fathers

i was sitting on a parapet under a shelter on saturday evening. it was raining yet again, and the air was uncomfortably humid. tired and hunching, i couldn't wait to get home for a shower. as if having a need to get busy with something to kill some time, i took out the brand new study bible that i bought from trumpet praise, unwrapped it and speed-flipped the golden lined pages for a smell of new book. i enjoyed the sound of flipping through the thin and crispy pages. hmmm smells goooot.... and i couldn't wait to index it later.

a dispersed cloud of smoke flew towards my face, and i could smell a freshly lit cigarette. sitting very near me on the same parapet was a malay man dressed in security guard's uniform. clamming a fag between his fingers, he was clicking his mobile phone away. i saw from behind his back that he was trying very hard to set a photo as his phone's wallpaper. a photo of 2 little girls hugging each other, probably his daughters. after a few minutes of fiddling around with the options, he finally managed to set that photo as the wallpaper. then he rubbed the screen on his pants to clean it. looked at the newly set wallpaper and smiled with pride and satisfaction. he swept his thumb across the screen several times to clean the screen even more and then put the phone back into his pocket. with a last puff and a flick, the exhausted cigarette flew a distance into the grass. he picked up his cup of coffee and left.

+++++++++

sunday was my last intensive day for the new module. was so delighted that it ended really early. took the NEL back home and saw a lovely dad seated opposite me with his daughter. they seemed really tired from a big shopping spree at mustafa. sharing a seat, the dad fell asleep cuddling his daughter. and the little girl put her hand around her dad's neck and started patting him to sleep. nice.

"He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers..." Malachi 4:6

someone i thought was dead

last night, my mobile lighted up and vibrated with an unfamiliar number blinking on the screen.

"hi. feeeon"
"hi, hello"
"i am the very old man whom you spoke to yesterday"
"oh..."

++++++

2 days ago, i met someone whom i thought was dead. how weird it is to be thinking of that about a person? and how "encouraging" to him if he ever see this note? but i doubt he'll ever do.

there's this very old and scrawny man living in my area, a very prim and proper person with a good command of english. he was always spotted with a big leather bag, a thick Pitman dictionary and a New Jerusalem Bible. i saw him a couple of times on feeder buses when i just moved to this vicinity, always sharing his stories to fellow commuters that he didn't know. i hadn't met him for more than a year, thus the thought of his death.

on tuesday, i saw him again. at the bus-stop. from a distance, i saw that he was speaking to a disinterested young boy, waving his hands while talking, and i presume he's telling his stories again.

the bus came.

i chose a seat near him and watched him speak to more people around him. then secretly fished out my camera and started to video his talk and snap a couple of photos. my heart had the desire to speak to him, but i didn't dare to. 'cos i know, i wanted more than just a simple conversation on a short bus ride.

the bus reached the interchange.

very carefully, he took all his belongings and stepped out of the bus slowly. and i followed, my heart thumping like it did whenever i drink some coffee. i took in a deep breath, and stretched out my hand to tap on his shoulder.

"yes?"
"hi uncle, i've seen you around for a few times. you had spoken to my dad before on a bus"
"oh did i?"
"yes. erm..... i. i was wondering. wondering if i can write a story about you."
"no no no! i don't want publicity. i don't want to be in the media. straits times came before but i don't want"
"ok.... but i'm not from the media. i write at my own leisure. and you're a very interesting person to write about. do you have a number that i can call?"
"yes. but it's not my number. i have no home. and i'm being taken care of by someone"

fumbling through my big and disorganized bag, i drew out my name card and gave it to him.

"my name is michael. M-I-C-H-A-E-L."
"hello uncle michael, i'm fion"
"ok, i will call you."

