imagined you would be able to." At this point i tried my best to stop picturing the man molesting all sorts of exotic south american wildlife.

Bestiality ravaged street preachers are the last of my concerns. the suns coming up, and i still cant get to sleep.

cedric, sidney, the pacific ocean and me

2006-09-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

immutable

2006-09-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

Started my week, with a philosophy lecture at school. Dr amitavo, an individual with the oratical skills and charisma of a garden snail on heroin, actually attempted some sarcasm , " today we shall examine the lighthearted topic of death." I was sure his veins would rupture and his body would be rent in flames right there and then in the lecture theatre.

I met my family in the evening. They just arrived in sydney and will be here fer a week. My mum was her usual silly socially inept self, saying things that display a brave abandonment of conventional logic or rationality. I used to be embarassed when i was younger, but now i just find it endearing. My dad was his usual stoic self. Left them and my sister at the hotel, and took a bus back home. I have a longer amnesty period to clean my room of incriminating evidence before the inquisitorial inspection.

Whenever i meet my parents i feel guilty. Guilty for not making more of an effort, to get to know them , to call home more often, to be there for them, or even bother to find out how the are doing from time to time. Years sometimes punctuate the conversations i have with my eldest sister, but i know shes got her own life, i just found out shes having a kid next april. Its different with my folks. My mum spent so much of her life raising us, and now we're all away, and too self-absorbed to make an effort. I know my mum spends alot of time alone in the house by herself and gets so horribly lonely she, talks to her plants and names the sparrows she feeds in the morning.

Whenever i feel terrible about these things, i draw away even further, and tell myself that there'l be enough time in the future for these things. Everytime i see them they look older and older, and i realise one day in the not too distant future they will be dead. two decades? one and a half? twenty septembers from now, my parents may cease to exist. and what then. My dad leaves me his temperament and my mum leaves me my physical appearance and then they go back to what they were before they were born. Does death make life seem sad or does life make death seem sad. i wonder what it feels like to have death close by. Not as an option you can step back from when your young, healthy and safe , but as an inescapable ineveitably that no amount of decision making and good luck can change once youve reached the end of your tether.

Im afraid. of becoming old and defeated. of being old and alone. of being left without options, of having cold and emotionally detached children like myself. Just because something has to end doesnt render it pointless does it. course not. The postmodernist leftovers of what used to be my brain cant accept objective meaning presented to me on a platter. unfortunately all the meanings i derive myself seem trivial and transient on a long enough timeline. i'd like to think theres more to life then a dialectic of pain and pleasure. What about experience and personal growth but how can they matter at all if i dont have a soul. I envy religious people, and people who have the capacity to act on faith. How wonderful it must feel to go to bed at night safe in the company of your beliefs. Im glad my parents are christian.

spring

2006-09-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

On the first night of spring, a bug flew into sid's window. we played football at 2 in the morning in the park near his house. running around the semi dark of the trees, the moon was so big i was sure i could knock off a chunk of cheese with the football. but spring is a capricious lady. a few nights later, sydney received the highest rainfall its got in over a century. oxford street became a river, with water gushing off rooftops and out of manholes in the sidewalk. Gale force winds turning my bag into a kite. went back to sids house to get my guitar and noticed the same bug was dead on his carpet, which cos of stray bits of tobbacco and alcohol stains, has become a sort of graveyard for a recent hedonistic past. Its nice to be in at night and hear the wind raping the guillotine styled windows of sydney's older houses, but its nicer to be out, i hope summer takes its time.

yelid

2006-09-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

God that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said 'yes I think we've met before'
In that instant it started to pour,

Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across point champlain
And all of the time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name…

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin
Tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in
Now you're outside me You see all the beauty Repent all your sin

It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard I'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love…

Live through this, and you won't look back…
Live through this, and you won't look back…
Live through this, and you won't look back…

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you I'm not sorry it's over I'm not sorry there's nothing to say
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say...

roadkill

2006-08-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

last night i drank quite a bit at adams house. Adam parked himself by the window sill for an hour and created a beautiful drip action jackson pollock number 5 on the carpark canvass below. He just kept going and goin, like he had eaten a particularly spicy family of four for dinner, i didnt know the human body could contain so much vomitus. i added to it, and left his house feeling like the devil had come in my throat. I went home, colder and emptier and more alone than kingsford at 4am, a part of me hoping to get knifed.

Ive been pretty fucking depressed for quite awhile now, i just havnt realised it cos ive been forcibly shoving it out of view. but its starting to get a little debilitating. my room is a mess of books, cans , ash and undone school work. keep telling my self that over the course of the next cigerrette i'll end the jarvis cocker chord progression in my head and get to it, but the fags are locking arms in an endless line. horribly whiny, self absorbed lines and paragraphs like this get ejected out every now and then , cos these words can never leave my mouth.

Don't bother saying you're sorry / Why don't you come in Smoke all my cigarettes again / Every time I get no further How long has it been? / Come on in now, wipe your feet on my dreams. You take up my time / Like some cheap magazine. When I could have been learning something Oh well, you know what I mean, oh / I've done this before And I will do it again / Come on and kill me baby While you smile like a friend / Oh and I'll come running Just to do it again /

You are the last drink I never should have drunk You are the body hidden in the trunk / You are the habit I can't seem to kick You are my secrets on the front page every week You are the car I never should have bought You are the dream I never should have caught You are the cut that makes me hide my face You are the party that makes me feel my age Like a car crash I can see but I just can't avoid. Like a plane I've been told I never should board. Like a film that's so bad but I've got to stay till the end Let me tell you now: it's lucky for you that we're friends.

there is a popish plot afloat

2006-08-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

I did do to the beach in the end. Several of em. walked from my house to Coogee and from there took the coastal pathway to Bondi. Stopped many times along the way to have a smoke on the cliffs and stare out at the pacific ocean. theres something about staring at the breakers from a great height and tasting saltspray in your mouth at the edge of a continent with nothing before you but thousands of miles ocean til south america. something indescribably beautiful and poignant.

from bondi, i went to kris' house to watch movies and stay over. In the mornin i heard the dog crunching on something hard, and realised that my stitched on thumb nail had fallen off. In equal parts amusement and disgust i tried to get it back. then the dog started making funny noises and i became mortally afraid of it choking to death right there and then in the hall while everyone was having breakfast. " hey everybody sorry, i killed your dog with my disgusting detacheable thumbnail, do u mind passing the butter? "

the dog spluttered the nail onto the floor next to kris' mums feet. I inched closer feigning conversation to keep her distracted, but before i could put a foot on it, the dog got there first, and starting making grating noises again. finally managed to get the damn thing out of its mouth while feigning having a hearty breakfast time game with it, and disposed of the nail , which surprisingly didnt have so much as a scratch on it.

Went driving around the bays with kath after that , and came back after going to newtown in the evening.

Ive been having troubling history related dreams lately waking up to the sounds of phrases like , " NO POPERY!" or " Roundhead, fling me up[a leg of mutton and i shall fling thee down a lord." The more i study history the more i strengthen a disparaging view of mankind. It seems nothing commendable or admirable was driven by anything more than ruthless self interest, packaged in shiny altruism and her accompanying ideals. the rights of man, the enlightenment, the english civil war, the french revolution.
oh well.

welcome to kingsford

2006-08-11T18:51:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

Last week, there was a midnight rampage at kensington and a couple of cars got smashed, this week the bus drivers union said it was considering boycotting dangerous routes including kingsford after somebody fired an air rifle at a bus driver from the kingsford roundabout. I love the eastern suburbs, they have so much character.

i woke up this morning acutely aware of what last nights binge drinking had done to my body. You start to take notice when your piss smells like whisky. i have a vague recollection of wobbling into uni at night in search of more alcohol and being given a slice of cold pizza instead, with the advice to stay out of trouble.

Its 1130 am on a saturday. The weekend has arrived. The domestic life is now presenting me with two options, that both hold promises of scrotum splitting excitement and fun; cooking or trying to figure out why the washing machine wont work.

The academic life is presenting me with a list of weekend obligations that i shall doggedly attempt to plough thru like an old farmer on a dead mule in a barren field.

