My transport was cruising down the expressway this morning when I saw in the air, a stationary bird. But the bird was hardly stationary. It was simply, like strangers who move in and out of our lives, for that brief instant, heading the same direction, at the same speed.

And after travelling for a good few hundred metres, as strangers, we met, as strangers we parted. It took flight upwards and never looked down. I went on my way.

Someone please remind me to tell the driver that if we are not flying, we are definitely going a tad too fast.

 
Love Is In The Air

I was watching the highlights of NBA on the treadmill last night. And I realized that there are quite a few having such a strange habit like me out there.

"I spent my summer watching old games on the treadmill."
Bill Simmons
ESPN Page 2 Columnist

The season opener featured the L.A Lakers against the Mavericks. And it was followed by the highlights of the game between Spurs and the Suns. The pace was lightning and it was actually breathtaking to just watch them play.

Basketball is the very reason why I am in the gym in the first place. And if I am to give a few reasons to watch NBA, there are the following:

First, there is grace and beauty in each seemingly flawlessly choreographed games.

Then as Michelle Branch puts it, there is emotional intensity.

A little bit of laughs
A little bit of pain
I'm telling you, my babe
It's all in the game of love

And there is poetry.

I want to see players make plays at crunch time as much as the next person, but I also want to savor these moments when the game, regardless of the score or the situation, is just a short, perfect poem on the rush of opportunity unfolding in front of you and the beauty of choosing the one true path.

Eric Neel
ESPN Page 2 Columnist

Grace, beauty, emotional intensity and poetry.... I think I am in love.

 
Words have been uttered,
And arguments made,
About the lonely journey,
That life is.
Yet despite all that is said,
And all that is done,
When my skin burns,
In the cold rain,
And my soul quivers,
To its core,
In the thunder...
My eyes search the horizons,
For one who shares,
Prayers that escaped,
From my trembling lips.

 
Seen on a PSLE composition describing two men trying to open a door: Beads of perspiration flowed down my body, soaking me wet, causing my clothes to turn translucent and pressing against my body.

What do the kids read nowadays?

 
It seems that if I am struck as often by physical objects as by my thoughts, I would have either arrive dead on my way to work or be found dead on my bathroom floor.

Halfway through my shower this morning, I realized that if someone is observant enough, he/she will be able to see correlations between my vocabulary, my body language, my intonations and my disposition.

I suppose everyone becomes the mental image which they want to portray of themselves.

And that is precisely what makes them predictable.

After all, self expression, portraying oneself, personal styles, are simply exhibited patterns; relatively consistent forms of expressing oneself.

It was an uncomfortable realization that someone can read me like a book. It was years since I last have any intentions which I need to mask, and it was years since I need to hide my thoughts from myself or from anyone. Yet there was a resistance when I realize that my physical body can betray my mental self.

If a person can read my thoughts, would not he/she be said to be able to understand me? And have I not, in the past, crave for understanding, thirst for my thoughts to be shared with someone, with anyone?

But that was in the past, in the relatively distant past.

Now, I just want my thoughts to reverberate only through the empty labyrinths of my mind. And then, they are to be silenced. But why am I suddenly so comfortable in my the cold of the solipsistic limbo? Perhaps I have finally resigned myself to the Nietzschean heights, or perhaps I am finally at peace with the true lonely nature of human existence. Then why do mere, harmless, random, often uncontrollable, imprudent thoughts matter so much to me that I have to guard them? Does it truly matter if others can hear them or see them? What exactly makes them so sacred, so precious?

Perhaps like knowledge, they are all that I have and all that I can ever have. Or perhaps they are like the intangible will and the fleeting images we called memories, all that I am.

And all that I ever will be.

Are they then who I am? Is this privacy of my intentions the very key to my individuality?

The answer to this question holds implications of such gravity that I shall be respectfully silent.

I began questioning years ago, if the people who asked to be understood really knew what they were in for. They asked for someone to truly understand them, to truly share their thoughts and their likes, their dislikes, and their passion. But have they asked if they can truly live with themselves? Have they asked whether their soulmates truly understand them, would they still be able to love them? Could imperfect creatures such as they, incapable of even approximating unconditional love, love creatures as flawed as themselves?

I think not. But I am in no position to answer the above questions since the said persons have chose not to answer them.

 
The signs of maturity sometimes lie in the questions one ask.

Thus the important question to Arnold is: Will there be Terminator 4?

 
I am thinking of taking up a second degree, probably in terms of business and marketing. If anyone is to ask me why I would contemplate losing sleep, travelling hours a week, and using what few hours I can squeeze to study, I probably might not be able to come up with a good answer, except that maybe I like to find things out and find out how it all works.

And I figured that if I am to truly go into teaching, I would really need to know more, especially about how the world works. Knowing and teaching the kids what is in the textbook is totally meaningless to me. Having a teacher without real life experiences, who has never written a resume, or done any jobs other than teaching, will not be helpful to a child's future at all.

In terms of career guidance, or in terms of knowledge of the skills and qualities required for the modern workplace, or the social etiquette involved in personal relationships at work, they could contribute little to a child's understanding.

Someone has to teach these children about the rules of the world out there. My friend had told me that I am probably the best person to teach the General Paper in Junior Colleges but I will end up being the most disappointed one.

But we will see, we will see.

 
There is something from the Ulysses that has struck a cord in me since years ago. Maybe it is the equating of the boring company an aged old wife to the thankless task of governing an disinterested, savage race.

Maybe it is something else.

But I doubt so.

Ulysses,

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

--- Lord Alfred Tennyson