Rosy memories

I suddenly remembered today that back in secondary school, during bio lesson, we once had to draw flowers for the plant reproduction practical lesson. My lab partner, who incidentally is Kappa, is clueless with the pencil, and I ended up drawing her flower for her with a lot of muttering. Most of the grumbling was because, of all the flowers she had to bring, she brought a rose.

A. Rose.
With lots of petals.

I hurriedly drew one for her (hey, it was almost the end of class), and then did one for myself, with what I believed to be slightly more effort. In the end, she got an A+ while I got an A.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

The First Post of the New Year

In which one signposts for the year ahead.

Initially, I had one of those romantical, resolution-y sort of post in mind, but as the year passed from one to the other, the mood for a nice, proper post just vanished. Instead, I will begin 2009 with a flashback, not to 2008, memorable though it has been, but to 2001, the year of bemusing, nightmarish home economics lessons with a certain Mrs G.

On that fateful day, Mrs G., who is usually a tyrant in the kitchen, appeared to be slightly more mellow than usual. We were told to start heating the fryin pans in our separate groups while we watched Mrs G. at a demo before we er...decimated the recipe by ourselves later on. Indeed, the lecture had gotten on to a fairly good start, seeing as Mrs G. did not seem inclined to scream or yell threats at us as she did on a regular basis and that everyone sitting in front of the classroom was behaving sanely.

Then. One of the frying pans abruptly erupted in flames.
We stared on, partly startled but mostly amused as Mrs G. began screeching indignantly about the many times she had reminded us to be careful when heating oil in the pan. She bustled over to the offending frying pan and switched off the cooker, all the way muttering accusatory things at my friend and her partner, the two unfortunate souls which the pan belonged to.

This memory remains burned in my brain and talking about it on the bus with Kappa only served to polish further the weirdness of the event. Yes, Morphie, if you're reading this, you remain the unfortunate source of our jokes till this day.

Speaking of which, I am glad that I am beginning the new year with the people who have been close to me, whether in the form of the butt of the joke or otherwise.

Go along with every year,
Bring with you your joys,
And leave behind your fears.

Stumbled on a memory

And so, it’s not quite the height of summer boredom, nor was it set in a deserted house, but the contrary, a well lit restaurant, and rather than sitting amidst rank weeds under a full moon, I was surrounded by the low buzz of inane chatter and happy diners. Still, ghost stories don’t wait for the so-called appropriate moment but for the importunate moment (I was eating, mind you) and the setting in any case, recedes into being immaterial once one is hooked.

So, after a couple of creepy stories, my friend told me the one her brother told her – one of those army ones that always seem to have an inexplicable ring of truth to them. Actually, this one sounded totally far-fetched, but as they say, human beings have the most amazing capacity for making connections where there are none. Hence, what you will get here are some of those random connections that came to my rambling mind:

As the story goes, an army colonel is making his way down the stairs one day (or night). Being a careful man not in a hurry to make his way to his destination, he held on to the staircase railing. Unfortunately, while the colonel was making his sedate way down the stairs; (he wasn’t as young as he once was you know), he, in spite of the precautions, in spite of holding the railing – fell anyway. The lackeys who were before him rushed up the stairs while those behind rushed down to his aid. Here is the interesting part. Out of the many recruits bustling about, one who stood at the top of the stairs remained where he was. His expression was grim, and several of the recruits could only wonder why he did not make a move to help the higher-ranked officer who was, incidentally, below him that day.

The recruits talked about it later that day, and someone finally dared to ask the lone soldier about his odd behaviour. The answer came calmly enough. Coming down the stairs, the soldier explained that he’d seen the colonel fall over an old man who had been sitting on the staircase, and even as his room mates hurtled to the colonel’s rescue, the old ghost, unnoticed, had been rubbing his injured arm in an irritated way. It seemed, the colonel had had the misfortune of tripping over a ghost…

So, the story is not the usual creepy kind, but it does lead in several interesting directions. This is the part where you, the reader, will have to suspend belief and assume that this is a real situation. Or maybe not.

The reasonable mind would have pointed out that it seems pretty far-fetched that with so many people coming and going on the stairs, each and everyone of them would have tripped over the ghost, and not just the colonel. A mistake by the reporter? A loophole in the account? In any case, ghosts shouldn’t be able to feel pain – they’re dead after all. In fact, they shouldn’t even be able to trip anyone since they aren’t even a physical obstruction.
Or maybe not.

The reasonable mind can also point out that of course, if the ghost can materialize a solid arm to trip colonels over, they arguably would also feel the sharp pinch of pain due to the contact. No? Yes? In any case, what in the world are ghosts? A slip of memory; a shadow of the past that lurks behind? I remember my physics teacher in secondary school and his wild conspiracy theories. Apart from being convinced that China had managed to conceal a high-tech military facility under the Forbidden City, he spoke about the “4th dimension”. This, he claimed, is the other-worldly world where fragments of time and space wander freely, and when the time-space orbit of our world bumps into this other-place, the outcome is essentially a ghost sighting. Memories of past, present and future? Had this fictitious colonel bumped into an illusory sliver of time realized?
Or maybe not.

