silver-lined.

as he stood in the rain waiting for the most romantic thing conceivable to happen, it dawned upon him that the greatest purpose of our lives is not change, but accretion.

how to deal.

listening to : the strokes - reptilia

reading up on : socialist history
watching : good bye lenin!

amused by : saf posters and pamphlets


today's message is brought to you by a tricksy hobbit.

the saf military medicine institute presents :

bounce back after breakup : 5 great ways to conquer crisis

1. it will hurt but not forever

forget what the songs tell you. especially that one where the girlfriend is cheating on the guy and he says he'd rather not know about it. it's a bad song, anyway. what're you doing listening to that kind of music anyway? didn't your mother raise you right?

2. there are others out there!!

but they are not interested in you.

3. don't stand on a 3 legged stool

building your life around one or two aspects will lead to instability when crisis strikes. throw away those boyzone albums. tear away your ronan keating posters. and for the love of all things good in this world, stop watching porn all day.

4. it's not the end of the world

talk to someone who has been through it. when no one is available, call the saf hotline and ask for benjamin ng. he always has the time for you.

5. i'm stronger than that

drinking and smoking are not good ways to cope. neither is driving dangerously. also, do not attempt any of the following : running with scissors, skydiving, kayaking, chatting up another girl or dancing under the influence of alcohol. always be optimistic. we too, at saf mmi believe in you. remember, the most important thing is to get support from your family and friends, if you have any.

love, ally.

the house was quiet, save for the meandering rhythm of rain outdoors. he shut the door behind him and removed his coat, folding it over the chair by the shoerack. his legs were aching from the climb upstairs. the building was eight floors high and did not have an elevator.

he stepped into the study and saw that the large window by the desk was open. streams of water swirled into the room and formed little droplets on the photo frames and ornaments behind the table. the parquet flooring by the window was wet and some of the rainwater had begun to seep under a small, blue rug, staining one corner of it a darker shade.

he kept his feet on the drier side of the rug, leaned over and shut the window with one, outstretched hand. he took out his handkerchief and briefly smothered his face, before dutifully returning it to his trouser pocket.

a book lay closed on its front cover on the desk, with a small piece of paper untidily tucked between the pages. slipping the piece of paper out of the book and inspecting it, he recognised it as being from the memo pad that was in the kitchen. the paper had been folded in half.

in it was a note from her, written, as always, with a characteristic flourish. it read :

went down to get some fresh air.

didn't use the stairs this time.

love, ally.

alchera twenty-seven option five.

general/option no. five: for some reason unknown, the powers that be have decided to let you be in charge, and as a result you will be given the world. (not on a silver platter, but don't complain.) you have achieved what thousands have failed to do before you. now what? what would your first day be like? what would you do? who would you appoint as leaders? who would you shove into prison first? be creative and have a fun! after all, the world is yours.

first things first, i’d fill in an appeal form and put it up for consideration. i think my request ‘i wish i had a dog’s life’ got lost in translation somewhere down the line. but since i’m here and i have all this at my disposal, i might as well give it a whirl till it gets approved in several years' time. sounds like fun, anyway, all this responsibility.

alright, just to get myself warmed up, i’ll give mtv a call and pitch to them the greatest reality tv show the world has ever seen. we’ll get a witty title like the ones they have for all those other shows (‘marital blitz’). when the tv crew’s in place and the film’s rolling, my first order of business will be to get on a direct line to donald trump and then tell him, live on international television, that he’s fired.

i’ll go with michael moore on one thing and make oprah the united states’ first female and non-white president. george bush will be made to stand in front of a camera and do nothing and there will be a separate channel on television in every country just for people to watch him stand there, take a pee, scratch his head, have a drink, sleep, (but never leave the camera’s view or change clothes), etc., 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

i will institute the amazing race as an olympic sport. the olympics will be conducted old-school. no clothes. laurel wreaths to the winners. gold medals to me.

i will make daily television appearances, each time sporting a different fake attachment, such as a moustache or really geeky looking spectacles. i will also try on various accents.

i would plan for a concert every fortnight that runs for 24 hours and has every imaginable brilliant artiste live in front of hundreds of thousands of people at various venues around the world. coldplay will perform for me, personally.

speaking of which, i will take it unto myself to give that poor child a future and rechristen the coldplay’s lead singer’s child with a less absurd name. such as jane martin.

pikachu of the pokemon series will be announced as the antichrist of the year 2004. hello kitty is slated for 2005.

the subway diet will be officially recognised as an acceptable way of life.

