3rd sergeant.

getting my rank sewed at beach road.

stoppage time.

i wonder how many journalists yesterday at anfield were sitting in the press box in the dying seconds of the match, waxing lyrical on their keyboards about yet another dreary arsenal bore-draw performance and yet another tenacious display from liverpool and their talismanic (to borrow an expression) captain steven gerrard, only to look up in response to a huge roar, at a jubilant neil mellor wheeling away from the penalty box celebrating a stunning last-gasp goal against arsenal. then i wonder what they were going to do with their match reports, which have thus been rendered as nothing more than moot.

i can imagine a few red faces glaring out through those glass windows, simultaneously muttering a single word with the straightest face possible. (a la harold from harold and kumar)

f*ck.

adorable.

there is no way you can't feel sorry for this rabbit.

a revolutionary new concept.

since most singaporean men readily assume that the ladies prefer caucasians to them for reasons that they can do nothing about, i've decided to step and do the right thing for this national problem.

by which i mean that i intend to make some money from it.

so here it is, ladies and gentlemen..

the amazing melaninonator!

what this remarkable device does, is that it basically plays around with the amount of melanin (which to the technically-challenged customer would go by the name of 'natural pigmentation') in the skin until you get the desired colour. hence, we can make you incredibly attractive to women, for no particular reason, just like those caucasian men! it's truly incredible!

this is mikey d's story:

"i was so uncool in college. all the girls kept saying i was too shy and too nice and too this and too that - it was infuriating! and to make things worse, every time i went to a club or pub, i'd see attractive, young girls all wrapped in the arms of some old, balding, pervy caucasian man! the nerve!

all the girls i know rave about brad pitt and colin farrell and george clooney, but never about lim yu beng. what's wrong with lim yu beng? it's the white skin! that's what it is!

i was desperate, and then i heard about rahul's miraculous new treatment from a friend's friend's other friend's mate's friend who's got 231 friends on friendster. i had to give it a try. and i'm glad that i did. things have been so different for me. i picked up a modelling contract with several major asian brands, i've got three girlfriends now, who all don't know about one another (laughs), and my boss just promoted me to senior foreign consultant to the board of governors. i just put the first downpayment on my new ferrari yesterday. my life has been turned upside down thanks to the melaninonator! thank you rahul!"

_________before____________________after_______

be one of the first to try this revolutionary new concept and your friends and family will be amazed! why lose weight, gain muscle, work hard, speak intelligently and be charming when you can just be caucasian and solve all your problems at once?

call now! you won't regret it!

aaron and liyen in a tree..

k-i-s-s-i-n-g. first comes love, then comes marriage,
then comes a bloody big copy of kamasutra for the baby-making bit.

unfortunately, the occasion passed without event. the grand kodak moment never arrived because i was told to wrap up the present by a friend who didn't turn up herself. and this was a church wedding and thus, i did not have what one would like to call the opportune moment to present the gift to the groom and his bride.

instead, i had to stare at the front counter and utter the words, 'is this where i can put the gift?' which will forever remain unrecorded in the annals of mankind.

bollocks.

the speed of death experiment.

there is a small, colourful (for lack of a better description of the premises) school down the road from my house that teaches children english. that's all fine and dandy, except for the fact that they have a large red sign just by the front gate that reads

DEAD SLOW

as if this is somehow possible.

just the other day, i had the good fortune of bumping into one of the teachers as she was leaving the school late one evening and locking up the gate. "nice sign," i pointed out, assisting her gaze with a pointed finger, in case she missed the point. she looked at me somewhat bewildered, until i spoke again. "exactly how fast are the dead, anyway?"

this was an extremely pertinent question, which she was unable to answer, probably because she had already gotten into her car and locked the doors. so i decided to take it unto myself to find out. i've been reading sophie's world, so i'm tempted to experiment with the natural world these days.

hence i present to you, using all the laboratory knowledge that a junior-college education has bestowed upon me:
the speed of death experiment

aim: to calculate the speed of death
theory : a living thing is considered dead when it can no longer grow or have sex
dead things aren't really known to move a whole lot (rolling over in one's grave does not count)
if placed in a controlled environment, and watched carefully, the speed of death can be measured using this formula commonly found in rocket-science:

speed = distance / time

the specimen :

a dead bee.

observations :
hours / deviation (cm)
0 / 0
1 / 0
2 / 0
3 / 0
4 / 0
5 / 0
6 / 0
7 / 0
8 / 0
9 / 0
10 / 0
11 / 0
12 / 0

conclusion and deductions:
after 12 consecutive hours, the bee did not move at all. it did flinch twice, which was rather creepy, but science always, always favours the brave.

