I like the background on Mr Harry Connick Jr.'s website. The songs are such fun sounds too. http://www.hconnickjr.com/

"I don't want to"

I don't want to protect you just because I am bound by duty. I want to learn to love you, a love I would freely give. A response would require something initiated first, something to respond to. I could respond in love, but it would not be you whom I react from. I can only act toward you.

Take a look.

http://pixane.net/blog/archives/305

Very Zen indeed.

The Strawberry
A Zen Tale from Japan

There was once a man who was being chased by a ferocious tiger across a field. At the edge of the field there was a cliff. In order to escape the jaws of the tiger, the man caught hold of a vine and swung himself over the edge of the cliff. Dangling down, he saw, to his dismay, there were more tigers on the ground below him! And, furthermore, two little mice were gnawing on the vine to which he clung. He knew that at any moment he would fall to certain death. That's when he noticed a wild strawberry growing on the cliff wall. Clutching the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other and put it in his mouth.

He never before realized how sweet a strawberry could taste.

[All together now...Ommm...]

Taken from
http://www.storyarts.org/library/nutshell/stories/strawberry.html

-wot?-

IT'S NOVEMBER ALREADY.

Watched Meet the Robinsons with part of the family on Sunday afternoon. We all enjoyed it very much!
Something which happened today and a discussion with my brother J reminded me of 2 of the characters in the animated movie-Lewis and the Bowler Hat Guy.

Lewis' obsession with his abandonment and his search for his mother was interlinked with the failed attempts to have him adopted because his Science experiments would miss the mark in impressing his adoptive parents-to-be. But he learnt to accept that failures aren't all they seem to be.

On the other hand, Bowler Hat Guy became the grotesque ungrown grown-up he is because he allowed hatred and anger to "fester". Poor man. Apart from wanting to destroy something good for another person, he had no other plans for himself. His list of things to do ended with a empty check box beside a question-mark task.

The film ended with this beautiful quote. It just reminds me that if I don't accept that I do fail, I cannot move forward. I would be stuck trying to re-do or un-do the failure.

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”–Walt Disney

pondersome

Holy friendship has no looks but what are simple and modest,
no caresses but those that are pure and sincere,
no sighs but for heaven, no familiarities but of the soul,
no complaints but that God is not loved, the infallible signs of purity.

Worldly friendship confuses the judgment…
Holy friendship has a clear light and does not seek to hide itself,
appearing willingly before good men.

When we see a man dress himself out and draw near to flatter and wheedle,
and whisper in the ears of a woman with no pretension to lawful marriage,
without doubt it is in order to incite her to impurity;
and a virtuous woman will close her ears
to the voice of the charmer who seeks to enchant her:
but if she hearken to him, what an ominous sign it is of the future loss of her heart!

Young people who indulge in looks and caresses,
or speak words in which they would be unwilling
to be surprised (i.e. overheard) by their fathers, mothers, husbands or wives,
bear witness that their conduct is not that of honor and conscience.
The Virgin Mary was troubled on seeing an angel in human form because she was alone, and he praised her greatly although his praise was heavenly.
O Saviour of the world! Purity fears an angel in the form of a man;
why then does not purity fear a man even in angelic form,
when he pours forth praises sensual and human?

St. Francis de Sales

Sometimes, self-reflexivity, self-awareness isn't a very good thing, don't you think? Especially when it becomes too much of a habit, practised in/to excess.

"these small hours"

Oh no, I'm not slacking. Just that I am sure we will all appreciate a soulful voice and a beautiful story. Love how the song opens. The defining clarity reminds me of Larkin again, especially with "in the end / we will only remember how it feels" because "it's the heart that really matters in the end".

So "let it slide" over you.



