Mitsuo Aida

Because it has lived its life intensely,
the parched grass still attracts the gaze of passers-by.
The flowers merely flower,
and they do this as well as they can.
The white lily, blooming unseen in the valley,
does not need to explain itself to anyone;
it lives merely for beauty.
Man, however, cannot accept that ‘merely’.

If tomatoes wanted to be melons,
they would look completely ridiculous.
I am always amazed
that so many people are concerned
with wanting to be what they are not;
what’s the point of making yourself look ridiculous?

You don’t always have to pretend to be strong,
there’s no need to prove all the time that everything is going well,
you shouldn’t be concerned about what other people are thinking,
cry if you need to,
It’s good to cry out all your tears
(because only then will you be able to smile again).

Is it really okay? To let others know that you aren't as strong as they thought? I try my best to be thankful for what I have. To me, what I can do for myself and the people around me, is to not make anyone have to worry for me. In thinking that people should not have to think about me maybe I've forgotten how to think about others as well. Perhaps thinking is the wrong word. Thinking I do pretty well, reducing communication to its constituent elements using my narrow perception, taking what I want and rejecting the rest. I must have hurt many people this way, when they talk to me and and feel like they're talking in an hollow cave because all they hear is their own echoes. It's something I try to wrap my head around a lot, because many of these people are people I truly care about. I don't know if I can give up this bit of selfishness in me, to give up my own emotional amnesia for the ability to truly empathize with people. In a way I've forgotten.

Passion Play

I should not have hid
where my heart can't follow
Cause this grace gets so far
and too hard to swallow
I've been running from Saul,
he's been giving chase
When I look in his eyes,
all I see is my face

Are you still on my back
after all these years?
Chasing my out of hell
and my nice veeners
I don't know how you stand
when you've got no floor
Or how you can breathe
with your hands on boards

I just want to be not what I am today
I just want to be better than my friends might say
I just want a small part in your passion play

Do you hear when I call
in the midst of wrong?
Do you hear these few words
while I sing this song?
Are you caught up in me
like I heard you say?
Or just some big cashier
that I'll have to pay

26/11/09

Caught Gokusen with Pamela today. I think I would have liked it a lot better if I had finished all 3 seasons or if I was a fan of Kamenashi Kazuya as much as the legion of them at the cinema who gave a very loud collective sigh when he appeared. Dinner was great catching up and the dessert we shared triggered a cascading dose of dopamine in my brain :D

And I have to appreciate my f***ing good friend who even after receiving a lethal-blow-to-lesser-friendships type of sms said he'll let me drive his car when daddy doesn't.

Fatty Joshua, tomorrow you get on your bike okay?! Even if there's a huge thunderstorm. If it floods I'll have you swim through it. No more excuses!

06/11/09

I'm going to kick myself for saying this once the time really comes, but right now I really feel that I could do with uni starting. I'm drenched in carefree bliss but I think I could do with having something to do besides watching my weeks go by without achieving anything. Having said that, I never found academic pursuits particularly meaningful anyway and my favourite thing in school was hearing the final school bell. I'm not making sense.

After getting very disappointed with Sofia Coppola's Virgin Suicides, her Lost in Translation (2003) made me do an about turn. The characters' estrangement no doubt in ways led to my above rant. The movie was exquisite in its simplicity and I can't believe I've overlooked the movie until now!

03/11/09

Today I overslept and then it got rainy in the afternoon which meant no riding for me. Instead I caught 2 films which were spun from novels: The Virgin Suicides (1999) & Crying Out Love, In the Center of the World (2004).

Of the two, I preferred the latter a lot more but I wouldn't dismiss the former. It tells of a neighbourhood focusing on a family with five beautiful girls who are the target of fixation by the boys around them. Their overprotective parents impose on them rules that in ways led to their suicides. Even in their confinement after one of them breaks a curfew, the girls collectively break free in their death. Their relationships with the voyeuristic boys is one of cruelty as satiate the boys' hormone-driven curiosity finally with the first view of their suicide.

In juxtaposition to the licentious and dysfunctional relationships between the teenagers, Crying (2004) was refreshing in its purity as the lead revisists memories of his love in high school as a typhoon descends and other circumstances lead him to do so. There are many parallels between this movie and Norwegian Wood (which should be released next year, I'm looking forward to it!) as both novels are bestsellers in Japan. The movie initially started very slowly but after getting used to the pace, the length was necessary for character development. The twist at the end involving the lead's fiancée brought the story to a satisfying conclusion which is where sometimes heavy-going shows like this falter.

