crap place. can i say it again? crap place. gonna put a blasting review up on tripadvisor. poor tourists that got conned by this place.

also trying to put up my pictures on eriyadu. can’t seem to get my bananalbum to work tho.

in the meantime, take a look my colleague Snoop’s pictures on Picasa. don’t have a camera so its pretty much gonna be the same photos, except embedded in my own site. heh. yes lazy me.

i haven’t been blogging as you can see. i’ve been mostly in the maldives since the beginning of year. both working and doing major self-detox. no alc, no entertainment, oats for breakfast, sit-ups at night and just focus and work. it’s been good. i got my grad school applications in. working non-stop producing code and documentation and learning learning lots.

last weekend i decided treat myself to a break at eriyadu. 3 of us. 2 wolves and a gal (tho i’m more of a wolf than both of them put together) took off to the northern most part of the north male atoll. the island’s so-so. 3 star place. 50 rooms. Mostly retired german, french and japanese folks. the place is marketed as a dive resort. minimal, untouched reef with a resident marine biologist and ecology talks. the place is very communal tho. quite different from the usual cold resorts that pple keep to themselves. within half a day on the island, i recognised everyone and knew their names. the dive school’s a little expensive but very thorough (must be the german heritage). almost all the divers were advance and nitrox certified. i found my open water cert quite useless. they wouldn’t let me go on advanced dives tho sea explorers had left me.

anyway so i did 2 dives. one orientation on the house reef and another at this place called caribbean reef. so-so reef, no current and easy dive. the coral was amazing but so-so cos easy dives mean not much large animals. the other folks headed of to finger point the next day for a shark dive (darn!). not that i was quite ready for diving with 50 sharks. still working on the buoyancy control. would be bad if i accidentally bumped into one of them folks.

so back on male today with the sunday blues . my first sunday blues in a long time. i realise that these swings of rest and stress are not good for me. puts my adrenaline levels on rollercoaster. i wonder if anyone’s done a study on that. (haha taking breaks is not good!). hmm… i’m looking forward to a good bed and a proper wind-up tonight.

and camped out in the server room. rawr!
hmm i don’t think i work so hard in singapore.
rawr.

2 sessions of random outbursts at people (my boss and 1 good friend). 1 session with the shrink. and i am here again. member of pill-poppers un-anonymous.

i don’t think i’ve cried so much in such a short period. again stuff gets dug out of the closet that seems to freaking walk out of childhood. yes, you could never fit in. yes, you tried so hard and felt so guilty. yes, perhaps you were wanting not to fit in to get attention? thoughts sometimes spiral needlessly.

i had a dream last. it was an extended one. i dreamt that we had come to the time of revelations. dreamt that we had found the holy grail. my family and i. and i tried my best to hold onto it. and i did. and we were filled with some holy spirit. the world turned gold and warm and fuzzy. and we stopped being separate humans, just energies surrounding each other. 4 of us, holding hands in a circle. with the grail i stole. being part of the light.

then my sis. says man i’m bored. this is not fun. so we took the grail and threw it back into fire. and we became normal humans again.

my mom said. the world looks dull now. sis and i commented that it looks just fine the way it is. same as it always was. (i think i looked out of the window and saw the windows xp interface!)

then we took a walk. searching for food and drinks. everything seemed so normal again. then i held my mom for some strange reason. just wanting to see what would happen. and the light back again. i felt the world light up again, the intensity. mom said. it’s in us now, we have felt god.

god.

i think i have been reading too much Kafka on the Fall of Man. Kafka and his themes of existential guilt.

i woke up at 630am to drive my sis to work. all the way in the car. i still felt that fire burn inside me. i held onto the dream. not wanting to forget. i wanted to know what it meant.

i went back to bed after and dreamt of ghosts. of those that have died. we put pictures of them up. but it brought their ghosts back. someone commented, don’t push those pictures up, it holds them back. it’s time for them to go. they want to leave. i took those pictures out of their frames and they passed on quietly.

another dream that i want to know its meaning.

i went to the shrink this morning. it was pre-arranged for get some ritalin meds. not for any dream-reading. she told me that it was ok to be a dreamer, that i needed to journey. that it was ok to be a nomad. a hermit. i guess its hard when i seek affirmation for these aspects of me, that somehow this society does not understand. i seek not to “produce” only to “discover” to “understand”. the next one to figure that the world is not square but a globe. like the clueless accepting people used to think.

how do i explain to people this burn i feel in me. how i do i know how to proceed. like in jc, when i felt my hair stand when i listened to music and i knew i wanted to dance. then. i can feel the earth in me. or i used to. i used to feel the ground….i used to feel every single molecule of intensity in the air. i used to feel the spirals of motion.

now i see. i see countries jostle, i see humans jostle. i can see people communicate. i can see myself in 3rd person. and i can hear. timing and rhythm. breath and space. don’t laugh, but i used to even feel my brain cells grow. the point when you cross over, a realm to a different mind space.

what am i to do with all this knowledge? what am i to do with all these thoughts? of no “career” use are they to me. and yet i question the concept of the production economy. i love to admire the beauty of its design and its flaws. i would love to break it apart and compare to other forms. all of life’s what is.

i am as Kafka was, the Fall of Man embodied. no i’m no megalomaniac who wishes to be famous past his death. research and win awards for the sake of glory. i just want to reach beyond the lines of world, between text and subtext. fine and almost non-existent, perhaps like the black hole, negative space. i want to see more than what the human can fathom. carry the weight of my sight in which no words can represent. for those words have not yet been created. for they can only be written by children i have never had.

