salah poster

Somebody wasn't paying attention when they put the poster up?



But here's the full poster in all its glory, right at the entrance to Cineleisure. Sent them a mail about it, do hope they rectify it and avoid further embarassment.

Wait For Me

Just discovered this beautiful poem by Konstantin Simonov. It's called Wait For Me.


Wait for me and I'll come back,
But wait with might and main,
Wait throughout the gloom and rack
Of autumn's yellow rain.
Wait when snowstorms fill the way,
Wait in summer's heat,
Wait when, false to yesterday,
Others do not wait.

Wait though from that far off place,
No letters come to you.
Wait when all the others cease
To wait, who waited too.
Wait for me and I'll come back.
Do not lightly let
Those who know so well the knack
Teach you to forget.

Let my mother and my son
Believe that I have died;
Let my friends, their waiting done,
At the fireside,
Lift the wine of grief and clink
To my departed soul.
Wait, and make no haste to drink
Alone amongst them all.

Wait for me and I'll come back,
Defying death. When he
Who could not wait shall call it luck
Only, let it be.
They cannot know, who did not wait,
How in the midst of fire,
Your waiting saved me from my fate.
Your waiting and desire.
Why I still am living, we
Shall know, just I and you:
You knew how to wait for me,
As no other knew.

picture postcards from LA!

And New York and California too! Mmmm how I do like receiving things in the mail. Such an exciting feeling it is. Thanks Shireene! May you go to many more places and send me plenty of postcards! Hurry on back, so we can all partake of Ribena together!



By the by, thought this pic would be highly appropriate, given the occasion. It was taken in the dugout at Stamford Bridge in 2003, long before the Special One came along. It was still the era of the Tinkerer, and even before Roman came along with his billions and his dreams of world domination. Pop quiz: who was the only Premiership manager to be fined for not speaking to the press after a game? It was, you guessed it, Fergie at, where else, Stamford Bridge.



I do hope Jose returns to English footy, and sharpish. No matter what you may think of him, there's no doubting his entertainment value. Just consider what he said to an English journalist the day after he left the club: "In football, I have always been a man of war, but in life I am a man of peace."

I daresay United will take Chelski to the cleaners tonight. And in a year's time, Roman will look back and realise that it was the biggest mistake he ever made. Poor old Avram will be out on his rear, and maybe someone like Fabio Capello or Frank Rijkaard will be in the frame.

show me the money

Non-Constituency MP Sylvia Lim of the Workers' Party comments in Parliament today on the CPF reforms.

"The minimum sum to be left in CPF at 55 years has gone up progressively over a short time. Apart from this, we're also required to leave a medisave required amount in the CPF. This means Singaporeans will soon need a total of 145,000 dollars kept locked in the CPF when they reach 55. On top of this, it also takes longer to accumulate savings due to reductions in CPF employer contribution. Besides all the above, the rule allowing CPF members to withdraw half of their savings is being phased out starting from January 2009. It seems to many that a member's CPF money is becoming a bit of a mirage, a virtual pool of water that seems just ahead but as one approaches is in fact much further away."

Is there anyone who can think of a better analogy? Just another 28 more years before I can get my damn money. Or rather, what little of it they let me touch.

Good on you, Sylvia. Now we just need another 30 of you in Parliament.

watch this space. watch paint dry.

Another weekend burned in the newsroom and another slow news day. Leading the news this hour: Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs Associate Professor Ho Peng Kee has called on youths to play their part in crime prevention.

Be still, my beating heart.

And here's another travel memory for the day. This picture was taken outside the Reichstag (German parliament) in Berlin in March this year. I don't know where the performers are from, but I found it pretty cool. I know the kids in the crowd loved the whole thing too. No, they weren't making some political statement about how the legislative is merely a puppet of the executive. That would be far more appropriate in, oh, I'm sure you can figure out where. I should probably take more recent photos to upload though.



Beginning to feel the overseas call again. So many options, so little money. North America, Central Asia, the Middle East...just when will I make it there? Now all I need to do is win the Golden Point Award. Still another 3 more months before I find out. Lord, let me win!!!

I'm finding out again just how hard it is to let go of things. How long can you carry the burdens of the past? After all this time, the oldest hurts remain. This verse spoke to me yesterday. It's probably rather cliched, but its the verse for the season right now, I think.

