To share with you this rough, divisive weather
And not to grieve because we have to share it,
Desire to wear the dark of night together
And feel no colder that we do not wear it,
Because sometimes my sight of you is clearer,
The memory not clouded by the sense,
To know that nothing now can make you dearer
Than does the close touch of intelligence,
To be the prisoner of your kindnesses
And tell myself I want you to be free,
To wish you here with me despite all this,
To wish you here, knowing you cannot be—
This is a way of love in our rough season,
This side of madness, the other side of reason.

–James Reeves (1909-1978 )

I was confounded by the syntax of this sonnet at first, but then realized a way round it was to divide its train of thought in 2s. (the commas are indicative of this) So this is my rusty attempt at paraphrase:

Lines 1-2: To share with you our woes is not an occasion for grief.

Lines 3-4: You and I are cold despite the absence of grief.

Lines 5-6: (The “because” is perplexing because it does not answer a previous query; I can surmise that raw emotion is breaking through here as it seems like a recollection of love)
I remember you best through memory untouched by the senses.

Lines 7-8: Nothing can bring you back except cold rationality of these lines?

Lines 9-10: This is a very confusing line to a mere mortal like me. I am entrapped by your qualities (ie kindness) but I want you to be free from me, but ironically i am not free from you. A paradox or some impossible wish the speaker is making?

Lines 11-12: I wish you were here (x2), but it is impossible.

Lines 13-14: These are the strange currents of our love. Binaries: Madness/Reason, Absence/Presence, You and I. Don’t you just love complicated relationships and the madness that comes from it? There is simply no resolution and you wonder why poetry indeed makes NOTHING happen.

Just as I’m considering an expensive foray into the world of analog photography, some cool digital effect has come by to upset the apple cart. I’ve just learnt how to do this miniaturizing effect on photos. Especially good for landscapes and buildings taken from far. It’s dead easy to apply this in Photoshop CS.

Here’s the original – my favourite European town which I’ll hope to drive to from Singapore one day — a good 10,000km.

And here’s the toy version — You could take a picture of it using it tilt-shift lens, but I think it is not an accessory you find everyday in your camera shop. So thank Photoshop CS!

I would love to write about all the recession nay-saying and the impending doom that befalls us in 2009, plus gripe about those predatory chain of bankers making irresponsible policies that caused the collapse of Lehmann Brothers Bank. But instead, I think I’ll just like to gaze lovingly at my “in-spite-of-recession” toy, the very retro-styled Voigtlander Bessa-R with her new Ultron 35mm f1.7 oculars. This is a fast 35mm, wide-angle lens, great for photographic stories in low-light conditions. Though tedious, the analog camera holds a charming engagement with History and Sound. If you ever get your hands on this non-electronic camera, listen to its film advance lever and the shutter…all working mechanically to catch that moment.

What a work of beauty! And how apt that I should just have seen Ben Kingsley’s “Elegy” where the most poignant moment was him immortalizing Penelope Cruz in his Leica.

“Oh milky white egg, spew forth your glorious white …” nevermind. I can’t write an ode to the egg without some hint of vulgarity. Anyway, have you seen such a nice eggie? Some excerpts from the Oxford Book of Food Writing: a genre I can never fathom because the tired descriptors of food just being “nice lor” is all I can think of:

“In English the word egg is something to cup in one’s palm. On the page, the extra g, like a linguistic wink, lends the word the same oblong shape as the thing itself. Egg nestles against the curve of the tongue.

In its shell it is all smoothness and balance. Next to it, other kinds of beauty seem bony and embellished… Yet the egg lends its beauty generously—witness the way egg tempera allows itself to be saturated with color; the chalky aura that bathes a Vermeer, as though the painter has cast his light through a broken shell.

The love of eggs is a love for the tiny and tender—pinkie-sized squash, potatoes like marbles, three-week-old chickens, skinny-limbed lambs and calves—but taken one step backwards.”

I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves. Atop Centrepoint Carpark, I had a lot which had a nice beam showering down upon the car and decided to seize the moment. What better way to showcase her new R32 shoes too? Just need to find more cosy spots to play with my camera’s aperture and shutter speed…

A long overdue shot of my sayang, after PPS and waxing. My goodness, are apolocalyptic changes going to be done unto her soon. The Eisenmann Sport Exhaust is coming in this week, as will the Bilstein PSS10s. Modifying this car is like playing Diablo; you just won’t be satisfied till you have a level *** [insert class] with all the best weapons and stash. But despite all the hoohaa, I have embarassingly lost out to ricer-boy Touaregs, Subaru WRXs egging me on to 180km/h, and the occasional showboating Mini Cooper Asses (S), all driving without regard to the hefty price they paid for their rides.

