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lets go watch the world together. lets just do that and nothing else. you and me. we'll just sit beside each other and i'll ask for nothing more. you're all that matters.

darKness-ak

Tori Amos is Staring at meit didn't exactly suddenly dawned on me but i believe that i liked to be visually assailed by aesthetic images. for the ones that had the opportunity to see my hermit's desk & abode will see the many pictures [newspaper & magazine cutouts, cd covers & sleeves, etc] that i place all around. just look at my monitor, its totally riddled with all sorts of stickers. damn, how i wished i had a digital camera to capture for you a snapshot of what the bollocks im blabbering here.

darKness-ak

Marx was so wrong, Capitalism is so much more Funjust found out while watching CNBC that one could buy contract-stocks in the end voting results of the upcoming Bush vs. Kerry elections. can you imagine that anyone of legal age could buy shares that track the performance of both presidential candidates, and if the one you bought had won the elections, you will get a windfall. im thinking this smells like the soccer-bookie betting thingy but slightly better.

at the moment, Bush is kicking Kerry's ass with the former's stock price hovering at US$66++ while the latter has plummeted to US$32++. and the payout for guessing right is pretty big, a US$100.00 per share payout to be precise. so imagine you bought Bush's stock at US$66++ and he wins, you will be paid US$100.00. these odds are so much better than what my bookie offer siah.

darKness-ak

Propaganda Styleyou know how we Kids In Saviour's Service [KISS] always preach about our stuff right. well, now im going to preach to you lah, you having expected it in my opening sentence. im going to wah wah about Persistance in Prayer [PIP]. yes da Dood does very so often wants us to pray with a gripping fervour, pray for the right reasons, pray for the senseless requests, pray for world peace, pray for that beautiful girl to look my way, and of course, pray with a damning persistance.

so while i was making tea earlier, i somehow got distracted and allowed the tea-bag to steep too long in the jug-cup, and now im drinking brackish Pu-Er tea that taste really powerful. and then Eureka!! can persistance in prayer be compared to letting my tea-bag steep for too long?? i know the brackish tea will do me good. its not going to kill me. it will just be good for me. so maybe PIP will be good for me provided i dont get distracted.

so did you think that i had just preached to you?? the answer is 'No' right because i dont preach, i just whack first talk later. and for the bazillion wahzillion times, i still think that Moses is pretty irritating especially during his younger days walking with God. and for the titillion mazillion times, i still think cantopop rocks.

darKness-ak

Christopher Locke's Gonzo Marketingyou know what makes a terribly kickass abnormal biz-marketing book?? other than the part he sublimanally recognises that Hunter S. Thompson is a demi-god, one that has, i last counted three mentions of the word "fuck" & one strenous mention of the word "motherfucker". and it just doesn't stop at there. the writer goes on tearing down the grandpapa of marketing, Mr. Philip Kotler himself. he was just short of calling Kotler a pip-squeak SOB marketing quack. the writer even attacked my hero, Seth Godin, more or less calling him a rip-off & showoff. true, the book created alot of hype but it also made alot of people - marketers or not - hate the writer enough to want to cut off his balls. but, but, but, as expected i dig the book, and NO, i wont recommend it anyone of you because it has the word "motherfucker", and might therein be a damning influence in your futre biz aspirations. stick to reading Kotler perhaps, he's not an SOB, he's just kinda of a stick-in-the-mud, added with a son-of-a-gun whiff.
darKness-ak

surfacinghad a good library outing with rachelC the day before at causeway point, and thanks to her perfect bespectacled eyes, she found locke's "gonzo marketing". its a damn important book for me at least. had a very filling price-worthy lunch, something that hasn't happened to me for quite awhile, and overall, it was also good that i managed to get out of the house. i borrowed four books on biz, what else, inclusive of the locke's one. we holed up at the children's section for awhile becos she wanted to read the mr men books, and it was fun sitting there on the kiddy bench, supplanted with a kiddy table, and she reading, while i looked at the small small kids tearing about. yea, i like to watch kids going into a crazy laughter berserk zig-zagging while the parent either trys to frantically rein them in or act detached liked, "this is not my kid". if i had my own kid, i think i'll end up playing more with the kid then disciplining him/her. am sure mummy can do the "no, dont, im going to cane you now" thingy. yes, it'll be fun to have another kid at home, tearing up the whole house, drooling saliva on my precious books, and basically, entertaining the kid that is still in me.
darKness-ak

bright shouts of clarityshe says, "lets forget about everything, its just like a really bad weather"
she says, "why dont you come to your senses"
she says, "you will never be able to draw the queen of diamonds"
she says, "the day is going to end now, dont you think so"
she says, "you have never really know me at all"
she says, "lets put an end to this ridiculous charade"
she says, "if only things were a little bit different, in bright shouts of clarity"
she says, "save yourself"

and he says, "your eyelashes, they make me fade into the night, to me, you're perfect.

