Casa De Shao

Author: shao

  • Thirty

    Thirty

    A cousin’s wedding – May ’25. Friends of the couple, dancing to Dancing Queen. Capella Ballroom.

    I’d imagined my thirtieth to be some kind of grand affair; after listening to weeks upon weeks of Harmontown, I thought that at some point I’d have the chutzpah to host a faux talk show.

    I’d invite my friends on stage and do bits where I tease them, celebrate me, celebrate them and clap them offstage.

    We’d do it in that Fort Canning event space, and I’d hire a sound team? And I could spend like 6,000 dollars for the food and location and the equipment, and that would be a fancy night, and I would group up my friends in their cliques and everyone would be beaming at me, tux and shit, onstage. 

    My friends would do lighting effects using flashlights, and I would make the multimedia, and at some point we could rehearse and sync up my theatrical shit with the onscreen shit and it would wow everyone. 

    Everyone would clap my back as they left, in gowns and tuxes, and people would say “haha, wasn’t that such a wonderful evening, Shao’s birthday?” “Yeah, what a great guy” 

    Perhaps I would gain some kind of renown, enough to be an NCMP, enough to be a marriage officiant guy, and people would recommend me to other couples, saying “I recommend this guy, Shao, he made us cry during our ROM, and the aunties love him”. 

    Maybe I’d show up at all the arts events, and whisper the same thing to every artist to not give up on their dreams. 

    And perhaps at my funeral, all the people I’ve crushed on would circle up around my coffin, like the seven dwarves, and they would share about their favourite parts about me and their regrets and how foolish they were to not date/continue dating me, and how that since I’m going to die, the world would be a worse place, and they’d do a North Korean wail and the audience would wail and-

    Pause.

    I would open one mischievous, twinklin’ eye at my actual wife (which I eloped with at 31) and wink, and she would hit a lever, and the coffin would stand up and fall apart and I’d have a hat and cane and look a lot like the monopoly-man and do a surprise jig, and the In Remembrance banner behind me would fall apart and say

    “I Remember-DANCE cum Celebrating an Orgasmic 130th”

    and I’d rehash my 30th with modern references, like how everyone tried to modernise “We Didn’t Start The Fire”.

    We can’t modernise “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, though, because there’s not enough content since that song to make a new one, we can’t retread what Billy Joel already sang about and anything else would just feel satirical and pointless.

    You can’t just repeat the line with the pope, that’s just derivative.

    30 was the deadline for me to start being a mature adult. Like the talk show idea, it was a blurry, ill-defined image of what should be to make my life better from then on.

    I thought I’d have my shit together naturally, as an effect of time and maturity. You know. Get a relationship without needing to try. They say relationships should happen naturally. 

    Han Cheng and I hung out once at some Soka event he invited me to. This was fresh off of uni. Five years later, I went to his wedding and knew only Ray Yan and Weibo, and sat at a table of HCI people.

    Han Cheng was still Han Cheng, and I watched him on-stage making cutesy corny jokes with his new wife, through green-tinted stained glass (metaphorically) from the table furthest from the front (geographically). That’s the same guy, I thought, and he’s wedded now, so logically, there must be something wrong with me. 

    I guess I haven’t really been trying as hard as I think I have, and some aspects of being in a relationship scare me enough into self sabotage.

    I haven’t especially been trying to connect with people on dating apps, I haven’t been trying to take better care of myself, I haven’t been trying very much in that regard at all.

    It’s funny that in spite of everything in the past year, this relationship shit is the thing that’s making me write a post at last. I guess it’s also the fact that this flight home from Yogyakarta follows the 4D3N trip I was on with Yunus.

    The 4D3N trip followed after the girl saying “I don’t want to waste your time on not being available for you, you know?” 

    I don’t know. Went out with this girl, thrice. Polar opposites. 

    Her? Cute, studious, clumsy. Methodical, family-oriented, serious. Experience-chasing. Interested. Incredible. She started the conversations.

    Somehow we had an astounding amount of differences. She didn’t like being asked about her days. She didn’t like people telling her to take a break. I liked both of those things.

