43 Days To Rag: We Have Entered Berserk Mode

Just six weeks left to Rag Day, so we have moved from playing around with stuff to the intensive building phase. Goodbye slack days with time for cooking and playing. Today was my first 12-hour day (not counting the breaks). Altogether it's about 16 hours a day with 4 hours of break for lunch, dinner and random in-between drinks when I get too tired. Technically I am not part of the engineering team or the team head, so I can turn in earlier with the designers. But we have so much to do and so little time, that I think I should do my best to help the guys. Yes, Rag tends to divide roles according to gender. The guys do the carpentry and engineering whereas the girls design the float and costumes.

I guess I broke through that division today when I decided that the Games Room where we build our float needed a clean-up. It was impossible to walk without treading on bolts, wires, cardboard, glue, aluminium can remnants or sharp tools lying about. The plywood leant at odd angles everywhere taking up more space then was necessary, and some of the pieces were so old they were warped and rotting. So I spent the whole evening tossing damaged wood and rearranging the remaining pieces. It was like searching for buried treasure. I found several aluminium rods and bars, as well as slotted angle bars hidden between the plywood sheets. This stuff is expensive, and every 3m piece we find is a boon. As the rods were lying under the plywood, I had to drag them out. It was very tiring, but worth it for all the metal I found. At one point, James said something about me being "very power" because I do the "man stuff." Such an odd way to put it, but I shall take it as a compliment. If you are wondering how arranging wood can be "man stuff," it's because plywood comes in 4 by 8 feet pieces, so even half a sheet is heavy. I can hardly manage one sheet on my own as it is too large for my arms.

Arcane knowledge I have acquired through Rag Day preparations:

1) How to decapitate a can under 45 seconds with a tinsnip
2) Welding is a complex task with different methods and welding machines for different metals
3) A truck with no power steering is a killer to drive

I will write about my Cambodia trip when I have the time....if I have the time. The post is still hanging unfinished in the drafts section. Seems I hardly have time for anything besides Rag these days. I drag myself out of bed a little earlier to pray and read a little, though. I think I'll only manage to get through the next six weeks in a sane and gracious manner if I lean on Christ's strength rather than my own. It's easy to spot me burnt out. I start flipping out, losing my temper and blaming everybody except myself when things go wrong. Not a pretty sight. Rag, just like every difficult task in my life, will be both a test and measure of my character. How far have I come and how far do I fall short of the secret person I envision myself to be?

The Two Cs In My Life: Cambodia and Cambridge

The real reason I hardly ever update my blog: once I start, I can't stop. I will blog incessantly, given the chance.

So anyway, yesterday we had red bean supper number 2. This time I managed to make the beans crunchy by overcooking them. How is it even possible to burn red bean soup??? The answer: by talking to one's parents. I decided I didn't need to run off from skype another time to check on the soup, but the saucepan is tiny and holds something like two and a half cups of water, so when I finally returned to it I saw a pile of beans, half red and half grey. O_o I solved it by adding extra sugar.

And YY called yesterday which was cool, although the line was bad so her voice broke up on every three-syllable word. I told her I had become yekatch's substitute sister, heh. She still feels bad for being the one who got to go overseas. No worries. It's not like Singapore is sinking or anything. And it'll still take a fairly long time before they manage to dump enough sand secretly into Selat Tebrau to make a land bridge...so till then, I am actually overseas. Or overstrait.

Speaking of overseas study, Cambridge is MIA! I can't get through to the administrator at Wolfson and this is terrible only because I couldn't pull out my application in time for the June round of selections. Which means that someone is being deprived of a place while I here happily hold on to an offer I can't afford. But it is an offer I can refuse. For the last time, everyone, I like being in Singapore and don't see myself anywhere else for the next few years. So unless money drops from the sky, I will take it that this also is where God wants me to be.

S, when I return from Cambodia I promise I'll call the general office number for Wolfson College and clear up the whole matter once and for all, so you can stop asking me for the hundreth time, whether or not I'm going. I think everyone could do with a break from the suspense.

And now I am still behind in preparations for my Cambodia trip, which is but seven hours away. Please pray! I haven't finished my sermon (and here I am typing you an update. oh dear). So let it be goodbye for now.

