Bailing Out With Baileys

Mr Dimples: Hey, I’m back with your Baileys. I bought from Denmark and so, there were two new flavours – with a hint of mint chocolate or with a hint of crème caramel. Please make your choice. By the way, they are 1 litre bottles.

Me: How come I don’t get to keep both? :(

Mr Dimples: Cause you specifically asked for one. I’ve gone the extra mile by offering you a choice of 2 new flavours that may not be found in Singapore.

Me: Who gets to keep the other Baileys bottle?

Mr Dimples: Me lah.

Me: You drink Baileys for what? It’s so unmanly!! It’s chocolate drink!!

Mr Dimples: I love Baileys

Me: -_-"

我有我去爱你为何你要避

I did something I shouldn’t have, that I should know better, but I went ahead to drag dignity across muddy grounds anyway and there, I have it today - my dirty reply - and couched in no uncertain terms, the invisible yet telling answer that wasn’t man enough, that never was, and I must be mad to think otherwise.

The answer came at a really horrid time, when I was already spinning with work-related angst and lousiness. It took 2 seconds for the contents to register and for me to place it in context before I wearily wiped out its existence, like how long, long ago, its predecessors had suffered a similar fate, except that was in anger and now it was in vain and vanity-no-more. I’m ashamed to admit that I felt teary upon looking at the message. All I wanted to do was to bawl my eyes out and be sorry for my pathetic, pathetic self. Oh yes, you must have been kissing a fool.

I can’t deal with the painful realities of modern life for the rest of today, and I took the afternoon off to escape.

Don’t ask me about it since you weren’t there when I asked you to be. All desire to spill has since passed and I do not want to relive my embarrassment. All sadness has fortunately subsided and whatever left, suppressed.

I love my senior for dragging me out to buy me lunch @No Signboard. She knows I’m depressed but she’s only 30% correct in her assumptions of the reasons behind my bad day.

Tomorrow will be a good day. Correction. All subsequent days are good days. It has rained - not figuratively perhaps, but still – the dirty smog has been washed away and I see sunny skies.

能被你踩到脚底也不用跌低
谁奢望你懂得单恋这种造诣
未爱我是你不济我寂寞仍旧高贵
但你竟将这极品放低

原谅你不够爱心品味次等
还福薄到接收不到我做陪衬
没法容纳这奖品浪费我这个人
难做爱侣我亦同情你不幸
如何还能安枕

我有我去爱你为何你要避
其实你损失不菲今天就来告诉你
曾预了天空花园给我们在游戏
还预了伸出手板好等你来出出气

我有我去爱你为何你要避
其实你损失不菲怎么没人劝慰你
被爱是福气未估到手信烦到你
莫非你古怪脾气渴望说对不起
单身女人都妒忌(都妒忌)
男人也觉得好奇难为你错失良机

Is Mr Dimples Flirting With Me?

Rambling Prelude: Earlier this week, Mr Dimples had called to inquire about an event his boss was keen to take his family to. I told him about the discount structures and available promotions to purchase the show tickets at a special rate. Teased him a little about 心机重 and earning brownie points, which he graciously admitted (I want to earn brownie points!!!) and said he learnt from me.

*

It occurred to me he was leaving Singapore tonight and for the next eight days in the name of work.

Me: Would you like to score additional brownie points from another source? Can you buy me a bottle of duty free Baileys on your return flight?

Mr Dimples: I will try hard to. Will definitely gain brownie points?

Me: Yes, I believe so :) Have a safe and fun trip. And I'll see you when you're back.

Now really, is Mr Dimples flirting with me?

if you believe in love at first sight, you will never stop looking

Closer

if you believe in love at first sight, you will never stop looking

now closer to home

Closer, an Olivier award-winning play that has been a critical and commercial hit and spawned off the blockbuster movie starring Julia Roberts, Clive Owens, Natalie Portman and Jude Law, is now adapted by Spring-Time Stage Productions and given an excitingly Asian interpretation for a predominantly Chinese and Cantonese audience. This theatrical tour du force, with all its riveting relationship realism and psychological gravitas, will be staged for the first time in Singapore at Kallang Theatre from 4th October to 8th October. Led by a star-studded cast comprising the brilliant Olivia Cheng 郑文雅, Stephen Au 欧锦棠, Perry Chiu 焦媛 and Tong Wai Kit 邓伟杰, this stage adaptation promises to be an intense and fascinating run with intelligent, intimate discourse that is brutally incisive and caustically risqué, none lost in translation and perhaps hitting closer to home via the Asian perspective.

德明政府中学50周年校庆千人宴

堂正君子， 社稷栋梁
心系祖国， 放眼世界














































































I couldn't upload in order. But all Dunmanians will live by 诚 信 勇 忠 - we do our darnest to live a principled life and one of purpose.
















The heritage site that no longer exists but is remembered fondly. Every nook and cranny has a ghost haunting. Hell, I love the old school premises in Katong. It's bad enough we had to scuttle to Tanjong Rhu but what is this: that we are temporarily shifting to Mr Vein's alma mater's former dwelling place?! Is this A Sign?? Heavens forbid that I hyperventilate and overreact. Anyway, I'm secretly pleased at this tenuous connection. I am sure the irony does not escape him. 'Cos way before the public announcement, he brought me to see his college and surroundings to mourn its demise and (re)moval from the landscape that hosts it. And now you tell me my alma mater is gonna be here?!

应该庆幸蹈覆辙的相联，还是默认江山没依旧，人事更已非的哀伤?
