The social life is reminding me that it is a figment of my imagination.

for 2 weeks i have been whining about going to the beach. today hell and highwater wont keep me from it. but catherine the great, and a spoilt washing machine might.

the Ruby Rabbit

2006-08-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

its a sunday again. Yesterday i followed the duchesses to their rehearsal and helped them set up for a gig at the ruby rabbit at oxford street, a tiny but charming venue. The cracked glass windows behind the band provided a changing street scene backdrop to their set, and made the whole place seem like an attic. Watching them practice and play, i realised how much i miss playing in a band or just making music for that matter. They played a great set. Afterwards, we packed up and moved the stuff back to tony's house and i got back pretty late. Theres an industrial area near Tony's house with grey bricks and factory chimneys that looks very much like something on a socialist postcard or a pinkfloyd album cover. Found it very beautiful. Sydney can be very beautiful even in her drab and bleak places.
Woke up this morning feeling really crushed for some reason i couldnt quite get a hold of. Just lay in bed an hour , before i forcibly shook it off and proceeded to the frozen bathroom. whenever i take a shower my head fills with images of naked swedes dashing out of saunas and diving into frozen lakes. Gonna go the IGA to get some groceries for the week, i hope they have cambells soup on half price again, i dont feel like cooking. Before the sun goes down id like to go the beach.

rainbow street

2006-07-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

Tried to watch a gig yesterday in the city. There was a bus service disruption, so i had to try another route and i got lost for three hours. its a strange liberation to feel lost in a new city, and to understand the inconsequentiality of you being lost in the city. Finally got to Darling Harbour but by then i was so exhausted i slept during the gig, and awoke during audience applause.

Today was a warm balmy blue day, a sharp contrast to the bleary dreary celtic rain clouds that seemed to take permanent residence in the skies over sydney earlier on in the week. i wanted to go to the beach , but it its getting dark now. started the day with one too many fortifying shots of whiskey before waltzing over to the IGA and buying butter. stumbled home and cooked eggs and cornbeef for lunch. ive been trying to get thru my philosophy readings fast enought to head out and catch some sun , but it doesnt seem likely.

my new landlord is a real character, and i sometimes feel like im living in the paper street soap company. he showed me some kalashnikov baring photos circa the early 1990s when he accidentally stayed in a taliban stronghold near the afghan/paki border. he takes his anti-globalisation, anti MNC ideals to their furthest practicality-shunning conclusions, refusing to buy or smoke big tobacco company ciggerettes or wear any clothes with a label. one comment is all it takes to get him to propel himself into a flaming sermon about third world hunger, american foreign policy, john howard, women's rights or frank zappa. yes zappa. he sings in a frank zappa cover band.

still i feel alot more at home here than in jim's cell. the neighbourhoodn im in now has been the location of 4 knifings since june. one on the street right outside my house. apparently robbers are targeting uni students cos there is a high concentration of them in the area. statistically speaking its probably still pretty safe, but i dont leave home after dark without a jackknife, pretending it would actually help.

the moments passed

2006-07-25T03:33:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

I moved out from old Jim's house. He was getting really weird and starting to creep me out , talking about us being friends and shit. Plus he continually stopped me in the corridor and proceeded to spend the next 20 or so minutes telling me a banal anecdote from his family history ( which he spent a decade researching ). it got to a point where i would shut myself in my room just to have my own space. plus i couldnt get my internet running in his house. i found another place with a leftie-tasmanian bloke and three students. i told jim , and he gave me a black face and told me he thought we were friends and asked me what he was gonna do about his financial situation .

i couldnt sleep that night, tossing and turning while the guilt devoured me . but i knew i had to go , i needed the internet for school and i didnt want to dread going home everyday. i walked about the uni area in blustery rain putting up notices and posters everywhere to avertise his place to some other poor sod and gave jim a weeks advance in rent for nothing. Then i moved my stuff over. I told myself id check up on him after my weekend in byron bay. I told my mum not to call the house naymore cos i was getting a little uncomfortable by how they would talk alot.

Well now i find out the old cunt told my mum that i smoke, well before i left . What a fucking arse, i didnt even smoke in his house. my mum has been giving me so much shite about the tabba thanks to old jimbo that i really cant be fucked to help him move his stuff around next week.

i went to byron bay over the weekend for splendor in the grass with kris and her band and her sister...

The train and bus ride to Ballina took over thirteen hours. Taking ciggerette breaks during the train ride were dodgy cos it entailed having to get off at strange little stations (with names like cowbell or cornear), taking three quick drags of a fag before hurrying back on the train before it abandoned you in hickville nothingness for the weekend. We got off the train at Grafton and took the bus to Ballina with dark fields on either side under a sky saturated with stars. We found a trailer park along the pacific highway and stayed there.

The next day we somehow managed to get a limo for the price of a cab to take us to the festival. So we made our way to the festival like rockstar royalty. obviously high out of our minds and making it increasingly obvious by upping our efforts to conceal it. I heard Tony's voice trail off as he engaged the driver in sharp conversation, while i started to zone out. The brilliant blue of the sky melded into the ocean through the limo windows and everything seemed to stand out and seem more real.

When we got there , i was greeted by a suffocating fume of purple haze. We packed into a festival tent and watched Youth Group, then i started to panic. The heat and colour and number of people started to stress me out . I went out to get a break from the sensory overstimulation and came back to watch death cab for cutie , who didnt really sound all that great. The band that really blew my balls apart later on was mogwai, who started off their set with bagpipes and rather ominour gaelic singing samples. Watched sonic youth and dj shadow before leaving the mud and filth of the festival and heading back.

The planned to leave the next day to get to sydney on monday in time for the first day of school, but the bus/train company screwed up my pickup point , bumping me to the day so i missed the second day of the festival for nothing. later on i heard that a girl died at the festival in a porta- loo.

took the long night train back to rainy sydney.

cities dont accept backpackers

2006-07-15T09:02:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

back tracking a little:

I celebrated my birthday by breaking my thumb on tjinns car door. went to A and E to get my nail removed and restitched on. before that i spent 17 hours q-ing up for the swee lee sale and bought a fender telecaster.

I left the country a few days ago for sydney. Im staying at an inn with a good lee harvey oswald view of oxford street below. Its the gay district of sydney and when i go out at night to get some food i can see men in thongs behind the glass windows of clubs , and leather and pvc queens making their rounds.

i found a place to stay with no bond or lease. Its with a 77 year old man who looks like he might expire at any moment. he seems nice enough though.

Removed the bandage and was amzed to see that my thumb bears a striking resemblance to oyster boy. a crack for a smile and two little holes where stitching was for eyes.

Im trying to not think so much about singapore , and telling myself that the loneliness will pass. i figured out some of the buses, sidney has been taking me around. trying to get adjusted as fast as possible.

its funny how fast you get used to the cold and it seems like the only thing youve ever known and that you havnt come from somewhere warmer.

sydney is a real melting pot of people from pretty much everywhere.

i went to a museum for modern art today. the kind of art that completely baffles me by its complete lack of aesthetic value. am i missing something? rooms with looped videos of people standing still, rooms with random objects splayed about. white canvasses with black angular lines. i mistook a seating area for an installation art piece.
i think alot of modern art is fucking bollocks, validated only by art world marketeering and perpetuated by pretentious art world opinion leaders. or maybe i just dont get it.

After that i walked around the harbour. there are so many old art deco buildings around. the wind and cold are refreshing but make u smoke and drink alot.

im exhausted.

the employment page

2006-06-12T07:59:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

Listenin to mercury rev now. feel really sad.

the defiant ones

2006-06-04T02:48:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

I am running out of painkillers and the pain doesnt seem to be going away. Tried to do without em today , but when the pain comes on i just dont feel like doing anything, and everything becomes a cause for irritation.

Took my last pair, hopefully it will subside by tomorrow. I made an important pharmaceutical discovery earlier this week.
i forgot to bring my painkillers out one day so my friend gave me her left over dramadols which she was using for migraines. i figured the potency would be a lot smaller since they were prescribed for migraines and took 5 within an hour. the effect of five dramadol tablets is very similar to something else from the chemical generation. It took me almost ten hours to come down.

The weekend was a mostly dull affair. I decided to get sloshed on friday night. We bought a bottle of rum and big bottle of mixed berry juice. we knew we were in for trouble the moment we opened the mixed berry juice. The smell was absolutely putrid, apon inspection we found out the juice comprised of about ten fruit mixtures from such diverse specimen as apples, oranges, strawberries and bananas. nevertheless i tried to mix it with the rum and drink my fill. The chemical waste was bad enough in my cup near my nostrils, but in my mouth it mixed with traces of the sterilising mouth wash i had used earlier and became something else altogether. i think that was the first time, i felt like i had to retch from drinking without even being remotely inebriated.

The rest of the weekend spelt options vastly limited by the jangle of lose change in my pockets and nothing else. I rented a video from the esplanade library called the defiant ones. It was a movie shot in the late 50s about about two escaped convicts from a southern chain gang. One black and one white , who yes on top of being chained together also happened to despise each other. The movie was really good , but featured three scenes of sidney poitier singing, if you can call it that. It was some strange southern black style that sounded like a cross between a arthritic baboon having an orgasm and the blues. In fact the first scene of the movie involves sidney launching off into song, while the rest of the prisoners and the drivers on the prisoner transport truck hes on ask him to shut the hell up. The truck subsequently gets into an accident which enables the two to escape.

