Chinese New Year eve. What does that bring to mind? Reunion dinners, really good chinese food, family feuds and angpows. But not this year. Is tradition really meaningful anymore? I like to think of myself as traditional and conformist... yet I don't know that I really miss the lack of tradition this year. That doesn't by any chance mean I'm losing my roots nor becoming distant from my extended family. It's really puzzling. I don't even know what I'm grousing about. Here's the poem

Don’t chase those who’ve chased you away
Don’t turn back on the one’s who’ve
Turned their back on you, turn away
Let go of the one’s who left you
But hold on to the only one who loves you

Hold on to the one who loves you
Hold on to the one who cares for you
Hold on if you know his heart is true
Hold on, don’t let go
And let him know
That you love him to


I must have written this for someone, and as usual never told them about it. I think I’m a pretty good listener, because I only know how to listen. Advice is a completely different skill altogether. I’m also pretty bad at comforting. But I do know how to keep quiet and listen. Is that good enough?

It's Chinese New Year's eve tomorrow. Usually at this time I'll be in Penang, with all the aunts in the kitchen, squabbling over the fish, chicken, soup, fatt choy, mushrooms, choy geok, etc... , while my grandma tries to slip away from the commotion and pretends to be busy distributing kum (mandarin oranges) or ang pows or something. Meanwhile the uncles will be watching some kung fu show on tv, with my grandpa dozing off and the few girl cousins gossiping and the even fewer boy cousins filling up their time in anyway they can.
But this year I'm not in Penang, I'm in KL and instead of a reunion dinner we're having a reunion lunch, and it all seems rather strange, almost as if all celebrations are starting to lose their tradition and meaning. I didn't celebrate Christmas last December, because my family went to NZ for a holiday, and I didn't even miss it one bit. Families are growing further apart. Cousins are moving further away. Is there nothing to hold on to anymore in that bit of festive cheer? I don't even want to wear red on new year... I have nothing new this year and I'm not complaining. Everything's left in dust.

Are you really looking at me?
Am I just hallucinating?
When you talk do you mean what you say?
Or am I just imagining things?
Then I play my little games
Sometimes I respond
Sometimes I back away
At times I play a charade
Sometimes I’m bold
Sometimes I’m innocence to the soul


Who am I referring to? I’m not really sure, I can only guess. And I’m not telling my guess here. In case you find me.
Greg says girls just don’t get it when a guy likes them. As if we’re totally oblivious to all the niceties and out of the way things he does for us. Maybe there’s some truth in that, but I for one have never been able to discern if a guy is paying me attention just because he likes me or perhaps its just some innate nature in him (delusional huh?) that makes him this nice to everybody. What do you think, girls?

I give up uploading poems daily! I think I'll just upload them as and when I like. CNY is getting to be rather overwhelming. Too much red and yet I have nothing to wear! Cooking beckons too... you can't believe it? Neither can I. Oh well... on to the poem

Close my ears so I can’t hear what you’re saying
Just keep talking, I’m not listening
I don’t want to show reaction
I want to pretend it’s just a bad dream

But if I listen to your poison it’s gonna be like a tumble dry washing machine
Drenching me of my believes
Make my cry but my tears were just irritations

Evaluation of your soul has constant changes
Characteristics of your style has different faces
A tangled web
A slick cocoon
I’m trapped
I’m bound
By your strategic annihilation




Lies, all lies. I can never look back on those Form 2 days without thinking about suicide. I wonder why you told us all those lies? About the pills? The abuse? Your parents? Jason? Your imaginary fantasy life? All these questions forever left unanswered. And now, no one except the few of us too closely tangled up in your web remembers those scarred form 2 days. But those days disappeared like smoke, and it’s as if it never happened, you, I, them, talk as if there was never anything in the past that tied us all together, in a hangman’s noose.

Alrighty then, to make up for yesterday I guess I should upload two poems today, so here's another one. Oh, I suppose I’m not really uploading my poems in chronological order. I’ve plenty of poems here that are without dates and I can only vaguely recall why and around what experience I wrote them.
I recall this one clearly, because Joon Kim read it out rather animatedly while we were stacking chairs for assembly in Form 2. Dear, dear Joon… where art thou now?
This also brings to mind the time I was an X-Files fanatic and was inclined towards the spooky, mysterious or outer-worldly. Oh yes, Sugania and Choo will never let me forget those days when I fancied masquerading as Agent Dana Scully. But I’ll let you in on a little secret; I still want to be an FBI agent if I could work with as quirky (and cute) a partner as David Duchovny.


The Haunted House

Many welcomes to my humble abode
Yes it’s always draughty here
Don’t worry about the door, it closes by itself
And don’t mind the wailing wind, my dear.

Have a seat on my coffin, while
I get my ghost of armour to bring you tea,
Just tell the poltergeist to stop fooling about,
Floating dishes is just his source of glee

Oh, that picture, I’m proud of it,
Its eyes follow you everywhere you go,
And here’s my great, great grand mummy,
She’ll be up in a minute or so

That tapping on the wall? It’s just
The poltergeist again
And here’s the Incubus’s bedroom
He’s out finding a bed partner in vain

May I introduce you to Mr Bones,
He loves clanking his chains round the house,
And Madam Trot-about who lived here once
Carries her head under the sleeve of her blouse

And here is my room of torture,
This is a guillotine and here’s a spike
They squashed you on these wheels you know
If you didn’t do something right

Oh the screams you hear are just
The Banshees practising their songs,
They usually wail on full moon nights,
And often I howl along

What’s that my dear, you say?
I’m growing whiskers, why you’re right!
I’m turning into a werewolf, after all
It is a full moon night!