Anyway, after having clocked about 5000km and doing an Engine Oil change, I’m so pleased with her performance. Unbridled when provoked, yet docile as a family Labrador when I want it to be. Lovely, absolutely lovely car…

Just one of those days when the world has gone awry, and one cannot make sense of things anymore… Anyway, I am grateful for Dylan Thomas who says it best when my brain has shut down this night: “That the engines be run”…

That sanity be kept I sit at open windows,
Regard the sky, make unobtrusive comment on the moon,
Sit at open windows in my shirt,
And let the traffic pass, the signals shine,
The engines run, the brass bands keep in tune,
For sanity must be preserved.

Thinking of death, I sit and watch the park
Where children play in all their innocence,
And matrons on the littered grass
Absorb the daily sun.

The sweet suburban music from a hundred lawns
Comes softly to my ears. The English mowers mow and mow.

I mark the couples waking arm in arm,
Observe their smiles,
Sweet invitations and inventions,
See them lend love illustration
By gesture and grimace.
I watch them curiously, detect beneath the laughs
What stands for grief, a vague bewilderment
At things not turning right.

I sit at open windows in my shirt,
Observe, like some Jehovah of the west
What passes by, that sanity be kept.

I wished I took pictures of all of you in the exam hall today! But a big thank you for that unreserved birthday singing…And happy Birthday to Amni too!!

Honestly, I couldn’t possibly cry in front of you and lose my professionalism. Thank you again…

I always like reading Jeremy’s Clarkson’s reviews on cars, his latest being the one on VW’s reincarnation of the Scirocco. It was feisty, opinionated and had little on the car’s real driving dynamics and real-world performance but there was a little phrase I did like especially. Me having just written something blurry eyed on nostalgia.

The new car is like an old girlfriend you meet after hooking up on Friends Reunited. To everyone else she’s just an ordinary middle-aged woman, but to you she’s a bit more than that . . .That’s the new Scirocco. To most people it’s just another car. But for those of us who had the old one, it arrives on the scene, after a 15-year period of nothing but grey skies and drizzle, like the warm, fast wind from which it takes its name.

Sure, I’m not old enough to have driven the old 1.8cc Scirocco and I was actually trying to convince myself that the new model, looked in fact, like a toad – a squat but stylish toad. I didn’t like its preposterous storm-trooper helmet looks and felt that it wouldn’t look out of place as a golf caddie in the death star. But who was I really kidding? I love the way it looks after glancing at it a couple more times. It’s like taking an instant dislike to Toni Collette, only to discover that she is really blessed with good looks. And now instead of “the Scirocco looks all squat and beastly” running through my head, I agonize daily: “Why, oh why, didn’t I wait another half a year more for this beauty?”

I just spent an hour browsing through coverart of old games! Really felt so nostalgic after that, I mean it’s amazing how pictures can be such a hotline to memory.

How furious I was when I found out that my ‘88 XT said NO to “Might and Magic” diskettes. There was something like an mechanical bronchitis coming from the steel casing that told me installation failed! I screamed at mummy, asking her to break the bank so I could play the game. Mummy said “Ok lor, you want to make us all poor for your game, go ahead.” I’ll never forget that.

Then I remembered the good old SJI days, when the seedy Katong shopping centre was the haunt for 5.5 inch diskette games, all wrapped up with their covers in nice sleeves. Who could forget unforgettable Pauline who worked at BASIC computer centre? Where is she now?

Those were also the salad days when games like GOLDEN AXE, KYRANDIA were the staple of the EGA 16-color screen. This was something bigger than a quantum leap for mankind, bigger than anything else combined, especially for a struggling student like me trying to pay $6 a week for his gaming needs. I also recall fighting with papa over the purchase of the 256 VGA monitor, which I kept shouting to him “Photo Quality you know!” over and over again.

But having recalled all these wonderful memories, I’m glad I was such an avid gamer. Seeing all these game covers brings that flood of memories back again… long, long before love, academic and work began their assault on my future years.