Surgery

2006-05-28T05:15:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

Had four of my wisdom teeth removed on friday. Just before i went into the operating theater, the nurses wheeled out this rather old bloke who was tearing and wailing, going on and on about the pain.

After that pleasant introduction to the bloody affairs to come, they brought me into the room. They fed me the nitrous oxide, and for awhile it felt great, like somewhere between getting impossibly high and dying. Then i blacked out and had strange dreams.

I awoke slowly to the sound of the nurse calling my name , and saw a detached wave of pain slowly make its way towards me and become mine in the few moments of limbo it takes you to remember who are. After that it was hard to breathe with all the blood going down my nose and throat. The bruises on my face and lips the surgeon smilingly told me, were cos his team decided to have a square go at my face when i was knocked for the fuck of it.

Went home and tried to eat but everything tasted like blood and pain. Took painkillers and went to bed. When i awoke the next day the pain had lessened alot but then i looked in the mirror and saw that the lower side of my face had swollen to ridiculous proportions. Its the day after the day after and i still look like i walked off the set of the nutty professor. its 8 pm now and getting dark i think a man of deformity such as myself can now risk making a trip to cold storage for cigarettes.

6 more weeks

2006-05-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

Ive got about six more weeks before i leave the country and swap one city for another. Starting thinking back about the last two years. i was rummaging through my old SBO and found my bmt notebook. It was filled with strange diagrams about the cross sections of grenades and M16s, notes on how to strip and assemble,effective killing ranges, section fire movement, geneva convention,trench digging, first aid, and of course the lyrics to a whole family of horribly written marching songs that we had to memorise. Now and then id find a little section amongst the pages where id jot down my feelings, in point form. Slotted into the cover was a sodden ruined photo that used to be of her but now is of abstract colour swirls that vaguely resemble a human likeness. Id try and keep it from the rain at field camp, but the rain would soak right through into everything no matter how you kept it.

Its funny how much situations can change and what was once so real now seems so strange and alien an experience. How varying degrees of deprivation and providence can define your outlook so much, how much you can gain from loss and how much you can lose apon gaining something.

Im looking forward to starting uni. When i was really young i used to believe that i was destined for greatness, that id become a successful musician, or an artist or some shite like that. That what id done and contributed would matter and echo down some minor corridor of history. Then i got older and realised more and more how delusional that was, and downsized my expectations progressively in accordance with the mounting level of cynicism that comes with frequent reality checks.You start analysing the quality of your writing or seeing your gigs on video and realise you dont have that potential genius you hoped for. But you still hope that you can leave something behind.

Maybe one day you will be a decrepit old geezer with leather for skin. And youl sit down because someone left you there like inconvenient furniture and you cant get up yourself. You might start gazing out behind those coin thick cataracts into distances too far for anyone to follow, and start to think of memories that no one can be half arsed to hear about through your toothless orifice of a mouth. If your mind hasnt degraded into a congealed slush of second childhood and alzheimers you will start contemplating your death and the meaning of your life. You might consider the possibility that there is really nothing beyond death and at that moment you can only hope that you can look back on a life well lived, and remember people who love you and loved you once and people you love and loved once. Then maybe you will feel a wave of peace or satisfaction that will coincide with the involuntary fart your weakened muscles had no option of containing. Then you can die.

i contemplated the man who was onece a friend but could now be best described as a barely tolerated aquaintance

2006-04-22T01:07:00.000-07:00

Last weekend , i wanted to see how long east coast went for so me and morgan walked for hours till we hit changi airport and the blinker at tanah merah ferry terminal. after east coast beach ended somewhere in changi, we found an saf yachting pub in the middle of nowhere at about 130 in the morning but didnt manage to get a pint cos we were in shorts. i felt like saint peter himself had turned me away.

Watched a film festival movie with guru later on in the week, a documentary about the flaming lips called fearless freaks. it probably ranks as one the strangest docus ive ever seen, but being about the lips it was expected. a section of the show featured the film that wayne was trying to shoot in his backyard about a suicidal santa claus in mars. The parking lot experiment was cool though. for awhile they stopped playing proper gigs, and assembled a thousand people in various parking lots. Then they would issue a hundred of em with boom boxes with tapes of different noises, notes and unrelated sounds. They would play the tapes at the same time, while the band members went around like conductors instructing people to turn up or turn down the volume , making this strange and beautiful soundscape.

its jonathans birthday today and im gonna leave the house soon but first ive got to go to viddy store and somehow deny that i wrecked one of their dvds.

......i dont know why i bother writing all this mundane shite out, when all thats really salient has to be left unsaid.

special k

2006-04-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

No one writes about drugs with as much poetry as brian molko. Something about the way he always turns them into people and then proceeds to intimately describe his bittersweet relationships with ashtray girls, sweet princes and special ks, with an equal measure of tenderness and disgust. Excitment and longing set against regret and loss.
Last week or the week before, i managed to catch placebo when they came down for a fashion show performance. Besides the initial wow of seeing molko and the rest in the flesh, the music was a bit of a let down cos fer most of it the band was just playing over an underlying track. All the songs had album precision but none of the spontaneity or rush you get from their live performances. Still it was great hearing them play without you im nothing and every you and every me, during which models walked onto the runway with black blindfolds making the whole thing seem like performance art. Then the models started to get bloody annoying when their runway antics started obscuring the audience view of the band.
I'll be leaving for sydney soon i reckon. Sometime in early july. Ive been waiting for this for 2 long years, and i cant wait any longer. But now its almost here and its gonna be a reality not just the dangling carrot of an idealised scenario that its been for a long time. Im scared. The army was such a convenient excuse for a lot of things.
i got an offer to bunk in with the sydney branch of opus dei, when i get off the plane like some paddy fresh off the boat and need a place to stay while i look for something a little more permanent. If dan brown's crap is anything to go by, im not sure if i wanna take the risk. I dont want midget monks doing away with me in my sleep for my heretical beliefs.
Im gonna miss a lot of things.

quiz

2006-03-07T00:52:00.000-08:00

I had to plan a triva quiz for the damn website. It was a quite a bother going through decades worth of newspaper microfilm and pioneer magazines so i anyway heres a few questions from my alternate version. Have a go:

1.Military and State colours are considered sacred and anyone who handles them must ________

a) first touch the national flag
b) wear special white gloves
c) wash their hands
d) refrain from mastabatory activity for at least 48 hrs

2.Who wrote our National Anthem?

a) Zubir Said
b) Toh Chin Chye
c) Lee Kuan Yew
d) Jonny Cash

During NDP 94, 6 members of the 80 strong SAF Provost Precision Drill Squad performed the “ sword drill “ twirling _________ within centimetres of their fellow soldiers.

a) broad swords
b) sabers
c) claymores
d) butt plugs

Fireworks were a highlight during NDP 93. For the first time fireworks were launched from a naval craft. A single 60cm Brocade Kamuro shell was also used. It soared 540 m into the air before bursting into patterns that could be seen 100km away. Brocade Kamuro means______________ in Japanese.

a) small boy’s haircut
b) secret flame
c) explosion of colour
d) holy shit!

In 1989, the audience at the National Stadium were treated to a surprise when ____

a) Footballers from the national squad ran onto the field and played a mini show match
b) Parade participants disguised as members of the audience, got up from their seats and performed an impressive dance number
c) 24 freefall parachutists made a surprise descent into the Stadium
d) In a grossly miscalculated mistake, a lion from the Singapore Zoo meant to make an appearance during a Sang Nila Utama re-enactment, escaped its handler and proceeded to horribly maul a childrens choir.

During the first national day, a three hour tattoo was held at Jalan Besar Stadium. The show-stealer was an act involving ___

a) traffic policemen riding their motorcycles through rings of fire
b) members of the Singapore Infantry Regiment shooting fruits placed on the heads of participants
c) a mock battle staged by the Singapore Infantry Regiment.
d) a taxi driver who could put his entire head up his arse, and negotiate road obstacles at the same time.

