Table for One

Craving for some indulgence yesterday, I texted a few friends to asked if anyone's available for dinner today. From colleagues whom I thought will never say no to food, to long time primary school friends (yes, can see how desperate I was looking for dinner company!), I found no one to oblige me. Everyone had some appointments or tasks of some sort scheduled on their advanced lives, I am so left behind...

Geez... I think it will get worse with age. There will be less people left who can spare the time...

Is this a little biz idea for a quaint little cafe called "Table for One"?

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Feb 1st Ramble

Life must be a comfort when there's company alongside while the clouds fly by. I seem to find myself blurred when I looked beside and found no-one there. Everyone else seems to be either ahead or otherwise, and I seemed to be treading on a different realm..

Alright, I guess it is okay to be swinging on a different orbit, but not when it is being beset by wild, thoughtless expectations from a different course. Geez... I feel the need to be unleashed from the field of conflicting forces. Well, I guess I am not looking for any wanton runaway. Just needed to be freed from the stifling air, and sit somewhere grounded, to chill and watch the clouds float by...
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The New Year

Every year, TS would drop cheeky Christmas jingles she'd compose in reply to my greetings. This year, it was sorely missed and I dropped her a text to ask howdy. A day after, she replied to tell of how stressed she was without all the nurses and assistants. All of them were coincidentally either out on planned or emergency leave for the week. Imagine the dentist taking queue number, rummaging for info cards, digging teeth with drills, and replying my text... I cannot quite imagine the picture, but I guess I can imagine the stress. WH also texted a day after Christmas with news of coming down with chicken pox over the festive season. It must have been dreadful.

The good thing is that his text this afternoon was more cheery, and he is anticipating himself to be up and out by the weekends. It has been a week, and I guess TS must have had her nurses and aides back by now...

Retrospectively, it did not seem a bad idea that the lousy experiences were bore over and left in 2009. It seems to make the step into the new year sweeter and more hopeful. Almost like how the financial market is inching towards a new high at the year's end. It seemed like a struggle, but it's pushing the heights. A stark contrast to the dumps it was in earlier in the year...

Earlier in December, I met up with E* for dinner, and he commented that I have not been updating the blog. Aside from having been caught by a little depression bug, being caught up with work and getting stressed over not being disciplined enough with my self-study, I have in reality, been logging in to read the updates of other people's blog entries. I was stumped in awe by the dazzlingly blissful lives people are living. As I surfed past my supposedly-dazzling 29th with sad realisation that I have lived the last (one year short of) three decades of my life without much sheen, I was tempted once again to whine and gripe. However, I am kinda resistance to jot another moan and groan.

Well, 2009 has not been life's best dream for me, but it has been pretty experiential, i guess. Minutes into the new year, I am still wondering what kind of road I am treading on, and what is in store for me.

A month or so ago, I was listening to some online sermon and was reminded that the God that I had vowed to put my trust in is a God who makes no mistakes (I mean, that is but of course la, if not, it would have been a mistake, isn't it? But I am that lousy, faithless little human..). And while I leaf through some wedding sheets and cards to help sis's friend find some appropriate wedding songs, I came across Terch's wedding invite many years ago inscribed with the beautiful quote saying "Life's coincidences are God's planned miracles". Faithless was I, but He was and is still in control. I guess these are little knock-knock-hellos on my head to look up and remember...

Entering into the new year, I am glad that I can count the little blessings that I have been bestowed with in the midst of the little storms and gales that I underwent through the year. The new friend I've made who would pray for me, the old-time friendships reconnected (Sab and Tuan who would hear my stories with no slightest impatience or criticism but words of encouragement) and rekindled (thanks, jeff for being able to be so frank and tell me straight in the face how ghor-tuck i am... appreciate the honesty, really!), and the old bulwarks who had stood by, being a constant company to the theatres, dinners, teas and chats (muacks, Hong!), and bearing my nonsenses - like obliging me in my long old grandmother's stories that finds no conclusion every once in a while and exploring unchartered territories for cakes and scenes! (thanks, E*! The evening was fun! Can we do that again? Heh..)

Yea, I had my share of depressive and abnormally imbalanced times, but i can't seem to remember what had exactly gone wrong. Yea.. talk of about selective amnesia... All that would come to mind now is how I have been kept on the look-out. Didn't sound too bad that the wretched past in 2009 can be left behind and I can step into the new 2010 on a better footing. Sure, I can do without some episodes and mistakes, but some things are like chickenpox, I guess - one just gotta get through and be over with it.

Glad that I can leave certain things in 2009, and I am contented for the willing instruments of blessings. It's another new year (arghh!! how time is flying by!), but I guess there are things that need no change... heh...