darKness-ak

this is my perfect stormever since the idea for the biz was mooted, funding has always been the core of the most unsolvable problem. it plagued the partners 2years ago, and now that im alone, its still plaguing me. maybe some might say that it should be plaguing me less since the amount i need is just 40K and not the original 280K. yes, 40K is like 1/7 of the original headache but nonetheless, its still a headache and im getting really really tired carrying this all alone. i know God is propping me up but sometimes, i really just want to give it up. give it up, get a job, get a proper structured life, just be a sane working citizen for once, and earn my bread n' butter just like everyone else. dont tell me to hang in there, cos there ain't nothing much for me to hang on. you know, i do envy my working friends, ever though they have their own set of terrible work-related problems too but at least they're working & drawing a salary. i had talked to Him earlier, telling Him thatt i really feel like giving up, and im assailed by doubts of whether this is truly His will for me. did He meant me to do other things?? is His will pointing me to another direction?? im almost lost. and you know what's the most wilful & craziest thing?? i think somehow i'll find that miniscule iota of strength, just enough for me trudge on, soldiering on. this is "life sucks die".
darKness-ak

lovers of Sarajevoi had remember reading about this incident back when the bosnia-herzegovina conflict was reported daily in the news. i was still mucking about in secondary school, the news had cuaght my attention but then somehow it slipped away from me until now, when i got reminded of it from a song.

a short intro on the bosnia conflict, it was a war of religion & ethnic conflict. the bosnian serbs committed uncountable atrocities to its Muslim fellow countrymen, causing an exodus of hundred thousands. there were daily ethinic cleansing, people herded into concentration camps, Muslim women were subjected to rape campaigns, detention without cause, and adults & children alike were mass executed & dumped into mass graves. till this day mass graves are still being discovered as the people there try to pick up their lives again.

back to the incident that i mentioned earlier, this is a news article that i had culled:
Sarajevo 1993: Two young lovers from Sarajevo, are shot dead by sniper fire as they try to escape the siege of Sarajevo. Admira Ismic and Bosko Brkic were dubbed ‘Romeo and Juliet’ because of their different ethnic backgrounds - she was Muslim, he was Serbian -- and their tragic end. The two were both 25 years old, and had been together for nine years. They decided to flee Sarajevo in May 1993, when the Serb siege of the city was at its height, to escape to safety, anywhere else. But as they crossed into Serb territory, Bosko was shot by sniper fire, and died. Ismic, also wounded by sniper fire, crawled to her childhood sweetheart, put an arm around him, and died at his side, never trying to escape to safety herself.

fyi, the serb snipers were given a reward of 500DM for every sarajevo person killed. so i guess that was how cheap life was. so now, shouldn't we be the least thankful for what we have, and what we dont have instead of complaining what a loser government we have. and vaguely, i also remember watching the Reuters pictures of the dead couple's bodies lying between both enemy lines. and hey, i think the world stood still for awhile for this.
darKness-ak

from Birthday LettersTed Hughes to Sylvia Plath:

Ten years after your death, i meet on a page of your journal, as never before, the shock of your joy when you heard of that. then the shock of your prayers. and under those prayers your panic that prayers might not create the miracle, then, under the panic, the nightmare that came rolling to crush you: your alternative - the unthinkable. old despair and the new agony melting into one familiar hell.

darKness-ak

coffee is a drug & im addicted to ityou know, this doesn't mean much, this doesn't mean anything at all. maybe one of these days, my step taken in faith will betray me, and i'll ask to be taken. in the meantime while you wait, enjoy this partial extract from Sylvia Plath's "Full Fathom Five". just wait for your number to be called, okae??

of the north, to be steered clear
of, not fathomed. all obscurity
starts with a danger:

you defy godhood.
i walk dry on your kingdom's border
exiled to no good.

your shelled bed i remember.
father, this thick air is murderous.
i would breathe water.