The Unreachable Horizon

...and for Monday's pickups I found myself back in the Tuas area for aluminium bars. We spent about $180 only for me to come back and realise that we already had a sponsor for them. I had not gotten the metal bars from that company due to a miscommunication and my own forgetfulness! Aah! I dislike making major errors, but then to be realistic I am doubling up as Marketing/Logistics crew in a one-woman show. Well, except for ZQ who drives the truck, yeah, I call sponsors, follow-up, arrange itineraries and go out in the truck to pick up the goods, as I am the PR rep and the navigator on trips out. What's that? Alissa, the person who gets lost in her own hall, is a navigator? FYI, as long as I have a map, I'm not too bad.

Following that was lunch and a long, long negotiation with the rattan-man Jensen who kinda looked like rattan himself: wiry, brown and supple. We started by approaching the office and were told that he was in the warehouse, which was itself about 50m away. We wandered among the piles and bundles of rattan. Some bundles, soaring 6m high, were stacked against each other to create little towers, while the shorter cane was stacked horizontally in criss-cross fashion. Short, long, thin, thick, skinned and natural cane--any varieties that you please--all formed a maze of corridors that we wandered through until, right at the end of the warehouse, we met Jensen loading yet more bundles of rattan on a gantry. He was a very friendly chap who agreed to sell us the few kilos that we needed, at almost cost price, even though it meant disassembling the 25kg bundle of 4-7mm rattan he had painstakingly amassed from the different rattan varieties that are shipped in from Malaysia and Indonesia. This was difficult to do as it would mean another long time waiting for the right types of cane to randomly come in through different shipments, until he had a sizable bundle for selling again.

***
Last night I made red bean sago soup for supper. Despite soaking the beans the entire day till they had swelled to the size of peanuts, the beans remained crunchy after one hour of boiling. I think I will try putting it on boil for an hour instead of just letting it simmer. Or just leave it in for two hours. Whatever the problem, I am not happy with the result and will stubbornly make another attempt tonight.

I had Den, Soci Boy and a neighbour of theirs down for the crunchy red bean supper. We speculated on the incredible size and texture of the beans, wondering if they were GMO or maybe a special variety from Japan. Or simply better quality beans as Den's mother bought us costlier beans that start out larger than the average bean too. Yes, hall is a place where we talk completely random rubbish with each other.

***
And this deserves a mention: floorball training yesterday was great, I thought. After nine months of training, I finally have a decent level of skill in stickwork, which consists of basic techniques like dribbling, passing, shooting and keeping the ball on the blindside of opposing players. It's not 100% consistent yet, but at least I have passed from consistently missing passes and fumbling my shots to making fair passes and attempts at goal even under pressure from defenders.

What I would rather not mention is how frustrated I can get on court when things don't work out and I react negatively to comments from my seniors. They mean well, but when they take a hundred words to say something that can be said in ten, I get irritated. I suppose that's where my pride comes in. "I know I'm less skilled, but that doesn't affect my ability to understand what you're saying," mutters my ego. Fight fight. Get angry. Stop thinking about the game and perform even worse than before. I've been praying about it and trying consistently to cut down on my backlashes, and thank God I am managing little by little to lose my cool less and less. Playing in Div 2 releases me from the expectations of the Div 1 seniors and allows me the space to concentrate on improving aspects that I can improve on, rather than the on things the seniors want me to improve which is sometimes a few steps too far ahead for me. So I'm thankful.

So yesterday was a good day. I walked back to hall singing, thankful to God for the day and stopping to stare at the boughs as they danced in the breeze. The breeze picked up and I knew it was going to rain in about five minutes, but walking quickly in my five-year-old slippers was uncomfortable as they kept, well...slipping. Yes, slippers tend to grow into their name over time, like people. So I took them off and continued my triumphant march back home, stopping every now and then to stare up into the waving boughs overhead. Now if I had waved back, that might have worried some people. As it is all I got was jaded looks from worn-out special semester and graduate students waiting for their bus home.

