@_@

Fish N Chips Make the world go away Fishball

Grated Cheese Get it off, get it off my shoulder Gado Gado

Hot Dogs Say the things we used to say Hokkien Mee

Ice-Cream And make the world, make it go away Ice Jelly

With Caution

Read this with caution

for I write in trepidation

the names I mention

the pictures I caption

Fame for this job is also no option

if not there surely will be some tension

I think it best a proposition

my face stays out of publication

A Toast to my Birth-Givers

How many days has it been since we have been cast away, abandoned? I do not know, seems like an eternity, and already I’m beginning to like my current lifestyle and have grown used to it. I get a big bed, I don’t get nagging and I get to eat, drink, sleep, come home as late as I fancy! Yes, I’m talking about the overseas trip my parents, or more fashionably referred to as birth-givers. It’s been, urrmm I’ve honestly lost count, a few days since they have been gone. Ok heck, but it also means I have to do a lot more work- housework… Though the brother and I have come up with a pact to try and minimize clothes wearage, and no verbal exchange on who is to wash the clothes or when. It’s only a matter of being able to tahan… lol… If you need clothes, sorry.. WASH!

I wonder how the fat mother bear is holding out there? Is she withering from the lack of amenities and the bug armies? Or is she happily running around shopping for whatever she can content herself with?

I can’t believe the WarTank has only been with us for about half a month… Feels almost we’ve always had him. So easy to just forget our traumas and sad soft toy selves going to and from work before we got him lol… I just silently uttered a prayer for him, hoping the War Tank will never get scratched or hurt… He’s cool. He’s ours. =)

Come later in the afternoon, I’m going to attempt to change the song of the blog to…. Yes… “Surrender” by Elvis the Elvis. There’s somehow a very magical feel to a lot of his songs, especially this current favourite, which is, even as I type stumpily and furiously, playing on repeat. Sometimes, as I think about myself and the taste for music, it’s rather puzzling. I mean, I’m 26 (I think). People my age, or rather guys my age listen to Chinese pop songs, or techno or hiphop (yucks). Ok fine, maybe except for a faggotty friend who is into *shudder* boybands and David BackHam. I was raised largely(largely is right, considering the amount of food I consume) as a Chinese-speaking boy, with a curry-puffed hairstyle. I grew up listening to Chinese music, pop music at that. Yes, then somehow at the magical period of adolescence, things got complicated. Classmates passed round a pirated cheapo cd of popular English songs. It was so cheapo, and badly done that even pirates today would close their eyes in horror… It was sung by imitation singers, and karaoke tunes… I remember listening to songs like “Hotel California” and “25 Minutes”. I think. Actually, before that, maybe in Primary 6, I had strangely went to buy myself a CASSETTE TAPE of English pop songs compilation. That is the reason why I’m still stuck and singing along happily to weird tunes like “Runaway Train” and “Go West”. I must point out, now that I’m in a seemingly clearer vantage point, that those were rather strange hippie, drug-inducing happy songs, that absolutely did not make much sense in the lyrics department. If you think that’s strange, you should stay tuned. In Sec 2, I started watching Jap dramas at 1030pm they showed on this Channel 12, they called it that last time for their equivalent of Arts Central. That started me off listening to Jap songs, yes well just an innocent happy quiet little flame in my heart which was to be wildly fanned out of proportion a year later.

Ah, we have come to the pivot of this fat soft toy’s life. Sec Two’s end and the start of Sec 3 of long pants, movies, and school-pond swimming. I need to time-out for a while now, as I’m typing this emotional part here, Elvis has begun singing “Are you lonesome tonight”. Eyes… my eyes…. Sand…

Yes, Elvis, I feel lonesome thinking back of those times, those carefree happy days. I spend my days standing alone on a basketball that seems to stretch forever into those casuarina trees and graying skies. No buildings block that wondrous view. Except for the beautiful occasional rain that curtains me off from the school and people. I have walked barefoot on the basketball courts I count and love, all 5 of them. I have sat on the open-air grandstand while rain water cascades down my feet, onto the floors, onto the grass, into the drains. Wait a minute, why do the scenes of the past I miss consist mainly of only me?? Ok, I deduce I’m a sad social animal.

I’m a quiet, shy nice boy. Until Sec 2, until King Ten and the fat gang came laughing and crazily into my life, they butted out that shy Kenneth with their ridiculous non-funny jokes we spent minutes laughing to, the deviant acts they effortlessly do, and the maniacal bullying that demanded you stand up against them. Music changed. Warped. Chinese music was only occasionally played, and even then, it stopped at that period and I never caught on to newer singers. I was time-capsuled. I never realized its impact, until… actually now… That was the first step, the first conscious step I took, away from some friends and some part I used to call life. I would have been a different person today if I had not had the mad life in those days. Looking at those friends I had walked away from, I saw what I could have been. No, I don’t think I will like it. I prefer who I am now- slightly mad, and happy, and all without the aid of recreational pharmaceuticals. In those Sec days, joining a different group of friends was a big thing. It meant stares, gossips, change of money-lenders, and providers of homework. Especially joining the infamous gang who were known to be weird, occasional bullies, fiery tempers, school rule flouters, loud guttural laughs that scared of hyenas. But they gave me more than that. All of them shared who they were with me, in sincere boyish ways. To say they gave me a new life would be too much, but they gave a new perspective, new choices, new empowerments. I never knew it was a possibility to skip school, I honestly never did. I never thought girl toilets could be entered, even at 12 midnight when nobody is in school. I missed terribly those days. We ate fried chicken wings like mad, chased each other in a more teenage version of catching, chased people with used sanitary pads, set off the fire alarm of a Hong Kong hotel, camped on the walkway of the Benjamin Sheares Bridge, swam and pretended to be naval divers in the new school pond, climbed into the school late at night to watch the fireworks from the Kallang stadium. Slept under the stars on the basketball court, got farted in the face etc. Other than the fats, they also let me in to their weird cult fanaticism for Guns N Roses, Bon Jovi and X Japan. These changed me, my mannerisms, my self.

Here’s the missing link… I have no idea how I came across Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, and the big band era. I fell in love with that period of America. The dancing, the music, the wine glasses, the cars, the street lamps, the mafia, the tux, the guns, the talk, the buildings, and the music.

I still listen occasionally to rock and roll and those songs from the past that seem to be photo album before me everytime they play. If the music you listen to could tell what kind of person you are, I must be a complicated person. If not confused.

I’m not ashamed to say I miss those weird friends, all of them, all 8 of them I think. They gave me a happy phase of growing up. But I know it’s no more. Previous meetings have shown me. It’s like what TGF said, it’s the past we remember and want, it’s not the present, simply because things have to change, people have to change. Heavens, I wouldn’t want to be near them either if they were still running around chasing me with a used pad. Having it before is enough. As long as I can remember, as long as these songs play, I see them, I see myself, a fat 15 year old self. We shall never be again.