Happiness is a fleeting thing, like dragonflies darting in and out of your view. They dance among the tall grass, glimmers of change in an otherwise static familiar.
But they let you catch sight of them, and you’re caught by the splendor. A burst of color snares your gaze, and disappears instantly into the swaying green.
But the warmth stays, a ripple of happiness through your field of emotions, and you end up looking for more dragonflies.
There I was, seated beside you, in a white room with a white table between us, blank white faces all around. There was color in the room, and it came from your smiling face, across the unappealing table.
I can’t figure out how we got there, but there we were. I said nothing, like always, and you were starting to get bored, like always.
“Let’s go,” you said, and all the words in my mind dissipated, waiting for our next date a few months down to manifest and simmer.
There were a line of houses, and it was a cool evening where we walked down the streets towards home. You looked upwards, craving release from the many things chained to you free spirit.
“Can I hold your hand?” I finally asked.
“Why”?
I paused as the words slipped from my mouth, and back into the recess of conversation I had meant to share.
So you sigh, like always, and take my hand in yours. I could feel your boney fingers locked in mine, moist and nervous. But I held your hand, and it felt nice. Finally.
But before the night was over, I would feel your lips - soft and gentle as I woke from sleep. I did not want to fall back into slumber, no. I sat there, a warm glow in my chest, remembering how I caught just one glimpse.
There they were, the dragonflies,
Blazing through the twilight skies.
If you follow, once or twice,
They will let them in your sights.
How they shimmer, how they tease,
As they leave you in your sleep,
Wishing more, yet no clue how,
Forgetting time, wanting now.
And as you lay there in your bed
Hoping they were real instead.
Making notes and writing words,
For when it comes, you’ll want them heard.
The Pig and the Lion
Sam was a pig, the same kind you'd associate pigs with - pink and fat and lazy and rude and noisy and dirty. Whatever he lacked on the outside, he'd make sure there's less of it inside of him as well. As far as pigs go, Sam's the creme de la creme.
Sam's owners were so proud of their fine specimen of a fat, lazy, rude, noisy and dirty pig. They loved him so much they kept feeding him and feeding him and stuffing him silly. For you see, the more fat and lazy and rude and noisy and dirty he got, the easier it is for them to kill him.
But like all living things, Sam was not aware of his fate. In fact, he thought that his owners were feeding him so much because they loved him! He thought, "Hey, that fat man and his fat wife must love me so much because they feed me and tell me to get fatter!"
But the day came when the owners have need for Sam's pork. They took him to his pen, right up to the spot where they always feed him at. The happy pig followed, ready to be pampered once more.
As the enormous animal lowered his fat pampered head into the food bucket, he noticed a shiny metal object behind his owner's back. Thinking it was a silver bucket full of food, he continued to stuff his ignorant face.
The old farmer raised the axe and brought it down as hard as he could, but he missed because of his eye sight (for old people often miss the heads of animals they attempt to slaughter). This sent Sam sprawling across the farm, his food bucket in toll.
And so Sam escaped certain death.
Running with a bucket full of food is no mean feat, and it soon tired out the giant animal. Sam took to resting so that he can finish his food better. When there was no more food in the bucket, with even the smell of food gone, Sam got up and started to find a watering hole.
Alas, the obese farm animal's luck seemed to have run dry! At the watering hole is a fearsome lion, the King of the Beasts! The magnificent creature sat still as the lumbering calamity of a livestock approached the water.
Seeing how much bigger he is than the lion, he proceeded towards the water. (You see, Sam had not seen a lion before, much less know what they are capable of!)
Alex (that's the lion's name) looked on in curiosity, but when the pig got too close to his water he hissed.
Sam, appalled by the smaller animal's act of defiance, snorted rudely, "I want the water, small furry creature! Move aside and be on your way. There will be none left for you when I'm done!"
Alex raised his eyebrow (if lions had any) at the audacity of the fatso, but did not speak up.
The pig pushed his blubbery frame into the lion's face, but got shoved back by Alex's front paws. Enraged and used to getting his way, Sam squealed at the animal lying before him, "Look buddy, I'm doing you a favor now. Get the hell out or I'm going to bite you!"
He bared his herbivore teeth at Alex, chomping at the air to make his point.
Alex shrugged his shoulder and got up. The arrogant Sam proceeded to trot past the relented lion, giving him a small shove at the end of it.
As the enormous animal lowered his fat pampered head into the watering hole, he noticed a shiny object behind him. This time, he had no time to react, nor did the lion miss his mark.
And so Sam got what he deserved.
Sam's owners were so proud of their fine specimen of a fat, lazy, rude, noisy and dirty pig. They loved him so much they kept feeding him and feeding him and stuffing him silly. For you see, the more fat and lazy and rude and noisy and dirty he got, the easier it is for them to kill him.