++++++

191108 - 12:52pm

met him again. at a stone table near home. my back was dampen with nervous beads of perspiration. i switch on my ipod and started to record as he spoke. his voice trembled with age, and started his story from the beginning - when he was borned in 2nd april 1894. i was awed by his memory and the detailed descriptions he gave, scribbled away busily.

at a point, he had a long pause and i gave him a prompting look. he said he wanted to wait for the plane to fly pass just in case part of his story wasn't properly recorded. and we laughed.

we stopped at 1899. 'cos he was hungry. before we parted, he said: i hope to tell you all of my stories in many sessions like this. you must based your novel on my facts very closely. but i don't want my photo to be publicized. i hope i can tell you all my stories till the last chapter provided the Lord Jesus allow, that i'm still alive.

my heart twisted and i smiled at him and thought: i don't want you to die. i walked him 1/2 way back to his block after him insisting that he knew his way very well around here. and we bid goodbyes.

he turned around and smile: i will call you again.

i don't know when. and it felt like tuesdays with morrie.

poisonous mushroom

what a crappy sunday to be on the way to school instead of church. school on a sunday? yes, on a sunday and next too!!! boon the hungry and going-to-be-late grouch dragged her feet towards the bus-stop. and it was also a bad hair day.

a sight that put a faint smile on my face, 1st smile of the day:

a little girl squatted on the grass patch beside the bus-stop, was nudging a toadstool curiously with a brown fallen stick.

"mummy, can we cook this mushroom?"
"no we can't, it's poisonous"

the little girl skipped towards her mum and sat beside her at the bus-stop. sniffing her runny nose away & eating a kaya bun, her face was filled with inquisitive wonders.

"but who put the poison in the mushroom?" (i smiled, for the 2nd time)
"nobody put the poison in it my dear. it's a toadstool. and toadstool have poison in them."
"maybe i'll get [a children super hero name which i've forgotten] to come and help toadstool to be not poisonous."

then her mum squeezed her shoulders with an arm and sniffed her hair affectionately, whispered something into her ear and she giggled. (i smiled, for the 3rd time. and my heart melted)

+++++

... Jesus said: " Let the little children come on to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 19:14

kids with camera

it was a horrible feeling night. tossed and turned on my bed but couldn't fall asleep. my mind ran a million miles of thoughts, mostly of questions that i never knew the answers. i stared at the ceiling, the only sound heard was that of the fan's spinning blades. i prayed hard. for the miracle. not wanting to sink into more negative thoughts, i distracted myself with yet another film. the clock ticked close to 3am.

and i began to watch Born Into Brothel - Calcutta's Red Light Kids (2004) - a docu-film introduced by mel.
i admire Zana Briski's heart for the children of prostitutes in calcutta's red light district. she gave them cameras and taught them photography. seeing the world in the eyes of the children, the photos developed were amazing. Zana then started Kids with Camera (http://www.kids-with-cameras.org), a project that sells the photos taken by the children to fund their education and lives. in hope to redeem them from poverty and the chaotic lives in the brothels. the photography project branched out to needy children in Haiti & Cairo as well.

kudos to Kids with Camera. a drive that touches my heart.
you can purchase the children's snaps at http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/kidsgallery/

these are some of my favorite ones:

by avijit - bucket.

avijit was the only child to represent india from the calcutta's group to go to amsterdam for World Press Photo Foundation as a child jury.
very creative boy with talents in painting and photography.
19 this year, avijit has been studying in US for 3 years.

by gour - running.

"I want to show in pictures how people live in this city. I want to put across the behavior of man."
gour is believed to still be living in the red-light district but have lost contact with Kids with Cameras.

by shanti - horse.
shanti loves photography but videography even more. she filmed one of the scenes in Born into Brothels.
17 this year, she is studying at FutureHope.

by suchitra - cat

one of suchitra's photos was chosen as the cover of the Amnesty International 2003 calendar.
21 this year, she is married and moved out of calcutta.

from left: Puja, 11. Suchitra, 14. Kochi, 10. Avijit, 11. Tapasi, 11. Gour, 13. Manik, 10. Shanti, 11.

butterfly effect 1

i saw tao gay sprouting from the soil of my cactus plant outside my window. then i remembered throwing in a few green beans a couple of weeks ago and had totally forgotten about it. the tao gay is really tall and leafy now and reminded me of my primary school days when we would put green beans on wet cotton buds and watch them grow for science lessons.

i was in a mood to watch a film last night. and i chose butterfly effect over edward scissors hands and born into brothels. heard many good critics for butterfly effect in the past years, but never gotten down to watch it, but i did last night & it was mind boggling good.