--

i finally met the same teacher again today and related my experiment to her with a kind of joy that only a true scientist can understand. i concluded that the words 'dead' and 'slow' are hence incompatible and suggested that the word 'dead' should be replaced with 'rather' or maybe even 'quite'.

in response, she immediately provided a crude but effective alternative, and i thought it to be very kind of her to entertain and encourage my work. although, i'm not so sure what others might think of a sign that reads

BUGGER OFF.

fallen into

dis- -repair.

pope bouba diop.

having flown on air india and silkair in my journey to and back (respectively) from india, i've picked up a ritual once commonly associated with the pope:

back from the subcontinent.

i got back from india in the early hours of monday morning, washed up at home, changed and took a cab straight to my brother's place for some long-awaited halo 2 goodness. oh and it was good. the good kind of goodness. the best kind of goodness.

i spent the last week in india visiting my relatives "before they all die" (in the words of my mother), but it really was much more fun that she made it out to be. i met my cousin (who recently got engaged, the poor lad) for the first time. he's a forensic scientist (like them csi chaps on the telly) from new york, and fittingly, he knows how every imaginable type of alcohol is made.

the flight there was uneventful, but these days, i guess that's a good thing. had a good laugh at air india's air safety guides, which remind me of the scene in fight club where tyler durden explains the function of oxygen masks. i explained his brilliant concept to my mother who then pointed out that i have, without fail, brought up morbid topics only moments before take-off only the last 2,293,183 times we have been in an airplane together. how touching. she remembers!

if there's any law that india rigidly follows, it's murphy's. right from the off, the immigration counter we were queuing up to was fated to be manned by the official who i knew had drawn the shortest straw that day. he really didn't want to be working at bleedin' two in the morning, that's for sure.

having been to india enough times, nothing there really surprises me anymore. so do not be afraid when you, as a tourist, land on indian soil and are immediately assailed by thousands of orange-turban-wearing indian men who ask you where you are going and offer to carry your luggage for you. no, they are not the courtesy brigade, nor are they street louts. they're porters of sorts and they probably drive taxis as well. they want to take you wherever you want to go, assuming you don't like to use those meter things and like to play number games (remember, the bigger the number, the better). even if you wave them away and take pre-arranged transport to your destination, some of them may still follow you. they may even follow you up to your room and stand outside, pretending not to be interested at all in your luggage. you may even have to resort to inviting them in for some tea and a good feel of your suitcase handle before they'll leave you in peace. they're harmless, but odd nevertheless. do not fear them. they can smell it.


hello to you too.

traffic in india is a wonderful thing to watch. that's precisely what you'll spend 95% of your time doing when you're stuck in it. watching. and waiting. and wondering. why. why the hell nobody is moving at all. then news filters through that the road ahead has been closed because some fancy-pants minister of state has landed so they've barricaded the road to the airport so that he can zoom off straight to the airport and catch the next flight back to the capital to sit down with his deputies and discuss why exactly there're so many complaints of jams in hyderabad when he visits that place every week and has never encountered any such problem.

which brings me to my next observation. upon hearing this news from the autorickshaw drivers up ahead, half of the drivers on the road proceed to cut right across the midsection of the road and head back the way they came. this particular road leads to a roundabout, which has no established direction of travel, so everyone makes a random guess at clockwise or anti-clockwise before hurtling through the junction and veering out at their desired exit. traffic in india is some sort of vehicular jaywalking. everyone has a permanently-issued god-given right-of-way which must be exercised by driving right into oncoming traffic. traffic lights and signboards (often proclaiming 'STOP') are obviously nothing more than suggestions. nobody curses or swears. driving is all done calmly, save for the constant horning that accompanies any sort of travel in india.

indian drivers have a habit of horning for everything. every bloody thing.

if you're behind a truck and you know it, sound your horn.
if you're making a turn and you know it, sound your horn.
if you're on a clear stretch of road and you know it and you really want to show it,
if you're an indian driver and you know it, sound your horn.

i hate to say this, but now i know why people from india speak so loudly.

but to give them credit where it is due, they are excellent drivers. driving an ambassador (imagine a car with the body frame of a zeppelin and the steering capacity of a doorknob) is no mean feat. indian drivers (we had two great chaps working for us for the duration of our stay) are adept at handling sharp corners and avoiding careless motorcyclists with an almost german-like mastery of machine. if you can drive in india, you can drive anywhere in the world. respect.