But like all living things, Sam was not aware of his fate. In fact, he thought that his owners were feeding him so much because they loved him! He thought, "Hey, that fat man and his fat wife must love me so much because they feed me and tell me to get fatter!"
But the day came when the owners have need for Sam's pork. They took him to his pen, right up to the spot where they always feed him at. The happy pig followed, ready to be pampered once more.
As the enormous animal lowered his fat pampered head into the food bucket, he noticed a shiny metal object behind his owner's back. Thinking it was a silver bucket full of food, he continued to stuff his ignorant face.
The old farmer raised the axe and brought it down as hard as he could, but he missed because of his eye sight (for old people often miss the heads of animals they attempt to slaughter). This sent Sam sprawling across the farm, his food bucket in toll.
And so Sam escaped certain death.
Running with a bucket full of food is no mean feat, and it soon tired out the giant animal. Sam took to resting so that he can finish his food better. When there was no more food in the bucket, with even the smell of food gone, Sam got up and started to find a watering hole.
Alas, the obese farm animal's luck seemed to have run dry! At the watering hole is a fearsome lion, the King of the Beasts! The magnificent creature sat still as the lumbering calamity of a livestock approached the water.
Seeing how much bigger he is than the lion, he proceeded towards the water. (You see, Sam had not seen a lion before, much less know what they are capable of!)
Alex (that's the lion's name) looked on in curiosity, but when the pig got too close to his water he hissed.
Sam, appalled by the smaller animal's act of defiance, snorted rudely, "I want the water, small furry creature! Move aside and be on your way. There will be none left for you when I'm done!"
Alex raised his eyebrow (if lions had any) at the audacity of the fatso, but did not speak up.
The pig pushed his blubbery frame into the lion's face, but got shoved back by Alex's front paws. Enraged and used to getting his way, Sam squealed at the animal lying before him, "Look buddy, I'm doing you a favor now. Get the hell out or I'm going to bite you!"
He bared his herbivore teeth at Alex, chomping at the air to make his point.
Alex shrugged his shoulder and got up. The arrogant Sam proceeded to trot past the relented lion, giving him a small shove at the end of it.
As the enormous animal lowered his fat pampered head into the watering hole, he noticed a shiny object behind him. This time, he had no time to react, nor did the lion miss his mark.
And so Sam got what he deserved.
Iron Man 2 - A Review
As all movie reviews go - I do not apologize if you read this and then tell me that I spoil it for you.
Tony Stark is a narcissist, and the scriptwriter (forgive me for not googling your name) did a good job of using an insurmountable number of “I“s in the show.
Right off the bat, as the heavy suit falls from a C-130 in to a roaring crowd at the Start Expo, Anthony Stark - played to perfection by self-absorbent flavor of the month Robert Downey Junior (check out his article n the December ‘09 Esquire) - let loose a barrage of bigotry worthy of the bringer of world peace.
Heck, I even caught the eyeball roll when he had to share the limelight with a video footage of his old man Howard. That was before he did a test check on the toxicity of his blood. The audience is introduced to Iron Man’s first dilemma - he is dying.
Then comes problem number two - because all superheroes need to lead a complicated life - Pepper Potts.
Ex-Secretary and now CEO of Stark Industries, love interest Gwyneth Paltrow not only has to continually look good, but also has to handle sharing HER limelight with vavavoom Scarlett Johansson. That, and she’s kept in the dark about Tony’s health issue while having to run the company which now apparently functions as Iron Man’s PR consultancy firm.
Every superhero movie needs a villain. Every AMERICAN superhero movie needs a villain with a weird accent. Iron Man has Ivan Vanko, played by Mongolian-looking-Russian-Accented -American actor Mickey Rourke.
He tears things apart in the movie.
And now we get to the main point of an action movie. Big explosions and lights and fireworks so real you get warm and sweaty watching it.
Golden Village at Yishun offers an experience like no other in cinematic-reality. While other theaters boast high-tech 3D projectors that bring the action to you, GOLDEN VILLAGE YISHUN 10 is the only cinematic wonder that takes you into the heat of the explosions and high-flying stunts YOU PAID TO ENJOY!
They do that by turning off the air conditioning.
Iron Man never felt more real. When Tony Stark made his escape from the cave in the first part, I bet all he thought about was how to add in that air ventilating system into the next model.
Iron Man 2 features more explosions and flying objects to rival the first, and with the introduction of sidekick War Machine, it promises to be a slug fest like no other.
Me, I got a personal tour of action - right into the hot balls of fire that is the idiocy of cinema management. I bet it does wonders for the soft drink sales (which they jack up like 40 billion times).
Three Stars.
Doodles
“Don’t you get it? It’s not about you or us or whatever stupid thing that you did anymore!”
I could hear her from three blocks down, blaring at the poor man who happened to wake up on the wrong side of bed. With another woman. While his wife came home from a long night working as a waitress in a club.