Travel Bitten

The Great Escape
Have you ever heard of a place where you can go to and forget all your worries and chores? Such a place has been identified before, and rumour knows it by many names: Arcadia, Halcyon, the Hesperides, Haven, Paradise, Eden, El Dorado, East, and also West of the sun and the moons. The truth is, such a place has no name at all, and the splendour of it as it is described accordingly is but a pale shadow of what it is to really experience the place yourself. It is after all, a place where your desires are true and anything can happen, as long as you will it to be so.
However, to describe this place is to impose limits on your store of possibilities, and render it finite. Yet, a complete refusal would mean to deny oneself of a dream of blissful happiness, even if that dream is but a painted picture, a handful of coloured glass, mere effluence of a wholly inadequate nature.

And we realize this only at a point

Where they lapse like a wave breaking on a rock, giving up

Its shape in a gesture which expresses that shape.

-- John Ashberry.

I could sit here all day and look at pretty pictures, rendered all the prettier by some photo editing programme, and yearn to jump into that world in front of me, or I could get myself a plane ticket and see the wonder as it is in reality. A reality that I suspect will be at once grander in scale and yet only half as exciting as the colours on my computer screen

A Long Time Away

Hah! Realised that I haven't blogged in a really long while. As you can see, phone died, and I had to get a new one... A Sony Ericsson! Now, I've always been a Nokia user, and the switch is confusing. Apart from pressing the wrong buttons a lot, the charfer plu seems to like the switch at home a lot, and refuses to be unplugged unless extreme violence is undertaken by yours truly.

Apart from that, happier memories: cycling at Pasir Ris! Aside from getting midly sunburnt (ugh! have I been holed up fpr so long that i've forgotten what sunlight is??), it was nice just to go out and do so excercise. If I keep up the illusion that my tummy looks flater after all that biking around, I think I'll be cycling a lot more from now on. Now, if anyone were wondering what happened to the so called attractions on Sentosa, I can tell you where they moved to...
Pasir Ris Park!

No kidding, there has sprung up, among other things, a pony ride! I'm not sure how much it costs, but its conveniently placed next to this carpark, but not so conveniently placed for those coming from DE, as it's a good 15 minutes bike ride away (and very far by foot). It wasn't very amusing, but I suppose little kiddies would like the ponies very much, even if they pee and poop and all...

Still, it was a nice day out... Sigh... School's reopening in two weeks's time. Darn.

Whoop

I had something to say here... I can't remember what. So.. what you'll get instead a nice little happy post about how my exams end tomorrow. Or maybe, that is what I wanted to say.. really, about from gloating that I get free preview tickets to watch Vexille next week.

Greedy me wonders greviously why we don't get free preview tickets to Stardust, or The Golden Compass, or rather, when I want to watch something, it's the exams... or essays. Still, am super happy. I only hope it doesn't rain tomorrow, because if it does it totally ruins my plans...
This, people, seems to be the beginning of a beautiful holiday

Reading and Writing

MF:Gooood evening ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to Ms Fickle's Mind Live! Interview, where you get to meet such extraordinary persons that you won't think to meet! (and will never meet, Peace be upon you) As for tonight, let's see just who we have tonight at the studio!
[camera pans right to cushy armchairs]

MF:Ah! I see that we have the excellent Master Reading here in the studio tonight with us! [chorus of excited murmur]
MF: So! Master Reading! What a pleasure it is to meet you in person! I am told that as it is the end of the semester, you have seen a slight dip in those who follow Readership.
MR: [Sourly] It is expected of course. But those who turn away ultimately return during the exams. I am not overly concerned by this.
MF: I see! How nice it is to see you so unconcerned... As a matter of fact, you have been criticised by some as being rather autocratic. Your followers complain that they have been often coerced into Reading textbooks and research.
MR: [waves one hand nonchalantly] I quite fail to see it as my problem. Insofar as I see it, they'll just have to deal with me in whatever way they can. [smirks] Seeing as they can't escape me anyway.
MF: Oh dear. Perhaps this might exlain why in the mean time, Readers have turned to your more charming cousin, Sir Essay Writing. I hear that at least he has been more democratic in dealing with his er. essayists.
MR: Democratic? I hardly think so. He may be as you call it, more "charming", but he is no less demanding than I am. Though I do admit that the effort put in on working on essays are strictly on a voluntary basis. Flattery may get you somewhere with him, but not me. I am not so two-faced. [looks at clock on the wall impatiently] Is it over yet? I did not ask for this ridiculous interview did you know? I am a busy person.
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