drawers

the start of any year doesn't go too well with my feelings...

was just chancing to take a slow browse through my pictures and i kinda decided to whack some pics up... hopefully if u click on it you could see the bigger image of it...

some from way back... and some really recent.

i hope seeing these brings back some memories..

cos it certainly did for me... of the years gone by and what they meant.


to all those who matters...

the spoof

whale of a time

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4631396.stm

What a ridiculously silly animal...

of all rivers to choose to swim into it comes into the Thames... where treated sewage waters are dumped into every day.. and they are worried it might get stressed from all the noise, attention and boats?

It'll probably only get high from all the cannibis residue still mingling in those murky depths i reckon.

the fruit dish

saw this in an architecture magazine over here... it's designed by Sir Norman Foster, a reknowned British architect.

To be honest, the top level looks more like a club or restaurant rather than our supreme court.
Yep, it's built and designed like blah blah blah... and i think back to the days when the Esplanade was built and i didn't really like it at first too.

But this, my friends, is not a shopping centre. If i don't like the exterior of the building already, what makes you think i can feel the spatial qualities of the building when obviously, puny mortals like us ain't allowed in?

Yes yes, we can go in... I know now. Fine. Stop correcting me. Hush.

Tsk.

trick 'O' treat!

here's a little something for all of
you guys out there...

or those that read my blog anyway...

it's a series of silly drawings
on my desk calender that
can be, seriously,
rather entertaining when one is
too bored from the pile of drawings
on the table...

*wink*

thesis

Untimely was the arrival of the gastric juices in my body it was…

stayed back in the silence of the office again… the essay seems to be heading off well but unfortunately I have not been able to come up with the third topic at the moment in writing… it’s somehow been eluding me I guess…

I reckon I express myself with less effort in writing than verbally… not to say I don’t… but it’s largely a matter of timing, mood and people. Given a lethal concoction of these factors, I doubt very much that you could shut me up even if you wanted to…

but for the past few weeks, I just haven been really able to talk much, honestly… it might be a post-trip thing or it might just be the time of the year. I do get very depression-prone in this period of time… it’s just… not a happy time of the year for me…

And so the gastric hits…

utterly gross feeling… seldom am I so racked with pain, and I do think my threshold for pain ranges rather high on the scale… but lately the body hasn’t been feeling anywhere near healthy… smoking does not help it one bit either. And so it hurts. Badly.

a reply

I was re-reading through a poem of old,
only to know how apt it is to life as told.

ELOISA TO ABELARD
by Alexander Pope
(a short extract)

Far other dreams my erring soul employ,
Far other raptures, of unholy joy.
When at the close of each sad, sorrowful day,
Fancy restores what vegence snatch'd away,
Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,
All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.
Oh cur'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night!
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
Provoking Demons all restraint remove,
and stir within me every source of love.

I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms,
and round thy phantom glue my clasping arms
I wake--no more i hear, no more i view,
The phantom flies me, as unkind as you.
I call it aloud; it hears not what i say;
I stretch my empty arms; it glides away.
To dream once more i close my willing eyes;
Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise!

Alas, no more--me thinks we wand'ring go
Through dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe,
Where round some mould'ring tower pale ivy creeps,
and low-brow'd rocks hang nodding o'er the skies;
Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise.
I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find,
and wake to all the griefs i left behind.

caffeine shots

All computer programs and backgrounds should be dark in colour… this is all the more true when you sit in the dark of your room at half past midnight, typing your blog when you can’t get to sleep.

Yes, amazingly, I can’t fall sleep.

Wearily left the office at about fifteen past ten or so… was fleshing out the 2nd of my thesis topics in the application essay for Delft University, Netherlands; which means I have one more to go.

As much as I am enjoying the sudden rush of finally thinking more about design matters again, I am also struck by how anal I am when it comes to trying to resolve certain thoughts in my head, particularly when it comes to matters pertaining to architecture.

It’s a fucking occupational hazard.

Another possible reason why I’m still sitting up instead of retiring for the night might also boil down to the fact that over a timeframe of the 4 hrs or so that I was in office, I had 5 cans of Coke.

That might somehow account for the ‘weary-body-hates-awake-mind’ syndrome that I’m going through this very moment.

17th century French philosopher Rene Descarte’s theory was that the mind and the brain were 2 totally separate things, and was never meant to be the same thing.

The brain is physical, the mind isn’t.

Of course they can communicate with each other in various ways. The mind gets the body to do various things by way of the brain – it tells the brain what to do, and the brain then goes on to tell the body what to do.

Wanting is something that, according to Descartes, your non-physical mind does. So the 2 are very separate. This sort of view is known as dualism. It sees each one of us as 2 different parts or components – hence dual in the title.

The result is the fracturing of a person into the inside and the outside; the mind within and the body without. Thus the real me is what’s on the inside, the special part that no one else can see.

I am blabbering nonsense from thinking too much, too late. Humour me.

recent memories

Do check out the photos from my Xmas trip to Spain here…
Or you can always take a look at my whole collection here too!

Personal Space

An old friend of mine, Mela, recently just moved into a place of her own back in Singapore… i know you will read this soon… I can’t say how happy I am for you… all the best in your furnishing! wink

Over the past few years, I have increasingly felt the urge to have a place of my own; a pad where close friends can come on over for a simple meal and wine, where we can share moments of simple pleasures; a place where I can hide back into at the end of the day, away from the world.

This has largely got to do with the fact that I have been in and out of home and other places, army not to be mentioned, Raffles Hall for a year, Korea for half a year, and now London.

This is also a typically difficult decision and news to break to most parents, in our Asian context I would refer to here… moving out usually equates to getting married, and that is not on my mind at least for the moment.

People who have lived with me would almost certainly know some of the ‘queer’ habits that I have…

After prolonged periods of being in ‘physical human contact’ with others, i.e. being on a long 2 week trip to Spain with 2 friends, I will very naturally develop the instinctive urge to retreat; to back away mentally to find that personal space that I innately crave for… a ‘comfort zone’ where I do not need to talk to anybody, a place where no socializing of any sort will ever begin… simply because I do not wish for it to happen… and thus I ‘kinda’ enforce it to be so… by hiding in my own room.

Thus I would now find it difficult if told that I would have to share a room with somebody, just like when I was living in Korea and had to share a room with Kerhow. Do not be mistaken, I enjoyed being in his company… and this particularly so for very dark and unspeakable reasons only known between the two of us that a few others may also be in the know.

No, we are not an item. Kill that thought.

I have been in my room for more than 24hrs now…

And I have never felt more comfortable.