The pouring rain failed to dampen the spirits of the 25,000 participants at the 1967 parade, who stayed put despite the bad weather. The theme for the parade that year incidently was ___

a) Onward Singapore
b) Our rugged society
c) United in adversity
d) Singapore, our miserable piss sodden culturally bankrupt excuse for a nation.

answers in order: b a b a c a b

live forever

2006-02-14T00:16:00.000-08:00

Watched this documentary about the rise and fall of brit rock and cool britannica at kris' house the other day. From the stone roses spike island gig thru to the oasis/blur war and the thatcher-major- blair transition, with plenty of jarvis cocker thrown in for good measure.Watching the idols of your youth go through over a decade of decline in one condensed hour is rather depressing. noel still has an excellent sense of humour disguised as boorish cockiness. i think im projecting alot of feelings onto other people and imagining things which arnt there.

im at a ndp website meeting now. all the discussions are flying past my head, and im trying to look busy. at this point in time i really couldnt give a fiddler's fart about the ndp or any other yearly testament to the poverty of our collective national imagination. two more hours.

EADGBE

2006-01-28T22:33:00.000-08:00

Not feeling too well of late. have enough phlegm and soreness of throat to begin speaking welsh.

Saw muse on holiday here recently, it was a little surreal.

Morgan finished up his national serfdom last week. we threw a party for him at amoy. while he went to 7 11 to get juice, we ambushed him and accosted him on the street ala clockwork orange. Decked out in wings, flags, capes, coyboy and jimmy hats, we dragged him to the park and stripped him, circling his nipples in black marker ( should have used white on hindsight ) and wrote FUNZONE with an arrow pointing down to his nether regions. After that we went back to the shophouse and locked him outside to face the treacherously homosexual evening streets of amoy alone. he squeals like a theatrically effeminate girl getting done in with a cactus. Later on Guru became a drunken lout again, reminding me why guru und hunde eintritt streng verboten.

i reckon last transmission will never get round to recording the last two songs, seeing as how tjinn isnt interested anymore, and everyone is going their own way. i miss playing a lot and my sundays feel kinda empty now. This massive cloud of ennui has been looming over my head most of this month/year and i cant seem to outrun it. nothing seems to be able to distract me anymore, no amount of smoke or drink seems appealing. even music becomes a poor substitute for silence sometimes. life's limits make themselves felt.

christmas time

2005-12-20T20:15:00.000-08:00

i was walking through the streets of orchard road, looking at all the lights and decorations on the trees lining the roads like ostentatious and tasteless jewellery on an old whore feigning a class she refuses to admit she will never possess, despite everything pointing to the contrary. Some where amidst the vulgar clash of music, i realised that though the reds lights made orchard look like one long maxi pad, the true meaning of christmas should not be lost and that all my seasonal bitterness was a little unwarranted, so id like to wish everyone a very merry and blessed hitachi.

raise your fists like antennas to heaven

2005-12-13T22:59:00.000-08:00

the gig was great. i was drunk and so i messed up here and there but it was great because of the friends and loved ones who came down to see us. Dancing, raising fists in the air, singing along to our songs and even crying ( sorry jeremy ) you guys made our last gig really something. Thank you for your kindness. ( photographic documentation available on hmmf.blogspot.com )

We are going to record a last album in january and have two songs down so far. I was meant to spent december writing an opus, but its just not happening.

While everyone else was at zouk out, i spent saturday evening driving around empty bits of singapore. Went a little off road for a bit into a hidden cemetry and kind of deflated my dad's tires in the process. It was the first time i had really driven by myself since the accident, so yes cedric i was strangling the steering wheel and feeling the onset of cardiac arrest apon entering the highway. But After awhile things got comfortable, a little too comfortable. I finished most of the fuel over the weekend and early week and my dad's back today.

My family is back from Israel after 2 weeks today, thus bringing an end to early nights at home. My mum is going to be upset that her plants are withering, and my dad is gonna be peeved once he finds out that i not only drove his car after explicit instructions not to but also accidentally went through an ERP gantry without a cashcard. I think i will tell him on xmas, when charitability is a little more forthcoming.

There will be no trip this december unfortunately cos i lost my ticket to someone else.

watched 3 movies recently. Lilya forever, hardcore and king kong.
across russian, greek and english , the movies were surprising similar. Unrequited love and tragedy. i need a happy film soon.

december is bleeding me out.

monday sessions

2005-12-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

four times in two weeks, the mrt gantries have snapped their jaws shut on my crotch, is there a clandestine ethnic cleansing programme i should be made aware of?

its been an absolutely horrid weekend, and i just feel like going into seclusion for awhile. when you think things cant get any worse, life has a funny way of proving you wrong.

tonight is possibly the last live performance that last transmission will ever play. ive been in the band for almost a quarter of my life now, so it feels a little strange, but im glad to move on and start something completely different.

that happy sad pixies song has been playing in my head for days, reminding me of everything i cant forget.

I feel estranged from alot of people cos i can no longer relate to their relative carefreeness.

no drama

2005-11-20T19:34:00.000-08:00

Despite ina's NO DRAMA tshirt, saturday's gig was anything but driving miss daisy.

Ter left the band on saturday, his reasons are personal, but i take it his heart was not in it anymore. i felt it really hard to play that day, the place was tiny and i was staring almost face to face with 4 eras of transmission members in the crowd, justin lim, guru, kenneth and jonathan even, suddenly felt like everyone was staring at me have a wank in a museum of historical artifacts.

Old transgressions from the slowjaxx does dallas drummer against tjinn reached boiling point and after he threw a first punch at tjinn, it erupted into a fight between the members of slowjaxx, and jon, ced and tjinn with the samanta blokes stepping in. happened outside the club and i missed it all cos i was returning gear. by the time i got there everyone was still standing around and watching from the neighbouring cafes but it was over. i left and went home cos i didnt want to see terence.

Fell asleep on my couch, to a strange movie and had a bizarre dream where a frightening angel told me that the past, present and future are all happening at the same time at the same place on different planes of reality, and that we linearise it in order to gain a sense of relational identity. she said that the sums of who we are are already known and that we were just living our whole lives out in one instance, no past no present no future. she showed me some ghosts and told me they were overlaps in the fabric, and that despite the seemingly fatalistic view that the end was already known it was our choices that still determine it.

In my dream i understood cause and effect as being a spinning wheel rather than a line , but after i woke up the whole thing seemed like a really bad movie script forged in the refuse chambers of my mind. So dont worry im not joining the ranks of elron hubbard and im not starting "the church of throw away your watches and pay me for it ".

dreams burnt down

2005-11-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

Lying under sky, laughing at everything I say,
And pulls me under. There's no time to resist.
Lying on the floor,
The tears are falling down and more.

Her eyes speak loud,But actions speak the best
Waiting, hoping for a sign,
That what's forbidden can be mine.
I just want what I can't have,
Until my dreams burn down every time.

She's effortlessly cool,But circumstances can be cruel.
And sometimes you must accept,
That you can't always get what you want.
We fill up our days and nights.
We fill up the gaps in our empty little lives.
But we know we are doomed,
The moment we walk out the room.

.................................................................

2005-11-07T01:34:00.000-08:00

My worst trait is my silence. no matter how much i feel, nothing comes out of my mouth at times when silence is inexcusable and hurtful. i dont even show a shred of emotion because i cant let anything out no matter how much i want to. i kill people with that ice pick, people i love that mean the world to me.

dead flag blues

2005-11-06T23:15:00.000-08:00

trapped in the belly of a horrible machine, the machine is bleeding to death

soap

2005-10-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

Booking into camp in the mornings always brings with it the risk of cardiac arrest from the stress of sudden spot checks and blockades. There was one this morning with the csm and his RPs checking bags and phones. i started to feel a wee bit nervous with the malaysian fags in my bag and the large selection of burnt cds, managed to hide it in a book and slipped thru.

i think my contempt for army commanders started in BMT when i became a perm staff toilet cleaner and began to realise that i was being led by men who defecate like animals wiping their arses on the floor and walls. my revenge regularly made its way into the soap dispensers.

disarm

2005-10-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

disarm you with a smile
and leave you like they left me here
to wither in denial
the bitterness of one whos left alone

the years burn
the years burn

i used to be a little boy
so old in my shoes
and what i chose is my choice
whats a boy supposed to do
the killer in me is the killer in you
my love
i'll send this smile over to you

disarm you with a smile
and cut you like they want me to
cut that little child
inside of me and such a part of you

the years the year burn

i used to be a little boy
so old in my shoes
and what i chose is my choice
whats a boy supposed to do
the killer in me is the killer in you
my love
i send this smile over to you
the killer in me is the killer in you

dieppe barracks

2005-10-13T18:08:00.000-07:00

ive just walked through the shite encrusted arsehole that is my camp gate, and im staring at the clock on the wall already.

i realised recently that ive been drinking a bottle of jim beam that wasnt really jim beam at all. Even offering it to people, some of whom have been really gulping that vile dosh down. its amazing how no one noticed the sickly faded hue of the liquid or the swimming dark particles at the bottom.

