Happy 200th, mi amor

I have anger management issues.

When I'm angry in private, I destroy things. I break furniture. I throw a mug against a wall. I snap whatever I see. If I'm in public, I'd dig my nails into my skin and watch its trail glow red. I must vent. It must get out of me.

So when Gabriel pissed me off today, I told him I'd like to pinch him to get over it. He agreed solemnly. I begun my reign of skin terror but then he started to laugh and grab my hands and hold them behind my back and hug me and I couldn't stop my stupid face from smiling.

I am dating the most adorable idiot in the world.

We continued with our plans to have a home-cooked dinner.

I think he makes everything fun. It is something as simple as grocery shopping but he'd twirl me around, make punny jokes with bad labels, get adorably distracted by everything and have something witty to say about even cocktail sausages.

One one hand, cocktail sausages. I should've known better than to have a craving for that. I basically cut out his work for him.

On the other hand, I do love myself a good cocktail sausage.

I managed to figure out the aisles and where everything should be because well, I'm not an idiot, but he immediately went, "Since you are so good at finding supermarket aisles, you should-"

"No."

"You haven't even heard what I was gonna say!"

"I will not do our future grocery shopping alone."

"Dammit!"

We went home and my heels were killing me and he happily plopped me down on a chair and sat himself on the ground and massaged my feet. He would grumble about the job and I would frown and he would laugh it off and kiss my legs and look at me with the most adorable smile.

I went to shower and when I came out, the cocktail sausages were ready so I started popping them. The supply was looking dangerously low and my chef looked back and grunted, "If you keep eating that, you're gonna be too full to eat dinner."

So fatherly. I told him I wouldn't.

Then his brother came and started eating off the shared bowl to. He looked at my smoking chef, visibly impressed.

"Since when you cook anything but maggie mee?"

And Gabriel grunted and continued cooking.

After a little while I got a little full from just the sausages and I told him so. He gave me this stern look and said, "See! Told you you'd be full if you snack!" and took the bowl away from me and forbade further snacking :(

So fatherly. I love how he makes me feel like a baby. And I love how well he understands my appetite. As if he precisely knew how much it'd take to make me full. I have the best boyfriend in the world.

I told him I wanted the word 200 on the pasta and he delivered!

Originally, he painstakingly tried to arrange the noodles into the shape of a 200. He triumphantly showed me the final product and I asked if his mum could identify the 200 if I showed her and he had the saddest face.

But then he said he had a brilliant idea and I awaited and when he took out a Bicycle deck, I started thinking, "Yep this is how I die, by hunger and bad magic tricks," but aww he used it to sign out 200.

Fell asleep to him hugging me and kissing me and telling me about his day. Also he has started to rebel against the two-minute matter. He now uses it to kill his boner instead of properly chit chat. Oh sigh such is my life.

Woke up to the warmest man in the world :)

The story of man overboard

My working space:



No I am never not glam sorry.

Work was wonderful. It is tedious as fuck because I am not good with inventory but doing something so relevant to what I love makes work a learning experience. It feels like I'm attending school. Paid to attend, no less.

Requested to get off early and the manager approved without so much of a question. And to silently thank him for his supreme understanding, I completed my colossal task in under two hours. I am magical.

In my old workplace, I always believed speed superseded quality. It took losing that job to realize that nothing is more important than being error-free. Be error-free; everything else is secondary.

And so error-free me headed to Neverland II @ St James!







I love my shoes.

Okay so because nobody I know shares my music taste (shame on all of you), I bought a ticket for Man Overboard and The Story So Far for myself. I tried looking for company. Tried paying my sister to join me. Didn't work.

I was ready to go alone - I do alone really well anyway - when this girl tweeted me, saying she found me from my hashtag and asked if I wanted to go with her. CAN YOU BELIEVE MY LUCK. TWO HOURS BEFORE THE SHOW SHE FOUND ME! Fuck I'm a lucky thing.

And hence I have ootd hahah.

But she should be gladder she found me, as we will discover later.





I am now a fan of Caulfield Cult.

You sexy, sexy, taking-the-stage-by-fucking-storm beasts.







Man Overboard was sobbingly amazing.

I'm much more familiar with Man Overboard as compared to The Story So Far so I was hoping TSSF would start the set. Nonetheless, MOB started with a song I didn't know and I zoned out for a while lol.

TILL RARE CAME ON. AND WHERE I LEFT YOU. AND DEAD END DREAMS. YOU ARE SO WORTH ALL OF THESE TORTURE! FUCK ME FOR MISSING YOUR STANDALONE SHOW LAST YEAR.





This crowd can fucking mosh.

I was very, very impressed with them when they moshed to Caulfield Cult. It was my first time hearing them and they were amazing, but I didn't jam to them because welllll I don't know how to support a local band.

But not the crowd, no. Me and Annie were hanging out close to the stage, when out of nowhere this group charged towards us and did their little Circle of Death, then started stage diving and leaping off each other.