darKness-ak

have you ever talked to God abovewhen i get caught standing alone at the window, i'll wonder where is this going to lead on to?? wondering whether this is the right path to take?? the doubts will creep in, settle in, multiply, and maybe i'll need to dig deeper this time round just to fight it. when have i ever been so patient?? or was this conviction just disgusing itself nicely as an excuse for me to drift away?? and so, sometimes, i'll look up and talk to Him. it doesn't matter whether the response is going to be outright because it brings me back enough that everything is thru Him. no, not in fatalistic terms but on His terms. He'll withdraw His hand when i might need it most. He might grow really silent on me when i need that voice. but way before he withdrew & stayed silent, He had already prepared my way. and for that, i'll not ask why. sometimes, i wonder whether i should choose to be simple, and lead a simple life. cos being the watered-down version of me, i'll have it easier, and i could resolve myself from His frontline.
darKness-ak

dont think i'll ever cut it at politicsokae this'll sound like paranoia but then im always paranoia-filled. but seriously, does anyone out there get the feeling that one of these days, in the very near-term, that the so-called terrorists are just going to slipped under Singapore's radar, and then launch an attack just as what we had seen in jakarta over the week. if im not mistaken, this should be indonesia's 3rd attack - bali, mariott hotel, & now the Australian embassy exterior - in less than a space of two years. Madrid, Spain got it this year, with a huge scale attack on one of its passenger train lines, something like our MRT. that had the effect of the Spain cabinet losing the immediate elections, with power handed over to a Spainish opposition leader, whom rode on the winning ticket of promising to withdraw all its troops from the Iraq conflict.

on a personal view, i dont think the Bin Laden & Iraq conflict is going to end any time soon, maybe not for a decade more or so. yes, democractic governments & electorate systems cant be built up overnight like our cup of Nissin instant noodles. i also dont think the US should withdraw their troops, whether they are there for the right or wrong reasons. ive already heard many too comments that the US should leave the Iraqis alone, or the US are there for the oil & control of the economy, not just Iraq but in the whole of the Middle Eastern region. agreeably, i do believe the US government are in there for the money & oil, and maybe to build & control a financial hegemony. afterall, war is the most lucrative & fastest way to earn money without a conscience. but then, while trying to light up one end of the candle, they're burning up the other end, by the obscene amount of money that have to be spent in maintaining the war over there. peace is a costly item to purchase too if mr. moore would want us to believe otherwise.

okae fine, using the WMD excuse to whack Saddam's ass was a very poor excuse but hey, who is going to guarantee to the whole world that he won't have a case of itchy backside, and start thinking of lobbing a few dirty bombs on US targets, not necessarily in the US itself. no government, no country, no political groups, no bipartisan individuals in this world is going come out & vouch for Saddam's ass, that he'll be a good boy from now on, and retrofit his gold-encrusted palace into a childcare centre. but i do see it that Saddam had to be removed because this won't be a case of once bitten, twice shy but rather, if there is a first time, there'll always be a second time. admittedly, there might be a better method of removing him, like asking the local bomoh to put a curse on him or bribing his palace chefs with obscene amounts of money, paid in gold bars, to get him hooked on Singapore's local food like char kway teoh; Hokkien mee; gambeng soup; roti prata; & tulang, eat it for every meal, and we can be assured that he'll die of heart attack within a year. to get it going, we could bribe his palace aides to get him smoking one hard pack of Marbolro Reds & drink at least 3 cups of teh ping everyday.

in the first place, Saddam shouldn't had been a worry after he got a serious whack from his invasion of Kuwait. Bush Sr didn't managed to remove him because he was busy trying not get booted off in the upcoming elections & juggling with the crapped-up tech-bust economy but then, he did got kicked out by Clinton soon enough. usually winning the war doesn't guarantee your political right as exemplified by Churchill after the second world war. but Clinton, yes the kinky Cigar man had two terms, a whole eight years of getting rid of Saddam, and also to suss out the terror network that was growing & multiplying while he was knocking off Monica.

okae, so still that doesn't justify why Bush Jr had to go into war with the rest of the Middle Eastern world. but do you think the world will be a much safer place if the US didn't retaliate after the 9-11 attacks?? will the so-called terrorists stop their attacks when dense-headed Bush Jr comes out saying, "Yes, we are very sad that you had re-modeled the New York skyline, and knock a hole in our Pentagon, but we are a democratic, civilised nation, so we aren't going to bomb you back because we're afraid that we might kill some of your civilians in the process." will al-Qaeda have stopped their attacks if the US had come out & apologised for its past infidel actions, and promise never to do it again. come, let us honestly ask ourselves which country had never committed an act that was against the most basic of human rights?? okae, some did it worst than others but even Singapore, our squeakiest cleanest country had to jail some Communist bloke on St. Johns island for like what two to three decades.

