surprised by joy

孤单北半球

用我的晚安陪你吃早餐

记得把想念存进扑满

我望着满天星在闪

听牛郎对織女说要勇敢

 

别怕我们在地球的两端

看我的问候骑着魔毯

飞用光速飞到你面前

要你能看到十字星有北极星作伴

 

少了我的手臂当枕头你习不习惯

你的望远镜望不到我北半球的孤单

太平洋的潮水跟着地球来回旋转

我会耐心地等随时欢迎你靠岸

 

少了我的怀抱当暖炉你习不习惯

E給你照片看不到我北半球的孤单

世界再大两颗真心就能互相取暖

想念不会偷懒我的梦通通給你保管

 

posted by Shi Ning @ 17:03 0 comments

after sunset one day

It's so hard to see the stars in Singapore, the night sky is always lighted. Last night, the sky seemed split down that tree-lined path. On the one side, it was a heavy dark blue fading into white light where it touched the rooftops and treetops, and on the other, it was a deep purple melting into a pinkish glow over the highest level of a pagoda. I don't think it's the setting sun, I know it! 

But what I want to remember is this- liang wan you mian, liang bei gan zhe shui, and a lamp with many rays of light.

And if I were your mirror mirror on the wall, I would tell you everyday even if you couldn't care to ask, that you're the dearest and finest of them all.

posted by Shi Ning @ 15:44

korean art film

There was a Korean art film on central last night. I’ve only watched one other such film on Malaysian TV the last time I went to visit, and last night’s show, as with the first one, moved me to tears. But both times, I could only cry after, when the TV was off and the lights were out. There’s something about these shows- I think it is the silence. The way each scene is depicted like a memory slipping out from the depths of a person’s mind, so that only certain details are attended to, and sends floods of emotion to fill each silent moment. And it’s overwhelming when afterwards you recall the beauty and sorrow of it.
 
I have plenty to say about both films, but not enough time right now, so I shall leave it for later.
 
On another, though not entirely unrelated, note, I feel anger and sadness and hurt.  Something of mine has gone missing; it has been lost for weeks now. And someone no longer has any time, to find it, for me.
 
If that sounds like self-pity it is not. I am grateful that I can look forward to meeting old friends tomorrow in my favourite school, and then a fond farewell to new ones back in office.
 
The pink flower standing in the bottle on my desk hasn’t wilted yet, and though I think it probably will over the weekend, it has lived a most beautiful, meaningful life!

posted by Shi Ning @ 05:17

...

The day before yesterday, was a new-found friend's last day at the office. She brought a bottle of Bailey's but I tasted none of it, because I waited an hour for real trade unionists (whose late appearance was so not worth the wait), and returned to the office quite annoyed. 
  
And her last day- so much romance! It all started with the mystery guy who delivered the mystery package in the morning. But she rushed off on an assignment and we were left guessing if it was more than a pr company's courier service, till we forgot. Of course, she did not, and it was when mid-afternoon came round and we were offered chocolates from the sweetest little book-box that all the gushing did start! A blue gift box and a red red rose, a copy of Byron's poetry, "passionate.romantic" says the cover, and a long long letter.
 
Embarrassment and what-do-I-do-nows aside, I'm sure she was plenty surprised and pleased. I told her one day I'll write of their story, which has been five years long but hasn't even started, and I will. And so her last day with us was the start of a new chapter with someone else. Not that it was really goodbye, as we shall all meet again for lunch tomorrow. :)

 
And yesterday, was a happy day. I love my parents so very much and just how many people can you find who love you so unconditionally?
 
I also thought about how I never really said farewell to my last school the way I did to the one before this. Is that a measure of love for the place? Anyway, it was nice to meet friends and acquaintances, in the same place I first met them.
 