I got back real quick lol and thought that was it but NOPE. When Man Overboard came, the lunatics took it up a notch. I have been to my fair share of gigs and I can say definitively that this is the worst/ best crowd.

Every two seconds, two seconds mind you, someone was leaping off the stage. And each of them tried to up the former. One did somersaults. One had three seconds with the mic. One bro hugged Parker. One did a midair spin. One fell flat on the ground. It was pretty funny. I think she won.

And the energy was infectious. The crowd started to mosh and shove, and I got pushed way back. I got separated from Annie and spent the reminder of the set chillin' alone at the far right of the stage. Not a bad position.







Hated this motherfucker.

He would barge past people, dive, then quickly barge up again, dive, snatch for the mic with the lead, touch the band, jump, somersault, etc fuckery. I was overly gleeful when security grabbed him and pushed him off the stage.

Choke on oxygen you disrespectful fuck.









Oh Parker you sexy motherfucker.

























Orgasmic.

As I said, I'm not very familiar with The Story So Far. The only songs I was praying for were Clairvoyant and Roam. And when they played the latter, I climaxed happily and mentally made it the last song.









I swore I heard the crowd chanting Clairvoyant. But my ears were ringing like a Nobel so what did I know. 

Anyway, towards the end I tried to make a hasty exit because the crowd was starting to get looney again. Then I bumped into Annie. Bumped heh heh. Okay shut it Nicole.

She had a bump the size of a pebble above her eye. When we were separated, I was pushed into the kalm korner while she got shoved to the center, where every leaper was aiming for. I knew I'd die there so I avoided that area like the plague. And true enough, they got her.

She said this fuck threw himself off the stage and rammed his head directly at her eye. He leaped away scot-free and injury-immune but she started to swell and we ended up sitting in the vip section with a bag of ice.

The set ended and we walked over together to The Story So Far and she was shy so I helped her ask the guitarist for a photo. He obliged and I took the photo. Then she asked the drummer. I took the photo again. And we parted ways.

See something wrong with this picture?

Of course you don't.

BECAUSE THERE IS NO PICTURE. 

BECAUSE I WAS TOO SHY. BECAUSE I PUSSYED OUT OF ASKING FOR A PHOTO. And because well..... I didn't know their names so surely I didn't deserve a photo right lol but still I WAS LITERALLY SO CLOSE.

Still a pretty rockin' night!

Requiem for the relentless

Look at that:

requiem
ˈrɛkwɪəm,-ɪɛm/

noun 
noun: requiem; plural noun: requiems

(especially in the Roman Catholic Church) a Mass for the repose of the souls of the dead.
a requiem was held for the dead queen

- a musical composition setting parts of a requiem Mass, or of a similar character.
Fauré's Requiem

- an act or token of remembrance.
he designed the epic as a requiem for his wife

Even the description for requiem is poetic justice.

A dead queen. An epic for a wife. Here I am trying to convince myself I am not secretly a shade of Sylvia Plath but through my favorite word, my true miserable self tears through triumphantly.

Watching Inside Out with Gabriel was pretty enlightening.

Yes  he imagined a scenario where Riley grows up. Yes he imagined her seeing a sword for the first time and the differing emotions that'll kick in when she discovers, in sequence, the fear of seeing a big sword and the sadness of the first blow and the joy of the penetration and the anger at anal hahah.

Digressing, the framework for this movie was set in 2009. 

It all started when the director noticed changes in his budding teen daughter's personality.

He was worrying about her ever-changing emotions when his mind started to personify the emotions he imagined she was going through. That was when he realized he had the next up-and-coming-(again) hit (he directed Up) on his hands and ran off to the studio.

When I first read it, my reaction was this: ???

Imagine being his daughter. 

One minute your dad's like 'awww what's wrong honey, are you oka- HOLY SHIT! PIXAR! DISNEY! GUESS WHOSE SALARY IS BALLOONING UP AGAIN? Geddit darling? Up puns never get old, do they! Okay hold that emo thought, daddy's gotta make a run for the studio."

Wait what was my point.

Okay oh yes, so there was this part in the movie where Joy and Sadness gets sucked into a portal and ends up in Long Term Memory. And there was one part where Sadness almost falls off a cliff and Joy rescues her.

Gabriel got into such an uproar.

"Why!!! She should've just let her die!"

And I laughed and said, "Then she won't ever be sad again!"

"Isn't that good? Then all she'll feel is Joy!"

"But how do you know what's Joy without Sadness?"

Yep it is official I am wise as fuck.

I also thought my epiphany would turn out to be the core message of the film, but it was, "Sadness's true importance is alerting others when Riley needs help," but hey I was going for poetic, not suicide hotline.

Still, I believe in my message.

How can you know what's light, if you don't know what's night? How can you know what's adrenaline, if you don't know what's boredom? How can you be happy, if you don't know how misery feels?

So going way back to the original point.

Requiem means a lot to me.

