good read

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/dont-date-a-girl-who-reads/

blinding light

the more you show, the lesser you are.

my deficiencies are glaringly highlighted each time i find works that i admire for hours on end. still not good enough. no where near in fact.

there will come a time when you find yourself opening up and awakening to another level. but not long after will you realise that you have in reality, and in the harshness of truth, barely progressed from where you originally stood.

recent dreams

i dreamt that i have a box filled with rolls of unused black and white film. i was excited.

i dreamt that there were a couple of fleas around me, and a tiny, toe size, rabbit next to me. in irritation from the fleas, i stamped on the rabbit and felt it's tiny skull under my shoe, before flicking it under the sofa with a sheepish smile.

some time ago, i dreamt that alex's brother, alvin, died in an accident and i was sad.

i dreamt of angel. a little surreal.

my life is dark and morbid.

3v2

played soccer today after months and months and it felt so good, despite being only 3 v 2, or playing with complete strangers, or the rain...

and despite the fact that i lao sai 3 times today, or that i've had the shits for almost 3 weeks now. 3 weeks!!! wtf...

Roy Hodgson

Roy Hodgson's pre-match interview:

"...if we could knock Manchester United out of the Cup on their home ground. It would be a remarkable coup."

a remarkable coup indeed.

no fuckin pride.

i've been through numerous frustrating spells of various liverpool managers and have stood by them all. if nothing, they had at least spirit and confidence in the last beaten team they had put out.

For once and hopefully the last, Roy, good riddance.

~~~~~~~~~~

Update:
Hours after this entry: Roy Hodgson was replaced by Kenny Dalglish.
Rob Hughes' column in Sunday Times also quoted Roy's 'remarkable coup' comment, thereby confirming what i've suspected all along, that I Am Awesome.

tart

kong xu

hollow.
very hollow.
and i know this feeling only too well.

really need a change, in all aspects.

what an ego day

funnie how things all come together sometimes.
suddenly received three different wedding photographer requests tonight; from zhiyong's sis-in-law joanne, iris - for her AD, and an overseas (!!) invite for diana's cousin's wedding in Kuching, Sarawak.

the words made me blush... shall allow my ego to float around for tonight.

I accepted iris' but humbly and regretfully declined the other two, honored as i am. i still feel bad for turning down yewjin some time ago too, but wedding dinners isn't really my cup of tea and not something i'm confident about. better not.

this one made me feel pro.. ahahah. and make me look forward to getting retrenched so that i have an inexcusable reason to do photography full time. hmmmm.
i'm feeling a lil sick today and yesterday though. zzz

Wing Thigh holdings

"one ayam penyet, take away. can you give me breast or thigh. thanks."

... short pause.

"you want drumstick? or wing?"

"no i want breast or thigh please."

his brows furrowed deeply.

"you want drumstick or wing?"

"no i want chicken breast or the thigh"

fed up, he...

"YOU WANT HAND".. slapped his arm.. "OR LEG??" .. slapped his huge ass.

unable to go on, i pointed to the nearest piece of chicken and said, "give me this"

he took a random piece of chicken and proceed to penyet it.

sorry

catch me as i fall
a star you said i am
in my fallen grace
hold me,
in safer hands

words

i miss writing.
words.
too long i've gone without putting them down.
this year, will i start again?

words
~~~~~
it's only words, and words are all i have,
to take your heart away.

2010 in figures

days spent overseas - 54

countries visited - 7

friends (unique) overseas with - 24

wedding invites received - 10

cameras in possession - 6

friends on facebook - 378

friends on facebook whom i've met for at least 5 min - 132

photos taken (excluding film, small cameras and deleted photos) - 5916

feeling lousy tonight.
and then i remember, quite a few nights.
who am i to make you down?

whatever will become of
the butterfly with clipped wings?

you twat.

do you remember how a love song feels like?

Are You Lonesome Tonight?

i feel alone in the world tonight. like a speck of dust, not with a current beneath me, or a feather, without the proverbial wind beneath the wings.

this is the sort of nights, where soulful melodies come to life. the sort of nights, you feel smaller than the chair beneath you. Where are the people around me? what if my life stands still for the next 50 years?

i dreamt of my auntie some nights ago. i was at an old block of flat, rushing out, late. I went past my auntie's unit. she called out to me to have some porridge. i was late, but i went in anyway, probably because i haven't had my auntie's porridge for the longest time.

this music is putting me to sleep.

Multimedia 4 - 7 uFO

For the first time in 2 months, today's game felt more like the soccer that we used to know than the rigid and laborious motions that we have been going through since the league's inception.

Well, from a personal point of view at least.

Zijing, ANg and I started on the bench against the team whom we set our hearts on beating right at the start of the season, the team whose last season's stats read: 18 played, 18 lost, points 0. If we can muster only two wins for the whole of this season, tonight has to be that night; the other being the return leg in weeks to come.

Edwin finally broke his scoring duck in the early minutes with the first goal courtesy of a heavy deflection which he nonetheless celebrated with both arms raised like a champion along with a whooping celebratory cry which stunned east coast park for a moment.

Multimedia equalized. 1-1.

Edwin then swiftly followed up with a second goal and a similar celebratory routine. Having just recovered from the earlier shock, the star studded bench of Zijing, ANg and I managed to politely applaud his committed celebrations while we were also impressed with how generous the opponent's defence was.