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" ~ Isaiah 43: 18 - 19

pages pages pages for words

"The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future" ~ Oscar Wilde

Isn't it ironic how much truth the irreligious often speak about God? The way I've always seen it, objective truth resides only in God. You cannot live or exist apart from God and hope to have some sort of anchor or meaning in your life. So why do the non-believers speak so much wisdom then? Maybe a lifetime of searching in the dark is especially enlightening. Particularly when the light begins to shine through.
To quote Stephen Colbert, atheism is the religion devoted to the worship of one's one smug sense of superiority! =P

In the words of Madonna, so where do we go from here? More and more, I begin to think of the future and my place in it. If there is anything the Word teaches us, it's constantly to look forward, and not to stay still or stagnate. People all around me seem to be moving on, especially at work. And I know I can't stay still either. I know the talents that have been granted to me by God, and I want my words to matter. Words are my vocation and my passion, and I want to have a voice in this world. I want to speak and I want to write, and I want to be heard.

But enough of all these serious matters: time for another picture of picturesque Europe! A more recent one this time, in case anybody thinks I'm living in the past. This one was taken just in March on a (so-called) mountaintop in Vienna. This was when I went with Mumsy and Dadsy to Germany to visit Big Brother, and we all took a trip to Vienna for family time. You may find it interesting that last light was coming just as this pic was taken, and wolves started howling shortly after! We got off the mountain quickly after that...

Europe

What is it about Europe that never fails to draw me?

Is it the museums, the chuches, the castles, the palaces, the football, the history or the beautiful women? Probably all of the above =) I've got all the credentials to prove my Europhone status, too. European Studies major, 3 years of French study, six months in France, boring people to tears with my constant recitation of European history facts. Been to France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, England, Germany, Austria and Italy. And still so many more countries to go.





Here's another picture from the student exchange archive, circa 2003-2004. It's of the Jet d'Eau at Lake Geneva. Jet d'Eau literally means jet of water, and true to form, the Jet d'Eau is quite literally a, you guessed it, jet of water. Two jets of water, actually. If you had turned the camera round the other way, you would have seen the other jet of water. Trivia fact for the boh liao: it once featured on an episode of Amazing Race. I'd tell you which season, but I'm not geeky enough. Unfortunately, I've lost that jumper I'm wearing in the picture. Left it on a bus about two years back *weep*

Switzerland's a lovely place, really. It's not hard to see why the gahmen's so obsessed with emulating them. Geneva was only like, a 2 hour train ride from Grenoble. It's nice and (largely) clean, the people are friendly, and they speak SUCH clear French without swallowing their consonants, as the French are so fond of doing. The Belgians speak so clearly too. Hopefully, I'll be back in la Suisse next year, but that's still a long way to go....

Here's another picture of Geneva before I go. It's a huge structure just outside of the United Nations. It's meant to symbolise the landmine victims of the world. Personally, I like to call it, "How effective the UN is"

Becks and me

Travel memory for the day: me and my buddy Golden Balls at Madam Tussaud's in London, 2003. He seemed overly concerned about his hair, and kept going on about how Victoria liked it "hard and sharp".



What might he have become had he never married her, i wonder. Retirement can't be very far off, natural fitness notwithstanding. Whatever will he do with himself once his playing days are over? Act? I hope to God not, given the squeakiness of that voice. Even Vinnie Jones looks more convincing. I fear Becks will become one of those American celebrities famous for nobody-knows-what, complete with annoying wife in tow, constantly showing up at some Hollywood do. I just hope the Cruiser doesn't convert him to his weird beliefs...

"Not a single experience is wasted in God"

That's what my pastor at the St Marc church in Grenoble (the only English church in town!!) said to me when I was there on exchange (Grenoble is in France, geography fans). Funny how it suddenly came to me today. Probably cos I've been wondering about the purpose of certain things.

It's 4 years on, but my exchange experience remains as clear as day in my head. It all feels like a really strange dream at times, but I can literally recall everything. I remember seeing the mountains in Grenoble every single day, and how beautiful they looked when autumn came and the peaks turned snow-capped. I remember Christmas service at St Marc, and sitting among people of all nationalities, in awe and wonder at how beautiful it was to be worshipping with God's people in French and English. I remember the magnificence of a 16th century Milan church, and how bright and vivid the murals still looked after 400 years.