look up ahead laddies! it's the mystery machine!

my brother arrived a day later with his intimidating professional camera and a pair of sunglasses that would convince even a blind man with a paper bag over his head that we were tourists. so, looking foreign enough, we decided to venture out into the city and do follow our instincts. by which i mean shop. a lot of things in india are affordable to people like us who have the benefit of taking their sacred currency and dividing it by a large number like 25 to get our own dollar's worth. americans, because they started the war on terror and have the support of pakistan, india's perennial foes on the cricket pitch and once-beautiful lands of kashmir, have the benefit of dividing it by an even larger number, like 35, or even 40. i forget.

even indian cottage-industry wholesalers have to get their products made in vietnam and thailand these days. it's a sad thing, this global village.


the technicolour dreamshop.

clubbing in india has made me realise the value of zouk. zouk, i will never take you for granted ever again. you are precious, zouk, and i love you.

as much as a man can love an old warehouse.

my cousin and i found the vilest green sludge imaginable at one of the drainage outlets of a small lake used for recreation. the surface had caked in the heat to form this greenish-brown cracked layer. so we did what any scientific mind would have proposed when presented with such a discovery. i threw a large stone into the sludge and my cousin took a video clip of it. my only regret is that i cannot furnish my discerning audience with pictures of this miraculous substance we hailed as what might well have been the original primordial soup from which all life sprang forth. either that or it's the stuff that gave us the toxic avengers.

my father prohibited us from drinking straight from cans because he read somewhere that rats piss all over these cans in warehouses. which is quite a possibility. i wouldn't be surprised if the warehouse workers pissed all over these cans themselves.

young adults in india are never against a good ol' game of dumb charades. oh, and plenty of alcohol probably had a part to play in that equation. somewhere in there, it's always somewhere in there. anyway, i was the only sober one, so my team won. the usual suspects was a really good one. as was freddy vs jason which was hilarious to watch my brother act out, seeing as how nobody in his team had ever heard of the movie before. he thought they got it in the end and was leaping about in joy, when i asked my other cousin to repeat his guess, and he replied, 'fetty vs jason?' they just couldn't get it. you should've seen my brother's face.


everybody in india has a vespa.

the flight home was uneventful as well, apart from the strange looks i got from other passengers and air stewardesses. probably had something to do with the coffee-table-book-sized edition of the kamasutra i was carrying in a thin plastic bag. i'd picked it up as the airport as a wedding gift for my ex-general-paper teacher. it's on the 27th of this month. i'm going to present it to him unwrapped, in front of his father-in-law, on behalf of his old class. a kodak moment in the making.

stay tuned...

alchera #28 / option one

"the beginning and the end," but with a slightly different twist: write a story in which the first fifty and the last fifty words are the same.

maresca cavialli.

darkness. an inconceivable silence. the agglomeration of gentle, swirling hues. corroded edges that seem to sublime away, one image to the next. a soft gurgle pouring forth into a gush of crimson. the rhythm of one's fist against the ground. a sudden clarity of mind that seems so strangely familiar.

ward 42, bed 14, san raffaele hospital. 1923. maresco cavialli is born to a public health officer and a piano teacher, moments after the elderly gent in the adjacent bed takes his last breath.

summer of 1942. maresco cavialli sustains head injuries when an artillery shall explodes several feet away from him. he remains unconcious for a week and several days later, against his wishes, he is redeployed as an inspector at an ammunition dump in sicily.

november 12th 1948. maresco cavialli marries the first-cousin of his long-time sweetheart.

1992. paula cavialli perishes in an aeroplane crash. maresca's three daughters never hear him speak again.

1996. five minutes from now, an aneurysm will rupture within maresco cavialli's skull and he will die of severe cerebral hemorrhaging. he is standing by his grandson's cot, admiring the iridescent mobile suspended over it.

a sudden clarity of mind that seems so strangely familiar. the rhythm of one's fist against the ground. a soft gurgle pouring forth into a gush of crimson. corroded edges that seem to sublime away, one image to the next. the agglomeration of gentle, swirling hues. an inconceivable silence. darkness.

uninvited.

