haiku how-to

Coin Culture

2007-04-25T22:36:00.000+08:00

3 dollars in hand
Proclaims the family man.
Buy food or buy hope?

Congratulations
On your son's birthday! Hooray!
Eh, buy 4D lah...

Haha ok that was honestly lame. If anyone asks, Tulips is definitely one of Sylvia Plath's better poems.

Two Funerals and an Opposition Ward

2007-04-20T20:44:00.000+08:00

Today, i chanced upon two funerals on the idyllic grounds of Potong Pasir.

Basically, one was large and one was small. The former was closer to the main body of Potong Pasir, otherwise known as 'the busy area', while the latter was embedded deep within the heart of the ward, aka the void deck of the flat which i stayed in.

For the uninitiated, overly wealthy species homo sapiens who have never visited the 'heartlands' of Singapore before (foreigners/expatriates/legal aliens are forgiven), a void deck is the empty space located at the foot of a HDB flat. Think 'void'.

Okay, so maybe i didn't 'chance' upon the smaller one. It was already in existence for about a week already, though i was surprised at the sudden appearance of the second, bigger funeral. The dexterity at which funeral parlours establish their temporal constructs - steel girdles and tarpaulin, altars draped with yellow cloth, plastic tables and chairs - really amazes me. Thereafter, a usually long, occasionally teary period of mourning ensues, but then that ends as well.

This is the small funeral. The big one is much, much more colourful. With a live band. Seriously. The garlands, i couldn't count them. They were lined up like a wall, keeping my eyes out and away. We had to walk around the whole thing just to avoid looking awkward. Some big shot maybe? I hope he spent his money wisely before he died... extravagant funerals are kind of pointless after all.

When my grandpa died, i can safely say that i didn't really miss him all too much. Not that i didn't care about him or anything; death really was an escape route for him after all, what with being tube-fed, having no privacy and suffering from bed sores just because his stroke prevented him from rolling over... agony.

From my room up on the 17th floor (quite high, ya?) the wails of the suo na resounds, a dramatically modest bemoaning of the death of a human i didn't know. Before that, the monotonous chanting of monks echoes, and a bell rings, a startling chime to revive the sullen minds of the living, a reminder that they haven't joined the dead.

Yet.

Lecturati Randoma

2007-04-17T00:58:00.000+08:00

Brilliance abound in pseudo-philosophy lectures!

With the Leftside-aide Debs and Rightside-aide Andrew we reign victorious in producing irreverence!

Blessed be thy socks
Hundred % cotton shocks
Ugly-worse-than-crocs.

Physics lasts as long
As you can keep you eyes open -
Momentarily.

Chinese can get tough
If you get really hungry -
民以食为天

Lateness! I sleep.

Ta Dah

2007-04-17T00:37:00.000+08:00

Got a new book today... some know that I don't read that often, unless I get hooked onto a particular author (Paulo Coelho) or series (Harry Potter).

Of course, there is the "aspire to read" list which undoubtedly most people should have, save the most primitive, whereby a carving/ook or two should suffice.

Mine happens to split into the "finish reading" and "start reading" lists, in that order.

Finish
1) The Pig that Wants to be Eaten, by Julian Baggini
2) The Wisdom of Imperfection, by Rob Preece
3) Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

Start
1) The whole Discworld series, by Terry Pratchett
2) The Lying Ape, by Brian King (New book! yay!)

"An Honest Guide to a World of Deception"

Nice. Plus the foreword reads: "Every word in this book is true. I may have accidentally arranged some of them into misleading sentences, but I hope not."

Have a nice midnight.

Amaranthis

2007-04-13T23:59:00.000+08:00

Though they're often meant to bind,
Words can seem to say or find
What divides the auras, two
Of mere consciousness, me and you.

Through the cracked and peeling walls
I hear your whisper, hear your calls
Like a sullen being, denied
of breath, and tears, those which I cried.

Through the rattle of the rain
Upon your shattered windowpane
My heart beats fast
Races past,
Run-in last.

But just so you know,
I'm not letting you go.

Pride

2007-04-10T17:52:00.000+08:00

Oh great, Merlion
Your facade begs a question,
one: "Spit or swallow?"

Heh... today was, as someone put it, surreal.

Practically everything passed from moment to moment, such that the whole day seemed like one huge mass of blur stuff... like a ball of lint.

Today's chem-chem was quite hilarious though, what with England-borne teachers wielding English like an axe... pronunciation police, methinks.

Is phenolphthalein fe-NOLF-tha-leen or fe-nolf-THA-leen?

On further checking, dictionary.com pronounces it as fee-nolf-THA-leen. oh well.

One must give lee-way
to guests; the crunch comes when asked:
"More celery, please."