david beckham will be made to announce to the entire world from a small, damp press conference room that “i am the biggest git in the entire universe.” he well then be made to tattoo the word “git” on his forehead. his wife will be banned from any involvement in any sort of recording medium.

sepp blatter, the head of fifa, will be made chelsea owner roman abramovich’s maidservant for all eternity. he will have to wear assless sequined pants and speak like betty boop.

igor biscan will be cloned and an entire team of him will replace manchester united in the english premier league. supporting manchester united will be outlawed.

we will play a little game. we’ll take several small islands and put several hundred people on each of them, each with homogeneous demographics. we will implement certain forms of governance (ie. communism, autocracy, democracy, dictatorship, military rule, etc) exclusively on each of these islands and after five or ten years we’ll see which one turns out the best in the most important aspects (ie. general well-being of its citizens, political apathy, social structures, population happiness, literacy, etc) and then using a magical formula we will decide which one the whole world should adopt. alternatively, we will write down these types on small pieces of paper, put them in a hat and then draw one out.

paris hilton will be indefinitely jailed.

i’ll write to mom and tell her that i told her so.

sony corporation will make me the most powerful playstation ever. and a 22 player multi-tap. and a 100-inch screen.

i will have a talking parrot that will sit on my shoulder and verbally abuse reporters.

i will hire the ex-minister for information of the now-defuct iraqi baath party government to handle all my public relations. he will also be the united nations ambassador for miseducation.

kofi annan will be replaced by a more hands-on, no-nonsense character. such as mr t.

just to see what happens, eminem will be indefinitely jailed together with survivor winner richard hatch. only one set of clothes will be given to the inmates to share.

arnold schwarzenegger will made the mayor of poughkeepsie.

he will not be back.

peter jackson, under duress, will be forced to make the fourth part of the lord of the rings trilogy. and david blaine will teach me all his tricks and promise never to teach anyone else how to fly.

get fuzzy, dilbert, foxtrot, the far side and sherman’s lagoon will be made required reading in all high schools.

my motto will be ‘this bus goes to merseyside’ except that it’s not pronounced bahs but boos. why? because i can.

you’ll never walk alone will be made the national anthem of a small, unimportant country such as holland.

once my appeal has been approved by the powers that be (whom by then i would have positively identified as elvis) , as my last act before i leave my post as leader of the (free) world, i will send out a private memo to reality-tv-star george.

just to inform him that his pants are on backwards.

haiku!

from the late willard espy:

i ku; you ku; he,
she, or it ku; we ku; you
ku; they ku. thanku.

we are what we love.

listening to : third eye blind - good man

reading : philosophy - nigel warburton

watching : adaptation



adaptation is a fantastic movie. i have never had anything bad to say about a movie written by charlie kaufman. that list includes, being john malkovich and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. spike jonze (who did the beastie boys' excellent music video for their single 'sabotage' and is charlie kaufman's director-of-choice) did an excellent job directing the movie. kaufman, as always, is clever, subtle and convincing.

i've been addicted to launchcast lately. give it a try, it's good stuff. basically, it's an streaming audio radio station where you get to influence what you hear. i say influence because you can't pick what they play next. you can only rate artistes/groups, their songs and their albums (never play again, ok, i like it, i love it, can't get enough) and your customised station will pick songs from your favourite artistes/groups as well as recommendations and relevant genres/popular music. this way, you'll quickly discover new groups and sounds. if you listen through the website, you'll have to endure the occasional advertisement, which takes less than a minute. but if you get yahoo! messenger, you can listen to song after song without any advertisments.

give my station a listen if you're interested - my username is jabrahul. the genres are mainly adult alternative, mainstream rock and modern rock, represented by groups such as dave matthews, third eye blind, coldplay, smashing pumpkins, our lady peace, oasis, the postal service, switchfoot, jars of clay, rage against the machine, keane, incubus, robbie williams, the white stripes, the red hot chilli peppers, franz ferdinand, maroon 5 and audioslave.

i spent the night ripping the audio track from a dvd i rented. the movie's called drumline, and it's about mainly-african-american american football marching bands. it's a terrible movie, but the band music makes up for all of it, so i extracted all the marching band tunes. skipped only one though, because they covered a j lo song.

i managed to get donnie darko, the director's cut too, so i'll finally see this movie tomorrow.

and i'm not getting lazy! i'm still writing. it's just that i'm not posting everything here because it's good stuff and i want to keep it offline to retain first rights to my work. i'm very involved in working on a story right now, so i don't leave myself with much time to write other stuff.