A hat-trick was completed and a fourth scored by someone but i shall skip the details for i want to quickly get to the crux of this match report which is basically about me. HT 1-4.

Following my demand to the uFO team captain Sean, i started the second half as a striker for the first time and what a season changing demand it turned out to be. Our keeper Xianming also strangely got ordered to take off his gloves and be my strike partner. Our combined weight is about 1/3 that of the opponent's imported defender. note the word, defender, in its singular form.

Anyway I scored. Little XM managed to squeeze the ball out of the jungle of ang moh legs to me and I thumped it, though a little less emphatically than i would have liked, into the top right corner, giving the keeper No Chance at all.

The best moment - there were many from me, if u haven't realised - came when we broke away in an attack. I received the ball at the halfway line with my back to the goal, made a half turn to my right where i spotted gay Brian running for once.

At this crucial, split second moment, Alex if it had been him, would have fumbled the ball into the sideline. Edwin would have stopped, turn for 3 seconds and shoot the empty space where the ball used to be 2.79 seconds ago. But me, no. Because I am Tricky Toh, my legs instinctively made some semblance of a fake (by dropping my right shoulder - turning my body - yet not committing my center of gravity in that direction) to my right, hence drawing my marker away from me, while I nearly simultaneously pulled the ball with my left leg to the opposite direction, and in one fluid motion, swiveled and made an Awesome through ball down the center, straight into gay Brian's path for a one-on-one with the keeper and he managed not to miss.

I thought a humble hi-ten will do but gay Brian insisted on giving me a bear hug much to my disgust and i refused to kiss him. I also gave our gay captain Sean a hi-ten through the netting after he insisted on it for ten minutes.

I did a few more brilliant moves, such as flicking the ball in one touch for Zijing to take a pot shot, another fake to create space for myself to shoot, making countless runs in and out of their defence etc etc. you get an idea of the amount of brilliance on display.

Unsurprisingly, I scored a second goal thanks to my intelligent reading of ANg's movement and anticipation of his cheeky back heel, which i admit is equally brilliant, before killing the ball with one touch, bringing it into the opponent's D, held off the onrushing defender and placed my shot low and sharp into the keeper's far corner. All on my useless left foot no less.

quite brilliant, even for my usual brilliant self.

We conceded a couple more silly goals along the way though i had absolutely no recollections of how those goals went in, apart from stand-in keeper Alex's imitation of Paul Robinson/Robert Green when he caught a tame shot but let it trickle across the line somehow. good stuff.

Final score: Multimedia 4 - 7 uFO with me playing a hand in all our 3 second half goals.

We all play for the team of course, unless your name starts with gay, but it's such brilliant moments sometimes that make the game special and leave lasting memories in your heart - I still remember the first goal I scored in AHS' basketball courts some 13 years ago, a series of one-twos with Jizheng on the right of the court before i slotted it pass the last man. these are the memories and unbridled joy that make you want to play the game till the day you no longer can walk.

Bid me sweet dreams in my saccharine sweat tonight

Yup i haven't showered.

My first fan

I was strangely honored by the admiration of my framed up photo by a cleaning auntie at the foodcourt yesterday.

While forcing the horrible char siew rice into my mouth, she puzzlingly came over to my table - there were no dirty utensils to clear - though if she had asked for my half empty plate I would have gladly surrendered it.

She tilted her head left and right at the large photo frame on the chair before finally asking if I had shot or painted or bought it - before showering me with great gusto of admirations at my finely taken piece of art.

Sell you for $80 ah auntie.

all the blah blah blahs

2 months and a few weeks - that's how long this blog hasn't been brilliant for.

blaming on the long hiatus, words ain't exactly flowing at the moment, the mind dull with atrophy.

and now, more than before, i feel the need to feed my soul.

but first, the bed beckons.

2010

has been a pretty fucked up year so far.

possibly the only positively interesting thing thus far was meeting the author J.M. Coetzee on a ferry trip to Lamma Island in Hong Kong.

(before knowing who he was)
me: I've read that book - nodding towards the novel next to him, Boyhood - A Memoir

him: I'm impressed. what do you think of it.

me: I find it dark and morbid.

him: I'm the author. (and made an action of jumping out of the ferry)

me: are you sure? I dun believe.
.

In the end I still wasn't quite sure if it was really him, although he told me about a new book that he's writing and showed me the manuscript. it's about a girl who fell asleep on a train and woke up to find no one on board and yet the train was still moving. the essence was of the girl reliving her childhood dreams/memories in present moment.

that's as far as i got, before the ferry reaches Lamma Island and we took a snapshot together before parting way.

the thing that bugged me was that i didn't tell him how much i like his works, even the dark and morbid ones, like Boyhood, Duskland, the Barbarian something and The Life and Times of Michael K which i have quoted before in this blog before. and i rate him so much higher than Paulo Coelho, the reason of his mention is because their books are always placed side by side on the bookshelves.

Another day, another trip, perhaps.

Hello world!

i'm still alive and functional.

an accidental glance reveals that the number of followers for this blog has dramatically doubled to two, and the two seems to be engaged in an unspoken face off to see who can go the longest without writing.

Things that i haven't done for the longest time - and would jolly well love to.

1. blog

2. write about my trips.

3. put up my backlog of photos since early last year. or is it last last year?

4. play pool

5. watch soccer at tham's

6. resume sunday soccer. or any other day

7. run

8. bowl

9. dive

10. reach work on time, before my boss and my new boss, who sits left and right of me.