constancy
Last night was another failed attempt to have a mini-scone outing. In the end I went with Wei Xian and Fernando to watch Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief in Cineleisure at 1040 pm. FIRST ROW SEATS!
After the movie, we went to Indochine where there was this Indon band playing and they were actually very good. We decided to order a pitcher of heineken and some chicken wings. Beer has always been my least favorite alcoholic drink. Give me martini, vodka, bloody mary, or whatever and I’ll down it for you. I’ll always try to like beer; one day i’ll get there. But last night, I took three or four gulps and gave the rest to Wei and Fern.
Fern and I saw this bald man peeing in the bush. We took pictures hahaha
I guess some things never change. Even though JC is over, it’s nice to go out and say ‘Bye’ as if we’ll see each other again on Monday in Chapel. Change is not always good. I usually order iced shaken lemon tea (passion) but today i decided to try raspberry black currant, which tastes like medicine.
Oh well… here’s to the hope of a future scone outing 
faces and places
Went to watch 2012 today. It’s basically carnage porn with awesome special effects and decent attempts at symbolisms. Everyone central to the story or instrumental to the exposition of some moral lesson was preserved in the end of the movie while those who were unimportant or superfluous were selected against by the plot. The over-arching theme was somewhere along the line of “What’s the point of preserving our species if we can’t preserve our humanity?”. On a superficial level, the antagonist was Mother Earth, what with the freely shifting tectonic plates causing massive earthquakes which in turn summon epic tsunamis from the wombs of Gaea like Mother Nature menstruating all over mankind and creation. But on a deeper sense, the real villain was really man himself. or rather the extremes of selfishness man would be willing to commit in the name of self-preservation. That was the true message of the movie, I guess… that in trying to save mankind, we must take care not to lose our humanity. Just as how that dad saved his sons but died in the end and how that blonde Russian girl saved a little girl and her dog but also ended up dead.
There were subtle attacks on Religion throughout the film. The praying masses were portrayed with a condescending light, with a tone which implies that prayers were useless and stuff. The movie even hinted that God abandoned man through symbolism in the fallen O Christo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro and the crack in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, perfectly forming a separation between the fingers of Adam and God on the fresco on the ceiling (Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo). I think that the crack that separated Adam from God in the fresco was an effective symbol, ominous though it may be.
However, there was too much luck factor in the movie. Everytime a building falls, the protagonist’s car would just nicely make it out of the falling rubble in time without a split second to spare (once they were through, the building promptly hits the ground behind them) while nearly everyone else fell into the abyss. And the movie ended too perfectly for the protagonist. His whole family survived and (SPOILER ALERT!!!) his ex-wife’s new husband died so he gets to keep the lady in the end and they’re a family again. Hoom-dee-dah-dee-dah. Happily ever after, if you ignore the floating corpses.
And for a movie about apocalypse, they didn’t really do anything original. Same old story about a guy who tries to save himself and his loved ones by traveling to seek sanctuary while narrowly evading catastrophes of biblical proportions along the way. Watch Deep Impact and Armageddon, same general plot, different actors.
So the verdict: 2012 was so 2008.
After the movie, I met many familiar faces. In order of appearance: Han Lin, Rahardi, Joelle Tan, Yi Ling, Tom & Poy (they come as a pair), Dora, and Sean Gwee. We tried to go prom shopping after that. Since the theme is Mosaic, I decided to go with something checkered or patterned. Don’t wanna wear a tux anyway since everyone would probably be wearing that. And I always feel uncomfortable in a suit. It has this uncanny effect which compels me to keep restrained and to stay reserved, which wouldn’t really make for a good prom night. In the end, I couldn’t find anything nice so I’m postponing.
What a happy day. I miss Scone already and I miss the people I haven’t seen for a while. I’ll miss Singapore, if not for the place then for the people.
it’s time to trust my instincts,
close my eyes and leap…
i cannot fight defying gravity,
kiss me goodbye, i’m defying gravity,
i think i’ll try defying gravity,
and you won’t bring me down…
rendezvous (with the s pronounced cos it’s plural)
Two papers today. Bio Paper III (T’was okay but I screwed up one part… mistook the duplication to be in XA1 instead of in XA2.) and Chem Paper I (tedious but was okay, I guess.). So I am officially one paper away from the end of A-Levels. So happy!
Went to watch A Christmas Carol with Jane, Choo, Chye, Anne, and Michael. The other Scones who said they were coming somehow couldn’t make it in the end. BOOOO!!
