bleeding sunlight

A bus ride.

Sunday, 18 November 2012 01:51

the bus is
always full

we lean
two-dimensional
into each
other’s chests

the air
is thick
sweaty honey
we breathe

when the bus empties
our lungs depressurise
and cave

Year-old five-minute poetry. I miss those June nights, fooling around on Skype with poetry, which I never write, for good reason. This is one of the better ones and it's kinda sad how bad my poems could get.

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Racially Boring

Saturday, 17 November 2012 22:34

In light of the recent diversity-in-top-schools controversy, I would like to point out that I have the most boring racial history in the ACS Independent Stage EXCO 2011-2012. From left to right, we have an Indian, two Chinese, a Peranakan-Chinese, an Indian-Vietnamese, and a Vietnamese. By the way, I'm the one holding the camera. And by the way, we all love each other to death.

I find it a sad coincidence that the Straits Times poll of 100 students, which included students from my school, failed to reflect the racial diversity we have here. At a glance, seven out of 19 people on the ACSIS Year 6 contact list don't have Chinese surnames. Three out of our seven Student Council presidents have been non-Chinese. In fact, my school (along with Nanyang Girls' High School, another school that was polled, and others I'm not aware of) accepts and houses a boarding school for a large number of foreign scholars from several countries.

I guess it's true that other "top" schools might not provide students with such a conducive environment to meet people outside our own ethnicities and backgrounds. But the ability to do this, in my opinion, doesn't have as much to do with being "elite" or not as one might think. Maybe whether we meet people outside our usual social circles depends on, well, us, which doesn't necessarily depend on the schools we're in. Maybe it's due to chance. Maybe it's due to all these things. Generalising isn't going to solve one bit of anything.

(Cross-posted to Facebook here!)

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Saturday, 10 November 2012 17:59

Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be?

He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot.

Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries.

But habit is a great deadener.

At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on.

I can't go on!

What have I said?

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Romans 8:31-39

Sunday, 4 November 2012 22:42

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When I was a child, maybe in primary school or so, my dad used to read from Romans 8 every few nights after my sister and I had gotten into bed.

I remember this part particularly well, in his voice, still the same as it is today. Reading the same thing with the same tone and the same enthusiasm every night till I drifted off asleep. I think I'll remember it for life.

(Nine hours and 15 minutes left.)

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