    We had one misunderstanding a day. She loves canto pop and R&B, I don’t. She’s not a coward. She has a sparse desk, mine is filled with cat reporter figurines.

    The one day on her work trip she didn’t reply, it tore me to pieces. 

    We met when she got back. After suggesting that we had a picnic, she didn’t reply till the morning of (not a great texter, I reassured myself),

    She apologised for not preparing anything (I washed and brought grapes and hummus and crackers and made cucumber mint lime water, because she said she ate healthy). 

    After a game of Splendor (she won by one point), we looked that the lame Botanic Gardens pond, and I asked if she wanted to continue. She seemed conflicted and apologised and said that right now, she couldn’t work through us because she only had space in her life for her incoming tea-based startup. 

    “Nothing you did wrong or could’ve done different,” She reassured. 

    I don’t know. I felt a real good future between us between our taunts between rounds of purchasing properties using gems. 

    I asked if, in a few months, when her startup had settled, we could give it a shot again, and she said yes, but in that tone. 

    (Yunus called bullshit. He says that she’s just making an excuse because she doesn’t like me enough. 

    It annoys me. I tell him that I believe her. Because, if he was right, then I could’ve done something different, and that would kill me.)

    Then Yunus and I went to Jakarta the next day, and I put Capricorn on loop. 

    Who was I supposed to send my hotel room tour to now? How much should I have cared? Did I care too much about something that barely began? Am I the only person doing this? Who can I care about now?

    This feels empty, my envelopes have no addresses any more. 

    We had a six hour train ride this trip. The weather was disgusting, the views weren’t exceptional, but six hours without being expected to do fuck about shit? 

    I think that’s what I need. To shut off any expectations. I didn’t contact my family, I barely texted my friends, and I could finish Alita: Battle Angel. 

    I don’t know. At some point, I felt myself unfold, the crease lines disappearing. None of these problems mean anything when you are hurtling towards East Java at 113kph.

    Farmers in the field at 113kph, rice paddies at 113kph,

    I don’t know. I have a fuckload of notifications on my phone and I can’t care less about 

    – if Blastoise is ready to have a good night’s sleep

    – if bdr invited me to a mushroom rally

    – anything on the Straits Times, really

    – what tasks I have to do for improv

    – story notifications on IG

    – Facebook birthdays

    – shopee/laz sales

    Maybe it’s my Eat Pray Love era. 

    We’re landing soon. Indonesia this whole time was me coming to terms with our drivers hurtling on the wrong side of the road towards tens of motorcyclists. If a rogue airplane wing sliced through my neck, I hope I can say something cool before it got to my vocal chords.

    p.s. I mean, I got over most of this, it’s like 3 weeks old, 4 weeks old.

    P. S. S. 6/7 weeks.

    But I still gotta post it. I guess. I don’t really give myself time to write this much any more. But it’s like outdated. I hope this other date is gonna work out.

    I’m doing better. Maybe drinking a bit much. Apprenticeship’s gonna end soon. I’ve gotten a recommendation to the fifth floor. Things get better.

    Apprenticeship ended. I’m down with COVID. There’s a new girl I’m talking to. I’ve got a good feeling about it. As usual. But this is different. As usual!

  • But In My Prime (Twenty-Nine .866)

    But In My Prime (Twenty-Nine .866)

    Blk 639, one of the dusks

    It’s 2339. I’ve stepped out of my room, faux-silk pajamas and fresh underwear in arms, shirtless, sweaty, sticky, long-pantsed, unbelted, hunched, squinting, tired.

    I’d turned the aircon on, so I bent over slightly to grasp the door handle, preparing to close it. My back stung numbly and stiffly from a strain that seems to have lasted too long, and the first whisps of cold air breezed out of the room, deflected off my pant legs.

    I pull the door closed, and it doesn’t clunk this time. So I pull again, harder, putting my sore back into it, and it feels like a bit too much resistance. It goes clunk.

    Pause. I straighten my back. I adjust the PJs so they are nestled under one arm. I twist the key.

    Stuck. A creeping dread. Another twist. Stuck. This is new.