Both movies had beautiful cinematography as they were set in a time before. The Virgin Suicides had homogenous color themes in each scene and not jarringly so, it added an artistic touch to the cinematography. Crying was also beautiful as it visited the countryside in Japan despite it having a more rustic feel

Alive (1993)

After 20 years, you analyze a lot. You remember people, heroism. "The Miracle of the Andes", that's what they called it. Many people come up to me and say that had they been there, they surely would have died. But it makes no sense, because until you're in a... situation like that... you... you have no idea... how you'd behave. To be affronted by solitude without decadence or a... single material thing to prostitute it elevates you to a sprititual plane, where I felt the presence of God. Now, there's the God they taught about me about at school. And there is the God that's hidden by what surrounds us in this civilization. That's the God I met on the mountain.

This film was pretty hard watching. Definitely would revisit this film another time. Although the film is an extremely watered down version of the actual events, it could not have been about the cinematography or the characters chosen or the representation of actual events, that would have been missing the point entirely. It was a celebration of sorts for the human spirit and the will of these guys to live.

30/10/09

Today I completed my first metric century ride! Landed myself at ECP and headed towards Changi Coast Road when the sky threatened and finally rained. There's no end to my fury toward NEA until they get their forecasts right. 11am is beforenoon you guys promised afternoon! Headed to one of the shelters to find 3 people already there. Actually 2 of them looked like they were there ever since their visas expired 3 years ago after swimming from Sabah and realising jobs in Singapore require proper travel documents. Nearby, was a group of a dozen men and two ladies having a picnic under the shade of a tree. When the rain got from a drizzle to a pour they too joined our cosy pavilion and resumed their picnic inside. Despite dressing all sunday casual and surrounding their hoard of snacks of chips and bread with spreads and drinks which included beer, it was easy to tell they were military. First and foremost, it was not sunday, and that's how we passed time and bonded in HTA as well, sans beer, and in real life, people don't call others half their age sir during a picnic, or anywhere else for that matter. Facing the deserted path with the sea behind me, it was impossible not to hear what they were discussing. As far as I could tell, it was all classified top secret stuff. Words like BBQ, paintball, yacht trip and souvenir shoebag kept popping up. These were the elite codetalkers that we thought only existed in Windtalkers (2002), but since they were local, they used colloquial instead of Navajo. I gathered that BBQ was a substitute for interrogation techniques, paintball for SAR21s, yacht trip for sending navy subs and shoebag for real shoebags. So they carried on their important discussion whilst the four of us original residents of the pavilion became unwitting eavesdroppers. Realising they were discovered, the leader of the pack (the one everyone else called sir) offered me chips and asked me if I was from the police (the emblem on my left breast). I assured him I was from NPCC and have not been secretly trying to break their code while politely declining his offer. Realising that the rules of engagement that he's been trained in did not work, he lowered the bag of chips and resumed his discussion while I stared forlornly into space as my bicycle was getting sprayed with rainwater which would require the 3rd cleaning this week (I usuaully clean it once in 3 months). Damned monsoon.

Rain subsided, codetalkers went on their way and I waited a bit more for the puddles to disappear before resuming. Reached the end of ECP and onto the park connector to finally get onto Changi Coast Road.

Ladies and gentlemen on your left is Changi Airport, the right is wilderness and ahead lies 7km of straight tarmac goodness. Now of course, you're wondering why I took the picture from the side when most of the time people take pictures of big long roads from the middle. Of course, you would like to have me straddling my bicycle whilst holding my camera in the middle of 4 lanes which has a speed limit of 70km/h but has the very inspiring sight of aeroplanes taking off showing people how fast they really should be going.

I trudged on and made it to the extreme east of Singapore where ice lollies grow on trees and there are springs of 100plus (by this time my body was no longer producing perspiration and I think my saliva glands had all but died).

Imagine my dismay when all that greeted me were people with nothing better to do just like me and a water fountain that is piped all the way from the Sahara. Across the deep blue ocean was Brian's seaside villa.

I then made my way home to wash my bike for the 3rd time this week but not before signing off on the guestbook for all who ever made it (and those who didn't)

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e146/amiss89/IMG_9165.jpg <- click on link to see it maximized.

Too many times we try to describe the life with a row of digits, bring a moment down to statistics, measure success with the number of kilometers cycled. It became well established, that a bunch of numbers is required in every summary even if they express the spirit of the expedition in the worst possible way.