The guest of honour is hot. He has the height I adore and a great smile that crinkles up his whole face in a most endearing way. I do think he can do with a better PR and marketing associate - ie me - managing his image and his words, ceteris paribus. This is said in reference to his overall adventures in public speaking and not just tonight.

The -_-" moment of the night: I was looking for the I'm-usually-omniscient-but-not-tonight Mr Kiw so after making table rounds up and down with Minxiu to no avail, I thought I would just approach one of the (ex) students in charge and demand to know where 邱老大 is. So after a short bout of observation, I decided to speak to a pink shirt guy wearing a lanyard - there were a few of them and I saw Mr Ang and some students talking to them. So in all politeness, I went up to one and asked if he were from DHS and one of the event organisers. I was suitably horrified when he said sheepishly he's the PM's personal body guard. Can faint lor!
















I love the specially commissioned Dunman High dolls. They are so cute. So I took pictures of them and used them as props to take pictures with. See here for more pictures of dolls and people.
















Cutting the birthday cake: We had to stand up and sing the school song too! The cake is a plain butter cake. All the nine slices served to my table had no other decorations. No Cream, no Fruit, Nothing.
















So I remember.

Has It Been A Decade Already? Damn!

我寂寞仍旧高贵

There’s always that critical moment in which either you choose to succumb or you reject, and even the whole steadfastly-refusing-to-admit-or-do-anything-about-it shenanigan falls heads and heels into the latter. Procrastination, too, belongs there, for you allow the all-important moment to be lost and the others, to catch and overwhelm.

On Sunday night, I found myself inexplicably overwrought by the desire to call and find out whether he has died or we are through and through, and through, or he is, simply waiting for me to call before he would gladly and gallantly make me happy again.

Except the dare game has dragged a little too long this time. One year is an awfully long time not to exchange calls or smses and I fear it is impossible to pick up from where we left each other.

Oh, how I was tempted to call. I went as far as to key in his home number and stare at the phone helplessly for the longest time, before I hit the clear button and I was back to square one.

I didn’t call in the end, could it have been any otherwise, if I were any wiser than before?

Maybe if I had called, I would have realized he was lost to me forever, irrevocably and irretrievably so, since I’m only keying in digits from the recesses of memory. What I was dialing may be a real stranger’s number as I have long deleted every painful reminder of his existence from my phone, in the desperate attempt to make it impossible for contact to take place, as initiated by yours truly.

Am I thinking of him only because I’m so very bored and so very tired of going out with another? Yes, and yes. And I really, really miss him so, right now.

Apart from calling him, is there anything I can do to mitigate this sense of hopelessness?

Why only now?

I’m glad I didn’t call, that Pride and Prudence saved the day, even if the heart was lost.

Simply because.

From It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy - Why shouldn't you call him? "BECAUSE HE DOESN'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU. EVEN IF YOU THINK HE DOES, YOU'RE PROBABLY WRONG. IF HE WANTED TO TALK TO YOU, TO CHECK ON YOU, TO RECONCILE WITH YOU, HE WOULD."

I Heart Eason: Ticket Sales Start 10 October

The man worth a perfect 10. Ticket sales start 10/10.

心平.气和

《雷雨》所显示的，并不是因果，并不是报应，而是我所觉得的天地间的“残忍”（这种自然的“冷酷”，四凤与周冲的遭际最足以代表。他们的死亡，自己并无过咎）。这种种宇宙里斗争的“残忍”和“冷酷”。在这斗争的背后或有一个主宰来使用它的管辖。这主宰，希伯莱的先知们称它为“上帝”，希腊的戏剧家们称它为“命运”，近代的人撇弃了这些迷离恍惚的观念，直截了当地叫它为“自然的法则”。而我始终不能给它以适当的命名，也没有能力来形容它的真实相。因为它太大，太复杂。 - 摘自《<雷雨>的写作》，《质文》（《杂文》）1935年第2号。


I watched the Chinese play classic 《雷雨》today and I must say I really like the writing. The dramatic tension was palpable from the solid structure of scene and syntax alone. Even if the plot is considered clichéd and overwrought and hyperbolic by modern thinking, good writing is good writing. The cast did a relatively decent job of getting under the skin of the characters. I find Yeo Yann Yann too young for the role of Fang Yi though. Her ability to communicate the emotional complexities of a woman spurned and scorned by two generations of men was limited and skimming the foamy surface at best (instead of say, literally kicking up a storm).

Watching the play made me realise that as a woman, I have come a long way from having merely two options in life if I were unhappy: either go insane or be very dead (usually via suicide). It’s not a false dilemma either in a feudalistic age. Now if I were miserable, well, at least I can mask my misery and feign happiness at my supposed liberation from stupid men, I guess. While we haven’t moved that far away from the predilection for manly regard (sigh!), at least most of us are better at control and yup, life goes on even when men go away.

The play also throws up another issue that I readily (and really) fail to comprehend all these years: what is so wrong with incest? Apart from claims that gene pools should not mix (and even those are contentious). Is it more a social taboo than anything? Why can’t I date my cousin, or brother? I remember terrorizing a professor in university with this line of questioning. It got nowhere, obviously, and he was saved by the bell.

Read here, here and here for more 《雷雨》 related articles, and here for something English

Incidentally, apparently Zhang Yimou’s latest movie《满城尽带黄金甲》starring Zhou Ren Fa, Gong Li and Jay Chou is loosely based on the play too.

And I’m the only sad creature left in my social circles yet to watch 夜宴 - looks like this is one movie I gotta catch alone against my will.