Whoever said ‘Ignorance is bliss’ has never watched a movie in 3D while oblivious to the fact that the screen pops IN and not OUT. The 3D movies I’ve watched before all had this ‘popping out of the screen’ quality while this one had the ‘there is something behind the screen’ feeling. Michael and I couldn’t help but take off our 3D glasses every now and then to massage the bridges of our noses. It made me so dizzy I actually thought I was gonna vomit. Nonetheless, the movie was quite enjoyable (if you factor out the nausea and occasional vertigo) and the Jim Carrey-fied Scrooge was rather hilarious. Despite some disturbing scenes (there was one when Scrooge fell into an empty coffin in an open grave) the movie was light-hearted as a whole and serves as a good pause in the A-Levels season.
After that, to Toy Kingdom where ghosts of childhoods past and offsprings future played their merry games of plastic cars and amputated barbie dolls. Choo wanted to buy a puzzle set and we ended up walking around and checking out the other toys for almost an hour. Okay, actually, it took us almost an hour just to find where the puzzle sets were so that means we weren’t regressing, just lost! Childhood stories of giant bouncing balls and ‘anatomically upgraded’ barbie dolls filled the interim of the entering and the exiting of the store.
Dinner was a sober, sort-of gossiping affair. Not really gossiping, just talking about other people haha. I shall not discuss the details of the conversation.
Today was fun.
indestructible
shock.
today was SYF. we fought with what we have and we felt we did great. no, we were great. we came to dance our hearts and to tell our story. and we did. some of the audience were weeping when our dance came to a halt… a frozen image of hope in the midst of imperfection and dysfunction. a smile playing on slumbering lips, holding the promise of happiness upon waking.
i thought it was a joke. i kept waiting for Raj to come through the door and tell us that we got what we deserved and admit that it was just one of his usual pranks. but he didn’t. it was like a really bad tv show with a really preposterous plot. it was just so unbelievable. everyone expected at least a Gold, which would’ve already been a disappointment. i never even considered this possibility of a Bronze. the stage manager even personally came to the side of the stage to tell the madams that our dance was beautiful.
‘beautiful’, ‘haunting’, ‘beautifully grotesque’,… an endless list of accolades. if we could touch the audience so much, how coulde we get a bronze?
pain.
then it sank in. Bronze. everytime i think about it i see this cold crude piece of unrefined ore, forgettable and discardable. hardly worth anything. dammit, we were so good… we connected with our audience and made them feel the sadness and the joy of living with flaws and overcoming these imperfections. we made them feel the pain of losing something that is inextricable from our lives. we made them cry…
i guess it’s the awareness that our dance had great sway over the hearts of the audience that made this so painful. if we felt that we underperformed, a bronze would’ve been fine. but we knew that we did great. we performed and our dance touched the hearts of many. my friend was telling me how he was crying after our dance and how a lot of the audience were sniffing and whimpering. it’s so painful when you feel like you got less than what you deserve.
acceptance.
but after a while, the disappointment fades. it doesn’t go away… but it fades. from an aching to a throbbing. one cannot change what is done. it is the opinion of eight people on our dance. if dance were merely an impressive sequence of intricate movements bearing absolutely no soul then i guess i would never wanna be a dancer. because the dance-ness of the dance is its meaning, not in its execution. execution is just the tool… the body; the meaning is its soul.
we got a bronze. fine.
epiphany.
but the further i contemplate and reflect, i realize that it doesn’t really matter that much. we are dancers. we are defined by our dance and not by the awards we get. if our dance could reach out to so many, then we have fulfilled our purpose. i would rather touch the hearts of my audience and walk away with a bronze than to execute a soulless sequence of extremely technical gestures and get a gold with honours. i would rather get a bronze than leave a trail of yawning spectators at my wake.
because i am a dancer. this is what i do. i try to touch people’s hearts by painting a story…. by sending a message…
i am disappointed with the results, yes. but i am happy with the dance. because this dance is so powerful in its ability to stir the audience.
our dance was real.
and so i end, about to sleep… a smile playing at my lips… the lights go off and i drift to where dreams and hope collide… because i know that when i wake up tomorrow everything i love would still be there.
i am a dancer. always and forevermore.
my soul is indestructible.
dance
One of the most cherished traditions of ACDance is the annual RJ (stands for Raj, our ever timeless and glamorous resident instructor) Dance Camp, where we go through much fun and suffering to learn the magical craft that is Dance. Themed ‘Versatility’, this year’s camp cleaved the society into seven distinct groups engaged in a two-day competition culminating in a dance battle on the last night. The groups represented different genres —ballet, hip hop, broadway, fusion (which is actually Indian Dance), ballroom, modern contemporary, and pop & lock — and commenced preparations weeks before the actual camp, which was on February 27-28. And who wouldn’t be so kiasu when up for grabs were free tickets to Cinderella, a Singapore Dance Theater’s production?