    I am brought back to the same door, decades ago. I’m in Primary school, or older. I’m on the inside. The door and lock and latch are old – as old as the HDB it’s in. The HDB was one of the first few ones built in Singapore. I’m crying, wailing. I don’t know how to open the door and I’m stuck. Mom is on the other side, guiding me through how to open the tough, small knob. I twist, and it opens – I run forth into my mom’s arms and cry.

    Present night. I hear sounds from my brother’s room; he’s still awake.

    “Kor. My door is fucked.” I speak into his room, at his silhouette.

    I hear him sigh. I feel myself creating some mental defences as to why this happened. I think about how strange it is to be defensive about this.

    He gets out and tries to twist the stuck key, while I chat with ChatGPT about what lock this even is.

    When I’m back, the key can turn, but it’s damaged! It’s loose. I can’t pull it from the keyhole.

    I want to be annoyed at him, but I know it was bound to happen in our troubleshooting attempts.

    ChatGPT tells me to fiddle with the keyhole which I disregard. ChatGPT tells me to call an emergency locksmith. What? How expensive are those?

    Googling it, top5brandssingapore says $250-350 for lock fixing. Fuck.

    Brusquely, Kor says to sleep in his room.

    I say I’ll decompress outside first before joining him. I slouch on the sofa, elbows resting on my belly, scrolling and scrolling on my phone. I think about the week, about my mind and about how I’m not sure what or who I am any more.

    I saw this coming. The closer I was to 30, the more my crisis would foam over the pot.

    I’ve been pushing myself to use dating apps again. I know one day this problem will be a distant one, but it’s depressing as hell.

    I matched with a girl and we had a great conversation – we chatted for a few days, on and off, she got a bit too personal with some of the things she’d found out of me, and I got spooked. I unconsciously tried to slowly distance myself (funnily enough, something ChatGPT recommends) and she’d get upset, maybe anxious about it, and I’d get spooked and distance myself, and she’d get upset, and I’d apologise and maintain my distance, and she’d get upset.

    I went for a “pitch your friend as a date” thing with Yuheng the other day, and we killed it. I got someone’s number (Pitch girl) and had a very awkward and stilted talk with her at the event. She never returned my texts, and everyone says it’s on her, but they’re wrong, right?

    There must’ve been something I could’ve done to change things, there must’ve been right lines of dialogue, like in Baldur’s Gate, and maybe her friends who loved me during the pitch might be telling her that “oh, I thought he was funny when he talked about how wacky his job was”.

    Or maybe Pitch girl’s friends are saying “you know what? He was kind of a nerd. And a narcissist. Good vibes, girl!”

    I called the locksmith this morning and went for breakfast with my aunt. I thought about all of it, all of the dating things, about being a shithead at dating, about how it wasn’t on me that things went South and about how it was on me to own up to it, about how if I’m not present with my aunt, I’m gonna regret it one day, about how the fucking door wouldn’t open, about how the fucking door was a metaphor.

    That’s it! The door, it represents my small mindedness, my refusal to admit that things are on me, my need to stand by myself, my “broken” social skills, my nonpresence, the door that won’t open and the woodenness of the metaphor.

    The door is a message from the dark night of the soul – you don’t actually need the change of clothes in your room, you have everything you need outside already. You just want to be perceived a certain way, when in fact if you can let go, you will be all the freer for it.

    Maybe I should tell myself that the Hinge girl is never going to see me as a good person. Maybe I shouldn’t text the Pitch girl to have a good life ahead, because she is going to have a good life ahead and she isn’t interested in your ability to predict so. Maybe it’s neither your loss nor the Pitch girl’s.

    Maybe I can go another day, swiping and texting with faux enthusiasm, learning about my tendency to withdraw, and learning about how better adjusted people manage dating.

    The locksmith came in and declared the lock as a fucking old one – he wore a headlamp, slotted a piece of plastic, that seemed specifically sourced and yet randomly found, through the gap between the door and the frame, crammed it at the latch and jiggled it.

    Crack!

    The cold air invisibly cascaded out onto us, together with the relief of having normal electricity bills, together with the feeling of one problem solved, one big cold fucking reprieve from a psychological miasma.

    Now I can have my clothes. Now I can go for improv. Now I can go for DnD. Now I can go back to Pasir Ris.

