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.

In Bruges

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780536/

It was nearly a year ago when i was travelling around Cambodia and ended up in Phnom Penh twice as part of my journey to nowhere. On the first occasion I stayed in a $3 USD 3m x 3m cubicle at a lakeside guesthouse. on the second arrival, i tried hard to avoid a guesthouse which has been syndicated by all, and i do mean all the tuk tuk and motorcycles in the bustling city, believing that something must be wrong with it. After walking around for hours with my eyes glued to my lonely planet map i finally gave in and checked myself into OK Guesthouse and demanded the cheapest $2 USD a night room.

At night after having explored a very large and practical joke called the Olympic Stadium, witnessed the single largest and unorganized mass dance i've seen in my life, warned off by a well meaning auntie and an aerobics instructor about bad boys who will rob me of my camera - i'm still at the stadium, and survived a sudden downpour, i retreated back to OK Guesthouse for dinner.

It was the kind of guesthouse with a cosy interior stacked with books and dvds, a very decent temporal lodge for a melting pot of nationalities and one Singaporean. Over dinner I set my eyes on the tv where a film was already playing and remained at the dining area still transfixed to the screen long after the last of my banana milkshake had been sucked out, and so did the rest of the United Nations. Bloody good film i thought to myself but promptly failed to register the title in my head... Tried as i did, i couldn't recall any searching clue of the films until moments ago as i browsed through imdb's top 250 again and caught the somewhat familiar looking dvd cover.

In Bruges! Written and directed by Martin McDonagh.

Lovely night.

Lovely night until i remember the incessant chattering by this fuckin retard sitting behind me while i was catching The Tunnel at Cinema Europa. For the third or fourth movie in a row i got pissed by idiots who dunno how to keep their mouth shut in cinemas. Cinemas should wage a new campaign against them.

it irks me that i can't make masterpieces out of everything, yet it's the hard truth that i must face.

in fact, have i even created anything that steals your eyes for half a minute?

i wonder.

hmm.

anyway here's a bit Yogyakarta.

god's will.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1009242/1/.html

The death toll from a week of catastrophes across Asia-Pacific neared 2,000 on Sunday as rescuers raced to reach the survivors of a series of earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons.

"This is a test from God and we accept it, but we're angry and sad that help hasn't come,"

So are you angry with the government, or god?

if it's god's who is testing you, wouldn't god be in control of when help arrives?

Or when it doesn't arrive?

Since he is almighty, and great, and hey, god's just testing you.

And you accepted it.

If I've offended any religious souls, i'm sorry that i'm not in the least bit sorry, because it's probably god's will that he trained me as an engineer.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1009335/1/.html

This is a time to thank God not only for those who are lost, but the rest who are still alive

Thank god for those who are lost?

You've really lost me now.

ohhhh brilliant

i have a blog, called ohh-brilliant, just that it's not so brilliant these days.

time hasn't been kind. i've been kept busy, with a seemingly endless streams of tiny conquests to achieve. some too minor for words, others mere pulses to maintain this semblance of life.

life. mine has carried on its daily business in recent time with remarkable predictability, right down to the bus - the one that means i'm late - that i catch every god damn morning.

am i still hanging on to long standing illusions? i might be. or meaningless shenanigans? most probably. could that be the self inflicted definition of my life? i'll wait for hindsight to arrive.

so that's it for now. no clever punch lines to to lift the gloom, nor brilliant last words to string all thoughts to make some sense.

a series of unfortunate events

this is just about the worst night i can remember over the past 1.5 years.
i'll need to call in sick in the morning.

The favourite lad from Spain

If there's one singular, defining mistake that Rafael Benitez has made in his much vaunted managing career, it would be the one made in the summer of 2008, when he attempted to sell Xabi Alonso for Gareth Barry. A Barry for an Alonso. A painter's roller for an artist's brush.

One year on, the saddest news of this summer is the one that we've pleaded so hard against, but materialize it did, and with it, departs half of our annual league ambitions.

Adios Alonso. It's gonna be a paler fields of Anfield Road.

Taking the plunge

Hello blog, it's been a while hasn't it.

Occupied. That's the one word to describe my last few months of existence. No need for much details now but it's Tues and I'm home because of a virus and my new computer is down with a virus as well. Productivity is down to negative value and hopefully not too much have been infected or affected.

I'm in the midst of installing Windows 7 over my old infected XP. Let's hope it works out.

Michelin Baby Little

wah lau eh

crybaby

those michelin baby arms

those strong fingers. i'll train her to pose with the tv remote next

already showing signs of being a world class couch potato

rolling good time in the crib

still working on it

ah flowers.

Oh Liverpool.

On the back of the penultimate game of the 2008-09 season which culminated in a 0-2 win over West Brom, and relegating them.

We played like crap today, and at one point Carragher got so pissed with Arbeloa he looked like he wanna beat the daylight out of him too, but settled for a few shoves after Alonso mediated. They are all teammates by the way. It's disappointing in the fact that we didn't get a 3rd goal. That would have been the 7th straight game we scored 3 or more goals, extending the record of 6 games from the current streak.

I dun usually do this but hey, why not. This is about the best team we've had since the swashbuckling, though sometimes just buckling, flamboyant days of '96. Here's my first XI, and prolly Rafa's too, in a 4-2-3-1 formation:

Pepe Reina

Alvaro Arbeloa, Jamie Carragher, Martin Skrtel, Emiliano Insua

Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano

Dirk Kuyt, Steven Gerrard, Yossi Benayoun

Fernando Torres

And good bye Sami Hyypia, it's been a pleasure.

hello again

3.40am, i gotta be up and running in less than 5 hours' time. yet i dun care. scrolling through, i think i kinda miss my blog. hello hello, here's a h-u-g from the keyboard.

work has been sucking up great portions of my life, but i've been generally happy these days. and did i mention about my long trip? was a blast. hanoi, halong, cat ba, lao cai, sapa, bangkok, ayutthaya, manado, lembeh straits.. along the way i know i've touched the lives of at least a family in sapa, and seen my mimic octopus in the fabled seas of lembeh straits.

anyway in one of those self reflecting days i noted down the list of places that i've yet to account for since last year

kinabalu, lata cemeron, hk, macau, cambodia, malacca, taman negara and now vietnam thailand and indonesia. some day i'll gather enough strength and stamina to put the pics up.

but ZHIYONG UR PHOTOS ARE TAKING PRIORITY NOW, fret not.

alright, tmr looks set to be another long day of slogging and right now i'm best off tucked under the covers snoozing against rhythmic thunder from afar.

to show you that i'm really working on them

A Wedding

Sorry for the long wait, I'm still working on it old friend.
Dun worry, everything should be out by the time you have your wedding dinner.. haha.