September 22, 2009 • 3:24 pm 0
Ellie (or rather, Elliott Bent) the boy kitten snoozing in the sun. I look at him and I think of what Albert Schweitzer had said: “Think of the suffering of which you have spared yourself the sight.” I’m glad I’m going veg. Determination seems to come easier these days. There is no inclination towards pork at all. Chicken is the daily temptation, but with time and some effort, that should be conquered. So should seafood. Meow.
Filed under: humdrum
August 17, 2009 • 3:49 pm 0
You see, I was supposed to post something about the two dreams I had some time back. But I just kept going back for more… sleep, instead of writing because I am so so sick of it. So sick of how, by writing, I seem to be condemning myself to the chains of frugality, forever.
Anyway, I still remember bits of it. Vaguely, something about travelling thick into the Amazonian jungle, in search of a special spot, the only spot on Earth without gravity. It was controlled by the indigenous people so tourists had to pay to enter it. We took a boat in – there were several. I think I was afraid of piranhas, or the possibility of piranhas (since it would have been interesting to see those tiny killers).
When we got off the boats, we had to line up, in zig-zaggy lines typical of tourists to move in. Everyone was floating in there. It was amazing, miraculous, well-worth the expensive ticket. I’ve always wanted to go space, I remember muttering. And then we floated. We could move our arms around, “swim” a little. We only had 20 minutes before the next batch of tourists. We were awed.
I can’t remember the other dream now. In other news, I just lit some sparklers with K and planning a trip to Penang. And I’m getting the iPhone 3Gs tomorrow. Am very excited – I can be such a tech-nut sometimes. I should have been a boy. But nevermind, I have a boy dog, and he has just finished his rawhide bone and he is happy, and so am I.
August 10, 2009 • 4:33 pm 0
Chanced upon the new store by Soon Lee after watching UP in 3-D (*Squirrel!*). Rockstar by Soon Lee stocks girly sneakers, comfortable dresses, cotton cushions, notebooks by Birds & Co and etc. Very nice!
Some pix from their blog:
Rockstar is at #03-08 Orchard Cineleisure.
Filed under: all things frivolous, humdrum
• 4:25 pm 0
My very dear Starkey, you are three today. Since you came into my life, everything changed for the better. I came home to a bouncy, greedy shih tzu every day. I love you lots. Because you, literally, saved my life. I want to spend every one of your birthdays with you and shower you with treats and toys! Hugs!
August 4, 2009 • 1:58 pm 0
I’ve almost forgotten about this blog. Here’s a pix of Starkey snoozing.
In other news, I write non-stop, had a diabetic scare, am involved with PR for stray cats and the training of a Jack Russell Terrier, and am constantly thinking of get-rich-quick schemes. I had some weird dreams too, coming up next.
Filed under: humdrum
August 19, 2008 • 2:43 pm 0
I’m not too sure if I can resist this delicately beautiful silk-screened dress from Wiksten. But I really should. I’ll compensate myself with this irresistibly cute Official (Unofficial) Team Zissou Intern Tee instead.
Filed under: humdrum
August 15, 2008 • 1:13 pm 0
The medicine is working, else I won’t be at a lost about what to blog about. My hands shake very occasionally, usually while I’m holding a fork. Otherwise, all’s jolly and dandy with my life right now. We attempted the deep pool yesterday evening – a brave dip on a full moon’s night. It was beautiful, pushing water under water. I think I should like diving very much. There is a cheerful recklessness about me these days. Swim to that ladder. Sure, why not. And I took a deep breath and went. It surprised me – that recklessness. It was almost like I didn’t care. Maybe the serotonin is flooding my synapses. But whatever – I peered at the old folks at the pool again. There was an elderly couple, both learning to swim to together. Like fishes in love, A said, uncharacteristically poetic. Then there was this old dude with a fat belly, happily waddling in the water. We had porridge after that as usual, and a mango pudding to finish up the meal. I spoke to a budgie at the pet shop after that. He bent down, pushed his head against the grilles, as if telling me to stroke him. I did and I think, he almost purrrrrred in delight. You’re a clever bird, I said. And he stared at me fixedly. You don’t have to lie to me, budgie. I read studies. You’re smarter than us. Talk to me! Budgie screeched: lao ban ngiang! lao ban ngiang! Brilliant – I want a budgie.