the question was would al-Qaeda had stopped if the US had said sorry?? do you know that that al-Qaeda's main objective, and it still is, to have a revival of the great Ottoman empire, where Islam covered two-thirds of the then-known world, and it will be the de-facto religion of the day. ive nothing against Islam not any other religion but you can be assured that i'll bear arms if anyone come to my doorstep waging war under the premises of religion.

off tangent, i know there're hoards of Singaporeans that dont like living in Singapore, from reasons of a despotic government to the lack of leisure venues. or specifically, some dont like the fact that the government can detain anyone without representation under the ISA Act. but guess what, i was brought by my grandpapa to vote only for PAP, and personally, i like the ISA Act. ive never back down in saying that i support our government, and i know that i'll vote for the PAP on my own conscience, and not because my grandpapa told me so but because their past records & future plans grabs my vote. c'mon, i even had fantasy thots of hanging a pig's head at chee soon juan house, just for the kicks of irritating that fugly face of his. if i cant get a pig head, then i'll get my friend to set up his illegal porno vcd stall beside chee's pamplet-giving station. okae, maybe after he reads this, he might sue me for defamation.

back to the first part of me being paranoia, i was wondering how we will all react if Singapore did really got attacked, whether it was on a small or big-scale. being the ass that i am, i think this is what might happen:

1. we will no longer quarrel who should pay for the metal barriers at the train station. but seriously, if one really wants to jump onto the tracks, what is going to stop the fellow to climb over the barrier, and do that same jumping thingy anyway.

2. all of us, meaning the grown-up children that have parents, will go home more often to have dinners with their aged parents. and grown-up children like us, will have more babies to top-up the decimated numbers during the attack.

3. we will build a memorial to remember the loved ones, and then there will be an increase of boys & girls signing on with SAF, so that we can do our part, until they realise its too late because in SAF, doing their part means helping to clear the endless "sai-kang" work before you get to off some terrorist dood in Vinny Jones style.

4. we will still continue to watch our English Premier league games, bet with the bookies like there is no tomorrow, and maybe, Arsenal will get relegated this season because Henry, Berkamp, Pires, Viera are invloved in a terrible car accident, with the car driven by Wenger who was tipsy from guzzling too much sponsored Tiger beer.

5. all of us will be in-touch with our emo side, we will listen to more emo songs, we will write more emo poetry, and the next Booker Prize & Orange Prize winner will be from Singapore.

6. we will stop being shallow-headed by complaining that life in Singapore is crummy. instead we will engaged ourselves in more charity work, and every weekend night, you will have some President's Star Charity gig going on, where normal human beings all think that they are disciples of the White Lotus Sect, all being "dao qiang bu ru".

7. i'll finally begged enough funding for the biz, set it up, buy out MDS after three years, and at the fifth year, buy Wheelock Place, kick Borders out to another location, and at the sixth year, kick Borders out of Singapore for good. at the seventh year, own a part of Paragon, and at the eighth year, i'll get lung cancer & die from too much ciggies consumption.

darKness-ak

why am i writing about my desk??my desk is damn bloody cluttered, obviously im not the epitome of neatness. ive squeezed in like ten thousand copies of biz literature; Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf"; Marx & Engels's "The Communist Manifesto"; lotsa of CDs; biz plans & marketing plans; a box of camomile tea; an alarm clock with a dead battery; inches of dust & dead skin flakes; spent lighters; a miniature plastic faux crystal Christmas tree; painkillers; 1abels that says: Buy Up Excess Stocks From Everyone; a disposable camera; and to top it all off, somewhere lurking in the dark corners of my desk, ive provided a liar for a family of spiders. yes, they've kids now, ive seen the really mini baby ones, with one of its parent, making a mad dash for cover when i sneezed earlier. oh yah, and how can i forget that my trusty NIV Bible is always reachable whenever i need, on my desk.
kosheen sings "hide u"
i lose the right words, i really need a rest....darKness-ak