Beware, my dear, run as fast as you can,
But you cannot get away,
For in this haunted house my dear
Forever will you stay!!

4/3/1997

I didn't blog yesterday because I was way too tired. Anyway here is todays
I suppose I was never fond of the past or the future. I live for the present. I hate planning for the future, knowing there is already a fixed set of expectations waiting for me. At times it seems that if I live according to what everyone expects me to do, things will be much easier, I’d face fewer decisions. And then I get all ridiculous and long to do things like restore heritage buildings or revamp the entire KL, PJ bus routes or write for the National Geographic… and I still don’t think they are insane ideas, as you would!
Personally I think this was a very badly versed poem, but it’s frank. Yup, that’s my 14 year old self telling my 20 year old self now that I have deserted myself and grown up.


I don’t ever want to grow up,
It may sound like a line from ‘Peter Pan’ but
Deep inside I know
I’ll always want to be
Mummy’s baby
Daddy’s little girl

Why must I be hastened?
Why do I have to act mature and serious?
It’s a free country after all
But everyone expects you to be realistic and straight forward
Especially when it comes to responsibilities
Which accumulate with each cm you grow

I’d like to be innocent once more
I’d like never to think of the future
Especially with no grown ups and their silly insincere grins asking:
“What do you wanna be when you grow up?”
To tell the truth, I want to be a child again
To seize each day as it comes
To never worry what’s going to happen and what’s not
To challenge problems when they come
And to be a child of love

30/7/1997

I remember writing this one in my prefects note book. I was inspired by some comical poems I’d read when I was younger. I think comical poems, even if they aren’t the best literary works, just hit a warm fuzzy note in my soul. I’m glad one of the earliest poems I can ever remember writing was comical. I think too, that this poem was directed at my little sister, for always asking my brother and I “duh” questions

I went up to my brother and asked:
“Why do we have to wear shoes?”
“So our toes won’t run away”
“So our toes won’t run away?”
“Yes, toes run very fast you know.”
And he gave me one of those brotherly smirks brothers always give.
The next day I went to my sister and said:
“Calvin says that our toes will run away if we don’t wear shoes”
“Oh don’t be silly. They won’t run away. They’ll smell.”
“Smell?”
“Yes. They can smell mum’s cooking, or the flowers or the carpet”
Then she looked at me in a very sisterly way that sisters always do
The next day I went to my brother again and said:
“Claire says our toes smell”
“Of course they do, silly”
“Smell things like mum’s cooking and the carpet?”
“No, they can’t smell the carpet. Because the carpet has a very special smell.”
“What kind of smell?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s a secret”
Then he raised his eyebrows up and down in the brotherly way brothers do.
The next day I asked my sister:
“What does the carpet smell like? Calvin says it’s got a secret smell”
“Then I can’t tell you what the carpet smells like”
“Then how will I know?”
“Smell it yourself”
Then she gave me a very sisterly smile the way sisters do
So I went to smell the carpet
And do you know what it smells like?
Smelly toes after running

30/7/1997

I suppose it would be unfair of me to not justify the emergence of this blog. So go grab some popcorn and some cushions and while you’re at it, could you make me a cup of hot cocoa too? No? Oh well, it was worth a try.

I started weaving my thoughts into verse when I was 13, the beginning of that tumultous age they call teenhood. Since then I’ve morphed into many different people, but I kept on writing my poems. Whenever pensive or melancholic, I’d grab the many scraps of paper lying around and write what ever came to mind. Words, in a strange way too, always managed to intrude on my mind at the most inconvenient times, and wrangle a rhyme out of me, such that I’d find myself scribbling poems during exams, in the midst of doing homework, sometimes even while at prefect duty (I obviously wasn’t a prefect for very long).

But the best times for poetry were late in the night, when the world drifts into slumber and you feel like you’re the only person breathing, thinking… writing your thoughts down before the night breeze catches them and they’re lost forever in Midnight’s clutches.

I kind of stopped writing when I moved to Singapore. It’s all your fault, Greg! You took up so much of my time and my mind! I haven’t felt the need to pen down my emotions since then, and the pages of my diary are now vacant expressions with no owner. Maybe I’ll pick up my pen and write again some day, when I’m once again alone with my thoughts, where the world seems too big a place for a small soul like me.

Till then, I’ll try to record my poems in this blog everyday, because I don’t trust myself nor my untidy room to secure my scraps of papers with my thoughts in them. And then I’ll lock them up in here and finally throw away the key to my past. It’s not that I didn’t have a happy one, I just don’t really like looking back. If you have found me, well, there’s no need to spread the word about my precious treasure trove here. We’ll keep it between you and me, okay?

Why? Heaven knows. I don't have a clue to my own mind most of the time. Probably because I've given up effort of changing, rearranging, trying to find me. Go with the flow. I'll just be.