this wasn't a very good television set. it was small - twenty-seven inches, to be exact, and the image was nothing to be particularly proud about. nobody in this house watches television, or at least takes any particular pride in it, he thought. the couch was comfortable, and brought to mind those that served only as a place of rest to the heads of families; men with whom their wives no longer were willing to share a bed. the air in the house smelt of an excess of garden-scented deodorant spray, a sign that there was more than just a stale smell to conceal within these four imperial blue walls with faux gold cornices. metallic ornaments, carefully wiped and polished, gave the room a gleam that deceived those who failed to notice the photograph frames coated with a thin layer of dust. he raised the remote control in his right hand, and switched to the next channel.

fathers will do what they believe is right, because they were made into the men they are. they understand that growth must be tempered by adversity; that nothing is free in this world. fathers will give their children the life they never had, and mothers will give their children one that they have always wanted. children will forever remain caught between those two ideals. the only salvation is adulthood and the understanding it brings. thus we grow. and thus we shed;

skins, sometimes tears.

a car pulled up in the driveway and within moments, the soft gurgling of the engine abruptly stopped. he switched off the television and picking up his faded backpack, made his way upstairs.

the door clicked open and a couple walked in, ending their conversation. the man entered the kitchen, disappearing out of view and proceeded to pour himself a glass of water, while his wife surveyed the living room. having taken her coat off as she closed the door behind her, she folded it over her arm and patted it repeatedly. the sound of glass clinking against metal emanated from the kitchen. the air of affectation was beginning to wear off of her. she watched as her husband left the kitchen and made for the staircase, giving her the barest of smiles on the way past. not yet for him, she realised.

she hung her coat beside the wooden shoe rack and walked over to the wall facing the kitchen entrance window, from which an inky darkness seemed to creep into the room. with the fingertips of one hand resting gently against the pane, she gazed out into the darkness and watched shapes swirling before her. the glass reflected everything about her, but her own silhouette, which appeared as a darkened area through which she could barely discern the foliage outside.

he came back downstairs, with his faded backpack still draped over his shoulder, and walked into the kitchen, carefully watching the figure by the window. he opened the refrigerator door and peered in.

she suddenly spoke.

not like this, she said softly, her breath briefly resting against the cold sheet of glass before evaporating away.

he stood up straight and turned his head towards the kitchen door.

not like this, she repeated, her voice less controlled.

he bent over again, and looked for something to eat.

several moments passed before she spoke.

i don't want this anymore. it wasn't supposed to be like this.

he pulled out a jar of pickles and placed it on the adjacent counter-top before diving back in again. a door slammed shut upstairs.

i want to be happy again, she whispered, loud enough for him to hear. then she fell silent.

he yanked out a large can of sardines and placed it next to the jar. he shut the refrigerator door, and noticed a plastic-wrapped loaf of bread lying on the far side of the counter. he leaned over, picked it up and shoved it into his backpack, along with the sardines and pickles, placed on either side of the soft loaf.

he walked to the edge of the kitchen entrance and peeked out to see if she was still there. she was, though hunched over, and with her head buried in her hands.

he knew that she was wishing for a tear in her husband's eye. for it to fall, to hit the ground, to seep into it and to bring life back into the foundations of this house. he had seen this many times before. these are the lives that one does not learn about from strolling through the groves of academe. these are the secrets known only to one who unknowingly wanders through the intimacy of other people's lives.

he reached into his backpack and groped about, searching for something. he found it and pulled it out, shedding a few petals in the process. he rested it on the coffee table just behind her and backed away, slowly. sufficiently distant, he turned and headed to the reading room, which lead to the laundry room and out through the back door of the house. zipping up his backpack, he trudged around the opposite side of the house and back onto the main road, heading down the path and towards a destination he had, as at every daily departure, not yet decided on.

she turned around and wiping away the tears still welling up in her eyes, spotted the flower on the table. she picked it up, perplexed as to its origin. as neglected as they were, she was sure that she never had any morning glories planted in her garden. she brought it to her nose and took in a deep breath of the flower's scent. it was pleasant and it calmed her.

i think.

the problem with mortality is that we're on the right bus, but we tend to oversleep.

the postal service.

he sent letters to himself twice a week. sometimes he'd be too busy to write one and mail it off at the post office. those were the quiet tuesdays and the lonely fridays of the month. he would read his letters carefully, marvel at the insight of its sender and then tuck them away in a small wooden box by his dresser. nobody else knew of this consummate relationship.

police officers, responding to an anonymous tip, broke into his house one warm wednesday afternoon, and found him lying in a crumpled heap beside his dresser. lying by his outstretched right arm was an empty bottle of tylenol - sleeping pills.

his suicide note arrived in the mail two days later.

larger than life itself.

i was born hemingway, i lived tolkien and i died dylan.