I was just telling my roommate how I cannot live well if I have nothing to look forward to. And now, thanks to Chernise, I have just that. Here's something from a random weblog.
Yesterday, Sunday, I returned from an overnight stay on a kelong at Pulau Gogok, starved of sleep and in desperate need of a cleansing shower, but sat electrified as I watched Before Sunrise, Linklater’s 1995 film with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, before collapsing into a state of stubborn inanimation. Since then, I’ve watched Before Sunrise two more times, finding in its simplicity and devastating dialogue a romance that hurts as well as salves. Before Sunrise defies judgement, for it is neither good nor bad. To paraphrase Yew Leong’s mother, it must be true. Narrow in scope, asphyxiatingly brutal in its portrayal of a realistic romance, but true nonetheless. Reviewers all over the world have grasped the essence of Before Sunrise, especially in the wake of the premiere of Before Sunset (the sequel) all over America late last month. Before Sunrise (and, as I’m told, Before Sunset) is a naturalistic romance that defies you to be cynical about romantic attachment, an affirmative yet disarming romance that is impossibly intellectual and terrifyingly real. Similarly, critics are gushing about Before Sunset. Read this, this and this, and cringe when you read that Before Sunset will arrive in Singapore only in December.
Throughout the weekend, on a overwhelmingly wooden and spartan kelong off Malaysia, I thought little about what would transpire before sunrise. It was in itself a magical and surreal experience to spend a night out on the open waters, watching fish, crabs and marine creatures of all denominations corralled into an enclosure, jostling in the sugarcane-green water and enraptured by a blindingly brilliant white light installed for the sole purpose of attracting them. To one side, under an equally brilliant light and bobbing languorously on the outgoing current, sat a score of people swarming about a makeshift barbeque seething in a stainless steel kitchen sink. Throughout the night, I drifted in and out of a wordless trance as rudimentary versions of a vicious reality show were enacted, allegations, recriminations, vengeance and all. Argentinean music wafted over the water towards the distant shore and lights of Tanjung Pelapas, and on the floorboards weathered and restless as driftwood, neophytes stumbled through the basic steps of tango. I wonder if the catch that morning was any different.
On the way back from Pulau Gogok, I sat on the back of a brilliant blue wooden boat and talked about land. Land that had been dredged up in some distant Indonesian shallow and was now being fashioned into precious real estate along the eastern shore of Singapore all the way back. I talked, feeling the faint stirrings of an former intellectual interest in biology, ghosts of an education past, and an inkling of obligations yet to be.
On the way home, I discovered that the hawker centre around the corner will soon close to be dolled-up, echoing a prescient thought I had a week back. Relentless, unforgiving, implacable. It must be true.
another claudia created template
Wednesday, March 16
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Something to look forward to 
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