Celebrated the feastday of the archangels today and while there was a buffet after Mass as it is the custom, the food catered was horrible. Some trays of beehoon were burnt, while others were too salty.

Went to catch Mama Mia the movie and I swear I could literally hear Dr. L's voice talking about nostalgia, how it is the songs that drive the simple plot... I think I miss school and academic life. Yes, someone please inject a little brillance into my life. I can't deal with obnoxious, bitchy HODs who are jealous of my qualifications, and thus stomp to the front of the class when I am in the midst of giving my lesson, to RUDELY take over the class, and prove with a smirk that you're one-up on me. Thanks to your concerted show of manners, the class doesn't listen to me anymore, but I digress. Mama Mia was funny in some parts, but I felt that there were parts which could have been better, for example, I would have expected a musical type genre, which has ABBA songs in it, to milk the kitsch and the campiness of nostalgia, something which would evoke and affect the audience to dance and sing along, but it didn't. I think it might have been due partly to how wonky GV's sound system was, and also in large part, due to the quite sedated audience who didn't quite belong to the ABBA era-I saw audience members as young as primary school kids. There were quite a number of popular culture references, but very few people caught them though. I guess the screen experience is different from a live theatre experience and thus, film has to work all the harder, which is why spectacle like the Moulin Rouge, or Chicago worked. Mama Mia was unfortunately flat. The subtitles didn't work either, for I was reminded of those cheesy karaoke videos with fake models and incongruous settings more than anything. I think I enjoyed the company more than the movie though...

Anyway, I've been tasked to cut salt, sugar and caffeine completely from my diet, or face the possible consequences of a damaged bladder and spoilt kidneys. Apparently there is some stone circulating in my urinary system. The best case scenario is that the stone dissolves by itself and passes out in my urine, but in the worse case scenario is that I'll have to undergo an operation to remove the stone. I have a gut feeling that I ought to return to the convalescence diet I was on after cellulitis, to aid natural healing, but we'll see what the doctors say on my next appointment.

After seven years of companionship, the phone could not take the stress of being jabbed at continuously, shouted loudly in ear and flung across the floor countless times. It went berserk one day and simply fell apart....

Oh well, it's hello to my spanking new Nokia 2680 Slide. While it doesn't have as many functions as the E51 (Can you hear my heart cracking up into a million and one pieces?) and isn't as user friendly, for instance I can't mass sms like it is in my habit to, nor can I upload pictures and videos as easily as I could with the E51, which only needed a usb cable - the 2680 can't connect directly to the computer and pictures have to be sent abeit small and compressed via email, it is nonetheless, a useful phone that actually stores my contacts by alphabetical order. Whoo hoo! I will have to recoup my contacts though. Many went missing when I switched. :( Maybe one day, I'll get the E51 again... but for now, this is good enough.

September has been a busy month so far. While I have settled in to the vomit inducing routine of teaching unruly beasties and screwed the lesson of which the HOD sat in to observe me today badly, the first weeks of September have been days to remember. Fel coordinated this massive dinner/singapore flyer surprise for Steph and I honestly haven't had so much fun in a while. 165m above the ground and cam-whoring with 22 helium balloons and the CSS peeps... now that was literally a top of the world experience! The 1101 gang took a different slant to mile-high entertainment when we celebrated Wai Wai's birthday in Changi airport. For some strange reason, I really love the airport-the strange liminal space of comings and goings... I am privileged indeed to be in the company of great friends and to have been able to witness the most beautiful sunset I've seen in a long time!

And yes! I baked! Vanilla-cocoa cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and fondant butterflies and piggies. That was a mouthful, a very delicious one indeed! I am so going to bake some more these few days!

I am filled with a passion to write something, but words fail me. My mind's a blank. It's an empty canvas as I contemplate the power of words and images to move, to create, to speak to the depths of one's soul. Is it possible to divest so much of the self, that one's writing and one's image become the self? Yet it is a paradox to say that something else can become the self, when the self does not even know who he is. To know - is that even necessary? We all know who we are, we merely forget, ignore or busy ourselves with a thousand other fancies. In truth, we are afraid to confront the self. For inherent in the self lies the soul and the soul bears the marks of a thousand transgressions, sins and hurts too many to count. Can one dare to look into the eyes of the mirror's reflection, to see beyond the phantasmogoria of light and to see one's soul as it were? Bare, naked and vulnerable? This disturbs us and we turn our glance away. We find things to occupy the self, for if the self is distracted, it need not listen to the voice speaking to it in the still silence. That prompting voice makes the soul afeared and so it busies itself with frivolity. It busies itself to override and block out that voice.

Memory is not the truth we believe it to be. We continually destroy and reinvent our memories so that our lives may appear to be a manifestation of our innermost desires. It is a mere delusion which serves to seduce us and to take our attentions away from what is to know and to comprehend the self. The self, in turn constantly remakes itself, so that it may appear acceptable to the people outside the self. We put on multiple selves to mould ourselves so that we may always belong, so that we may always be accepted. Yet the self also forgets that people judge and people often are unforgiving about falsity.

While youth allows us to get away with folly, youth, unfortunately, like beauty, is ephemeral. It lasts only for a moment and is blown away like the seeds of a dandelion. Transitory possessions, youth and beauty pass by like rattling trains on a neverending journey. Each stop being further away from the other. Who appreciates the beauty of the mind and the richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart? I am but a destitute. A person desperately clinging on to a torn and tattered paper lantern. Can one find happiness, by indulging the senses? I think in a bid to find happiness, one would more often drown in the mire of the senses. The brain, seeks pleasure like a drug. Pleasure drives it, pleasure excites and ignites the neurons. Pleasure is derived from the self influencing someone else and pleasure is derived when we project our own needs and desires onto someone or something else. These however as they occur, only tell us of their impermanence, of their flirting nature. Their favours wax and wane like the disdainful moon. She has seen too many things and she scorns the fickleness of men.

Sense ebbs further away as I am overpowered by sleep. The human body though magnificent, needs rest too. The mind however great, needs the sweet nectar of sleep. Sleep refreshes. In sleep, we may dream.

It sucks to be me...