2007-04-07T22:40:00.000+08:00

When asked if paper
was made of trees, he replied:
"Nah... that's pulp fiction."

... which is in truth a lie of course.

Today, the artsie students went to the Singapore Tyler Print Institute where a particular exhibition, Focus on Paper, was being held. Hence the lame entrance to this post.

... Nevermind.

Anyways, I love paper! Yay!
Things one does with paper:

1) Fold Origami
2) Make papercuttings
3) Write long, pseudo-essays (blog on paper?)
4) Make funny buzzing noises with
5) Cut oneself (on accident, of course)
6) Hold up against a light for whatever particular reason, such as noting angbao money ( oh my... punny! -note?-money?-notes? nevermind...)
7) Crinkle, maybe chew on (to DLWJ, it isn't very healthy you know, what with bleaching agents and all)
8) Wrapping presents! Yes!

and the list goes on...

Patrick and Pablo
campaign their Philosophies.
Two peas in a POD.

From the Land of Rising Sun

2007-04-05T19:27:00.000+08:00

Ooooh... my mum attempted to procure a Japanese meal for the first time! so exciting!

So for dinner, the menu was basically like this:

1) Cold Soba with Shoyu, chopped spring onions and little bits of seaweed
2) Tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet) with her very own diced tomato dip, salsa-ish

... okay so the salsa thing just threw the whole Japanese thing off. But considering that i put wasabe on everything negates this, so there.

Quoted from Wikipedia, "Japanese hokku and haiku are traditionally printed in one vertical line, though in handwritten form they may be in any reasonable number of lines."

An example of classic hokku by Basho:

古池や蛙飛込む水の音　

Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

Old pond

Frog jump-in

Water sound

Please note that the english translation DOES NOT FOLLOW THE 5-7-5 RULE (count?), for reasons simple enough for basic human comprehension.

Long posts may lead to
Unreasonable Ranting.
Rah Rah Rasputin.

Humour

2007-04-04T20:27:00.000+08:00

Drafting up my vote-list, i realise that certain negative votes weren't exactly spent that appropriately...

spending my votes on people-who-would-get-in seemed sort of wasted, and negativing people-who-really-wouldn't-get-in seemed similarly dumped.

... oh heck.

Local Kopitiam
singlet-wearing Ministers
the under gahmen

rah rah!

Forum For 'em

2007-04-03T19:26:00.000+08:00

Hmmm didn't go overboard with the title i hope.

Anyways, methinks that it's about time my dearest peers begin finalising their vote-lists, but mealsothinks that it wouldn't be very nice if one published one's vote-list on one's blog.

i'll just sorta poke at the names then... maybe. Like orange vegetable is obviously someone in the clu13... but then again i think i can afford to be a little vaguer...

Matrimonial
Repertoire: preferably
a Man who can sing

And a ring, or two.
Or guts to say, "Want to buy
a HDB flat?"

Haha... quite the Singaporean feel to this one, no?

Chunky

2007-04-03T00:28:00.000+08:00

Ok so I threw out most of my haikus... no biggie.

Anyways here's one from Daryl, which is actually really funny:

Old Japanese man
wrote shopping list and became
a famous poet

And one more for my fellow peers...

Midnight oil, I burn
10 bottles full. Chemistry
Practicality.

'nite everyone...

Longing

2007-04-03T00:27:00.000+08:00

Green tea and crackers
English-soil-grown Sakura
and letters, sent home.

Inspiration

2007-04-03T00:26:00.000+08:00

Fresh pens on crisp sheets
crave a muse to fill one's ink.
Writ's block 101

Colour

2007-04-03T00:24:00.000+08:00

Despair, like autumn
rains down, red and dead flurry.
Hopes strewn, litter style.

Purpose

2007-04-03T00:22:00.000+08:00

I write a haiku.
Short. Simple. Five-Seven-Five.
Hermit's feedback form.

Old Beginnings

2007-04-03T00:01:00.000+08:00

Here we go again...

3rd blog in a row!
In my first, I was posessed by St. Irony of Potong Pasir, and in manifesting his character, I ranted too much, resulting in the closure of that blog.

For seconds, iamsoverytired revisited cynical, semi-emo-angst filled posts questioning humanity, our existence, and making fun of peoples of authority in relatively harmless, not-very-innocuous manners.

And for a while after exterminating that one, I relapsed into a bah-bloggers-are-mad-ranters and I-refuse-to-read-another-blog mood.

Of course, being the self-contradicting bum that I usually am not (hah!) I went ahead and read blogs. Many blogs.

This one though, will try try try to diverge from usual rants and focus more on stuff I actually put heart and thought into writing. The need to express myself preceded that of being a bum. Yep.

... and everyone needs to express themselves in some way or another.