    Now I can continue worrying about the same things I’ve been worrying about…

    You can’t see this, but I’m tightening a bandana over my forehead, and gritting my teeth and screaming “let’s do this” at a door that can’t close any more.

    Also, it’s 80 bucks. What a steal.

    This is the eighth time I’m trying to write something for my 29th birthday post.

    I’m doing it over my Le Nu dinner, I’m Pasir Ris Mall. Pasir Ris fucking Mall! It’s new, it’s spanking new, and there’s stuff like a second luckin coffee, the sixth McDonald’s in Pasir Ris…

    I’m leaving Jude Studios. It’s been five years. I got into AI Singapore. Mom got stem cell injections. My room has no more latch. There are two more contacts in my telegram app as of Thursday that will never talk to me ever again.

    Christ, I’ve been here for an hour and a half. Finally. This post’s done. It’s a shitty, temporal post that likely will not have lasting themes that will resonate with me a few months for now, but who gives a shit? Better better than perfect!

  • A Post Written On Bus 53 While Opposite The Buff Chinese Guy With A Zangief Beard

    A Post Written On Bus 53 While Opposite The Buff Chinese Guy With A Zangief Beard

    Tokyo Skytree, Floor 450, Mar 23

    That’s right, fuck the 6 year streak of post titles that lengthen by one every year.

    Scoot over a bit. I’m cramped in my seat. I know. It’s one of those seat arrangements where 2 benches face each other, there should be enough space.

    That point would be rendered moot if you were to look up to witness the Buff Chinese Guy With A Zangief Beard. He’s seated opposite me.

    Don’t look NOW, you fucking idiot. He knows we’re talking about him. You used the words “Buff Chinese Guy” with “A Zangief Beard”. Fine. WE used the words, “Buff Chinese Guy” with “A Zangief Beard”.

    How am I supposed to know if he’s looking at us? I’m not looking at him.

    No duh that’s why I wrote this post. I stopped wasting my time playing Tsum Tsum because 1) there was no more visible progress in that game, which I had been playing all day, 2) playing Tsum Tsum looks like I’m sneakily filming the Buff Chinese Guy with a Zangief Beard and 3) he looks like he could suplex me into the wheelchair bay if I were to do 2).

    You aren’t saying shit, but I know you are agreeing with me that the Zangief Beard is certainly interesting. And that look is asking several questions.

    Why talk about his race? Chinese guys can’t grow beards beyond a Fu Manchu.

    Why buff? To emphasise how if I were to film his Zangief beard, he’d reach over, grab my shirt and suplex me into the wheelchair bay.

    I’ve NEVER seen ANYONE with a beard this three-pronged and shoulder-resting as he. The cherry on top is that he’s Chinese.

    I just want to watch his beard. I want to witness how it brambles and trails from his undefined chin, and how the roads and avenues of facial hair cruise down his neck to his shoulders and chest, under the canopy of an army singlet, exiting the freeway of his shorts onto his furred knees, pointing toward mine, a causeway of ape to man, hairy limbed to bald legged.

    I wonder if he is thinking of me, my person shuffling in the seat uncomfortably as I avoid his eyes. I wonder what a beard feels like – I wonder if he washes it after brushing his teeth.

    I wonder if his parents abhor it, I wonder if his girlfriend loves him for it, and pulls on it in during frenzied climaxes. I wonder if his identity is the beard, if the beard is a depressive defeat from time, or if it stems from genetic abnormality, or if it’s just cool.

    I wonder if my high distinction was a fluke, back in Sec 3, when I took the UNSW Creative Writing exam. I wonder why it has followed me, a speck of glitter on my shoe that reminds me that I AM someone who can write, but chose not to.

    I know it was a choice to hold onto this tiny label, as an I am better than you, but I wonder if it is time to let go of the High Distinction. I wonder how many more labels I have foisted upon myself, glittering when I meet my potential and blinding my eyes whenever I don’t. How do you let go of all of them? They are a mass, an ugly mass of shoulds and potentials, only discoverable when you put your face really really close and discover in blinding, seething realisations that you are not an actor, great improviser, fast coder, etc. Etc. Etc.