The camp started immediately after the unveiling of Smiley. Sadly, I had Bio SPA which means missing all the games and ice-breakers (boohoo…). I arrived just on time to join them for warm-up (or wear-out, if you want to be more apt) and conditioning, as Raj took us through two hours of leg raises, scissors (with your legs), push-ups, stretching (my ligaments are still crying over this), pas de bourrees, and basically everything else that the human anatomy can execute without sustaining any injuries. okay, maybe I exaggerate but you get what I mean. It was torturous (short sentence for dramatic effect). However, it took more willpower to sustain a smile through the crunches and the splits than to perform the actual exercises themselves! At the end of two hours, the dance floor was freckled with puddles of sweat.
Instructors from different dance genres took us for genre-specific lessons throughout the two days. For this year’s camp, the master class was ballet (which I sadly had to miss in lieu of external commitments.. again, boo hoo…) and Mr. Jeffrey Tan from the Singapore Dance Theater personally came down to teach us (or them, rather) some ballet techniques. I heard he could do a 180° arabesque penchée (front split with one leg on the floor, one leg pointing at the ceiling and his torso perpendicular to both legs). Wow… The other classes were hip hop, contemporary, some jazz, and BELLY DANCING (gasp!). Yes, belly dancing: scarves, bells, and all…
The whole camp ended with the Dance Party , where the dance battle would ensue. The dancers, clad in the high society version of their respective genres, traipsed across the make-shift party area outside the aerobics studio with much glitz and anticipation. Some trophies were given away. While most were real awards (Best Leader was a tie between Kris Fu and Joy Sim), others were given phony awards in the spirit of good humour (like the coveted Kian-Yong-please-have-some-class award… an award which demands an unfathomably unglamorous level that only the mythical Kian Yong himself could muster). As traditions go, the alumni from the old days came down to support and to acquaint themselves with the latest progeny of ACDancers. They even performed an item for us!
The dance battle proved to be a fierce competition with the top three groups differing by margins of 2-5 points. But in the end, Ballroom emerged victorious with a score of 527 points and claimed the free tickets to SDT’s Cinderella (Sadly, I was from Ballet, which was an awesome group except that we didn’t win. So again, boo hoo…). Nevertheless, the seven groups performed beautiful and impressive pieces which received flattering comments from Raj himself. Even the ballet guys surprisingly did well ( can you imagine tiny me doing pas de chats and ballet pirouettes?)!!!
Most people learn how to ‘dance’ but never learn what Dance is. While they may look great on stage and have perfect lines and techniques, many great ‘dancers’ never understand the meaning of Dance and its inexplicable and inextricable connection with the human heart and soul. What is the line drawn between a mere sequence of movements and a dance? Dance is emotions in motion. Dance is when the human body, heart and soul merge to express unfathomable passions and inexpressible thoughts. It is a great freedom. When one surrenders his body to the whims of the heart and the soul, one becomes a Dancer. When you dance, all the world is you… the music, and your thoughts and passions pulsating through your body, touching lives. Dance is life.
And the RJ Dance Camp was just that. While we learned a lot about how to dance, Raj always shares his passion for the craft and never gets tired of explaining the real meaning of being a Dancer. This is what makes ACDance so different from the rest of the dance troupes around. Not only do we know how to dance, we also know what it means to dance. So to Miss Yu, Miss Chen, Miss Neeta, Madam Lim, Miss Wong, and Raj: thank you for sharing the gift of Dance with us. We will never cease dancing.
“Dancers are the athletes of God.” (Albert Einstein)
My Christmas
My Christmas: Christmas Eve dinner with my Mom’s family and Christmas Day itself with my Dad’s family.
The traditional Ramos Noche Buena is a fussy and fuzzy affair. For dinner, it was the Sanz Rival, baked Ziti with Alfredo sauce, Uncle Joel’s pitas, roast chicken, Chinese Ham, Paella, Queso de Bola, Fruit Salad and the Ramos Family’s self-proclaimed world-famous Macaroni Salad. It was all fun and delicious but somehow felt staged and scripted. The same things every year. Only this year, as well as the last one, my dad wasn’t there.