But in places where I work, it’s all normal. Chaos and strife is the way of order around here, and sometimes you’re just left to thinking about how you managed to end up here in the first place.
Hope is a prospectus given to the imaginative mind of a 5-year-old. It’s a gift handed to their naive and untainted minds. As they step through the one-way rotating door of reality, it’s sad that most of them left the catalog behind.
I was a fat kid, sitting at the back of the class everyday. I liked to draw, and I’d draw everywhere I could - on the tables, in my textbooks, on myself, on other people… Life was a big white canvas for my pudgy hands.
And I loved my drawings, not that I can remember much of them now. They were innocent depictions of an otherwise derelict and forsaken human soul. Fast-forward thirty-five years and you have the resultant exposition of what remains as each creative scribble and doodle oozes out from a young impressionable mind.
Drawings became words, words turned to photographs, and photographs turned a means of survival in the damp corner of the street we have to call home.
I walked towards the screaming and stopped at the door, looking up and taking my time to compose myself. Traces of the fat kid still lingered as I shook off the urge to snap a romanticized perspective of our old neighborhood.
I shrugged it off with a glance at the news stand - nothing good, just like what we have here.
As the door slammed shut I made my way up to where the commotion was, one heavy step at a time. The floorboards have definitely seen better days, and the walls looked like they were permanently covered by a sheet of vomit. Heavy footsteps echoed mine as we made our way past each other. She was crying and emotional.
“Excuse me, but I can’t help but notice what a natural beauty you have,” I said the lines I used to stay up all night rehearsing.
“Get away from me, jerk!”
She shoved me aside, and I fell the fall I’ve done so many times. It helps that as a fat kid, you were never short of a good push and tease. The motions were graceful, the resulting cry of pain sharp, and the look of hurt afterwards priceless.
“Oh my god, are you ok? I didn’t mean to hurt you!” She came running back.
That was all the cue I needed. Too many times have I seen this happen, and too many times it has succeed. In this dark world where people mistake chance for hope, it’s easy to find desperate people not in their state of mind and take them away from what they treasure.
Forced into a life of misery, our streets are paved with a network of women offering sexual services in hope that they would be set free from the chains of reality that I put them in. A touch, a fall, and sweet words - promises of a chance at leaving the muck they see themselves in.
All this, from the harmless doodles of a fat five-year-old.
I could hear her from three blocks down, blaring at the poor man who happened to wake up on the wrong side of bed. With another woman. While his wife came home from a long night working as a waitress in a club.
But in places where I work, it’s all normal. Chaos and strife is the way of order around here, and sometimes you’re just left to thinking about how you managed to end up here in the first place.
Hope is a prospectus given to the imaginative mind of a 5-year-old. It’s a gift handed to their naive and untainted minds. As they step through the one-way rotating door of reality, it’s sad that most of them left the catalog behind.
I was a fat kid, sitting at the back of the class everyday. I liked to draw, and I’d draw everywhere I could - on the tables, in my textbooks, on myself, on other people… Life was a big white canvas for my pudgy hands.
And I loved my drawings, not that I can remember much of them now. They were innocent depictions of an otherwise derelict and forsaken human soul. Fast-forward thirty-five years and you have the resultant exposition of what remains as each creative scribble and doodle oozes out from a young impressionable mind.
Drawings became words, words turned to photographs, and photographs turned a means of survival in the damp corner of the street we have to call home.
I walked towards the screaming and stopped at the door, looking up and taking my time to compose myself. Traces of the fat kid still lingered as I shook off the urge to snap a romanticized perspective of our old neighborhood.
I shrugged it off with a glance at the news stand - nothing good, just like what we have here.
As the door slammed shut I made my way up to where the commotion was, one heavy step at a time. The floorboards have definitely seen better days, and the walls looked like they were permanently covered by a sheet of vomit. Heavy footsteps echoed mine as we made our way past each other. She was crying and emotional.
“Excuse me, but I can’t help but notice what a natural beauty you have,” I said the lines I used to stay up all night rehearsing.
“Get away from me, jerk!”
She shoved me aside, and I fell the fall I’ve done so many times. It helps that as a fat kid, you were never short of a good push and tease. The motions were graceful, the resulting cry of pain sharp, and the look of hurt afterwards priceless.
“Oh my god, are you ok? I didn’t mean to hurt you!” She came running back.
That was all the cue I needed. Too many times have I seen this happen, and too many times it has succeed. In this dark world where people mistake chance for hope, it’s easy to find desperate people not in their state of mind and take them away from what they treasure.
Forced into a life of misery, our streets are paved with a network of women offering sexual services in hope that they would be set free from the chains of reality that I put them in. A touch, a fall, and sweet words - promises of a chance at leaving the muck they see themselves in.
All this, from the harmless doodles of a fat five-year-old.
