yet another year

and i’m so glad to have you in my life <3 happy 23rd my dear!

mmm..

I think love is a useless word for descriptions these days. Love binds and pulls and tugs and shatters, breaks and stirs and murders and revives, all at once. Love is a word turned into a full stop in teenagers’ conversations, peppered all over to spice a bowl of bland sentence soup. Love is an excuse for not loving. Love is an inspiration for the most handsome things in the world. Love is a justification for the ugliest things in the world. Love is indefinable, yet has its place in every single dictionary, in probably every single language.

And I won’t be hypocritical; I’m one of these people who exploit the word like breaths of air. It’s almost like a hello and goodbye in every conversation. It’s a “hey Tim, bye Tim, I love you Tim.” kind of thing. Its things you say drunkenly to strangers, or things you say to people you don’t really care about at all. Yet you can wake up one morning, to the most beautiful face you know, and know that this was the one, this was the one for sure, this was the one that makes your heart want to describe colours that don’t exist and the one that makes you want to stop time as you kiss and you lose your head into a blind space.

And all you could offer is the same “I love you” you praised your mom as she packed you pbnj sandwiches for lunch.

I could say I loved you, and be right and wrong all at once. I could say I loved you, and then squeeze in a “but”, but that would be like drawing a bold line in permanent marker across a Mona Lisa painted in gold with rubies and diamonds embedded in the details. I could say I love you. I could mouth it. Write it down. Paint it on paper and etch it on trees. But no. I don’t love you. I will never say it and mean it.

I will show you.

—— Nova Halle

so simple yet so meaningful

family; all that could, should and ever will matter

japanese fish carpaccio

wagyu carpaccio

cream of mushroom with truffle and foie gras

black squid ink tonnarelli with uni

baked boston lobster with yuzu

panna cotta and some lychee ice

<3

had dinner at Caffe B at MBS. while the food wasn’t mind blowing, it was pretty decent, at least a refreshing change since it was Japanese with Italian. worth a try in my opinion (:

cny in hk

this year we decided to head to HK for cny since there was a longer holiday but more because we’re just bored? anyway, it was just a huge food fest! initially we thought that the shops would all be closed given how CNY is such a big thing in HK but actually, on the first day at least 50% of the shops were open and by the second day, most of the shops were back in business!

we took family pictures in the hotel room, gotta love my dad’s face.

had lunch one day at caprice, one of the 2 restaurants in HK which has 3 michelin stars.

food was delightful and desserts were so sinful but service wise, can’t be compared to the 3 starred restaurants in NY.

dinner on the 2nd day was at Nobu because it faces the harbour and in HK they have a 25 minute long fireworks display for CNY. to be honest we made the restaurant reservation in May last year (yes i know, in true singaporean fashion) don’t think we’d do it again primarily because we realised that we can view the fireworks from our hotel room but also so because getting to the hotel was a real bitch. road closures meant having to take the MTR and walking LIKE CRAZYYYYYYYY.

the crowd that gathered along the bay.

it was really quite spectacular, the fireworks felt so close!

t’was a good 5 nights away next up, Cambodia in march!

 

the kinds of people you can date

You can date someone in the summertime when it’s too hot to have rules. This person might not make sense in February when you’re wearing thick coats and eating too much, but they’ll fit in nicely at a Fourth of July barbecue or a pool party. Your bodies will stick together in the heat and sometimes having sex will be the grossest activity you can think of, but you’ll do it anyway. You’ll understand what it means to be in a “summer mood”, how you can spend three months taking a break from your real life to make out, wear provocative clothing and drink too many margaritas. Your skin will be sun kissed, sand will stick between your toes and you’ll feel kinda sexy. When you start wearing cardigans and throwing yourself back into your work, your summer lover will fade away and the romance will live on as some kind of lost weekend at the beach. That’s okay though. Those who can love you in the summer have a difficult time doing so any other time.

