We don’t choose the people for whom we fall. We can only choose to continue loving them, to make that conscious decision to put aside fears and worries, to do things that we didn’t think possible, to entertain thoughts that scared the hell out of us months or years or lifetimes ago. We can choose to take the risk, because we think these people are worth it.
from Sitting on the Fence by Adam Rakunas
Fray is a magazine about true stories that’s been publishing since 1996. We put up a new feature story about once a month, and each one ends with a posting area where you can tell your story right back. The website has four story sections and four other sections.” Derek Powazek, founder and grand poo-bah
*This is one of my Fray favourite: Wrestling with an Angel
Sugeo a.k.a. budak Aalen is back for his summer break!! Since he has not eaten any bak chang for the past three years, mama, Supra and me made some over the weekend. The recipe is based on Grandma’s traditional Hokkien one (lots of marinated belly pork, black-eyed beans, chinese mushrooms, dried chestnuts, dried oysters, dried prawns and of course, pulut rice) and Supra learnt how to wrap the rice dumplings from watching Astro!
A visit to the ECP for supper today brought back memories of a crazy adventure two years ago… here is the long-winded account written in an e-mail to dear super-G-lau…
p/s: There’s no old war bunkers along the ECP lah, Joshi!! It’s built on reclaimed land…
………………..
sunday, july 6 2003
It all started out quite innocently enough… me and a bunch of friends decided to go lepak at the East Coast Park recreational area, Singapore’s answer to Port Dickson, but of course, with much more public friendly amenities, proper skating/cycling, jogging paths, lots of beach esplanade pubs/bowling alley, pool/snooker centre, BBQ pits, gazebos, exercise equipments in sand boxed areas, the lack of huge commercialised resorts/hotels hogging up the beach front and what not…
We went there after lab at about 9pm… had dinner at Komala’s which is the Indian vegetarian equivalent of McDonald’s, had some masala, poori beriyani, chapati and lassi. Then we decided to go roller blading and cycling since we haven’t been exactly sporty over the last few decades haha… It was dark, I couldn’t see any beach, only the sounds of waves coming ashore on a high tide cycle. But the park was teeming with people… a lot of young people camping along the beach but many families and couples too…
We went to a skate/bike rental shop which opens till 1am… got a couple of bikes and blades. I chosed to blade first together with Hari, Yvonne, and Saurabh while Jigyasa (fondly known as Jiggs) and Joshi went cycling.So while Hari and Saurabh practiced falling down, me and Yvonne went along the skating path…chasing after the two on bikes… Jiggs, me and Yvonne locked our wallets and bags in a locker provided by the shop, we only took some money and Jiggs her phone…
After getting tired of all the cycling and skating and falling down, we took a rest by hanging out at the seashore… the breeze was warm and it was super windy… we traversed the shoreline and stopped at every old war sea bunker to chit chat and play spin the bottle… before we knew it, it was 2am in the morning… the park was still bustling with activities though… so we headed back to the shop to get our belongings.
Alas to our horror, the shop is closed and the lockers were moved into the shop already!! We had earlier thought that the lockers would be left outside just like the ones next to the public showers and other shops…. Arrrrrrrghhhhhhhh….. (more…)
Si Tu Me Olvidas
de Pablo Neruda
Quiero que sepas
una cosa.
Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja
del lento otoño en mi ventana,
si toco
junto al fuego
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña,
todo me lleva a ti,
como si todo lo que existe:
aromas, luz, metales,
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.
Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.
Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.
Si consideras largo y loco
el viento de banderas
que pasa por mi vida
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en esa día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.
Pero
si cada día,
cada hora,
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable,
si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos. (more…)
slide delight
A few of us in the lab tested out Google Earth yesterday by locating hometowns and cities. We looked for Mauritius, Kluang, Kuala Lumpur, Kuantan, Paris, New York, Rome, Ladakh, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore and lots more. Although we couldn’t locate some lesser-known places and most locations couldn’t be zoomed into much, everyone was pretty amazed by it. Ken wished the images were real-time (he was looking at boats in Wallabout Bay, New York) whereas Ryan wished he had this tool when he was back in school. Yeah, it would have made geography, history and culture so much more fun!
I recreated some maps of European cities visited last summer using Google Earth, albeit not all of them since the 3D terrains for some locations are somewhat limited. Really liked the aerial view of the cities which gave a different perspective than as seen from ground level walking- Barcelona has neat organized blocks like a graph paper or mosaic tiles whereas Paris appears very disorganized and spirals whimsically outwards from the banks of the Seine. I am so pleased…
Barcelona, Spain
Paris, France
Rome, Italy
Vatican City
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