Partially because god, have you seen it's definition? Is it not a beautiful meeting of tragedy meets art?

But secondly because once upon a time, I woke up with a marquee of 'requiem for the relentless' across my mind, tailored for a man. But then I met Gabriel who revolutionized my life and it faded away. Still it remains that it defines two of the things I always had trouble grappling with: death and remembering.

“I wish for a moment that time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say "I'm sorry" until it is as meaningless air.”

And so I will stand vigil over the ruins of our relationship, till my guilt kills me.

I think I have my next text tattoo on my hands.

Alright rant over.



Told Gabriel I was still disappointed and so he wrote me a poem!

Under the wide and starry sky
A requiem for the relentless 
Without wings we try to fly
An experience not for the faint-hearted

Into a relationship we plunged into
Never holding back to improve
The souls of two worlds now complete
The hope for all eternity

My honey
Let's intertwine our bodies
And create a new baby

I did my necessary awws and oohs before pointing out that this poem technically had nothing to do with requiem. And he went 'heh heh was hoping you wouldn't notice' but still A++ for effort. This is why I love him.

If I had to write for requiem, this would be it:

Requiem for the relentless

May we take a minute
To remember his wretched soul
It is about a woman who wanted a song
And a man who tried till the end

Here, my broken darling,
Here are all my words
The things that matter to me
My memories
And my heart

To write a song that's never been played
You have to feel emotions that's never been felt

'Here, my broken darling,
Here are all my words
The things that matter to me
My memories
And my heart

To write a song that's never been played
You have to feel emotions that's never been felt

And I've done it darling
I've bloody done it
This is my symphony
The greatest the world's ever heard
Maybe now
You'd be able to say you love me
With the lights on'

With trembling fingers
He picked up his guitar
And played

One,
He dragged his fingers across the strings
He thought of the first time he saw her
She looked so very angelic
How lovely it was back then
Before the pain and the misery
Her eyes remained empty
He felt his insides lurch

Two,
Again he strums
This one was for the first time she said she loved him
So simply and so absolutely
As if she never knew another truth
The memory lingered sweetly on his tongue
She wasn't looking at him anymore
His heart beat slows

Three,
It was a chord he liked
He named this chord after their first kiss
The way she breathed him in
Before drawing her arms closer
Before her lips changed him forever
She left the room
His legs gave way

Four,
It was their favourite lyric
'Will you forgive what I've done
To give you four white horses'
He wonders if she remembered
How excited she had been
That he found their perfect song
She dropped her keys
His hands started to perspire

Five,
It was a guitar riff she loved
A song played in Taiwan that reminded her of him
She hummed it to him that night on the phone
She was overseas then
But she came back to him in the end
She always did
She came back in the room
But still his head continued spinning

Six,
The hurt and the betrayal
He never held it against her
It hurt, oh yes did it fucking burn
He had the scars to show for it
But like a veteran
He knew no battle could faze him from his mission
And it was to make her laugh, always
She was saying something
He can't hear her anymore

Seven,
Seven was her favorite number
She wanted to marry at 27
He had their whole lives planned together
She wanted two kids
And he named them
'I'm sorry. I need to do this alone.
I hope you'll always be happy.
Goodbye now.'
He fell to the floor
And the world faded away

There was a yellow glow
Then red
Red, like the color of her hair
He smiled
The universe is all her
It has never been anything more
Every word he's ever whispered
Every song he's ever played
Was just a lead up to her

She was his muse
She was his obsession
And in the end
She will destroy him

But you are my masterpiece
So if it makes you less sad
I'll die by your hand

She nodded

And so here the eulogy ends
A final thump of dirt slices the silence of the night
His mind lays awake
And all he sees is her

And he smiled one last time

Night my-ass-tival

This will be quite a grumpy post.

But why not.





Headed down to the final night of the Singapore Night Festival with the sister.









Trying really desperately to capture my ever-changing hair color.







And headed back to the same HDB installation!















Got our photos printed and headed off to dinner.

Me and the sister got severely disappointed here because we went to Alt-Topia on time, for the poets-turned-prisoner installation and they were still taking poem orders when we were there, but we were directed upstairs.

When we learnt that poem ordering was downstairs, we rushed down only to find that the booth has closed. It was supposed to close at 1am so I asked what gives, very very nicely, only to be told they ran out of fucking paper.

Are you fucking serious, you close because of supplies?

Jesus Christ I will write you my fucking word on a $10 note, is that paper enough for you?

Me and my sister spent all night revising our words. She had hers in a quick epiphany, 'remember'. I was still torn between 'exquisite' and 'goddess' but in the end, I decided I wanted nothing more than 'requiem' but OH WELL FUCK US.













But we managed to catch the garden lights performance.

I suppose it's pretty timely. Had we stayed in the poets' house, we wouldn't have been able to catch the performance, so that's our silver lining I guess. In the end, we caught an early bus home and I slept my disappointment away.