I also remember how, towards the end, I was pining for home and the comforts of home. And my complete sense of loss, when it was finally time to go, and how hard it was to say goodbye when I realised I might never come back. I remember, after pining for it for so long, when I finally got home, just how much I missed Europe and the friends I made there. I remember how I struggled, simply because no one understood what I had gone through.

But even more than that, I remember every single lesson God taught me in my time there. It was prayed over me that God would teach me very specific lessons when I was there, and he was absolutely right. I learnt that you can be a million miles from home, but God will still be right there beside you. I learnt what it was to fend for myself, in every sense of the word, and just how much I need Him. I learnt that nothing ever happens outside of the context of God. I learnt exactly what the most important things to me were, and to never let them go.

So in the end, I took the memories, the good and the bad, and I moved on. I learnt to be satisfied with the memories.

So its long over now. But I remember. And, cliched as it sounds, I may have left Grenoble, but Grenoble has never left my heart. =)

"A rollercoaster ride with some hellish dips along the way"

That's HK Financial Times correspondent Tom Mitchell's assessment of HK's economic progress since the handover in 97. I wasn't quite expecting such, shall we say, candid remarks when I spoke to him. Nevertheless, its turned into my most memorable interview yet. Please see below for more pearls of wisdom from Tom, who's been based in the territory for 15 years. Take a bow, Mr Mitchell.

1. "In terms of bilateral trade, does HK affect the mainland more, or vice versa?"

"Well, we certainly import many things from the mainland that we need to keep things running here. Every once in a while, we import things that we wish we hadn't, like SARS."


2. "What does Hong Kong need to focus on in the years ahead in order to stay competitive?"

"It needs to do something about the pollution that blows over from the mainland, because its a big deterrent to investors setting up shop here. Investors who don't want their kids to get asthma won't come here. There are some days I look out the window and I can't even see the river, and I wish I was in Singapore."

"It also needs to do something about education, because language standards here are just abysmal."

Totus Tuus

Learned this Latin phrase on TV (from where all my knowledge stems). Simply, it means, "totally yours".

It's what Pope John Paul II prayed as he was being rushed to hospital, after he had been shot by a would-be assassin. He prayed, Lord, if it is Your will that I should live, then from this day forth, I will be totally Yours. It's also worth noting that after he had recovered, he went to the jail cell where his assailant was being detained, and forgave and prayed for him.

Anyway, it's a restless, boring Sunday, and I am stuck at work. I'm cold, hungry, tired and XIAN. And the biggest news story is about some Indonesian maid in Malaysia who tried to escape from her(abusive)employer by climbing down an improvised rope from the 15th floor. Who then got cold feet at the 12th floor and had to be rescued by firemen.

Probably going to have to put in OT this week. Features galore to finish. And I still need to find another interviewee!!!

the sound of music

I have succumbed to temptation.

Went out and bought a new mp3 player to replace my Creative Zen. Once, it faithfully played music upon command. Today, it can best be described as residing in a persistent vegetative state. When you shine a light in its eyes, the pupils dilate, and its hands and feet respond to touch. But the trail of drool leaking from its mouth tells you all you need to know.

I'm sorry, Creative. In the words of Air Supply, though it's gonna hurt us both, there's no other way, than to say gopodbye. It's time to pull the plug (literally) on you and let you go to the big Creative scrapyard in the sky. Located right next, and looking remarkably similar to, the Apple scrapyard.

Anyway, I've gone and bought a *quelle surprise!* an ipod nano. I know, I'm about 25 years behind everybody else. But hey, you can't beat the classics. Besides, I have never been a 15GB man. The 2GB in this one is more than enough for me. Good timing too, consider that the damn GST increase is less than a month away. It's small, it's lightweight and it's easy to use, just the way I like it.

So there's music in my life again. Will there be more to come?

What the hotel in Taipei told us

Been more than a month since I went to Taiwan, but oh, the memories *sigh*. Lovely food, lovely weather, lovely scenery...and lovely girls =P I really ought to write more about it, and I will eventually.

But in the meantime, I'd like to share this lovely "Chinglish" brouchure with you that I got hold of at our last hotel in Taipei. I think it rather speaks for itself =)

NKF Affairs - The Sequel

And now...the sequel!

NKF affairs

Again, another old video. But hey, totally appropriate now, wouldn't you say? A toast, friends, to T.T. and friends!