Then my second favorite part: the presents. Mother gave me a sudoku book (==”) and an authentic Swedish Laplander bracelet (an attempt to make Sweden look more appealing for university) and lil Aya promised to buy me a laptop which I’m now using to type this blog post. The rest are the usuals: shirts, shoes, hats, and books. From my Father’s side, they gave me shirts, shoes, hats, and a genuine Armando Caruso handkerchief (thanks Grandma!).
Then my favorite part: Christmas day itself. I woke up at 8 am to travel to my Dad’s place, which is 4 hours away. There, I played volleyball with my cousins and somehow managed to injure the epidermis of my forearms. No, thats not my favourite part. My favorite part was when relatives give me red packets. It’s a tradition too. You give gifts and money on Christmas Day. n.n
So now I’m back to my Mom’s place finally writing my Christmas escapade.
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! n.n
that black cocktail dress
there is this point, called the Archimedean point, and this is the immovable point of the universe. with a lever long enough, the universe can be moved about this point. the Archimedean point is the metaphoric center of the universe.
‘hiraya’ is a word from some obscure extinct tribe in Asia (my dad told me the tribe’s name 12 years ago but we have both forgotten it now) and it also happens to be my sister’s name (her nickname is Aya).
the last time i saw my sister was on December last year. i used to think of her as cute and quite pretty but not beautiful. i guess one year can make a big difference.
today (18 Dec ’09), my mom left her ATM card behind. my sister found it and whispered, “oh my gosh… unlimited power…”. off to the mall after that, where we spent 10 minutes looking for and buying a gift for her classmate, and four hours finding (both our job)and trying on (exclusively hers) dresses for her Christmas party tomorrow…
the dresses she chose were… well… cute, childish, and, truth be told, boring… the dresses i asked her to try were, in her opinion… sexy (i swear they’re not! goodness! she’s only 12!), mature, and scary… well, when i agreed to help her choose the perfect Christmas Party dress, i meant business…
and then suddenly, i saw my sister in a new light… seeing her in the more serious dresses, i suddenly realized, “oh my gosh… my little sister is now a woman…”
my baby sister, now with extra body parts which were non-existent a year ago, stood in front of a full length mirror clad in a lacey, slightly sexy, black cocktail dress and gazed at her reflection with unfocused eyes… who was inside the mirror? a frozen image. a hazel-eyed mestiza with a flawless face partially concealed by a frame of thick, shiny, jet black hair cascading over her right cheek. her full lips were slightly agape, fingers on her right hand froze on her decolletage while her left forefinger teased at her left shoulder, and her eyes turned a bit watery, drawing my attention to her long eyelashes.
a whip of black hair; she faced me and muttered, ” i’m going to a Christmas Party, you know… not the prom…”
I swear I heard disappointment in her voice.
oh my goodness, how could this atrocity happen? So now, my cute, cuddly, quite pretty baby sister has evolved into a poised, beautiful, and (admittedly) sexy woman… wow… where was I? I cant believe I missed all that…
suddenly, it dawned on me…
small chinky eyes are now big and astonishingly brown (i never realized the color until now…)
round chubby cheeks are now flat, high cheekbones…
dry and chapped thin lips, are now full pink lips…
and where did that collar bone come from??
the parallel lines are now an hourglass too…
she even has a butt…
more than that, the soft-spoken cute girl is now a witty, well-articulated, (and occasionally bitchy) lady…
And she’s only 12.
“You’re 12. Imagine when you hit 18; you’ll be like your mother (we use this as an endearing term when we tease our Mom).”