    —

    Oh my god I was going to alight the bus and he grabbed me.

    Instead of suplexing me into the wheelchair bay into a 76 combo finisher, he passed me my wallet, which had slipped out my pocket, because I was squirming, because his hairy Zangief thighs (/positive) were right in front of mine, so actually it was his fault, so I guess I don’t need to thank him for what was essentially his responsibility.

    And that’s how you start a new hiatus.

  • I’m Back, I’m Back, I’m Back (Twenty-Eight)

    I’m Back, I’m Back, I’m Back (Twenty-Eight)

    Written 23rd Sept 2022

    This is kind of alarming, because there have been multiple times when I told myself that I would write something on this here blog, and suddenly it’s a year since my last birthday post.

    If you’re a fan of thematic repetition, I’m currently transferring files to my hard drive. (I was zipping files last year. You can literally just click the previous post button. I can’t be bothered.)

    28 feels like a fuck closer to 30. Like those giant buckets at a water park that fill up so slowly.

    Once these buckets of age tip over, BLAM! You’re youngish again at 30.

    I’m slated to be part of this event called [REDACTED because it’s quite a unique name that is easily searchable] , held on the VRChat platform.

    Basically, 10 Singaporean and 10 Korean artists were given 6 months to create world-based art / art-based worlds on the platform, and us at JUDE Studios are like the technological advisors or something?

    Earlier in Jan, I even led a workshop for them to learn how to make worlds in VRChat, as well as how to use Unity.

    Naturally, they all waited till this week to finish their projects, because they’re artists. And-

    What? Oh.

    Yes. I haven’t quit yet.

    During ICT in Feb, everyone asked me the same thing.

    “Eh I thought you were gonna quit last year?”

    😡

    I kept saying that I would, but…

    30 minutes left. What a way to start 28.

    1st Oct

    It’s

    21st Oct, Tiong Bahru MRT towards Clementi

    It’s? What the fuck did I even want to write on the 1st?

    I had gastric twice, once on Sept 22nd and once two weeks after.

    I thought it was a stomach cramp, like a muscle spasm found its way into my daily routine.

    This is a legit remedy: Potato Juice.

    If you feel like someone decked you in the stomach, but the world froze at the decking part and the concave bean part of your stomach was wrapped around this flaming fist of pain, Potato Juice.

    Not potato soup. Juice.

    It works like this.

    Potato Juice (1 pax)

    Get at least 4 small potatoes or 2 large ones.

    If in extreme pain, don’t worry about peeling them. Wash them and scrub them a little at least.

    Now, dice them into manageable chunks, or strips, about a quarter thick of a chunky fry.

    Throw these into a blender and blend them till you get a mush. That’s right. Raw Potato Juice.

    Now, pour the slush into a sieve and strain this into a bowl or plate. Keep doing this, and pressing the slush into the sieve for more Juice, until the slush becomes dryish.

    Here’s the hard part. Wait till the Juice settles. The level of cloudiness is up to you, but I don’t know what. The hard part is waiting while your stomach tries to contort itself into a fleshknot. Listen to my mother and don’t call the ambulance.

    Done? Good. Now drink the clearer bit of the Potato Juice. You could drink the starch at the bottom if you want, but I don’t know what that does to or for you.

    If everything is good, you should be at ease enough to stop leaking snot and tears into your family sofa, and be able to fetal position yourself to sleep in cold sweat.

    Repeat the next day, first thing in the morning. Avoid sour or spicy food and coffee.

    Anyway, the [REDACTED] event went well.

    I was pretty annoyed when they anxiously came up to me, virtually, to do last minute (like literally, 15 mins before the event) changes.

    I realised my mom’s own anxieties have inculcated this feeling of “I don’t want to be bothered by YOUR emotions” from me, because it’s become my main source of annoyance in other people.

    28th of October, walking along National Gallery

    One of the first few Fridays which I didn’t need to go for an event so I’m taking a walk in the city.

    In hopes that I’ll finish this by today I have elected to use text to speech, wait no comma speech to text. There are issues of course, like having to correct myself in the middle of speaking to texting, but all in all it’s a lot more ellipsis… stream of consciousness?