One tutor I know has not grown bigger, but I think his smile is kinder. Another whom I'm so indebted to I could not find and I dread to tell him what I must tell him soon, hopefully he understands. I heard too that a friend has ended one love, I don't know whether to be glad or sad, (and I don't think I'm supposed to be either anyway), but I hope she'll find another soon.
 

Today, I thought about goodbyes and farewells. The thought of leaving for London gets drearier by the day.
 
I know, I know that I'll probably enjoy myself lots over there, that I'm lucky to have someone go all the way there with me, that it's all part of the package I chose. But how am I ever going to speak about everything I need to say to everyone I wish to speak to before I leave? And this includes my little sisters, who I sometimes don't see in a whole work week. :(
 
It's strange how when I'm still in this same place as all of them are, there's no pressing need to get in touch- one of those things I always tell myself I must do!, but never quite get round to doing. As though living in the same country means we'll meet someday, Singapore being as small as it is. I've realised by this time though, that it's not always true, given how many people have slipped out of my life, who might have been more to me if I'd put in the effort. But then again, how many people do I want to be part of my life? In any case, I know I'll miss my family- just thinking, how many pictures should I bring, should I get a webcam and a mike, should I... makes me feel a little sick.
 
I really should stop this, getting all homesick before I've even left (63 days till I fly). Hey, aren't people usually all excited and eager, and don't they look forward to going abroad? Not that I don't, surely, but I guess I just don't like saying goodbye, even for the shortest time. I'll have to learn.

posted by Shi Ning @ 10:08

Why.

We rode into town the other day,
Just me and my daddy.
He said I’d finally reached that age,
And I could ride next to him on a horse
That of course was not quite as wild.

We heard a crowd of people shouting,
And so we stopped to find out why.
There was that man that my dad said he loved,
But today there was fear in his eyes.

So I said, “Daddy, why are they screaming?
Why are the faces of some of them beaming?
Why is He dressed in that bright purple robe?
I bet that crown hurts Him more than He shows.
Daddy please, can’t you do something?
He looks as though He’s gonna cry.
You said He was stronger than all of those guys,
Daddy, please tell me why?
Why does everyone want Him to die?”

Later that day, the sky grew cloudy,
And Daddy said I should go inside.
Somehow he knew things would get stormy.
Boy was he right, but I could not keep from wondering
If there was something he had to hide.

So after he left, I had to find out.
I was not afraid of getting lost.
So I followed the crowds to a hill
Where I knew men had been killed,
And I heard a voice come from the cross.

And it said, “Father, why are they screaming?
Why are the faces of some of them beaming?
Why are they casting their lots for my robe?
This crown of thorns hurts me more than it shows.
Father please, can’t you do something?
I know that You must hear my cry.
I thought I could handle a cross of this size.
Father, remind me why,
Why does everyone want me to die?
Oh, when will I understand why?”

"My precious son, I hear them screaming.
I’m watching the face of the enemy beaming.
But soon I will clothe you in robes of my own.
Jesus, this hurts me much more than you know,
But this dark hour, I must do nothing,
Though I’ve heard your unbearable cry.
The power in your blood destroys all of the lies;
Soon you’ll see past their unmerciful eyes.
Look, there below, see the child
Trembling by her father’s side.
Now I can tell you why...
she is why you must die."

posted by Shi Ning @ 03:55

innocent kiss

you're cute and sweet and like it that way

What Sign of Affection Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

posted by Shi Ning @ 17:15

illness and suffering

My aunt has taken ill. Thinking she had a gastric problem, she went to the doctor only to find out that she had a tumour in her liver. Worse, they've found that there's a tumour in her colon too, and there's the huge possibility that it will be cancerous. As usual, all the signs were there, the blood which she mistook for a piles problem, the stomach pains which she dismissed. In illness, there's always a gloom that overtakes the whole family and my father is especially worried this time round. It shows plainly though he wouldn't ever mention it to us. I know he fears for my grandmother's health too, because this particular aunt of mine was her eldest daughter, who was always driving her to the market before the sun's up, who was probably her closest companion, visiting her morning, noon and night. And my grandmother is by nature a worrier, and also by nature a stubborn woman, (I think it's from her obstinate nature that she draws her strength)refusing to move out of the house, though it's empty save for her.