I shouldve known that a spare bottle of jim lying around was too good to be true. it came back to me in a flashback......

twas the night of my twenty first birthday, a very loud and inebreiated sidney koh was helping to clear the table. Pouring all the left over soft drinks, beer, green tea, and liquor into jimmy and topping it off with stray bits of crisps and food particles from the table. He even named it the punishment drink. i must take more care to remember important events from the past, buts its good that no on has died yet, although tjinn delivered a spectacular merlion impression apon consumption of punishment.

my new camp is pretty dull, dreary and highly regimental, but ive only very recently been shot up into her rancid bloodstream so im hoping things get better with time. Nine months time actually. on a lighter note i found out that my office is a renovated toilet from the seventies. right now the highlight of my day is when a grouchy white cat comes to visit and i play with it until i have an allergic reaction.

Friday couldnt have come any sooner. looking forward to meeting jason and pei and any other mysterious ex school mates fer a sheesha at mini baghdad later.

Its october and the leaves must be turning red and starting to fall near hillside cresent and conkers must be everywhere. Arthur's Seat is probably changing colour too, getting ready to put on her winter coat against the North Sea chills. The shops in Princess street will be closed now, and the old town is probably pretty ghostly, her centuries old gothic buildings waiting silently for another inconsequential morning. wish i was there.

jude the obscure

2005-10-10T17:35:00.000-07:00

nothing can bring it back, no amount of screaming, gnashing and tears can undo the past. there are empty spots that never get filled again. wear your crown of shit, apon your liars chair, full of broken thoughts that you cannot repair. beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear, you are someone else and i am still right here. what have i become my sweetest friend. everyone goes away in the end. you could have it all my empire of dirt. i will let you down, i will make you hurt.

albums of mine which have mysteriously gone missing

2005-10-02T20:52:00.000-07:00

the following are a list of albums which have gone missing, and are probably now being used as weapons, to line coke off the buttcracks of morrocan boys on yachts in the meditarreanean, being sold at gramophone, playing in someone's stereo as a soundtrack to sex and suicide or are simply rotting away in friends houses.

i miss every last one of you:

1. siamese dream- smashing pumpkins
2. mellon collie and the infinite sadness disc 1- smashing pumpkins
3. figure eleven- elliot smith ( sid i know you have this one! )
4. yoshimi battles the pink robots - the flaming lips ( sid despite the denials i know you lost this one, you wanker )
5. pablo honey - radiohead
6. ok computer- radiohead
7. 1977- ash ( Karthi!! )
8. intergalactic seven - ash
9. absolution- muse
10. origin of symmetry - muse
11. frengers- mew
12. the masterplan - oasis
13. this is my truth tell me yours- the manic street preachers
14. the best of bob marley- B.M
15. ebony tears
16. urban hyms- the verve
17. the best of- the cranberries
18. in utero - nirvana
19. unplugged in new york - nirvana
20. alison's room - the 60 ft dolls
21. the best of - queen
22. the yellow album- blur
23. performance and cocktails- stereophonics
24. the guest - phantom planet
25. a sense of the bitter, a taste of the sweet - return to fall
26. kept secrets- shereens closet
27. black market music- placebo
28. and many many fucking more

my life will never be as complete

black market music

2005-09-23T00:18:00.000-07:00

Played at club momo yesterday, it was great. the sound was excellent. true to form i broke a string during the second song and had to improvise a solo without it. borrowed a guitar from slowjaxx and the rest of the set went well. binge drinking soon followed and my last few waking moments of the day involved watching, hearing, and smelling tjinn throw up in a cab.

The day after always feels really empty and faded somehow. trying to shake off this monumental sense of gloom thats making me feel five times heavier than i really am. Gonna head out to meet josh in a bit, havnt seen him for ages. we used to be so close, somewhere between being 15 and now our lives went completely off tangent. i think i changed and he remained true to himself. nowadays theres this gulf i cant really cross anymore, in a way we've become a warped reflection of each other, seeing as how we started out pretty much the same. i suppose we're each others' could-have-beens.

im fighting the urge to buy a pack of fags that will surely send me closer to economic disaster for this month. i hate army wages.

i cant wait for our shows to be over for this month, so i can just take out an acoustic and write new songs. Sure playing live is great,but u can only whip out the same old ghosts for so long. Nothing beats writing a song in its early stages. Its unpolished, rough,most of the layers and accompaniments are imagined, and in all probably it sounds like crap to everyone else. But it feels so real and true.

your glassy eyes betray you

2005-09-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

your glassy eyes betray you

When you open up to people without checking yourself, many a time your also opening yourself up to being treated like toilet paper. Sometimes its better to keep an objective detachment, cos frankly im getting sick and tired of it. Understand the sides of you they want to see and display them , give nothing more, take nothing more and dont expect understanding or anything for the matter. Cos if you dont turn to lead, you'll break eventually.

tuesday night

2005-09-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

Our first show is on this saturday, and this week is pretty burnt out of practice. Yesterday after practice i went to watch a movie with ced and edle. It was pretty damn crappy and badly executed and i have to say that my faith in eric khoo has gone down a couple more notches.
After the film, we bummed and talked til four plus til they both piled into a taxi and headed back. I didnt quite fancy spending a ludicrous amount of quid on midnight charge back home. Its hard enough trying to survive on the third world wages the army trickles down to me every desperate start of the month.

I decided to sleep on a bench somewhere til the first bus. All the benches were wet cos it rained, so i found a slab of pavement under shelter near the Singtel Centre Carpark. i wrapped my guitar strap and bag round my arms so they wouldnt get nicked and dozed off. Later on i was rudely awakened by a sharp pain my head, took me a few seconds to realise someone was kicking it. Realised that i was surrounded by a bunch of obviously drunk indian blokes. One of em gave me a parting liberal kick in stomach, before being dragged away by his giggling mates, then they ran off. Was pretty glad my guitar was untouched. Got up and trudged up to the lucky plaza bus stop, my contacts fused to my eyes and waited fer the bus home. i learnt to appreciate my bed alot more after this morning, firstly its considerably softer than concrete, and secondly random people dont start kicking you in the head.

watching the sun rise during the bus ride was nice though, even though all the seratonin was gone and i couldnt feel much, the aloneness was comforting strangely, cos it always allows billy to take over.

the last song

2005-09-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

This is the last song
This is the last song I'll sing for you
This is the last song
This is the last song I can give you

The roaring city sleeps
Metal fingers clutching dirty sheets
And no one comes for free
In this place where the angels sleep

This is the last song

My eyes are open
my eyes are open wonder to this
As you hold the secrets
I count the minutes off so perfectly

The shards of broken glass
Sing the strains of a sad old tune
We've made it at last
But what we had is lost inside our past

This is the last song

Could you find away across me
To forgive and forget me
To appease and relent me
To deceive and protect me
To understand and release me
To the dusk or unto the dawn

cos this is the last song

the end is the beginning is the end

2005-09-04T10:35:00.000-07:00

While nihilism is often discussed in terms of extreme skepticism and relativism, for most of the 20th century it has been associated with the belief that life is meaningless. Existential nihilism begins with the notion that the world is without meaning or purpose. Given this circumstance, existence itself--all action, suffering, and feeling--is ultimately senseless and empty.

By the late 20th century, "nihilism" had assumed two different castes. In one form, "nihilist" is used to characterize the postmodern man, a dehumanized conformist, alienated, indifferent, and baffled, directing psychological energy into hedonistic narcissism or into a deep resentment that often explodes in violence.

French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard characterizes postmodernism as an "incredulity toward metanarratives," those all-embracing foundations that we have relied on to make sense of the world. This extreme skepticism has undermined intellectual and moral hierarchies and made "truth" claims, transcendental or transcultural, problematic. Postmodern antifoundationalists, paradoxically grounded in relativism, dismiss knowledge as relational and "truth" as transitory, genuine only until something more palatable replaces it (reminiscent of William James' notion of "cash value"). The critic Jacques Derrida, for example, asserts that one can never be sure that what one knows corresponds with what is. Since human beings participate in only an infinitesimal part of the whole, they are unable to grasp anything with certainty, and absolutes are merely "fictional forms."

"Faced with the nonhuman, the nonlinguistic, we no longer have the ability to overcome contingency and pain by appropriation and transformation, but only the ability to recognize contingency and pain"

If we accept that all perspectives are equally non-binding, then intellectual or moral arrogance will determine which perspective has precedence. Worse still, the banalization of nihilism creates an environment where ideas can be imposed forcibly with little resistance, raw power alone determining intellectual and moral hierarchies. It's a conclusion that dovetails nicely with Nietzsche's, who pointed out that all interpretations of the world are simply manifestations of will-to-power.

"Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

.........

2005-08-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

ive run with devils
ive walked with angels too

all along the streets
the streets that make up you

through the darkness of you eyes
id get drunk on city lights

if i dont keep my guard up you'll
devour me tonight

build it up to tear it down again
can't leave it behind
your a state of mind

Im running out of things that i can tell
to glass angels
who were devils when they fell

ive run with devils
ive walked with angels too

along the streets that make up you

when the thin veneer comes peeling of the skins of painted saints
and your zeppelins come crashing down in flames again
you can find it there in the vacant stares of mirror men
in a very real sense i know that i am alone again

when the devil vomits in your kettle

2005-08-08T17:22:00.000-07:00

It 5 o clock, i have been working the entire day without a real breather. the damn parade is tomorrow, after that god knows. its a relief to think that its all led up to this and its ending soon. But on the other hand the thought of ten more months of national service is pretty daunting. Think im going to get all my wisdom teeth extracted in my next unit, to get some leave.

the weekend started bittersweet and quickly bleeded empty. found myself having to pretend everything was okay even though somethings hurt like hell. its my fault for allowing it to continue to hurt like bloody hell.

as usual all this was made trivial by its relation to larger issues. someone elses. Mr Someone told me bout his dire straits . im amazed at how well hes taking his possible demise in the very real sense of the word. Didnt really know what to say. The devils already spat in his kettle and he's partly to blame. Now he's waiting for the test results to see if its the end. Sure he's bummed but not in the way someone whos undergoing a similar situation would be bummed. he even squeezes in time for black humour. i admire his strength.
ive got a feeling its not his time yet and im hoping. Once again im reminded that we are all not armoured by some shining indestructability of youth. anything can happen at anytime.

Jamming was horrible. The general negativity hung in the air like an old but potent fart. the tension in the whole room seemed liked it was primed to blow at any minute and if it did, everyone would only understand little jigsaw pieces of what was really going on. im sure next week will be better, after we've all spent a couple of days in our secret confession boxes.

The circular hand-job everyone was passing around after the album, is long expired, and its time to get up and get going again. edle has been a huge help with the band, and we are really lucky to have her in. still on the lookout for bass replacement. i cant whole-heartedly start promoting us until i know that we sound full and good again. 2 distro deals are waving infront of us and we need to decide soon.

gonna go on a self imposed exile of writing, composing and disappearing. we are all not getting any younger.

for good times make it centauri times

2005-08-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

went with with kent to the eski bar the other day. we froze our balls of in seven below zero. seeing as how we were the only idiots in the cold section they asked if they could film us in exchange for glenfiddich and beer. They planted two heinis in our hands and asked us to shiver. We really played it up for the cameras doing a real shake job. As i was theatrically exhaling fog, i suddenly thought about centenarian twins in kimonos laughing at us while watching the telly in their paper houses during some hokkaido winter. I also thought bout what the odds were of one of the film crews recent ancestors dragging my grandma's dad away from her arms and chucking him onto a truck headed for thailand and death. Its easy to let your imagination run wild when an unintelligible japanese man is plying you with drinks across a bar counter made of ice in seven below.

2005-08-02T02:42:00.000-07:00

I'm coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all
It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss
Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his-chest
Now, he takes off her dress
Now, letting me go

And I just can't look its killing me
And taking control
Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
'Cause I'm Mr Brightside

jacks oblongata

2005-07-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

the gig was excellent, thanks everyone fer coming, it was great seeing all of you. i would like to write about all the thinsg that have been happening lately but i dont know where to start. You always end up
exggerating the banal, understating the important, and paying no attention to the poignant. No never quite the way you want it.

Baybeats was somewhat of a disappointment, except for a couple of bands like death of cinema. who can forget the interstellar melancholy gorgeosity of concave scream, my teenage idols. I wasnt really looking at them when they were playing though. the dark water, with stolen reflections of the skyline, the highway and the cars. city hall is my favourite part of singapore. but she can be so sad sometimes.

need to find a bassist and guitarist soon, before we start losing steam.

its become really easy to read people these days, see the words behind the words, the layers of self-deception, the sincerety and lies, the subconscious manipulations, the fragility and secret strength. People have so many stories to tell sometimes i wish i could be them for a day to soak in their experiences, still its hard to view your own life with quite as much objective curiosity.

theres still something missing. something rather big

fear for freya's day

2005-06-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

life has been rather odd lately, in a good way. Apart from the fact that im losing so many things, and by the end of the week il prob be parted with half my material posessions at the rate im going. i dont have to deal with guilt at home every day cos my parents are not around, and every day after camp has been LT LT LT. Not that its a bad thing, i love it. June has prob been one of the best and most horrible months i can remember in a long time. so much has happenened, and i started june one person,turned into something horrible in the middle and am ending it someone else. Spending so much time with LT i realise how much each one of em is like a self-contained universe, even dead legs. listening back on the record , i remember all those nights melting into mornings. the chain smoke, trying to be bright on the outside, but feeling death violence and darkness inside.
staying up with cedric after everyone else had surrendered to sleep, and wandering around the ethereal sober corridors of camp on perpetual screen saver the next day. the fevers, lung infections,stomach acid, sedatives, psychiatric wards and the heaviest emptiness. it was the band and the music that got me through in the end. Work is piling in at camp, but everyday i cant wait to book out and get on with my real life. right now im supposed to be arranging an interview with rui en and taufiq but the words are jumping at my face in plastic defiance. even if the gigs dont really go that well, i wont really be disappointed, cos it was meeting up and preparing for em that really did it for me. I just cant help but feel really afraid that its all winding to an end soon, but i want to hold on to it and not let it slip between my fingers like everything else. ill-worded, inarticulate and not really what i had in mind. what i really wanted to say was that im sorry for being a morose snappy bastard the better part of this time, im sorry for almost fucking everything up a number of times and ina, sid and tjinn, i love you guys and u mean a lot more to me than ever i let out, thanks fer everything.

prozac nation

2005-06-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

day three of day prison.

confined in that small space, i enjoy the one hour or so i have in the morning with my mind alert. i escape to the toilet and do morning exercise, but not for too long. they like to burst in when im taking a shower and ask why im taking so long. meals are bland and meager, and served with a spoon only lest someone decides to fork away his mortal coil. kinda ridiculous considering the amount of potential death tools i counted inside the wards, shower hooks, sringes blah blah.

then the medicine comes, the temporary lobotomy, making me sedate and mentally incapacitated. today i was so dazed on the couch , that a cleaner stole my handphone. i feel really upset about it. its not the fucking handphone or the cost, though i prob cant afford another for awhile. my handphone was my loneliness off-setter. the ward gets so scorchingly lonely, just a silly message from someone i love would cheer me up alot. i dont leave that loneliness in the ward when i book out either, now i feel like that umbilicals been severed.

They forced my to attend alcoholics anonymous just cos i booked in on monday slightly hung over and late. ( its sounds hilarious, i dont know wether to laugh, scream or drink somemore ). Today was to be my first session. didnt go. memorised the description of the place, and the usual happenings from another patient who attends A A . tmrw i shall thank my doctors for the valuable experience.

the doctors usually see me for a grand total of five minutes everyday, i barely have a chance to drive in to them that im fine and i want to go back to my old camp and that i really really do not need this. if anything is making me feel horrible it is that place. the head doctor's ( a major ) mind has probably been so eroded years by of deference from his subordinates, that he thinks and talks in a unquestionable monologue.

i didnt think monday evening would hurt, but it did, and quite a bit and it still does. okay enough whining.

i feel ashamed about all thats happened lately, all the mess ive gotten myself into. im angry that all this has to happen when im better and okay. on the outside i probably seem like a problematic muck-up and i understand why im so hard to like. my parents are leaving tonight for weeks, soon the house will be empty again, it always is anyway.

if there is a god, he in non-interventional and the devil is just a metaphor made up because men need absolutes and conceptual and constructual shorthand to mentally deal with chaos and her thousand shades of grey.

whos left then . just me and you and i need you.

33 hillside crescent

2005-06-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

mood- melancholy and infinitely sad
music- a new beginning, SIGUR _ ROS

Last Saturday, never ended until it turned into Sunday. i blew the party, and went to meet morgan, kavin and soph in Bukit Panjang. me and morgan left, at the witching hour and walked to hillview, past the big empty roads, kicking up the dust devils with the forest on either end. houses and people were far away and we could make the rest up. we walked behind the bank to the train tracks in the forested area. we sat on the line, and made sparks in the dark. pebbles on cold metal rail. the tracks stretched out into pitch darkness. we plugged in some music , and it seemed to disappear into that dark place. we talked , i had the frankest conversation ive had in ages. we left just in the time , the morning K line express came rushing out of the darkness like a phantom. carriage after carriage of cargo and baggage that the first carriage was trying to outrace.