    I recently installed MyFitnessPal, which I saw up and down to not use because I told my mom that it was obsessive. However it turns out is easier to use and if I’m going to track my expenses I might as well track how much shit I’m putting in my body? Right?

    Now this is going to sound a little, desperate, but hear me out. A lot of this desperation, comes from the idealism, of having a partner to be the one who has a bareback dress while you’re walking along the city streets. And by you I mean i.Then the question is, why am I trying to walk along the street to create situations where I get to walk into – – – – -? And framing the question like that really opens a whole can of worms because you know the answer is that you want an opportunity to tell her that you would like to go on a date with her.

    The other answer is because the more you walk the more stupid shit you can put in your body . That’s what MyFitnessPal tells you anyway. You were so close to a deficit every single day and all it takes is to eat less shit. Who’d a thunk it?

    30 Oct

    Reading Either/Or by Elif Batuman.

    Decided that if I wanted to write something interesting, I’d have to put this ancient draft down.

    My opportunity to tell “her” that I want to go on a date is coming up. The idea is to not let it fall onto your lap, but to climb there in the first place.

    See you guys in my next post!

    P. S. I had gastric again yesterday; the solution is to buy Blackmores Stomach Settlers (1 pack of 15 for 15 dollars, but 2 packs for 20 at 7-11 now) and drink Teh Halia. Saved.

  • No Truce With The Furies (Twenty-seven)

    Harbourfront, That One Self-care Day

    Section written on 9 Oct

    My knees are pretty busted. They began hurting about three weeks ago, when I got a sharp pain a day after a 5km run.

    Of course then, I’m out walking now. I feel tightly wound from being indoors all day and today being a Saturday makes it worse.

    (more…)
  • Fruit Wine by the River

    Fruit Wine by the River

    MRT from Woodlands towards Jurong East

    Rory and I met on Sunday evening. Earlier that day, I came home from improv training and laid on my bed with the familiar sense of raw anxiety.

    During BMT, when we’d queue in formation at Pasir Ris Bus Interchange to wait for our buses to come take us to the ferry terminal, I’d be breathless and giggly and I’d say “wow I’m so excited???” and I would find out in uni that I had anxiety.

    When I met her, she was sat next to the river. I sat down too and we made small talk, while I tried to seal my throat with my tonsils to stop my heart from doing that thing they do in Prison Break.

    4 canned fruit wines later, we got into really uncomfortable conversation territory where I asked her about “us” again, specifically lamenting how our Telegram conversations seemed so… Lame now.

    She was upset, telling me that she thought we went over this already, that she thought our small talk was already going very well and that she was tired of having The Talk every time.

    I was morose, of course, but somehow we started to see how we both wanted to reconnect again, and how the weird awkward Telegram convos were there because she wanted to draw boundaries, to stop me from having feelings and making things weird again.

    We started laughing a lot about the absurdity of the odd push/pull and how we did miss hanging out.

    She told me how hurtful it was to feel like the second banana (I was hopelessly enamoured by XM when I asked her out last year) and I apologised.

    I told her about how confusing it was for me, when she said she used to like me and said the opposite the next time we met and she apologised as well.

    We stopped being so guarded, and I started to tell her how I really wanted to just be friends again. Well, be friends again first, if it mattered, and she agreed.

    I promised to not talk about anything like this for the next year and that I’d assume that she’d never date me ever, which she replied with “I wouldn’t say ever…” but I told her to shut the fuck up and let me focus on the friendship first.

    I think we can begin hanging out and just talking shit. I sometimes fear having nothing to say, but I think things aren’t like that for now.

    I think our convo’s back to normal. We talked about booking driving lessons. I smiled the whole time.

    I don’t know. That feels like… a lot. Honesty really does a whole lot. I don’t know. I still have feelings for her. But I’m not judging my feelings. I’ll just let them stay next to me while I remember how much I love having a friend back.

    Oh yeah, Gratitude Lab 1.0 went so fucking well, you guys.

    Ping really just… Made a whole fucking workshop which people came for, and took part in wholeheartedly, and left feeling absolutely full.

    It’s Gratitude Lab 2.0 next week, then the real exhibition setup shit is gonna start.