Filed under: humdrum
July 8, 2008 • 2:56 pm 0
In The Noonday Demon, one woman said it is impossible to have dreams and be creative when on pills. How true. I vaguely recall the last dream I had. A mongrel sat on the top of my head. Other than that, nothing. When there are no dreams I feel numb. When there are nightmares I feel frightened. But numbness is a good thing to feel. At least it offers stability, which is more than what I can ask for in these days. On my wrist the scars are fading, slowly. I look at them and wonder just how I could have done it – and I maintain, I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me at all. It was caused by my hand, but that’s it. It happened to me – I didn’t do it. I have three pills left – a dangerous situation. In my mind I manoeuvred – god it took me five minutes just to type that fucking word i must be dyslexic or depressed did i spell it correctly? – schedules to permit an opening so I could run off to the hospital for more. Surely you can pick them up? I hear the doctor saying, gently. Or get someone to pick them up for you? I think she has never been depressed. Did she think I’d submit my mother to this, this perversion? Besides in my sobbing and spiralling that night I couldn’t even remember where I placed my prescription – my precious half a prescription of pills! I searched the sleeves of my wallet but it wasn’t there. And for the life of god I cannot remember. Certain faculties are so lost to me it is a miracle I function the way I function, that is, amazingly organised, at work. In bed I hold on to The Noonday Demon, which calms me at night. Solomon is wise, compassionate and lyrical in his writing – every word he writes is truth. Of the pills, he wrote: It is humiliating to be reliant on them. It is inconvenient to have to keep track of them and to stock up on prescriptions. And it is toxic to know that without these perpetual interventions you are not yourself as you have understood yourself. I could not have phrased how I felt so poignantly, so beautifully, so accurately.
June 17, 2008 • 2:29 pm 0
I was gleeful too quickly. Too complacent (aren’t we all nowadays?). I must understand, from my struggles against it, that it is by no means self-induced. Nor could it be overcome by sheer willpower (try doing that with appendicitis won’t you?). It is biological. Definitely, maybe. And in my quest for Prozac it seems I must yet again trudge down to that dreaded place, and be quizzed to death by psychiatrists who read two pages of your history and claims to know you. I must put out my card, by now yellowed and crumpled, and waited for hours in the cold waiting room. I must sit down and state my symptoms. Except with this sort of thing I can’t just tell it all in seconds. I must lead herr doktor through my case file, bring him to back to the past, remind him of the lead characters, repaint my life after -, how I climbed back up from the abyss of the dead (or more accurately, less poetically, my bed), and how, now, I’m back in that same seat, sniffling. I must re-describe the signs – the bad dreams, the uncontrollable sobs on the train, the twisting of the fingers, the thrill of having the cat claw my hand till the skin peel off, the breathlessness, the sorrysorrysorrys, the weekend spent in bed worrying about the broccoli out there, wilting – Starkey would have to go without it for now, three broccolis gone! I shouldn’t be thinking about broccoli.. shouldn’t be thinking about it at all. All I want is to be on Prozac again. Maybe I shouldn’t never have gotten off it. It works long-term. Without it, it’s just short-term straight-line surrogate happiness.
Filed under: humdrum
May 30, 2008 • 12:18 pm 2
In my two days of leave, I hardly left my Mac. I routed all company emails to my Gmail just so I can be, or so they say, “on top of things”. I felt strangely guilty and lost, and spent half the time worrying that things are going wrong with my published stories. I reply to all office emails at lightning speed. I continue writing and surfing for ideas. I email potential newsmakers. When I took naps in the afternoon, I carefully placed my laptop right beside me so that I can know when a new email comes in. And yes, I wake every 20 minutes to check my phone. The thing is, I’m just not very used to having annual leave and breaking the working momentum to… just rest? Perhaps – since the depression has cleared – it’s time to warrant another visit to the psychologist?