“It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can ultimately cause a typhoon half way around the world” – Chaos Theory

+++++

what you did or decide for your life in the past will potentially create a whole big chain of events to determine your destiny and that of the people around you. and then the devil would whisper by your ears, saying: “what if…?” “if only…?” and you start to have wishful hopes and thoughts of traveling back in time to amend certain events in your life in hope for a better ending.

a murderer would wish to “un-murder” someone

just like the classic movie “back to the future” or the recent jay chou’s secret, butterfly effect manipulate the fragility of a human mind, and its desire for the best for its life and its love ones’.

it has been a long time since i cried in a film. the last time was Big Fish, heh heh…
i was sobbing away towards the end of the film, when the guy went back in time as a boy and said nasty stuff to the little girl he loved so much, for her future’s sake, for love.

i'm sure there would be overly rational people out there that would go: where got such things one? not possible to travel in time lah.

i thought: there are those idealistic individuals who live without regrets, who look forward to the future and treasure the present more than the past. while some others hold on to their past so tightly that it became suffocating. though this movie in the eyes of the rationals would be absurd, i didn't think so.

is there something in your life that you wish to change or hoped that it never happened?
would you choose not to know a person at all for love?

i wish.

butterfly effect 2 seemed like crap though

wonders

life is so much like lomography, filled with colours of uncertainties with element of surprises. sometimes they aren't the colors that you imagined them to be, but they're all so nice anyway. like a green sky & purple sea. my addiction is stirred again. the psychedelist is back in the cult.

a little girl in oversized school uniform was dancing alone in the drizzling rain. she looked up the sky and tasted the droplets, stretched out her little hand and opened her palm, for a collection. i watched her skip around the slide, from the window of my room. the lonesome happiness was so innocently sweet.

+++++

the morning broke
through dusty air
wondering why I’m awake

unexplainable

the psychedelist wonders
what’s ahead?
what’s in store?

somnambulism

was fiddling through an old and dusty hard disk that i kept in my secret black metal locker, and managed to find some very old photos, writings and drawings that were saved close to 10 years ago, some of which looked really unfamiliar, so lost in time. old memories compressed in megabits, the amazing wonders of technology.

i read, and smiled embarrassingly at those writings filled with teenage angst, many with morbidity. identity crisis(es)?i guess that was the phase of growing up when i couldn't understand a gist of the meaning to life, couldn't comprehend the responsibilities that came with it, still awkwardly stuck in the cocoon of a child, prying out with difficulties to embrace the harsh world of adulthood. i must say, that even till now, i'm still unsure if i had entirely left that old, browned and dried up cocoon. if i hadn't, will i ever?

*angie is undergoing delivery as i wrote this*

anyway this was something quizzical that i wrote about dreams and sleep walking, accompanied with amateurish graphics that were somewhat dark and psychedelic. the entire layout looked tacky too:

why do people sleep walk? why do we dream? do those series of linked night terrors had any indications in our lives? do recurring dreams mean something too? Omen.

false awakening dreams. freaky experience. we thought we had woken up but in actual fact, we were fooled by our own minds. it all seemed too real to be fake. you thought you were really walking down a flight of stairs, but to realise that it was only a dream when the sudden jerk came along soon enough to really wake you up from the illusion.

sleep walking. running around the house. screaming and wailing for help from the hold of *something* that had been after you for years. no words could describe, no one had seen it except you. no one could understand the fear in you. walking into the household kitchen (filled with instruments of self-destruction), peeled the skin off the fresh cool pear with a fruit knife, putting it back in the fridge after the job, not realising anything at all. *who's pear ah?* after seeing it lying in the fridge for days, all yellowed and dried.

lucid dreams. clear events running in the brain when one's deep in sleep. weird happenings, unknown people, queer situations. it all seemed so real too. i would record some of the vivid dreams that i had the moment i wake up. scribble the details in a notepad. 'coz i know in no time, i'll forget every single shit. i want them to be remembered. especially dreams that seemed so clear, lucid.

was that a dream long time ago? deja vu. i guess this should sound familiar to most of us. realising the familiarity of certain events or actions at the point of time. *have i seen this before?* *eh? look so familiar* were these what we had anticipated in our dreams before it actually happened? i think maybe it's a split moment of travelling forward across the actual time zone and returning back to reallity at the next instant. interception of time zones and activities. curiosity is strong here. haven't got an explanation for myself regarding this yet.