eating air & bing shan mei reni used to begin with "she". and what else is left, is that im still waiting/looking for someone like her. it doesn't make it any better that i hadn't seen her for ten straight years. its like losing an old friend to a freak accident or suicide, and knowing innately that you're never going to see that loved one again. wickedly, the one that you yearn for the most will always easily dissolve into the maddening crowd. and somehow, you're also always one step too disjointed from the maddening crowd. nothing i do can redeem what i want. dont say morning has come, dont say its up to me. we removed ourselves from one another's life by refusing to speak out on that late morning thursday. we had tempest-like clouds sitting on our tongues, and straight out of a fictional novel, she boarded the bus, smiled her "bing shan mei ren" smile, and waved goodbye to me. i guess we thot we'd see each other again as friends & schoolmates, the next day at school but we forgot that we had unknowingly removed ourselves from each other's life already. everything fulfilled. everything illuminated. the wretchedness of not saying what we had wanted to say. the naive-stupidity that emanates from me is appropriate enough to smother the life out of a stillborn. tori amos knew well enough to write "robins brings me many things but sugar, many things but sugar." you know, i'll give up Paragon just to speak out on that Thursday morning. and maybe i'll just say, "come, lets go 'eating air'."
tori amos sings "cooling"
come, lets go 'eating air'....darKness-ak

Knock It Downwhile at ditz's place on friday, william & i got into talking about our past army experiences [one of the best bonding topics for s'pore guys in general], and i realise that army life was quite funny after all, on hindsight at least. and even though i fared pretty well as a 'this is my soil, this is my country' soldier, i dont think i could live with it as a career. why?? because i dont think i could keep up with the little sick idiosyncrasies that always happens. this is the only place where one could shed blood swinging on the monkey bars, and then feel macho about it when you reminiscence with friends years later. this is the only place where the durability of your helmet comes under stringent testing by your sergeant giving it a good kick while its still on your head because you shoot like a bobo. this is the only place where drinking one litre is the required norm before you sleep, and if you dare spill a mouthful, be prepared to drink another litre. and this was also the only place where we could learn the mystic wisdoms of life. my si-peh gung ho BMT officer used to drill into our thick numbskulls while torturing us with with his commands of "knock it down" saying, "You know what happens when you assume, don't you? You make an ass of u and me." man, we loved our officer so much because he was willing to be an ass whenever we began to take the initiative to assume.
tori amos sings live "sugar"
look at me when im not aware, then you'll see that i cannot do without you....darKness-ak

Jars of Claymay the Big Doodad bless KC-Isaac's soul for sending out the last email, highlighting on when to move & when not to move. finally, ive reached exactly two years in mooting the idea for this biz, gathering my partners, got into skirmishes with competitors, did some really nasty stuff, lotsa of slacking involved, planning & organising, alot of talking got done, not much action, losing my partners, and now, im already at the final stage. like what KC's email said, that guiding pillar of cloud has finally told me that my patience has come full circle. its time to move ahead another step, into another challenge, into another alien territory that da Dood wants me to be in, and turn up the fire in the kiln that He has put me in. da Dood is the potter, and im the clay. maybe one of these days, i'll be jars of clay. at long last, thankyou to da Dood for sustaining me thus far regardless of how much i had trangressed against You. thankyou for tolerating with thus far. thankyou regardless of what happens next. i'll always hold fast.

btw, ten thousand thanks to ditz & william for helping me print the bloody 120page document. gotta thank you all for trying to sort out the messed-up printing order, and was kinda wicked-fun watching you two quibble over the page numbers. and no, i dont ever want to go to bukit batok again, so far, bus ride so long that i nearly considered getting off and scurry into the forest to peeeeeeee. lucky i got strong bladder.
diana krall sings "narrow daylight"
what i have you dont know, what i see you cant touch, what i experienced you aren't even close, what i have done you can only shudder....darKness-ak

back in 94'//for you// without a thread of worry, i see you lying asleep, gently fall, your breathing slows in that trance-like rhythmic movement. sitting beside you, we try to box-up those distant stars with our futile hands, and you always chose the ones that seem to glitter best. i think we spent hours lying beside one another. you, pressing your nymph-fingers onto my face, forcing funny expressions out of my face. you, covering my eyes with your hands so that i couldn't see you. you, making paper stars, made it for me, giving it to me before your art lesson & my technical lesson. do you know i still remember the place where you gave it to me, at the staircase beside the assembly hall, and telling me to keep it safely. and still, everything fades away. you brought the firmament to me, and showed me your craziness. i think you had made a part of me of what i am today. for the good, and not for the worst, with everything nearly illuminated. your craziness i cant deny, while this distance is forever sealed. knowingly, we wither away and the stars get left behind. i'll only hold fast to that one part of you. for you always said, "crazy do, crazy does, crazy works every single time."
zayin sings "lan se de yan jing"
crazy do, crazy does, crazy works every single time....darKness-ak