Yuletide cheer?

The train of 2009 is chugging inexorably into station. It has been a relatively uneventful ride, with no major hiccups - no derailed hopes, no stalled ambitions nothing nada nought.

Hopefully 2010 will continue in this vein.

Merry X'mas, all.

My own cell

Two weeks have passed since I moved into my 67 sqm or so HDB cell. One of many cells organised and structured in the honeycomb that is called the HDB high-rise. Every morning, from my ninth-storey vantage point, I could make out lights flickering into life in the honeycomb facing mine. Doors will open and disgorge drones with bleary eyes and fuzzy minds, all taking the tentative steps to another day of labour - all for the sake of paying off that $200 over thousand dollars cell that's our home, our cove, our prison.

So from the prison of matrimony to the prison of habitation, my life takes another turn.
I am so *not* excited awaiting my first CPF deduction to pay off this 20-year prison debt.

My boss, my leader, my conscience.

The days, they are slipping away fast like sunlight streaming out of the eaves.

as night plays musical chairs with dawn, i am fading away like the dying cries of the cicadas.

i lament the chaos, the disorder, the anomie of the organisation.

what is organisation but alphabets jumbled up in an incoherent mish-mash.

who is a leader that does not align his deeds to words,

but an empty vessel trawling a route of misdirection.

so much unhappiness seething in the ground,

and yet he sits unmoved in his ivory tower.

as another torrent of meaningless dither comes forth,

sad we are, the misguided crew.

Moving house

Oh I will miss
The pitter-patter of
My niece's little feet,
When I pack up
And move house.

Oh I will miss
The fragrant and delicious
Cooking of my mom,
Commingled with her admonitions,
When I pack up
And move house.

Oh I will miss
All the familiarity and comfort
That I grew up with
The last 30 years.

When I pack up
And move house,
A chapter will come to an end
And I'll begin another.

The Saturday Night Gang

It is yet another Saturday night
At the corner coffeeshop,
A few streets from my house.

All eyes glued to the stylo-mylo LCD TV
Broadcasting images of stick men
Chasing a round thing
On a field of green;
We are the Saturday Night Gang.

Over bottles of Tiger Beer and Carlsberg,
Mugs of Kopi-0 Kosong and Teh Peng,
Lazy twirls of cigarette smoke curl
With hopes, rising a-stir.

We are all punters on a flutter,
Clutching our betting slips nervously
And swigging our alcohol or caffeine
With wild abandon,
Eyeballs entranced by the shiny LCD TV.

Cheers and jeers go hand-in-hand,
Compliments and invective fly about;
The action in the LCD TV holds us allured.

90 minutes come and go,
Clinking bottles toasting triumph...
Or torn betting slips.
Big beaming smiles...
Or shredded hopes.
Which describes you,
The Saturday Night Gang?

The footy match ends,
And so, with many of our coffeeshop pipedreams.
Amidst abandoned bottles and littered butts,
Lie the carcasses of our valiant bets.

It is yet another Saturday night,
Where we nursed a small flickering hope
Of making a killing...
Except we ended up being killed by
The vagary of a leather ball.

Friday afternoon

The sky frothy with rain clouds
Has finally broken with a deluge.

Time's heavy head takes
A surreptitious nod
In the drowse of this Friday afternoon.

Clammy fingers of cold
Worm through the walls
Of an office thick in slumber.

Nestling in the cradle
Of Friday afternoon,
Such wondrous delight
To be oh so languid.

You

I see faces everywhere
In this melting pot
That I call my home,
My Singapore.
Also your Singapore.

I have nothing against you
After all, we are all migrants
In some way or other.
Pastures greener we flock to
So I understand.
Such's globalisation.

My forbears were migrants too
I am the children of the children
Of the children of migrants.
So many tiers removed, so many permutations.

So I have nothing against you
As a new migrant, ephemeral or permanent.

Yet, I do have something against you
When you start telling me
A citizen borne of the soil
What to do.

You are just my guest
You don't supersede the host
And tell him how to man his backyard.

So if you are here
To partake of your host's tea and provender
Spare a thought and
Be sensitive.
Don't attempt to overthrow your host
From his own abode.

You wouldn't want to be
Known as foreign trash
Do you?