Nights like that dont come often, nights like that i wish would last just that little bit longer. Staring out at the river, as sir stamford switched off the lights. watching the first light creep across the sky as we set on the steps leading out to the murky blood of a country i love and hate in equal measure.

The greeks were right, music is a spirit that flies past the gatekeepers of reason and comes to you in the deepest and most secret of places.

my elaborate plans for a spectacular pre-birthday departure are kinda messed up now. carolyn is getting married. as selfish as i am , i cant be that selfish. i cant screw that up for her.
i realised today , that i dont wanna leave yet. i was trying to get everything done this month, tried to avoid sleep so i would have twice as long. but im not making much progress. racing to never grow old like peter pan. There are still places i want to see and people i wanna be with.

i wish i was walking along St Andrews now, looking out at the North Sea with an ice scream dribbling down my hand even though i dont really fancy ice scream. A cold but sunny day. kick of my shoes and walk ankle deep in the shallows. hear the gulls and look out across the surf at that big emptiness. walk to that sea wall, and taste the salt spray and get chilled by the wind.

i love my memories. The world is so crushingly beautiful sometimes that no force of will allow you to look away.

fuck love, wretched bloodsport

2005-06-04T04:37:00.000-07:00

dont talk of love
ive heard that word before
its sleeping in my memory

i wont disturb the slumber
of feelings that have died
if i never loved i never would have cried

2005-06-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

" And Jack left that day for good. He knew he couldnt stay in a town where his heart was forced to break or turn to lead ".

2005-05-31T22:21:00.000-07:00

undecided

2005-05-29T01:04:00.000-07:00

its 1am,
4 more hours to get up for camp.

recorded another song today, one of Ina's. i really like how it turned out, prob my fav song on the whole album.

prob gonna finish recording the album by the end of this week, looking forward to it.

there are so many things i would like to say but , i cant and i dont know how and im running out

of time.

recording

2005-05-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

ive been spending a couple of nights recording the guitar bits for the new album.
ive got about 2 or 3 more songs to go, plus the keyboards.

i cant help but feel insecure bout my guitar playing and the music in general, sometimes it sounds like pure KINDERKRAKEN to me, a little too digestable ,too bright, a little too bite-sized. perhaps i've just outgrown the music.

like someone said, i guess its a good closing of a chapter. now i want something less approacheable, darker, edgier, more linear.

blessed

2005-05-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

I found an old tape of my dad's that he used to play in th car when i was a kid. Simon and garfunkle, this one had alot of obscure songs that are not on their greatest hits. there was one i like, when i was small i never understood the words or the anger, thinking this was a christian song.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit.
Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows.
Blessed are the sat upon, Spat upon,shat upon, Ratted on,
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
I got no place to go,
I've walked around Soho for the last night or so.
Ah, but it doesn't matter, no.

Blessed is the land and the kingdom.
Blessed is the man whose soul belongs to.
Blessed are the meth drinkers, Pot sellers, Illusion dwellers.
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
My words trickle down, like a wound
That I have no intention to heal.

Blessed are the stained glass, window pane glass.
Blessed is the church service makes me nervous
Blessed are the penny rookers, Cheap hookers, Groovy lookers.
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
I have tended my own garden
Much too long.

2005-05-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

there is nothing i want from u anymore.

death, death death.

burn your poems and smoke them

2005-05-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

i havnt used the internet for over a week, its wonderfully entertaining to me now.

i took an mc today so i didnt have to go to camp. somewhere in the middle of waiting my turn at the clinic, amidst my own cold shivers, pounding migraine, nausea and hacking coughs with the coppery taste of blood in my mouth, it suddenly occured to me that i never wrote a poem about the joys and experience of smoking. After all smoking used to be a big part of my life, and ive done it for almost a quarter of it. how unceremoniously i left it, no farewell, no last goodbye nothing, so i decided to .

we've missed the last buses and trains
so can we stay out til late

i like the dark
i like the way you are in the dark

on piggy back rides
under a bridge at night
i smelt your hair
now sometimes i smell you
when your not there

the end is near
wont you hold my hand til we get here

maybe its better this way
we'll never grow apart
never crash
never burn
never stray

still i cant help but wonder
what it would have been like anyway

can we stay
can we stay

walk under metal skeletons
sending drink cans to watery graves

every step we've made
is sending more darkness to bed

we've missed the last buses and trains
so can we stay til late

i want you so bad
but tomorrow won't wait.

boo

2005-04-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

i feel happier than ive felt in ages. just 2 more days now. whatever happens these next two days are of no real consequence and i feel incredibly free and peaceful. i cant wait to go , i cant wait to leave, i want these hours to slip through my fingers like sand.

on other lighter things, i added shima from buddhiston to my msn and have started talking to him, his english is really bad but i find it really hilarious that im talking to that strange far away voice on my discman.

on a darker note a friend is going through a real bad time. i know theres not much i can do but i wish i could.

100 percent pure gibberish

2005-04-27T02:51:00.000-07:00

so we walk in a row
so we dont have to be alone
but it takes more than a row
when your dealing with ghosts

instead we'll hold hands
on her hands i can depend
devour my dreams as we start to descend

you on the other hand
your early to bed
so you'll never see
my dreams come alive
in ships under the sea

once in awhile dont you wanna come with me?

wish i could wear it on my sleeve
outrace the speed of speed

Days like this, I don't know what to do with myself
All day -- and all night
I wander the halls along the walls and under my breath
I say to myself
I need fuel -- to take flight

i had tender feelings that you made hard
but its your heart not mine thats scarred
so when i go home , il be happy to go
your just somebody that i used to know

we didnt do wrong
i just cant stay this night for long
so when i go home , ill be happy to go
your just somebody that i used to know

look into my tired eyes
see someone you dont recognise
something in the silence died

heres what you get for things that havnt happened yet.

we'll crucify the insincere tonight
make things right
feel it all tonight

i wish that time stood still
and we could be forever true
but time wont slow

i almost ran over an angel
he had a nice big fat cigar
innocence, he says your alone here
if your jump , you best jump far

is it dark yet outside
im through hiding tonight
is it dark yet outside
im through hiding tonight

for every chemical you trade a piece of your soul
and who you think you know, doesnt know you at all

someday we'll wave hello
and wish we never waved goodbye
drink up every line
shoot up every word

shakedown

2005-04-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

yesterday i came early to camp, the duty clerk was meant to play the radio in the main lobby but flicked the wrong nob and ended up playing it through the horn speakers all over camp and thus i walked into camp to the sounds of the smashing pumpkins. The first light was stealing across the sky and mingling with the dark and 1979 sounded pretty poignant,

" With the headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we'd never see an end to it all,..... Double cross the vacant and the bored
They're not sure just what we have in store
Morphine city slippin dues down to see
That we don't even care, as restless as we are
We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts.......Faster than we thought we'd go, beneath the sound of hope"

that night i sat by the sea with wan ting, we drank and talked. she told me bout canada, well, about her canada. she told me bout her singapore and i told her bout my singapore. got her to burn me the organ and nada surf. was really nice talking to her, didnt feel awkward at all. im prob not gonna see her again for at least three years.

just got told my medical review is up and that im prob gonna be shifted back to a combat vocation after national day.

the forest

2005-04-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

the forest is lovely dark and deep
but i have miles to go before i sleep
miles to go before i sleep

eating air

2005-04-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

its a sunday, i lost my wallet over the weekend. my driver's licence and military identity card are gone , among other things. i can just imagine them showing up at the wrong time in the hands of a slain militiaman after some major drug bust somewhere in a dark part of indo-china. damn it.

i made amends with kavin and soph it was great and thats an understatement. actually met quite a number of people over the weekend. the company was comforting, but i was distant. theres so much i cant tell my friends, and i feel heavy from the weight of my secrets. shelve it all up inside and smile outside. the more i do it the further i feel from everyone, its like walking around in a bubble. besides secrets, theres so much else that never leaves us.

listening to tori amos, looking out my window. my mind is in overdrive. the sun is fading and everything is turning rich dark blue as the last light is going out and the street lights are coming on in my street. tori's jangly piano notes are bypassing security on their way into me and are laying out an ethereal soberness. the sky is absolutely gorgeous and melancholy. there is so much beauty in the world. just wish right now i didnt have to see it alone. if u were here i wouldnt have to.

eating air

2005-04-17T03:58:00.000-07:00

death

2005-04-13T18:06:00.000-07:00

An old friend died in a motorcycle accident yesterday. we lost touch after secondary school, but i would meet him now and then bumping into his cheery self on the streets. maybe i didnt know him that well.
He was 21 this year, my age , but now he's dead. back then he was 16, my age. we were indestructable , we thought we were wise, we had a long way to go. now he's dead.