+++++++

be with me

found a little journal amongst the organized mess in my room. the black pages were scribbled & drawn on with pencil. i could barely make out what i wrote, 'cos the silvery-grey marks were fading.

aug'06 [SIN] [SYD] - alone - 8 hours - seated beside a caucasian lady with bad breath

i flipped through the programme booklet and mentally selected the films to watch, preparing for a movie marathon. then plugged in my ipod, even though all electronic devices were asked to be switched off. i allowed The Shins to muffle the captain's welcome speech and weather forecast. at the corner of my eyes, the stewardess was busily instructing on the usage of life-jackets, but i was more interested in the various films' synopsises.

i closed my eyes as the plane roared on the runway with increasing speed (i always have wild thoughts of it exploding at this point). and i hugged the given blanket and little pillow for security as i watched changi got smaller and smaller. the island eventually became really far, dotted with sparkly little night lights.

i completed "The Pursuit of Happiness" just after dinner time.
15 minutes into "Little Miss Sunshine", i felt really sleepy, my eyelids felt really heavy and my eyes stung with dryness & tiredness. blaming the dinner that caused such lethargic-ness, i surrendered to the hypnotising sleeping bug.

[4 hours] later

i was woken up by the french lady's nasty bad breath. she was sleeping, facing me. the pungent breaths came to me like periodic heat waves, drifted toward me as she breathed in and out in her deep sleep. i looked at her for 3 seconds, and rolled over before she breathed out again. put my hand before my mouth and *HOR*, just to check and be sure that my breath wasn't as stinky as hers. then looked out of the window and saw stars twinkling, as if they were just next to the plane, stared at the moon which was partly covered with clouds and opened the ice cream desert which was left on my table for God knows how long. i bit through the soft chocolate crust, and liquid vanilla ice cream flowed out, messing my face. it was so melted, it tasted like milk shake.

my movie fiesta plan failed. cos i was left with 1.5 hours to complete only another film. determined to watched just one more before the touch down, i decided on a short local film by eric khoo - Be With Me. which in my opinion, was the best local film i've ever watched then. it was very good, comparing to those overrated and superly commercialised jack neo's(which i would never spend $ to watch on the big screen, most often would wait till the re-run on CNY 2 years later).

the film had 3 parts ("meant to be", "so in love" & "finding love") of different stories, intertwined to form a movie. just like how chung king express was done. it touched my heart as i could identify with the emotions of the characters. it's about love, in different forms. about fate. hope. loneliness. lost of love. desires for a love which u fear to embark.

the film ended just before i was asked to put on the seat belt. then the screen was abruptly switched to that of a map, showing a plane nearing australia from singapore. i looked out of the window, and saw dawn. I smiled at the french lady. partly because the bad breath ordeal was finally over, also because I just watched a nice film. still thinking about the movie, i put my canvas shoes back on and waited. for an adventure in a country that i've never been to before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lHSrTLh2ek
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR9A_cwo_gE

be with me, my beloved.

the missings

passed by sengkang mrt station today and noticed this relatively big board featuring some missing individuals. i slowed down my pace and read. i never thought of how their loved ones would feel, losing them one day (with no apparent reasons), and then frantically searching for them, resorting to pleading for the public's aid thru such bulletins. grasping the little glimmer of possible hope that they're hopefully not dead.

i had potentially walked past that very board a million times, day in, day out. my subconsciousness told me that it's non of my business, not as if i could remember their faces or would put a constant effort in looking out for them in my daily life. i had the couldn't care less attitude. the only likely emotion felt was being glad that at least non of those faces looked familiar to me. i'm pretty sure that most of us would think like-wise too, the selfish nature of human kind.

but hey, i thought again. it doesn't take a drastic disappearance in person or a public notice like this for us to feel the tangibility of missing someone, or to realise the physical absence of someone. if u really get what i'm trying to say here. we all have our own private notice boards like this in our lives.

that someone who still exist at the dusty corner of our minds
that someone whom we never get to meet for a long time, and before we realised, it has been a decade or more since you last saw that person.
the person that you had crossed paths with
someone who had more or less contributed to your past
that person whom u remembered the name, but could not put a face to it (vice versa)
our grandparents whom we see only once a year for chinese new year, then one fine day they're no longer around to spend CNY with.
that someone who taught you back in school, but you never saw again after graduation.

those people whom u had met, but very unlikely to see again this life time. but are the people you wouldn't mind meeting again simply to keep them in touch.

who are you missing today?