so strange that lum commented that i shouldn’t talk like such as people will be afraid of talking to me. i question their foundations too much. will i tear those bases apart. and so strange to think that i had first asked “who am i” at age 15. scared the shit out of friends and got me crying. this vast void of existence that i can see. through my mind’s eye that lies at the crest of my forehead. i can see all the way into space. i can see outside of this reality.

of no use may that be. except to perhaps go crazy.
does it matter what i want to do with my life?
does it matter if i don’t know what to be.

perhaps those who seeketh truth
seeketh only empty.
perhaps those who giveth all
giveth but nothing.
perhaps those who want so much
must never have
for to have is change their reason to be.
perhaps those who throw it away
really want to keep it all in
and hold close to their heart the madness with which their flaws have created.

i haven’t blogged since my two week rocky time-out with dahlia and then subsequent breakup. sitting at my desk at home now alone. new year’s day. no alcohol in the system at all, surprisingly. it’s more to due with trying to cut down my calorie intake than to stay sober. although i actually don’t believe in this new year resolution hogwash, i’m actually attempting to do so now. perhaps faith is what makes reality. if you believe enough it will work. like those horoscopes and tarots and lifeline readings. if you believe enough, you will make it come true.

thus, my new year resolution this year is to:
1. end the procrastination and self-doubt, apply and get into grad school.
2. find the spark of passion that will get me to the next stage of life.
3. get my freaking body back in shape!
4. go through cognitive therapy to lessen my dependency on ritalin to function at work.

hmm sounds like a lot of things eh. tho i’m slightly invigorated by the new slate 2008 is offering me. this year will be a major turning point in my life. i know it.

will you wait for me to stand on my feet?
will i wait for you decide?
will i be enough for anyone where i am now.

standing up like a just birth doe on stick thin legs
except this is the umpteenth birth
and i no longer an infant
my body is red not from the rawness of being just formed
but of tears and sores that have eaten into me
mine own self rot
mine own as the object of my mind.

i would like to expound a new found therapy of mine.

sitting cross-legged “properly” with butt support in a yoga position for 1 hour can increase your blood circulation, improve posture and remove your aches and pains.

it’s true!

as my dear blog readers (hopefully there are!) and friends have noted, ol’ rickety Serene suffers major aches and pains on her right esp after working at the computer or drumming. i was actually pondering dropping tabla all together cos of the health issues it was causing. even the chiropractor with his exercises couldn’t fix me.

anyways, recently DO bought a pillow from muji to sit on. did some research on the web and apparently sitting at an angled position with your hips slightly above your knees rather than the typical 90 deg bend is a good ergonomic position at work.

thinking it should help my sitting position at tabla as well, i brought it to class. devi and joyce commented that i was sitting on it wrongly (i was sitting full on the cushion), told me to raise my butt and promptly pulled the cushion out so that my butt was just on the corner of it.

lo and behold. it worked! i can sit cross-legged all day in that position! the only problem is the legs falling asleep, but strangely enough it so comfortable i don’t even feel that.

i tried it all home today, assuming the meditative pose whilst reading for an hour. i started the day with an ache on the right side from yesterday’s computer work. after about 10 minutes on the pillow, i felt my body start re-adjusting itself to the correct alignment. my spine and straightened and hurt on the right side slowly dissipated. it feels even better than getting a massage!

crazy crazy eh. i think i’m starting to understand this postural stuff. not an “active” pushing and strengthening of the muscles but a “passive” easing and control of the re-alignment. i say passive because in actual fact the muscles on my back were working quite hard to hold the body still. i could feel twitches in my scapular and sciatica once in a while when the weight shifts to pull the body back into position.

hmm.. this has gotta be one of those pilates principles somewhere.

another horrid day at the work that this one day-dreams and wanders mental landscapes.

listening to I, Love by Jennifer Lopez. I can feel the beats in me and on my skin. Washing all over me, and up and down my spine. my body tensing for a graham-like thrust. arms over my head, leaning sideways, palms open, stretched, reaching. at the same time my fingers twitch in a trkttr of the tabla. soaking in the kinesthesia of the moment.

why do i still feel this way?

why do i only feel like this when i think i’m starting to move in a “career” direction that i want. moving away from the body to the mind….and now the body calls.

sigh.

a fortune-teller actress, friend of DO, read my palm and told me my only dilemma in life was that i could be anything i wanted to be, limitless potential, but i just couldn’t make the choice. how apt, i thought, that’s exactly how i see myself. too much potential, too many choices, dreadful indecision. is this the plague of the smart?

and yet this smart one is so hopelessly unable to focus on her work on hand. rawr.

i can’t even think straight to write this blog. i try to check for grammatical errors but i just don’t see. the characters expand and contract and blur on their own. my legs twitch wanting to move. guilt. guilt at under-performing.

i can’t even see straight. what’s up with this brain. wtf. why do you only choose to focus when you want to?

wtf.

cry.

whimper.

ok. so things have tide over for now. so perhaps i’m melodramatic. or that we peeps are melodramatic in general.

anyway. been through my 1st maldivian weekend the 3rd time around. and i’m glad to say it feels like the maldives again. that is compared to the horrid torrential rain that has been happening the last week. yup. in honour of mr president nathan’s visit. we say the prezzie brought the rain.

also met a bunch of ah-pek singaporeans living on hulhumale, a nearby island. funny-ass dudes.
in their 50s. we stayed for dinner. one even propositioned me! (guess they haven’t seen women for too long. or at least yellow-skinned women). i’ll put the pictures up when i get them from wendy’s cam.

alright. over and out.