Eh... I meant more blessings... Heh... Toast to the new year! =)
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Loved not, Love lots

If ever I have kids of my own, I will make sure they are hugged and told that they are so lovely everyone will love them. The loved kid(s) will grow up loved, love and be loved. Why would anyone want to keep being told in one way or another that they are never loveable enough to have anyone really love them?
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Outside the Hubbub Bubble

Everyone's caught up with something.

Busy, busy, is their common name. Everyone has activities galore. Seems like I am the only one outside the hubbub bubble, watching the bubbles float by.... . like this:

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Hi, Saturday High

Met up Hong (she's looking prettier each time I see her! Wish I am too...), went to catch The Hossan Leong Show at the Drama Centre, had a good laugh, unexpectedly won a year's supply of frolick yoghurt during the show for sitting at the circles 2, GG14 seat (just as I was wondering if it is only the people who are in the stall seats get to win anything), took a photo with the standup comedian himself (up close & personal!), got shoved with two Maquillage lip gloss samples with an assortment of shades at Bugis, got tickets to Beauty and the Beast next month, grills, salads & devil's fudge cake at Cedele (yummilicious!), yakked and bitched about work (in the chill ambience), shopped (although without harvest), poked fun at obscenely dressed muscle-men, and got a much-needed esteem booster from spotting a cute guy (so there are actually still eligible looking guys out alone on Saturday evenings!) at Times bookshop whose gaze followed me after I sauntered past him at the shelves all the way to my exit from the store...

I suddenly hate full stops. I think I am on some high and I wonder if it was the good company, the day's program or the doubly whammy chocolate fudge in the cake...

How I wish every Saturday is as such.
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The (Occasional) Sunday Brunch partner

It's nice to have someone to do Sunday brunch with after too many weeks of turning into a perpetual hermit. I may not click with everyone on the street, but I do love being in good company. Sure, there have been litters of texts now and then, but there weren't always replies... With some people, I am still excited by face-to-face exchanges.

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I have lost count of the number of weeks we have not met and I wonder if it was because of this long absence, that it seemed the conversations needed more efforts to get going. The synergy was a tad retarded, and at some point, in intermittence. We were almost like awkward teenagers on first dates, not knowing what to expect and needing more time to respond (or was it just me?)... All the things I thought I would ask and tell through these weeks dissolved from my thought bubble just when I most needed them.

There even came an instance when silence ballooned for almost too long, and we were found literally staring at each other, eyeball to eyeball, under the dim brown lights across the oak brown table. For a while, it was awkwardly uncomfy. Then funnily, we smiled bigger at each other and broke the mute with a laugh. Consequently, one of us (can't remember who did, but probably not me though) mastered a question, releasing the paralyzing acupoints, and we went on again, idly chatting about work, old school-times and of things seen and heard.

Back in my solitude, that moment of silence replayed... I wonder why I was looked at like that and if I had missed any significance that was perhaps being transpired. Or perhaps, I am just imagining too much - as usual. Logic is awry here. I am befuddled. Can't quite figure a good conclusion of the event sequence. Ah well, don't try then, I guess. I will just be a faithful good Sunday brunch partner whenever hunger seizes and there are no other appointments in line....

Food was great at The Old Brown Shoe though, and chill ambience too, where we were seated. I walked out of the place and found myself smelling really nice from the refreshing flowery fragrances that they infused the air with. As was with our last two brunches (Simply Bread in Cluny Court and Kenny Rogers in Novena Square), I like the choice of food place by my (occasional) Sunday brunch partner.

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One thing I wish for now

Chilling out in a tea room with some great company.

(photo plagarised from W.Ong's FB album on Canada. hope MICA doesn't catch up with me. hee..)
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万卷书

Introducing my loot of notes accumulated from 4 + 2 years of tertiary education. Look how high they stack. And these are not all, excluding tutorials and another mountain of textbooks.. I wonder how my brains had digested those information. As I flipped through the complex engineering maths functions last night, they gave my head a spin and stared back totally unfamiliar and without sense to me. I feel like one with amnesia... They are things once held so dear (can't live without them!), but now so foreign.. Will I ever recall them again? Will I even ever need them again?

To throw or not to throw?

...And remember those times when we were allowed to bring in notes on A4 sized papers for exams? I found 2 sheets of my treasured notes... can't bear to toss them out even though they too, don't seem intelligible. They ended up getting tucked into the stack and hidden back to the top of the shelves. I am such a sucker for sentiments I cannot even remember. But maybe, just maybe, they will again make sense one day...

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Mood blog

Feel like jetting away for a little holiday....

To feel exhilarated and excited again.

....but leaves not enough.... =(

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