After secondary school, we all went out own way. you keep procrastinating meeting up with as your social circles and lives situations start to run off tangent. It took his funeral for all of us to meet again. met alot of my friends from my past. some looked different, others just the same. i think i heard, " what a shite circumstance for us to have a reunion " at least ten times from about 7 diff mouths, some people love to repeat themselves.

we talked about the past, we joked as we remembered him. talked about him like we were waiting around for him to show up and we were just poking fun at his antics in the mean time. we really were pretty innocent then, many of us had gone to hell and back with burns to show for it since.

i didnt think i would be sad when i went into his house to his body for the last time. his flat was packed with police officers ( he was in the force ) soldiers, family, school mates, friends from the different patchworks of his life. his home was really packed. almost body to body, the walls were heavy with the weight of concentrated sorrow. i wonder what was in everyones minds. People feeling sad for diff reasons. some of them must have been feeling sad for his mother who was beyond consolation or comfort. some were probably mourning the fragility of life, and the cold hard reality of death rather than him.

it came our turn to squeeze to the front and see him. he was wrapped in a burial shroud with his face exposed. only then did it hit me that he was actually dead. he looked pale and unnatural and his face had to be reconstructed because of the accident. i tried to think of him smiling or him laughing, or angry. tried to forcefully conjure a living memory of him but all i could see was him in the shroud, dead.

After that i left, i didnt want to see him get buried. For awhile now when i am freshly awaken from sleep and if i think about him im sure ill think he's still alive for those few moments it takes the mind to sharpen itself for waking life. I took the lift down from his house and i felt terrible, heavy and black. the lift doors opened and i saw an old friend crying. i asked him if he was heading back and if he wanted to take the train with me. he said he was waiting for Alfian's girlfriend. I didnt know he had a girlfriend. i left before i could see her.

reading what ive written earlier i suppose this the point for some kind of summation or conclusion, but of course theres none, the wheel stops for awhile then it starts turning again.

goodbye alfian
ill miss u

sad peter pan

2005-04-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

Ain't it funny how we pretend we're still a child
Softly stolen under our blanket skies
And rescue me from me, and all that I believe
I won't deny the pain
I won't deny the change
And should I fall from grace here with you
Will you leave me too?
Carve out your heart for keeps in an old oak tree
And hold me for goodbyes-and whispered lullabyes
And tell me I am still
The man I'm supposed to be
I won't deny the pain
I won't deny the change
And should I fall from grace here with you
Will you leave me too?
Too late to turn to turn back now, I'm running out of sound
And I'm changing, changing
And if we died right now, this fool you loved somehow
Is here with you
I won't deny the pain
I won't deny the change
And should I fall from grace here with you
Would you leave me too?

And the winding vines
The pretty boys dive
And thru the pinhole stars
Into the shadow mind
You will lose him then
On some gentle dawn
This boy is here and gone

And when we've all had our fun, deflate my stars and put away my sun

2005-04-03T18:29:00.000-07:00

And when we've all had our fun, deflate my stars and put away my sun

how can so much go so wrong so fast. we recorded the single til late on saturday morning, it went well, but the recording is of no concern to me right now, after the events that took place after that.

im almost over it,
just wished you had given me an apology, that was all i wanted, instead of a decontruction of the events, deindividuation theories, sharing the blame with everyone and the place we all went to together. all i wanted was you to say you were sorry for what you did and to sound like it mattered, like my feelings mattered.

i had barely enough time to sort out those feelings , when i had to deal with kris' departure. this week with her has reminded me just how much i love her and need her. i miss her so much it hurts.

LAST TRANSMISSION

2005-03-31T11:17:00.000-08:00

Last transmission is going to record this Saturday at blackisle studios. gonna do our single, neon nothingness , looking forward to it. trying my best to find somewhere to record the rest of our songs so we can produce an album before sidney leaves in mid june to study in Sydney. yeah he's going . im happy for him, NS was killing him and more importantly he's going to be with tara.

i guess the band is going to be in stasis for awhile til he comes back at the end of the year. a great shame, we were building up momentum and the 4 of us were really starting to gel together. but its not over. anyway recording has always been more of a priority to me then live performances. that silly little inexplicable need to leave your mark. why though? i think subconsiously its us coming to terms with our own mortality and limited sense of time. sometimes there is only now, im always planning for the future, practicing for future gigs , recording. i know listening back on a record is like looking at a photo of a good day. nothing beats playing there and then with the other three, il never trade those times for anything. the fun , the friendship and the music.

Sid is an indispensible part of the band, he's the joker, the bounce in the step, the unending corn field, the swagger and of course the killer bass lines.

its going to suck losing him as a bassist for awhile, but screw that. more than being my damn bassist , sid was a mate, he's not dead so i mean he is a mate, a real good one at that. when hes gone im gonna miss his humour, his " dionysian debauchery" , his company. gonna miss him

your glassy eyes betray you

2005-03-30T19:00:00.000-08:00

death and television

Havnt updated my blog in a long time.
kris is back for a week. its been great. when your other is 6997km away you try and build up your life here, do your own thing and be independent. its not that i love her any less, i just need that. she feels that i dont need her anymore, that im so absorbed in my own life, thats shes just a small part of it and when shes away i put that part in refrigeration.

its not true of course, but you ineveitably become self-absorbed in yourself as an individual when your alone. when shes back all of that disappears in an instant. i have been having great evenings with her. The sidewalks have stories to tell again. Worn buildings release old feelings through their cracks, the evening skies let you let drown if you only have the time to look up. things are just like how they used to be when before i got into the army. shes leaving on sunday. my hearts gonna crack a little bit more when i see walk through the glass of the airport departure lounge.

departure is such a cold word. the cold feel of finality of it as the syllables scrape of your tongue that was only moments before bathed in the warmth of her mouth. Depature sounds like the name of a morose norse god. every second lasts a thousand years.
distance kills.

what secrets do you keep in your ears?

your glassy eyes betray you

2005-03-20T17:01:00.000-08:00

Flaming zeppelins

Musically frustrated. theres not enough time. loosing faith in my own writing, think no one really likes it anymore, and maybe neither do i. wish the others would write so i wouldnt always feel like i have to represent everyone else.

your glassy eyes betray you

2005-03-15T18:05:00.000-08:00

your glassy eyes betray youTrickster

Came to camp earlier, only to remember that i had lost my locker keys. danny who shares a locker with me is late, i had to borrow someone elses uniform. As a result i have to try and stay incognito today cos my name tag says Y R LIEW instead of SOLOMON. My camo pants, or rather his camo pants are really baggy on me and make me look like a member of Public Enemy, during their militant fashion phase.

Im becoming increasingly absent minded of late, i think its the lack of sleep. currently im getting 3 to four hours every weekday and on weekends far less. my reaction time has started to slow considerably, i rarely ever dream anymore cos i think i never hit the REM stage. numbingly surreal

weekend

2005-03-08T20:28:00.000-08:00

i dont why these things ever end i sometimes wish it was that summer again.

Last weekend was an extended day which started on friday morning and ended on sunday night.
clubs are strange places. the strobe and lights whose only purpose are to punctuate the concealing darkness.
the numbing alcohol, the seething mass of swaying plastic beauty. strangers faces which bleed into each other and become one. you leave your emotional baggage in the lockers and pick it up your inebriated way out , finding it slightly heavier.

theres just something about day to day living that is so deftly skilled at crushing sensitivity. i could feel happy or sad, but after watching televisioni feel numb and blank.

i could never suffer the company of the shallow , but everyone seems to become hollowed out eventually.

i miss her so

neon nothingness

2005-03-03T00:09:00.000-08:00

Mulitiple power outages, a one painful experience with hot wax later, i think my bad luck streak has ended.
its a pretty gloomy day today and im in camp. Kristine left 2 days ago, and i feel kinda empty.
heres the lyrics to the most recent song last transmission wrote:

i have 30 days to decide
what im doing with my life
but i cant be sure
under artifical light

we dont cube by choice
chose a cube instead of a voice
to sing
the songs i never had a chance to begin

we dont need all these things
empty plastic ,faithless rings
draw us in
where the neon nothingness begins

you are innocent to me
you are innocent to me
i thought i heard faith speaking
im not broken , im just breaking

lately i dont care if its real
just show me how i should feel
fool me you want to
fool me cos i want you to
fool me cos i wanna be fooled by you