speaking of which, my time's up for tonight.

being cheap.

listening to : agoraphobia - incubus
reading : financial accounting - reynolds, sanders, hillman et al
(this, my father announced, holding the antiquated book aloft, is the bible of finance. then he added, in all seriousness, make it your wife.)
watching : van wilder

i was running some errands in town today when i stumbled upon a very ghetto-looking internet cafe. seeing as how i already spend an unhealthy amount of time on the internet at home, i decided to venture in and look up my next errand on the internet. oh i am incorrigible. in my defence, it must be pointed out that the sun was bleeding people all over the place, so i had to seek shelter indoors.

the large sign outside promised 4 dollars for an hour of surfing or 8 cents per minute. i went in, signed up for a computer and logged on at 3.47.

at 4.17 sharp i logged off and made my way to the cashier. a caucasian couple were in front of me and they were visibly annoyed with the owner. i used it for 50 minutes and it costs me 4 dollars. i could've just used it for another 10 and it would've come up to the same, the caucasian man told his wife. she shook her head as he pocketed his change. business is business, the cashier announced, as if he just read that gem off a fortune cookie. he was being exceptionally annoying. the couple stepped aside as they fumbled with their belongings and i approached the cashier. he took a sip from his mug of coffee, adjusted his spectacles, took a good look at me and then consulted the numbers on his screen. he stabbed some numbers into his calculator before showing it to me. that's two dollars and forty cents, he pointed out with a smile, in case i was from a country that doesn't use numbers.

i smiled back and laid a two dollar note on the counter. when he realised i wasn't fishing for change, he repeated, forty cents. the caucasian couple were looking on with interest.

the cashier continued. thirty minutes at 8 cents a minute is two-forty. he was getting irritated.

i slid the note closer to him. half an hour at 4 dollars an hour is two dollars. the caucasian man laughed. the cashier turned visibly red, grabbed the note and muttered, go.

ah, i thought, as i left the shop, business is business.

finishing touches.

bedside photoboard.

watson's new frame. 

mirrors. 

bits and pieces.

listening to : daylight - coldplay
reading : the life of pi - yann martel
watching : i, robot

i had to cancel my driving test because of my collar bone injury. i'll probably be taking it in january instead. this is bad news. on the bright side, my medical leave got extended by another three weeks. plus, i picked up a membership at a nearby dvd rental shop. go me!

-

bjork is creepy - an eerily haunting kind of creepy. i'm glad she's not related to me. i'd hate to ever have her over for tea.

-

having been severely outclassed in french, much like damien was the other day with some francophone friend of his, i have resolved to learn the language and a healthy dose of insults by the end of college or to pick up the fine art of ass-kicking. whichever works better on them.

-

i love getting fanmail.

-

never ever ever ever ever click on this link.

cent.

he stands next to his mother, with one hand in his pocket and the other dangling limply from the heavy canopy that is the length of his shoulders. carefully, he rolls two coins around in his pocket without letting them touch one another. every now and then, they clink together ever so gently, sending a chilling current of awareness through his spine. funerals are uninteresting affairs when one is a child. yet, they are an important. children understand the most important aspect of it, that even parents sometimes do not. it is the one time new life is presented with an opportunity to understand the complicities of the time-honoured tradition that is death, and yet see it with a clarity that only the innocence of youth can provide. from the very moment a child asks for his deceased relative and receives a veiled response as to his whereabouts, a process begins. years later, the child will begin to grapple with the concepts of life, death and fairness. for now, however, death is an event - like having to bathe, or attending a prayer gathering. unpleasant, but necessary for reasons he cannot yet fathom.

seventy-three people, several of whom are weeping quietly amidst the sea of monochrome, are gathered around a hole and a wooden box, listening to an elderly gent recite a tale about a kind man who, rather unfortunately, was unable to be in attendance today to hear all these wonderful things about himself. the boy wonders what the man has done to deserve all this praise. he takes his hand out of his pockets and starts to tug at his shirt lapel. he itches all over from the linen suit he had grown out of two summers ago. just then, he notices the shock of bright red roses strewn over the wooden box. they lie there, unclaimed, forgotten, irrelevant. they glow against the lacquered surface, giving off a faint aura that permeates through the air. the boy inhales deeply but smells nothing, save for the sickly scent of his mother's perfume. trying to imagine the scent of a rose, he shuts his eyes tightly, holds his breath and succeeds only in picturing his baby brother in his arms; soft, red and moist like the breaking of dew drops on one's finger. he leans in closer to his brother's napkin-wrapped head, and takes in the olfactoral potpourri of johnson and johnson's baby soap, fab laundry detergent and the natural sweetness of a newborn child. upon opening his eyes, he realises that he is no longer within the congregation, but an entire step out in front of it. he feels alone all of a sudden, and in his sudden awkwardness, he inches backwards until he can see his mother's entire form out of the corner of his eye.