Little Wonders

Let it go,
let it roll right off your shoulder
don't you know
the hardest part is over
let it in,
let your clarity define you
in the end
we will only just remember how it feels

our lives are made
in these small hours
these little wonders,
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away,
but these small hours,
these small hours still remain

let it slide,
let your troubles fall behind you
let it shine
until you feel it all around you
and i don't mind
if it's me you need to turn to
we'll get by,
it's the heart that really matters in the end

our lives are made
in these small hours
these little wonders,
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away,
but these small hours,
these small hours still remain

all of my regret
will wash away some how
but i can not forget
the way i feel right now

in these small hours
these little wonders
these twists & turns of fate
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away but these small hours
these small hours, still remain,
still remain
these little wonders
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away
but these small hours
these little wonders still remain

From Disney's Meet the Robinsons Movie Soundtrack.

daydreaming when i shouldn't

i would like to attend dr talib's literary stylistics and narrative structure classes again. he used a variety of media and text types to bring ideas across. been listening to linkin park's Minutes to Midnight and am rather intrigued with the development from the tone in their first album to this. compare In the End and What I've Done and tell me what you think.

i love shinoda's rapping. wished there was more of it to listen to. rap is really a curious vehicle-there's so much artistry in it and because of that the fierceness/ferocity of feelings can be so accute. poets in a different guise, don't you think? the good ones, lah.

In my dreams

Sigh, I have failed in keeping this blog from becoming frivolous. :\

You know how Remy starts imagining the different dishes floating up from Gusteau's cookbook? I feel like that now. Pancakes with butter. My mom's fried rice-I can almost taste those green peas. Char siew rice.

Sigh. Yeah, I'm controlled by my stomach.

Pondering.

Doesn't it look like someone's living room?

So cosy, with the pictures on the wall

and the use of different tones in the wooden furniture.

And this is the only picture we took yesterday which had my eldest brother in it.

Guess where this was taken.

hello

I have my 2 friends-at/from-work standing at my table and discussing about a project, so I have kind of lost the message I wanted to put up.

I am thankful. Today's been somewhat funny. I had to drag myself out of bed to get prepared for school. It's been a tiring period.

But as I moved into work and working, I forgot about the morning's reluctance and weariness. And talking to, interacting with my friends has helped. There is no way to explain it except that it is just God's grace. So much blessing with just my little step of faith in the morning, in just bringing my weakness to Him.

[And for some reason, I've been thinking about chicken teriyaki.]
[I'm sorry, but I tried. Still can't seem to steer away from talking about me / my thoughts / experience.]

very very nice

Henry David Thoreau said this:

"One of the most attractive things about flowers is their beautiful reserve."

What's your comfort food?

Experienced a terrible sneeze-and-drip attack this afternoon. Maybe the onset of flu. Got me wondering if that was the reason I've been thinking of how it'd be nice to have warm, plain porridge.

What's your comfort food? Something which you'd like to have when you're not feeling too good, whether emotionally or physically?

Waiting

在等待当中
不是环绕在
被封锁的小地方

而是时刻，
专注的成长，
迈向终点的光线。

今天

我想去民歌餐厅！Oops! 说好了不能在继续太自我了。

我 想去民歌餐厅吗？

then and now

"Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. "

From Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen)

Is that true? Will the past always seem to be worthier, more noble; but will it only appear to be so?

We say things like "Kids/Students nowadays are so (insert adjective), I don't remember being like that!" Is that really true? Or is it just us putting on rose-tinted glasses to gaze on into the past? Are some of the attitudes we had now obsolete, unapplicable to today?

For some time, it felt so.

(This may sound like a silly place to pick up something valuable from, but I think it's real enough.) I watched 13 going on 30 a few days ago and this is what I'd like to share from the movie:

"Let's put life back into the magazine. And fun and laughter and silliness.

I think all of us wanna feel something...that we've forgotten or turned our backs on. Because maybe

we didn't realize how much we were leaving behind.

We need to remember what used to be good." (My emphasis.)

Do you think that's worth holding on to?

In Him, we live and move and breathe

I've decided to move on. I think my previous blog became too much of a public airing of my private thoughts. I think it was getting too egocentric in some sense. I'll just be using this to share some interesting things I come across from time to time.

I'd prefer this to be less of me, more of what we see in life.