About Me

My photo
I call the living, I mourn the dead, I chase the lightning.

Wanderlust -- "a trip, or a need to understand one's very existence,
that starts with the first step of a long journey"

-- Travels and ramblings -- summer of 08 and beyond ---

Friday, July 18, 2008

nineteen is not the age of reason [Birthday weekend 5]



Five, make you fall in love with me


~~ To my birthday wish ~~

Only time will tell --



If ever I believe my work is done
Then I’ll start back at one

nineteen is not the age of reason [Birthday weekend 4]



Four, repeat steps one through three


Saturday night after Sentosa I went on a friend's chartered boat for a party that ended up being a joint birthday celebration for him and me, 10pm to 5am. As Gerald would say, "night of mayhem" indeed. The boat was very sleek, and an amusing old New Zealand captain. Met lots of cool people. We spent a good amount of the time stopped at a deserted island for some fun and barbecue, including two birthday cakes. I think that would sum up the whole party very nicely, in a very tame way :-) Indescribable, I guess what happens on the boat, stays on the boat :-)


The bonfire!
The two birthday cakes before they get set on fire...


Cutting my melted coffee cake on the beach and trying not to get sand in it...


Yet another blurry night picture... flying the point on the ship as we come into harbour

<3


nineteen is not the age of reason [Birthday weekend 3]



Three, girl it’s plain to see



Saturday I went back to Sentosa again, but this time spent most of the day at the beach just relaxing, enjoying the view from the southernmost tip of continental Asia, this pretty little island connected to Sentosa by an awesome suspension rope bridge --

And there was this really cool palm tree I sat on for a long time just staring out into the sea, letting the water wash away all of my thoughts...

There were also some interesting and fun, albeit sometimes ear screeching, animal shows in the late afternoon, and after dinner, I didn't do much but lay down by the beach at night -- the stars.. so so many, cold and clear against a great black backdrop that merged into the horizon waters into the shore --

As you can see, I'm slightly obsessed with the night sky and dark beaches...

Night-time sharpens, heightens each sensation
Darkness stirs and wakes imagination
Silently the senses abandon their defenses

Slowly, gently night unfurls its splendour
Grasp it, sense it - tremulous and tender
Turn your face away from the garish light of day,
turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light -
and listen to the music of the night

Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams
Purge your thoughts of the life you knew before
Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar
And you'll live as you've never lived before ...

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Nineteen is not the age of reason [Birthday weekend 2]



Two, just wanna be with you



Parkview Square
A pretty green fairy is hoisted up on steel wires to retrieve the bottle of wine that you bought -- for us, a nice bottle of 2004 Margaret River, Cabernet Sauvignon


After Parkview closed, we headed to New Asia bar at the top of the highest hotel in Singapore, SwissĂ´tel Stamford. The view is gorgeous and DJ pretty cool, I would definitely recommend visitors to try it out at least once.

During the day we went to the Singapore Botanic Gardens and had dinner at Boat Quay, chili crab by the river. The Botanic Gardens includes an Orchid Garden inside which was absolutely beautiful. There is an interesting VIP section where they name hybrid orchids after famous heads of state that come visit -- I love orchids, they are such fragile beauties -- [Facebook album] --

Nineteen is not the age of reason [Birthday weekend 1]



One, you're like a dream come true


The world's largest fountain, the Fountain of Wealth at Suntec City, and its evening laser show is absolutely awe inspiring to stare at. The powerful, gigantic expansiveness overwhelms oneself, and the ever changing colors dancing upon ever changing water completely fill our vision. The fountain shooting so high it looks like it could touch the moon, droplets quavering in midair as the lasers pierce through -- nature's eternal ephemeralness. The water shimmers and rains down back to earth, I want to run into the middle of it all so so badly. I want to tilt my head back and open my mouth and welcome the earth, I want every inch of my clothing to be soaked in the fountain, to have the droplets splitter splatter against my skin, to dance and sing in the rain and feel alive. To feel alive.




To feel alive.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

hiding from Singapore in Sentosa for a day

Oh dear, haven't updated in a while, I have a backlog of events to talk about, but we'll start with a big one, Sentosa Island :-)

Sentosa Island is Singapore's man-made resort island, filled with beaches, a golf course, hotels, and amusements like aquarium, walking trails, observatory towers, butterfly garden, museum, etc. -- and this humongous iconic Merlion statue of Singapore.

>> Facebook album here << In the morning, we took the cable car starting from Mount Fable - it passes Vivo City over Harbourfront to Sentosa. Quite a nice view, but it's hard to take good pictures from inside a cable car. Also, the side of Sentosa that faces Singapore is under massive construction so it's kinda ugly, but cool in a mech-e ugly metal way haha. They're expanding the resort island to include a Six Flags! and other amusement park stuff, wow it's scheduled to open in 2010. A nice relaxing ride to Sentosa --

We had a package ticket, so the first place we went to was the aquarium. I've been to Atlanta, Georgia's, which is the biggest in the world, so this aquarium wasn't amazing and much smaller, but it had a really good collection of crabs, haha, and the fish here are extremely big. The underwater world is such a mystery to humans, they subsist in their tiny little microcosms, watching them is amazing. A complicated dance for survival. Truly, to a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower...