he will cry later on that morning, more out of concern for his mother having broken down all of a sudden than for anything else. in the line that filters past the wooden box, he will realise that his
grandfather is lying inside that box, and that he won't be waking up today nor tomorrow nor the day after that. he cries again because he does not understand something so simple; something that everyone else seems to get. tears stream down his face as he wrestles with the unfairness of this. confusing this for grievance, his grandmother kneels beside him and softly tells him that her husband has gone to stay with the lord. he nods, unsure of what she means and then he looks over her shoulder at his mother. he wipes away tears with the sleeve of his blazer. one day he will understand why people take comfort in flowers. one day he will recognise the scent of funeral bouquets. one day he will understand the true cost of death. but those things will have to wait. for now, as he walks towards the black limousine parked at the gates holding his mother's hand, he lets his other hand slip back into his trouser pocket and with its fingertips, he gently caresses the solitary rose petal that now rests there in place of the coins.

alchera project #27

poetry/option no. two:
haiku's are short, little 5-7-5 poems that attempt to capture the beauty of a moment. write two poems, one capturing the best moment of your life, and one capturing the worst. remember, it's not the best or worst day, but just the best or worst moment.

1.
like leaves in autumn
softly caressing the breeze
i fall into you

2.
red steel pirouettes
a ballet of entropy
the curtains crash down

revenge of the crackpots!

the crackpots is back in action! we're looking for regular contributors to the site, in the form of articles, shorts, photographs, drawings or reviews.

we're also looking for fans of various english premier league teams, who are willing to write match reports for us. you'll be suitably (and eventually) rewarded for your efforts. contact me at jabrahul@yahoo.co.uk or leave a comment here if you are interested. if you're completely talentless, at least help us spread the word! also, visit the site! thanks!

tiny plaid ninjas.

listening to : keane - bedshaped
watching : tiny plaid ninjas!

the best of bigbad.

listening to : dave matthews - an' another thing
reading : jhumpa lahiri - interpreter of maladies
wondering : why oprah isn't running for president

one
two
three
four
five
six
--
seven
some poems i wrote on psychological disorders
eight
interesting psychology stuff
--
nine
ten
--
eleven
---
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
---
fifteen
bmt tales!
---
sixteen
seventeen
a short story.
eighteen
--
my brief history of singapore!
nineteen
twenty
(as yet unfinished!)
--
twentyone
twentytwo
twentythree
--
twentyfour
another short story!
--
twentyfive
friends' ocs commissioning parade
--
twentysix
--
twentyseven
plagiarism!
--
twentyeight
--
twentynine
old movie reviews
--
thirty
thirtyone
thirtytwo
thirtythree
thirtyfour
thirtyfive
--
thirtysix
a short story
--
thirtyseven
thirtyeight
thirtynine
forty
fortyone
fortytwo
fortythree
fortyfour
fortyfive
fortysix
fortyseven
fortyeight

war.

okay.

today's random message from a stranger is :

you are a wallflower.
i beg your pardon?
but of course.
alright gentlemen?
i am a banana!

twenty.

yum.

alchera project #26

option 2

put yourself in an unfavorable situation--perhaps you're in the middle of a break-up with someone you love, your job is in jeopardy, or maybe you're even saying your final words at a loved one's funeral. write a poem with interchanging lines of speech and thought. your first line should be what you're saying out loud and the second line should be what you're thinking (this line should either be in a different color or, preferably, in italics). the situation in which you find yourself is up to you, but remember it should generally be an adverse one.

bed 13, ward 42, san raffaele hospital

the lord is my shepherd, i shall not be in want.
forgive me for coming to you only when in need,
he makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters,
when he hears my heart burst open and bleed,
he restores my soul.
when it dies a hollow, black death,
he guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
the name i now whisper under my breath ,
even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
and feel his gaze draw life from within me,
i will fear no evil, for you are with me;
i will fear no evil - if you are with me,
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
the caduceus can do no more than console,
you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
as i drink my fill from the drip,
you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
into the ocean of forgiveness that begins at your lip,
surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
and pain, for what few days remain,
and i will dwell in the house of the lord forever.
where at long last, i find calm once again.