of all my family members, i love my sister the most. we only have each other, anyway… i am very different from my mom and dad (and they too are very different from each other)… but my sister is like me in so many ways… we both have high expectations in everything… we wont settle for anything less than stellar… and we would fight for ourselves if others are being unreasonable (‘others’ usually refer to our parents… n.n)
she fervently emails me whenever iM overseas and tells me everything that happens at home (even the ones that my Mom asked her not to tell me)… she needs me too… when my Mom got a new boyfriend, she told her she would meet him only when iM back… digressing: i honestly think my sister’s putting too much drama into the whole affair but that’s another issue…
she always asks me whenever she needs anything, instead of going to our parents… the separation between my parents mustve established me as the immovable point in her universe… she knows iL never leave her…
and with the complicated set-up of my family, we both only have each other to grieve with whenever we find ourselves holding back our shine because of the limitations our family has enforced on us…
we understand each other because we’re one and the same. only, i have already trodden the path and have shown her the routes she shouldn’t take…
i feel wistful, thinking of my baby sister…
how surreal it all felt when this fat noisy thing covered in a cloth entered our house and looked at me with curious eyes 12 years ago…
how important and needed i felt when she was a toddler or a small kid, always asking me for help, always asking me to carry her around and always asking me to buy her stuff…
and how superfluous i felt this afternoon looking at a full-grown swan ready to fly away and leave me behind in a cloud of white feathers, reminiscent of the days when she was but a fledgling and i was her older brother… her Kuya…
but i look at her with immense joy… my swan flying away, ready to discover the world and find her place in the midst of the chaos… and while i am still on the ground, grieving over my withered wings, i know that someday, i too will fly… to the skies and beyond… into the conundrum… to find my baby sister again…
because in the craziness of it all, we truly only have each other.
i love you, Aya… n.n
HIRAYA: the greatest… most unfathomable… most unreachable dream from the depths of the human heart
home
Fine print: the following paragraphs were written on 12 December 2008 at 8 pm.
It has been 30 hours since my feet have left Singaporean soil. Bye hostel; hello real house. Bye roommate; hello sister. Bye Mr. Foo (hostel dictator/administrator); hello mother (peculiar control-freak woman in the house). For a foreign scholar, going home for the November-December holidays is the most anticipated affair of the year. Who wouldn’t be ecstatic? Private transportation, awesome internet connection, good food, and a bed which actually conforms to the human body… what more can one possibly ask for?
Of course, going home does have subtle and unappealing nuances here and there. There is that inevitable obligation of visiting the leaves, green or withered, on the family tree. Thankfully, Uncles are satisfied when you call them ‘Uncle’; that way, you don’t mix up the names. There is also the small matter of repeatedly answering the infamous ‘So how are your studies?’ with well-rehearsed regurgitation. I actually counted how many times I was asked last year. Nah, just kidding… I lost count at 14. Moreover, we all experience that phenomenon when our mobile phones temporarily transform from a telecommunication device into a glorified time-teller while we wait for our parents to finally buy us new sim cards. Finally, there is that bane inseparable from every overseas escapade — unpacking and packing. I really have no words for these. But I guess once you get through the over-enthusiastic strangers your parents call relatives, mobile phone incapacitation, and unpacking, you begin to realize why you wanted to take that earliest possible flight despite being extremely overpriced.
And so I’m here on the bed, exiled by my grandmother who has been hogging the television since dinner, hiding from a nagging sister, and preparing for a possible trip to Dad’s tomorrow, happy to be in the midst of it all. I’m back. Home sweet home.
all grown up
Tostitos + Salsa Con Queso + Half a bottle of warm coke light + A microwave oven + Yoshi’s Culinary Expertise = The best birthday meal. n.n
Almost inherent in being foreign scholars is the one year age gap between us and our local classmates. For 2008, the implication is we legally turn into adults a year before our Singaporean peers and for my 18th birthday, what better way to celebrate my debut to adulthood than to watch a PG movie with kids (seventeen-year-old classmates), attend a Christmas Guitar concert, and spend two hours on Facebook replying to birthday greetings and suggestive taunts?
Come to think of it, this is the only birthday I spent in Singapore (and it just had to be my 18th birthday) since I would normally be home for the December holidays. While my sister’s 18th birthday will be marked by a Cotillion, a Rigodon (an aristocratic dance from my country), or a Debutante Ball, I was initiated into the adult world by Tostitos chips, salsa con queso, a half-filled bottle of warm diet coke, a microwave oven, and Chef Yoshiaki Gondokusumo’s culinary skills. And the verdict on the whole affair? Totally priceless… I wouldn’t have it any other way. n.n
So to Yoshi, Kris and Julfri (both all the way from Indonesia), Joelle, Fern, Grace, Wei Xian (whom I coerced into watching the aforementioned PG movie using the “Walao… I thought you were my friend” maneuver), Cynthia and countless others who made my day special: thank you for a wonderful birthday. n.n
Moral of the story? While at times we may be unsatisfied with the circumstances surrounding our lives such as missing faces and separation from home, we should never overlook persistent blessings such as the people who are still around us and for me, the second home that I have found in the company of my friends. Sometimes, all you need to do is to stop whining and look around and you’ll realize that all you need to have a great day is right in front of you. n.n