    God, I’m fucking just… I don’t know.

    Be here now.

  • More Than You Can Chew

    More Than You Can Chew

    My Room, Pasir Ris

    I’m zipping two huge fucking files, it’s 1:43AM and meh, might as well write something here, right?

    Xue Min (my bestie) and I have somehow succeeded in submitting some proposal to NAC and RP.

    One unfortunate day, the RP people messaged us and whoop de fucking doo, we’re now Resident Artists for the “Community Arts@RP” residency.

    It just occurred to me that anyone curious about that residency could just Google it and find my blog. Welp.

    Concurrently, I also have a shiny role as a Multimedia Designer for Bound’s next project as well as their next next project.

    I realised there’s no need to zip shit, I could just copy the whole folder into my HDD which would do just fine.

    Anyway.

    This whole residency business has made me realise a couple of things, which I will present to you in point form.

    • Your next crisis is always the worst one ever.
    • Ergo, every crisis is manageable.
    • Anyone can do art.
    • To handle bureaucracy and red tape, allow for 50% more time than required.
    • Everyone is trying to help you. Let them.
    • Every time you feel a spike of anxiety at a new complication, realise that you have been through this before. Tell the spike, thank you, I’ve got this, okay?
    • Your friends are more willing to travel to Woodlands at 9am on a Saturday with only 5 days’ notice than you think.

    Okay. My new method of “just copy it” saved me half an hour of zipping and then copying, and I predict another half hour of copying back and unzipping. God, I’m a genius.

    I don’t know who’s reading this, but if you want to do a workshop to learn about mindfulness and expression of gratitude, visit bit.ly/GratitudeLab1.

    Will post more soon, okay bye love you

  • 10 Years and a Snapshot

    10 Years and a Snapshot

    Brunswick Pool Hall (defunct), The Cathay

    Dear Time Traveller,

    This blog was started on 10 April 2011. Happy decade years old! I will dust you off and write more often.

    Welcome to Checkpoint May 2021. We’ve just reentered our second Circuit-Breakerish… Thing. We cannot dine-in, group sizes are 2 pax and you can’t visit Ping’s House.

    (more…)
  • “I Wouldn’t Die For You”

    “I Wouldn’t Die For You”

    Beachside Training Ground, Woodlands

    It came as banter in a group chat.

    “I wouldn’t jump in front of a train for you”

    When I read it it felt factual, stoic, cold, too cold.

    I felt, in those double grey ticks, everyone’s judgement and pity.

    This week’s been… Exhausting.

    Work’s been difficult. Love’s been difficult. I feel like a shit employee. The flavour of the month is “unlovable”.

    I go to work late. When my boss manages me, I get frustrated easily and defensively. When I go home, I fear my boss firing me because I am not a good employee.

    The Courage to Be Happy means that I have to give up what isn’t working… To reach the next stage of happiness.

    I laid on the couch, grimacing at my phone. I wanted to cry at the injustice of having someone not want to die for me.

    Fucker! I’d die for you, I thought. What’s this imbalance? What’s this humiliation?

    What does that then make me? A die-r for someone who was a wouldn’t-die-r for me?

    Did this version of you in my head, one that was incredibly tight with me, metaphorically die?

    Didn’t I tell you yesterday that I was despondent and extremely lonely? How’s a message like “I wouldn’t die for you” gonna fit into that narrative? Am I just a little less safe at the MRT from now on?

    What if I told you all this? Would it guilt you into being more likely to die for me? Should I take out insurance for the both of us? What if I died in front of you? Would that make you regret not dying for me? Would a train slow to a nonlethal speed after hitting my body?

    Was it ever about dying for me? Because nobody else occupies that spot other than your brother and mother. You wouldn’t die for anybody else, right? You promise?

    Do I then, likewise, move you down the ladder of importance? As an act of revenge?

    Or as an act of realising that I am putting you on too high a pedestal, and maybe, just maybe, we could love each others’ companies without having to consider jumping onto MRT tracks?

    It’s time to reassess the rungs of the ladder. What would someone at rung 2 look like? Or is everyone either in rung 1 or 10? What happened to my boundaries?