***

And as I am getting back into writing like I always meant to, this blog will contain a verbal diarrheoa (did I spell that right?) of sorts. I have figured that writing about my life, however narcissistic an exercise and however uninteresting it may be, would be a lot better than not writing at all in the quest for that perfect post or perfect poem. Pursuing perfection, I realise, is like pursuing that "untravell'd world whose margin fades forever and forever when I move." The line is from Tennyson's poem Ulysses, about the aged king Ulysses (also known as Odysseus) who regrets his life of idleness after decades of adventure and exploration. It's long, but the four lines which strike me most are:

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margins fade
For ever and for ever when I move.

The horizon of perfection eludes us forever. Ambition, that tantalising fruit that remains always just beyond the reach of your fingertips. Whether as a Rag Day Marketeer, a noob cook or a sportsperson, I realise I am a die-hard perfectionist. I struggled to understand these lines in the poem until one day, it dawned upon me that the imagery is that of a ship travelling out to meet the horizon, which promises to reveal what cannot be seen beyond it. Yet however much I move, however much I experience, I never reach the horizon. I am reminded of Paul's exposition on faith, that no one hopes for what they have gained. There are always places to grow beyond what I was before. And I hope I will keep growing.

Speaking about new lands, I will be off to Cambodia tomorrow for a week. Till then, then.

The Trash Heap

On Friday, the 6th of June, which was dearest Tracy's 21st...I was out digging through trash. (Happy Birthday, dear! You is adults now. Takes cares and alway vote carefully, ok?)

First of all, let me say that I didn't know that a trash disposal company other than SembCorp existed in Singapore. It's called Jakob Altvater, which translated roughly from the German is Jacob Oldfather. If you ever see a red rubbish truck labelled SULO, that's they. They're big-time recyclers, though, not the anykind of landfill garbagey stuff. The barn with recycled papers was decent enough--lots of random corrugated boxes and papers about. The barn opposite it had bales of compacted paper stacked to the ceiling. That's about two and a half storeys' worth of recycled paper awaiting transport. It was the barn of plastic and aluminium products that really grabbed our attention. First thing that strikes you is that this barn is filled with a mini-mountain of garbage about 10m high. A worker stood on it as an excavator truck rode into the garbage and used its trough to pile the stuff up even higher (ok, i totally don't know truck terminology). Next, the reason for this operation became clear: yet another red dump truck entered and tipped its stuff all over the floor. An automated chute took up the garbage and conveyed it to a cabin perched above the mess, where workers picked up their assigned trash to dump it into large containers below them.

And this is where my team and I had come to source for cans and PET bottles (which are polyethene bottles, which is just the jargon for your average plastic drink bottles). Why? You'll find out in the months to come. The team (as usual) wore slippers. No matter how many times I ask for people to be wearing shoes when they come out, they still insist that it's alright, despite the fact that we walk into all manner of strange places like recycling plants and scrap yards. There was broken glass all over the floor, in this instance, as the trucks drive over the rubbish all the time. And I know I act the fussy aunt sometimes, but I'd rather that than seeing someone get stitches on the sole of their foot, when it could have been prevented.

Fortunately, the manager of affairs got a friendly PRC dude (he came all the way here to sort trash!) to pick out the stuff we needed. We picked some out from the fringe of the trash mountain, but we couldn't go into the containers for the lack of proper footwear. He was very friendly and helpful--didn't mind one bit, and when we got him a drink at the end he wanted to give it back to us, but Carl left it on the edge of a container for him.

The trash, mind you, was not tame old bottles and cans. If you've ever collected recycled cans and washed them, you'll know that it only takes a week for them to be positively seething with stuff. There were flies everywhere, the smell assailed my consciousness with all the force that a tonne of post-consumer product can muster. Eventually I got used to it, though. I imagine the people who live among the trash heaps in the Phillipines live with a far worse smell. They certainly do not have proper footwear. If only the guilt of allowing people to live in mountains of trash while we accumulate mountains of wealth could assail our senses. How much would we pay then to be free of the smell?