You can date someone who loves you more than you love them. They’ll look at you with complete adoration and hang their jaw in a droopy way that strikes you as charming. You’ll be more goal-driven, more structured and they’ll teach you how to let go and feel worshipped. The inequity in love will be immediately apparent, but you’ll convince yourself that you’re just falling in love with them very, very slowly. After a certain amount of time, you’ll realize it won’t be possible and this swirl of guilt, anger and sadness will develop inside of you. You’ll look at their smitten face and want to spit in it. You’ll act ugly and hate yourself for not knowing how to love them back. There are certain people who are meant to have their hearts broken and there are certain people who are meant to break hearts. You’re not sure which is worse.

You can date someone who will treat you like shit. They’ll be a Scorpio or a sociopath and have an intoxicating energy that’ll suck you in. After a few months, you’ll have completely lost yourself, making excuses for their awful behavior and telling your friends, “You just don’t know them like I do.” Even though you know it’s bullshit and hate yourself, those rare moments of tenderness will keep you involved and make it feel worth it. Hopefully, you’ll hit a wall with this person and tire of the emotional manipulation, abuse and misery. You’ll make a clean break and feel like you’ve woken up from a nightmare. Later, people will tell you that “everyone has that type of person in their life at some point. You know, the kind that abuses you and leaves you wanting the next kick.” Hearing this is supposed to make you feel better about everything. Or maybe it’s not. It’s hard to tell. What you do know is that you’ll never blame yourself for what happened. You’ll always blame them.

You can date someone who’s more attractive than you and marvel at their perfect body and porcelain skin. Their clavicle is just so exquisite, isn’t it? Love them most when they’re naked and they’ll love you most when you’re clothed. You might be smarter than them, have more warmth, empathy and intuition, but somehow you’ll end up feeling like the inadequate one. Everyone stares at you when you’re out together thinking, “What are they doing with that?” At least that’s what you’ll assume they’re thinking. Dating someone so beautiful has made you completely paranoid and insecure. Even though the beautiful person has reassured you of their love, it won’t be enough and you’ll stop dating them because you don’t want to feel like a gargoyle anymore. You’ll miss their clavicle most of all.

You can date someone who has never been in love before. They’ll remind you of teen love and it will be absolutely delightful. They’ll say weird intense things without knowing how weird and intense they are and make grand sweeping gestures of their love for you. They haven’t been ruined yet, haven’t discovered how cruel people can be and how much they can disappoint you. You’ll inevitably be that person for them though. Through some sort of love osmosis, they’ll inherit your bitterness and broken hearts when you start to show the slightest bit of disinterest. When they leave, you won’t ever be sure if dating them was worth it.

You can date someone who would be a good father or mother. Admire them for their nurturing capabilities and wonder if you’d be a good parent. Leave them when you stop wondering.

You can date someone who’s right for you. They’ll have a normal clavicle, make sense year-round, been in love before, take care of you when you’re sick, be occasionally passive-aggressive, want kids, sometimes disappoint you, love you, hate you, love you again. You won’t worry about who’s the cuter one or who loves the other one more. It just won’t cross your mind, which is when you know the love has longevity.

The people you date aren’t necessarily the people you end up loving and that’s okay. There will be different kinds of people who enter your life at certain times. You date someone who hates you when you hate yourself. Afterwards, you date someone who loves you too much to make it all better. The goal is to eventually have your shit sorted out so you can love someone just because they’re lovely and make you happy. That’s it. I love you; you love me. The end.

Source: Thought Catalog

who the hell complicated it?

origami

look! jan taught me how to make hello kitty. hehehehehe. tons of fun but so tedious!

don’t let it go by

butter followed by Zouk. i think i get bored easily. butter’s music was bad, zouk’s was beyond awesome.

art stage (with the retards)

2 saturdays ago we went for Art Stage. when you look at contemporary art, sometimes you wonder to yourself, ‘hey why didn’t i think of that?’ but the point is you didn’t which is why you’re not an artist. anyway, that aside, there were tons of interesting pieces!

i know, we are retarded.

xiao mark who isn’t so xiao after all

i think it was an 11pm surprise? but whatever, a rose by any other name smells just as sweet. a surprise is a still a surprise.

clearly we both weren’t doing so well at the end of the night.

my oh my, tomorrow marks the start of week 4. how time flies when you’re having fun.

you should date an illiterate girl

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

Source: Thought Catalog