    Are you at the top only because I’m afraid that your joy and support will be gone once I focus on other things?

    But you already are focusing on your own life too, while I’m making my entire one about you…

    Am I afraid that once I lower you to non-dying-for levels, or more reason levels, you would plummet to rung 10 because I am so bad at drawing boundaries?

    Later on you’d say in the chat, as a reply to another message I’d wrote, “where did you go? how come I don’t know”

    And I would see pieces of myself, and pieces of the website about “enmeshment” and “co-dependency”, and I would have bubbling thoughts in my hopeful little brain about how I could somehow use your fear of being abandoned by me to make you assuage my own fear of being abandoned by you-

    “I wouldn’t die for you. ” it rang true and true.

    The ouroburos spins. Life goes on. You live, you die, but not for me.

    Jesus fucking Christ, my friends. I am 27 years old. This stupid friendship and abandonment shit is what adults fear too?

    Maturity is a lie, everyone just doesn’t admit they’re afraid.

    Fuck, time to pay my taxes. Literally. I have no idea how to ask for my pay slip.

  • My Family, Everywhere I Go

    My Family, Everywhere I Go

    It’s reservist time again.

    Reservist feels like an odd… wacky… social experiment where all of us poorly adjusted, middle-aging-towards men exhibit all kinds of weird behaviours.

    I wouldn’t call these behaviours “toxic masculinity”, because I found myself on the giving and receiving end of that stick. (gay joke)

    There’s this guy in my bunk called Gabriel.

    For some reason, his actions provoke the ever-fucking ire out of me (I’m literally ignoring what he’s saying right now, with my earphones on and typing into this phone)

    He’s like if God decided that Hercules didn’t need so many trials, and instead mashed all my traumas into a single being-

    He hovers over me, backseat-advising as I attempt to practice assembling and disassembling a chainsaw.

    He says, and I say this as someone attempting to be compassionate, the dumbest fuckingest unnecessariest shit ever.

    When anyone in an area asks a question, aimed toward or away from him, he would answer in the smarmiest fucking way, especially if he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. His answers are like stockbrokers’ advice, statistically worse than a coin flip.

    He acts out in stupid ways, like driving recklessly, giving stupid threats that can be dismantled by calling his shit out and forcing himself into conversation.

    He pays off his debt of being socially cloying with literal gifts of chocolate and beer, an act which I absolutely hate but accept anyway.

    I’d be content with ending this here, but for my hero’s journey to be complete, I need to sink my teeth into my judgement. I need to bare my fangs of projection of inner hatred and trauma.

    Gabriel is one of the angels sent from heaven to tell me exactly that.

    God will pass me my metaphorical ticket to heaven (enlightenment), if I were to realise that Gabriel is not a dick, cunt or asshole or any part in between.

    He is just what he is; a guy who tries too hard for my attention, and I withhold it from him…

    Just as the people I crush after and try hard for, “withhold” it from me.

    Gabriel exhibits so many features of my brother as well: Anxious attempts to answer any questions posed to the family, to soothe a chaotic father. Cloying, awkward, inauthentic ways to attempt to bond, which are still applaudable as attempts to bond. False nonchalance in a bid to appear mature.

    And I tend to… unfairly… (you don’t know how hard it is for me to admit that) translate so many of his utterances and “troll-speak” into malicious, vile words that are personal.

    My bunk mates don’t see as much a problem in him as I do, which brings to call something Ping mentioned a day ago, that everyone is triggered by different things and it’s okay to disagree on the nature of someone else.

    Believe me, I feel like a cunt for writing all that shit about him above, and I feel like performing desecration just for writing his homophobic, showoff-ish, piece-of-lying-ass into this post.

    Under all the layers of grungy paint, is someone who is not my brother or father, who is actually real and wants to be my friend and is confused as to why I’m so cold towards him because he offered me advice on how to shack up the chain on the chainsaw.

    I took melatonin and I’m gonna crash, will update later? Reservist sucks cos I’m tired and the lack of female figures makes this such a ripe ground for male trauma.

    My next step is to then listen to his bullshit. And understand who he is beyond someone who exists so superficially similarly as my brother that I dread being in the same room as him.