Filed under: humdrum
May 21, 2008 • 3:28 pm 0
Back from my first ever work trip. To the supposedly foggy city of San Francisco. Flew business (ate plenty of warm croissants and drank plenty of juice), ordered room service happily, walked the crookedest street, spied the famous Citylights Bookshop and Jack Kerouac Street, saw the Golden Gate, said “no” to the homeless 
, dined at an over-hyped restaurant in our hotel and…overspent on Kate Spade stuff (1 Classic Noel Small Coal in Stucco, 1 Jane Street Sonda wallet and 2 Becca Bow clutches!) and quirky Benefit cosmetics (Ooh ooh ooh la lift!) in Union Square. All very pleasant.
In the time we were there, a heatwave struck the city and fires broke out everywhere (“You brought the heat with you!” our hosts exclaimed, in their summerwear and singsong style). My black Zara trenchcoat lay limply in one arm while I fanned myself with a Benefit catalog with another. It was, in some ways, a very Singaporean sorta heat. My skin peeled from the dryness. I yearned for spritzers and for the cool to descend. On our second day there, same-sex marriage is legalised, to great joy in Castro. I shall watch Women Who Love Women on Saturday to celebrate it.
Filed under: humdrum
April 29, 2008 • 11:13 am 0
DinDin chewing his paw.
Been spending my evenings nursing the three lovely kittens Mum brought home one night in a huge carton box. Luckily, Starkey has been helping us out, playing the nanny. While this doggie of mine hates other woofies, he’s fallen in love with kittens. He licks them and let them nibble at his tiny nipples. And they paw him, climb onto them and take swats at his furry tail.
More pics and updates soon. And if anyone’s willing to adopt them, please email me at limjaclyn@gmail.com Tks!
Filed under: humdrum
March 25, 2008 • 1:09 am 0
I don’t think I can resist Zouk Flea & Easy, even though I’ve been quite determined to stop shopping and spending. It’s on this Sunday. Admission is free. Bring your own shopping bags.
Filed under: humdrum
March 9, 2008 • 2:34 pm 1
I slept the weekend away. First in snatches, on Saturday as HDB-recommended workers drilled and tore the toilet floor away to reveal raw cement. Second, a Sunday siesta in a familiar-unfamiliar apartment, a familiar-unfamiliar bed. It was the wavering in and out between dreams that depresses me (but what doesn’t depress me nowadays?). The stumbling through reality astounds me. Why do I feel so drained, all the time? It is so wholly uncharacteristic of a seemingly healthy 26-year-old.
Sometimes, the thought that I am going to die springs up, suddenly. And I asked around, “Am I going to die?” I don’t know. Because I don’t exactly know what I am living for, now. There seems to be nothing. Even Kafka’s Metamorphosis is based on a completely true account. How else do we understand this world? There is only the doggiewoggie, but the obsession with this furry creature is too much, as is starkly presented to me each passing workday.
I am rambling, because I am again no longer clear. I have two boxes of psychiatric drugs from a worried GP, who advised me to go Changi, go Buangkok. She didn’t have Prozac so it was Fluxil. She didn’t have Ativan, so it became Lexotan. I didn’t even have to cry. And now I have a rotting face. The mini volcano on my dream head moved down to my nose, and spread and spilled. Pus.
Because somehow I know I will never be happy I wonder if I can trade places with those who are dying, and die instead. I am pondering this philosophically, with a cup of water on my desk. Like the cancer-stricken blogger Shin, who has two young kids to live for. Or the Filipino maid who was killed, instantly, by a taxi, with a leg cut off and her body in a drain. That’s the thing. If either one of them has my life, what a difference it would make! Their children will have a mother.
I had many dreams when I was asleep. Vaguely of dogs, of running down empty streets, of being in a world so completely different from the one I inhabit in real time. I haven’t blogged for so long. I am too drained and my life seem to be set on a trajectory of terrors.
On a completely random note, the Juno OST is brilliant.
Filed under: humdrum
December 6, 2007 • 2:20 pm 0
In the mad rush of a Thursday filled with meetings I found time to navigate through the Dec issue of Lovely.
Reading Lovely is a wondrous experience. From the minute you step into the comfy living room (with a radiator for warmth no less!), you’re hooked. I especially love how interactive the pages can be. Pink highlights guide your reading through the pages and credits on the fashion and product pages only appear if you so wish! The Dec issue boasts of great stories, pages of Christmas gift ideas and yummy fashion pages. Even their pie charts look…Lovely!
Filed under: humdrum