Unable to speak teochew, I talk too little to her to know if she still grieves my grandfather's death, though I think she does, and that my daddy does too. It doesn't help much, that he died of lung cancer, and that that came after an operation to remove a cancerous colon tumour. Nor does it help to sit here feeling helpless because they are all so far away in Malaysia, and work and school will not allow us to pack up to go up and be there.

So, the best we can do is still to pray and trust God. The urgency to share the gospel, to want them all to know the truth, to believe, to be saved, that urgency somehow never comes to you till something bad strikes. And now I pray with all my heart that she'll be well, that the family will remain well, that all will be well, that they might believe.

A friend questioned me about Christianity today, and the conversation started in the strangest way possible. I was glad for it and I've heard all her questions before, and so was not so much frustrated as much resigned that I cannot answer her to a satisfactory degree as she tries to rebutt everything I say, as she tries to dismiss my faith altogether. I understood the confusion and doubt, maybe even cynicism behind those questions, only if I told her that I too asked these questions but still believe and keep my faith, wouldn't she be even more confused?

posted by Shi Ning @ 16:52

random thoughts

Just occured to me that I started this intending to tell all I know, so that it might be a way of keeping in touch- if they'd like to know what's going on in my none too exciting life that is. But now that I'm posting without telling anyone to read, I quite like it and wonder whether if I should write differently, should I know of a potential reader.
 
Anyway, to explain my act of jumping on the proverbial bandwagon so very very late, this little journal will in no way be my personal diary. It shall be a means of jotting down interesting little things that happen, thoughts I wish to share and so on. I think I'm still rather afraid of some of the soul-baring I read, and the loneliness, bitterness, anger that exists behind some of the writings online. In any case some things,  I will still pencil away secretly in a brown book that I'll let no one read!

So really, does it matter who reads this? When I feel like telling someone that there's this page where I'd like to share snippets of my life, I'll do it. And who knows, this might prove to be my way of keeping in touch with friends out there. :)

posted by Shi Ning @ 17:55

gluttons square!

I finally had a proper dinner after work today, at gluttons square! With all the bright lights glowing in different colours above us, wooden tables, plastic stools, soggy tissue and lots and lots and lots of people, it really was buzzing with everybody's good moods and noisy stomachs, and the boring, old carpark just looked so happily, CNY-street-market-ly festive! (as I told the crazy colleague who hungrily trooped down with me) With such a mixed crowd it was easy enough to stand in the long snakey queues and just people-watch, so waiting for the food didn't spoil my appetite the tiniest bit, and in any case the cai dao gui (dialect is so hard to anglocise) was well worth it! Even the raindrops slipping through the tree leaves into the mutton soup we shared wasn't bad at all. =) Maybe I should have a proper dinner more often. But what about getting in shape and shedding some weight, before the onset of that dreaded freshman-fifteen syndrome then? Oh dear me.

posted by Shi Ning @ 17:35

of love, war and a mandolin

I was initially reluctant to pick up Captain Corelli's Mandolin, fearing a soppy war-time love story, but it's a "wonderful, hynoptic novel of fabulous scope and tremendous iridescent charm" to quote Joseph Heller, who wrote Catch-22 . After all the book jacket says, "and you can quote me"! Louis De Bernieres is astonishingly funny, and his words slip between joy and grief and mythology and history, politics and.. I don't know, pscyhology? Oh, how to put it? It mayn't be the bestest book I've read, but it's the first wonder since Brideshead Revisited I think. Which perhaps reflects on how much reading I've done. But Captain Corelli's Mandolin? Who would have believed it!

posted by Shi Ning @ 17:40

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

posted by Shi Ning @ 13:57