Embarassing Poetry Part 2

Yes! It's that time again. For me to disappear into the deepest ocean trench I can find, that is. On second thought, it's not worth the trouble to be so dramatic...that's probably what got me into this situation in the first place--writing terrible angsty poetry. If I had to choose a favourite way of ceasing to exist, it would be to dissolve quietly into the air, with every atom choosing to go its own separate way, without any fuss whatsoever. But you can only choose (and perform) one way of ceasing to exist, whereas you can choose many different ways of living your life...well, most of us get a choice, one would hope.

Right, the digression is over. Here is an actual scrawling on a piece of foolscap in one of my angst-driven phases:

********

liquid silence in a soupbowl rises to reclaim the sound
sloshing warily with no spoon to stir
and no ear hears it--
only pure, hallowed, unrecorded sound.

Black and screaming silence.

The silence is too deep for me to climb out of.
I live on the inside of my life.
Waiting in the dark for death, or do you just
run, or scream waiting to wake up in the light that never comes?
Curtains are forever drawn. Shut out the light,
Shut out the light. It does not return. But the silence pours in again, stifling the screams. A nightmare flutters on the inside of my mind and I can't wake up. It's a dream where I'm pouring water into a jar but it goes out with a gurgle, and no matter how fast, no matter how much I pour--it's never enough. It will never be enough. Sink into the desperation of the dream.

Dark and mazy. Dark and mazy. I am blind. Nothing. I am wandering in the dark. The dark. The following dark. The dark that follows and surrounds. Fitful darkness of the mind.

*******
The rest is silence.
.
.
.
.
.
.

But then I start talking again, haha. I promise you I have never, ever done drugs in my life. Though when I look at it even I think I sound high. Probably high on emotion. It induces the same chemicals or something? Let me tell you, one of the biggest scares I ever gave myself was when I found myself laughing uncontrollably at being told that Sylvia Plath killed herself by sticking her head in an oven. I can get high on water, given the right cirumstances.

Anyway, there are several lit references there. Shall not go all technical and explain them, but will point out that the poem breaks down into prose halfway through. Go figure.

Two Deaths

This first one is undated. I can't remember how old I was when I wrote it. This is for someone who did live every day as if it was the best in her life. At least, it seems so to me; I only knew her a number of years.

The second poem commemorates another death. There should be one more, but by the time the third happened I had stopped writing poetry. It took me almost a year to shed tears for the third. And it will take a little more time before I can write something for that one.

********
I

We were in her house, every one of us
around her lidless oblong box--
and she was in it.
Then they carried her and marched,
Stiff, stark black and sombre
Like ants, if I were a giant.
But how slow their steps;
A dead march for the dead.

II

No tears were shed--
"You must be strong," they said,
My uncles the pallbearers.
"Why shouldn't I cry?" asked I;
I said so to my brother.
"Hush! Show some respect," he said;
his hand it squeezed mine tighter.
The box led us into the church
until the pews, to the altar.
And she held it all to herself,
Her my dead grandmother.

III
Then all stood up as if to go,
Their lips were white
Their hands were cold.
White and pale, like wraiths themselves,
They walked up front to say goodbye--
"Goodbye, we love you but we cannot cry."
I tiptoed to see her--
She had a secret smile
And her lips were painted red.
Her dress was blue
and lilies crowned her head.
"Why should we cry?" asked I,
"She seems so happy to be dead.:
But no one heard; they were busy.
Their ears were shut, their lips were screwed,
All screwed shut and screaming.
I dragged my feet back to the pews
While a lid was put in place.

***********

We took them to the sea.
"Toss them in deep,"
he said.
Let the bones dance
in deep darkness
While the boats go
overhead.

************

Don't crack your head over "deep darkness." Weak, meaningless metaphor in this instance. The first poem also shows an interest in ants--that might help date it at around the same time as the "scrittle" poem.

After writing this post, I realize that revealing this poetry is not so much embarassing as it is painful. Remembering what I thought and felt in those moments--a poem crystallizes it for eternity. You think writing poetry is a good form of emotional release, but the trick is on you, for it gives the emotion a tangible shape that can be relived. In endless playback. But then again, you could also say that it pins the emotion in a "formulated phrase," trapping what might have otherwise continued rampaging through the soul.