I was sort of afraid of touch the starfish o.O

Okay too many fishies pictures to put up, the Facebook album has only a few of them. I'm adding a jellyfish one here because it's cool :D

Then we went to those 3D Cinemagic things where you wear those weird glasses and sit in this box that moves around and simulates the experience of a roller coaster. The 15-minute movie simulated the audience as a log that was going through a processing factory, oh my god -_- We got rolled around, chopped up, plummeted downwards, soaked through, thrown away.... my eyes were dizzy and my head hurt O.O haha but it was quite fun besides that --

And to make my headache worse, we decided to go down a hill on a luge, lol. A luge is kind of like a go-kart type thing you can steer on a track downhill, ahhhhh I suck at driving in real life, how can I drive a luge haha. You can see the luge track and people in the right side of the picture, this was taken when we were on the chair lift back uphill:

When we were on the chairlift back, the girl in front of us dropped her purse onto the hill below. When she first shrieked, you could see it all in slow motion -- she is trying to grab the bright yellow bag at the last second but it falls just below her grasp, the bag rotating in the air due to the shifting momentum and spilling out her wallet -- then gravity speeds up the free fall and the bag lands decisively on the green green hill below, its contents in a disarray like guts spilled after a hari-kari. (Haha okay not as morbid as my analogy.) We all laughed, herself included.

Afterwards, we had lunch with a nice beer overlooking part of the island and harbour, relaxation and a breeze. Good food, good drink, good company, good environment -- what more could one ask for? :-)

We went to catch the Dolphin Show at the lagoon -- I thought pink dolphins were fake -_- haha but apparently there are some pink dolphins, the color coming from the water they live in and eat. The ones we saw, only the snout, head, and some fin parts were pink, the rest became the shade of normal dolphin grey. It started raining hard soon after the show started, and the show itself wasn't great anyway. I was out on the beach area without any overhang, so I got soaked, but I didn't mind too much. The rain stopped when the show finished actually, haha.


We had to wait forever to get on the bus to get back to the main area because it was all rainy and there was a massive amount of people waiting for the bus. We went to take a look at the gigantic Merlion and took a few pictures, typical must-do tourist thing :D

We decided to go into a Singapore museum, Images of Singapore, that chronicles Singapore's whole history from beginning of colonization to modern day. It's filled with wax people and little scenes from different history periods and explanations of cultural groups, traditions, customs, etc. Singapore was originally composed of the Chinese, Malay, Eurasians, and Indians, so there is lots of varied history. It ended up being extremely interesting (I'm still a history buff at heart) and we started there longer than anticipated. I came home and realized I took way too many pictures of wax people and furniture, for no particular reason or use, hahaha.


We wanted to go to the Butterfly Garden, but it was already closing. I took a picture at the entrance, then after I finished, this group of Indian men came up to me and asked me something unintelligible. I thought they wanted me to take a picture *for* them, but one of them smiled and said: "If tiz oh-kay wit you and if tiz oh-kay wit yur friend." I'm like... huh? Why do you want to take a picture with me?? O.O.... so I bewilderedly took a picture with them, my friend took the picture along with the other Indian men just so I could have a record of it haha... as you can see, I was trying to space myself from them and hence sort of blocked the sign, plus I had a weird smile/look on my face lol

Normal picture >>>
Creepy what-is-going-on picture >>>

That wondrous event basically marked the end of my Sentosa trip, afterwards we took the cable car to Vivo City for dinner and rest, so incredibly tired from walking around and being in the hot sun all day -- wave good bye to the great Merlion :-)

To return to the city... sigh it seemed like we were so far away, yet we were just across the strait. The strait where worries and stress cannot cross, where even time does not obey normal physics. Time slowed down for us that day; I could feel it as I sat on the Vivo City terrace steps, looking over the harbourfront at the Sentosa that I just left behind, looking over Sentosa at the Cygnus constellation flying south. Every breeze that flew by whispered in my ear to cherish that day. Carpe diem.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

To see a world in a grain of sand

I meet so many different people in so many different ways when I am traveling around. Some meetings are random, some are electrifying, some are awkward, some are mandatory, some are accidental, some are surprising, and some are so natural they must have snuck up on foggy little cat feet. Some people are mediocre, some are immature, some are entertaining, some are enviable, some are memorable, and some are so extraordinarily compatible Fate must have carefully fine-spun her silk web just for you.

All these different individuals span across my memory as jewels in an Indra's net. My mind is a vast white space expanding out in all dimensions infinitely, and my net is glittering below. I look in one jewel, and I see the convoluted crossroads that brought me to that meeting in time, and I see the reflections of all other jewels that were also affected, whether those are in the past or future of this one jewel matters not. The Indra's net of my memory holds no sense of time because "the pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory" (Bergson). The fine interdependencies of the jewels propel me mercilessly towards the edges of the net, so fast I barely have time to look back. The net is infinite like my mind and infinitely reflected within itself so there is no edge; as I am impelled forward by my life on Earth, new jewels materialize continuously at the horizon and more and more reflections shine brighter and brighter, casting their light towards the path of my destiny.


...so fast I barely have time to look back. People I never got to know, people I never saw again, people I never said apologized to, people I never tried hard enough with, and people I never forgot I shared a special connection with, a mutual understanding so inspiring it would have made the star-crossed lovers jealous. Can these people never be recaptured, are they truly lost to me forever? A crueler punishment than Tantalus' in Tartarus, is this the net that Fate cleverly wove for humans? No time for sadness, no time for nostalgia, no time for pity, definitely no time for regrets...... Oh but in my headlong plunge towards the ends of my universe I still try to turn back for a few glances, the tears flying out, droplets wavering in midair for a slow second... then crashing down as I finally summon my strength and move onwards pushing my boundaries, only glistening jewels upon glistening jewels of my memory remaining.