Passing through...2 hours in Changi Airport

I anxiously checked my watch. It was 21:59. My phone lied still on my desk. No buzz. No little envelope unopened. My shift would be over soon, and yet I did not know where I should go next. Flight status on the web marked: arrived. I stared at my phone, willing it to ring. It did.

Changi airport newly opened T3 looked flashy, but barren in the middle of the night. The only bar in this terminal shut at midnight, so unless I planned to gulp my drink in 5 minutes the night just had to be without. I guess I could drink tea,... I wanted to sleep when I got home after meeting my girls.

SMS: ...waiting for key, drop bag then come out to cu.

HH sent AL to meet me first. Hugs, kisses and stories of importing foreign maid kicked start a new day. It was good to have that familiarity, the kind you get with wearing old pajamas to sleep. I saw HH approaching, she waved from a far with a big smile on her face. The moment she sat down, she reached inside her bag for a duty free bag with a bottle of red wine. There were grins all around. For 2 hours we sat in an airport coffee shop, trading stories of yesterdays over wine in plastic cups. If only we had cheese... Did I mention simply how perfect it all was?

A few plastic cups later, we needed to call in the night... HH and AL had a plane to catch in a few hours. I had work to go to. Time to walked back to where we came from. It was fantabuloustic!!

It was always about the company. Always.

Lost Words

This urban jungle swallows all my words. I keep thinking about things and yet unable to express them. Maybe the truth scares me and that as long as I don't hear them life goes on swell, all hunky dory.

This time I will learn to listen to the silence. I want to be able to translate the silence into words again someday. For now, enjoy the deafening silence.

There's too much sadness in the world, but then there's Kungfu Panda

There are too many sadness in the world. More often that not, we manage to feel sorry for the hunger in Africa, the closed regime of North Korea, the stolen generation of Australia; we get angry at the violence of Mugabe, the fuel hike in Indonesia, the closed-mindedness of Burma. All of them are sad, horrible and infuriating, but they hardly ever make you feel as sad, or near as bad when your loved one is sad.

Recently I came face to face with sadness. It came to me in a form of my best friend; clothes down a size, little of an appetite and sighs awfully a lot, thanks to a broken heart. Most times I didn't know what to do, or say. I didn't know whether it was better to leave her alone, or whether I should try to break her cocoon. It was one of the hardest week (...despite all the fun times we had) of my life.

How do you tell someone who was feeling lonely, at the lowest of low, and afraid and angry and sad that she was surrounded by gazillion helping hands? How do you make them see that all eyes were on her, and that people were watching out for her, waiting for her to reach out and meet their helping hands? Even if they're only to hold and to comfort, because often they alone did not have the strength to pull her out of the darkness; that her broken heart breaks their heart, too.

And just as I thought I was overcoming my pseudo broken heart, once again I was surprised by another friend's story about her cancer. She is one of the bravest people I've ever known, and I haven't known her for very long. In her quiet ways and soft-spoken words she told me, "I know I beat it once, but deep down I'm still scared... that it will come back and I won't be able to defeat it the second time around." There was fear in her eyes and again, I didn't know what to do, or say.

But then, there was Kungfu Panda. Dreamworks' latest animated movie about the fat, noodle seller Panda who loves food and dreams about kung fu. Everyone can always relate to the story of a loser who finds his potential and beats all odds. Po, the kung fu Panda master still has problems climbing the thousand steps into the Temple after beating the evil Tai Lung, but he learned that faith can make the impossible comes true. That the secret ingredient is no-secret ingredient, you just have to believe.

I left the cinema with a smile and newfound thoughts on my recent encounters with sadness.

Life works in opposite forces. Negative and positive have to coexists. Happiness and Sadness walks hand in hand. One can not function without the other, and one is never permanent. At times of sadness, we must rely on our faith. At all times, we must believe. Not only when reasons fail us, not only when we can not control things anymore. It needs to be the ground we stand on, because the thing about faith is,... it is simply beyond comprehension.

It is about giving in, closing your eyes and letting it guides you, even if doubts fill your heart and mind. That's why they call it a leap of faith.

Sex and The City Pt. 1

Gold class cinemas around the world is fully booked weeks in advance; every girl in town is having a "Sex and The City" girls-night-out where gorgeous dresses and fancy shoes make way for the clinking of cocktail glasses. All in the name of the return of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. These 4 girls captured our hearts and minds through their trials and tribulations of single girls in NY. All girls living in a big city can relate to them, and that was how they lasted seasons over seasons.
The single girls of SATC are 10 years older, and not single anymore. But when it comes to love, being older never means that you are wiser. You simply have traveled more miles in the quest of finding love, perfecting love and discovering love. Breaking up when you're 40 still feels as crap as it was 20 years ago. Leaving someone at 50 is as hard as it was when you're 23. Nothing much had changed.

What makes it different is that Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte are as relentless in their pursuit of love as they grow older as when they were younger. Most of us are jaded and disillusioned with love as we get older. When we walked out of the cinema, the movie affected my friends so much -- they were dissapointed because the 4 girls' NY no longer echoes theirs. Carrie kept a "love" key chain as her good luck charm!! What's up with that?? These girls should wisened up and be more like Miranda. Realistic and tough.

I wonder why my friends take the pink-coloured-SATC movie so personally? It is after all, just a movie, and not only that... one that is sponsored by Manolo Blahnik as the star diamond engagement ring.

For the longest time, we believe that the NY lived by Carrie is a representation of our own world; the same horrible yet exciting, excruciating dating scene, the struggle of gender and career, the constant battle with wanting everything,... that when all of these are reduced to the simple quest for love we get angry. We are disappointed that our lovely characters are losing sight of the important things in life. Not to say that love is not important, but really... it can't be all?!

Is it? Or is it not?

IN - eating, living

It's hard to go the extra mile to cook something at home, especially if you are on your own. I love grocery shopping and I always end up buying things and keeping them in the fridge forever and ever because my social schedule is never fixed, and I do things on the fly. Last weekend, I planned to be home; to not go out. Yes, call me weird... but I need to plan these things; psyche myself into domesticity and not to succumb to the evil temptations of being 'out'. I made sure I had enough food for breakfast, lunch and dinner to sustain my abstinence from the world that weekend.

Domesticity is a bliss.

Ha! For several days, I spent quality time with myself. I read, did laundry, hung out by the pool, did a bit of writing, and most importantly, ate well. I am not claiming to be a fantastic cook. Most of the time, I imagined what certain things would taste like, see the ingredients sitting in the fridge and come up with something. Cooking is always an experiment, but for the whole of last weekend, it was an experiment gone well.

I will attempt more of these domestic moments. Recently I've just been busy trying to 'have a life' and that's almost always means being out and about, doing stuff. Life gets hectic and it becomes impossible to listen; to the little birds in the morning, to the voices in your head. Last weekend was a good reminder how eating well (IN) can make a lot of difference.