The Year So Far

IN random order: so far, this year I have...

• Made new friends in Temasek Hall
• Been betrayed
• Learnt what it means to forgive deeply
  
• Learnt to trust again
• Performed below average for a module I thought was easy
• Suffered a recurrence of shin splint (ongoing)
  
• Been asked about a hundred times whether I am staying or leaving
• Crushed an egg, not realizing my grip has gotten stronger from floorball and badminton
• Tortured, and have been bitten by, a moronic hamster (it's a love-hate relationship; i feed it yoghurt for all its troubles)
• Made about fifty calls to companies asking for money and materials to build a float for the Hall
• Ridden in a truck that skids if the driver brakes suddenly at a speed greater than 55km/h...which makes for a very slow truck.
  

Embarassing Poetry Part 1

I have decided to bare all. Dug out my folio from the stack of boxes in the corner and flipped through some breathtakingly bad poetry. But who cares? I was young. I still am. So will write self-importantly until the day I hit a note that strikes a chord in all. That is, a poet should be self-aware, but not self-absorbed. In other words, "enough with the narcissism and get a move on!" as the little voice in the back of my head would like to put it. "Just embarass yourself already. We want to be entertained."

This shall be an exercise in exorcising old ghosts.

So. A self-conscious fifteen-year-old steps up to a too-high microphone. (Omigosh look at the number of hyphens there. Edit! Edit for your life, woman. Stop it. Stop it. Calm down. What's wrong with you?) In the time it takes to adjust the mike and swallow hard, she battles her inner panic and the cold trembling that accompanies her whenever she speaks to a group larger than five people. In that one second, the many voices she carries within her--voices of self-doubt, self-deprecation, egoistic self-assurance and secure self-knowledge--must stop jostling for attention and space. They must meld into a united voice to speak forth....what?

What?!! At the end of the day it was--and still is, I assure you. Look, stop butting in and let the woman tell her story. You shut up. No. you shut up. No you. No, you...

Anyway, at the end of the day it was a scribble written on the back of a dirty receipt picked up from the ground. Yes. I used litter to write--you know it's a good thing to recycle. Recycling saves the environment for our progeny and keeps turtles alive. For instance, by reducing the amount of plas---

*sounds of choking as militant Voice Two grabs fussy Inner Voice One by the throat*


I WROTE:

Futilism
Pavement-crack ants scrittle
in valleys, through gullies
while supermarket trolleys trundle
about them, above them.
It makes no difference to their lives--
a trolley wheel or shoe
should end it.


I cannot for the life of me think of what I meant when I wrote it, as there are obviously opposing meanings in the poem. It does make a difference that their lives are ended. Perhaps a foolish attempt to storm the gates of logic. Or if I take the dash out of the fifth line it would mean that it makes no difference if a trolley wheel or shoe ends their life: either their lives are insignificant or...alright, alright, I shall not insult your intelligence by performing a technical analysis of a poem. This is a DIY kind of place, you know. Go break a leg over the meaning of a comma, if such things entertain you. (Really, if it does, read Wit by Margaret Edson)

*A dying gasp.* Inner Voice One has left the game. Go Alissa! Mission accomplished.

Just to reward you for reading so far, I shall throw in a few more freebies.

I wonder if the grass is glad to see me
And cheers as I walk by,
Or, like an ant I'm noticed
By the giant sky.

Labelled that epithet Egotism and I am confounded by the third line. Obviously had a problem with condensing the meaning here.

Here's a howler from my primary school days. I know it was written before I was 10 as I cleared up my spelling problems after that (okay, except for double the 'r' and double 's' bits). This was for Mother's Day. I don't think I ever gave it to her. Since I didn't get my mother a present...here's to you, Ma.

White lilies fair,
Fair as God can make,
Each one white strand of hair;
Wisdom that God gave.

In beuty what can compare?
To beuty of the heart;
In beuty of the heart,
Who can compare to you?

A loving mother's kiss,
Sweetly, tenderly given.
But what is it's use,
When it is ill forgotten?


Okay. I very shy now. *pulls blanket over head and hides* The rest is stuff from my depressive periods so I shall make fun of it another time.