Dreaming (still) ...

Spent the Christmas eve with my secondary school friends again.

Went to play soccer in the morning, but had lousy day. Woke up very late, cos came back late that night, and they had shifted the timing to 8am, so i missed a lot of playing time. But nevertheless I think my spirit was pretty good and ran a lot. Was quite enjoying myself till it start to rain, and everyone ran for shelter and after which, i forgot to warm down.

Afternoon around 4.30, we met at city hall mrt and started making our way to suntec, scrutinizing the food and prices there. Our original plan, which was fish & co, was scrapped immeditately cos the cheapest meal there is $30 nett. That's crazy. We went to Siam's kitchen in the end. Buffet for $16 nett, and add $2 for free-flow of drinks. And the service is good. Food was ok.So had an enjoyable dinner.

After which we spent some time in the arcade, before our show (Narnia) starts at 8pm. They played that shooting war game. Wanted to join them but one rifle was down, so only 3 people can play. As usual, Guangxiang was the last one standing, for along time after everyone else has KO liao. The movie was quite good (at least to me), although i agree with them the battle is sort of sucky...

After the movie was another period of dilly dally, with sean insisting on walking the Orchard road every christmas, while others were deciding on where to do the customary gift exchange. Finally it was decided to be Esplanade and we make our way there. However, in the end, we stopped at the big open area between Marina Square and esplanade and did our gift exchange. The system this year: each present was label with a poker card, as some numbers need to be re-used, we use both colors and numbers to indicate the present. And then we just took a card each. 17 presents this year, and the strangest gift this yr is from Zijing again. A filmsy looking rat toy. But i think it is ok lah, generally no sucky stuffs for this year. No cabbage, cooking pans, chinese calendar, and no newspaper (i can't think of any worse gift than that). I got a game set, something like monopoly i think. Dunno what to do with it. Anybody wants?

Finally, we make our way back to the hotel. Only 12 people stayed. Actually i felt quite left out initially, cos I was one of those who went back early, 2 couples plus another friend. Six of us. Nothing to do. I stayed so that can help to share the cost, think it is not easy organising this annual gathering. However my mood lifted when everyone was back and they played some games, where the loser will to drink connoctions. I din of course, they were all strong alcholic stuffs, no way i could take them w/o knocking out. And of cos, it is more to the precept reason. In the end found out i had to pay quite a lot, cos they have a policy of complimentary staying for the partners (to encourage more girls to stay overnight) so only 9 of us sharing. :s

The three couples had the luxury of the bed b blanket (no choice! I was freezing!) while the rest of us squeeze on the lower bed and the floor. My space was really tiny and I almost can't sleep at all. Not to mention my body was aching after soccer. Now my body is aching all over. Dukkha

Posted by Zeathereal at 5:22 PM | Permalink

'Merry Christmas', supposedly a well-acclaimed foreign language film, is good. Boon Whye said it is a french film and jio our french class classmates along to watch at cineleisure, but actually, it is a triple language film. Actually dunno the title and the type of movie (i had thought it is just another comedy like the Taxis series i have watched, the only other french films i saw before) and just went to watch with them. Maybe because i din expect anything of the film, i enjoyed and was totally absorbed in the film.

It is a war film. The three countries involved were Scotland, France (two of them are allies) and Germany. So the Scottish spoke English, French spoke French and Germans spoke German. B/w French and Germans, they spoke mostly French. The three countries took up position at this frontline near France (I think). And a lot of hostilities. The scene started with each country kids being made to recite bad things about the enemy, like they are not real humans, its justified to kill everyone, including children and women etc...

Gist of the story: A German private soldier, a very famous singer, gets a night off the war front on christmas eve, due to his very longing wife, equally famous singer, pulling strings. Together they performed for the prince of Germany. However, he told his wife he have to get back to sing for his comrades. And together, they went back to the frontline (Sneaked back actually). Their comrades were of course surprise and the guy broke into christmas carol, Silent Night. Before this the Scottish were alreading blowing their musical instruments. Suddenly, the Scottish were heard playing the music of the song, Silent Night. Touched, the singer step out of the trench and sing so that his voice could be projected to them too. Absolutely shocked by his actions, the rest wer all trying to get him back down. The funny part is when he finished, cheers and clappings were heard from the Scottish side, and when the Germans went up to look, the Scottish soldiers were all sitting along their trenches, at the top. really a touching side. The singer then walk over the frontline to somewhere middle b/w them and .......

Anyway the important thing is, the French lieutenant, together with the Scottish and German counterpart, agreed to call for a truce just that night, and soon everyone was came out and drop their weapons and huddle together. The next day, still some uneasy tension, since the truce was over, but a digging sound could be heard and someone was trying to bury his brother and the three leaders met up again, to discuss the issue of handling the dead, and so everyone was buried, and the only priest among the soldiers, a Scottish, gave his blessings. Soon everyone was together again, even playing games like soccer.

Then next, the German leader walk over to the French and Scottish side and told his counterparts that the Germans artilleries will bomb in 10 mins. It is safer to come over to their trenches (everyone in the cinema was laughing loudly but to me it is really beautiful). And more funny conversation about how accurate the bombings were, and how a French lament that they will have to dig all over again... After the bombings were over, the French leader replied that their countries will soon replied with artilleries too,and so they shld go over too.

The ending is a sad one. Of course the war continued, but those few hundred men were disgraced in their own countries and being given all sort of label and punishment. Some meaningful conversation took place here, like the priest was screwed by his higher authority and said and did something which really disgust me. The French commander was screwed too but he rebuked that he felt much more with those Germans on the other side, than those that had give the orders about.

Finally the film was dedicated to those soldiers who had participated in such truce (they had a term for it) in all parts of the World during World War I during Christmas eve. Anyway think i really like the film, haha. It gives a realistic view of the soldiers (i think usually Germans were more badly protrayed). Its main principle is something which i had just read about in 'The Four Noble Truth' by Ajahn Sumedho. Plus you get to listen to French, German and some English. I confirm will get the VCD or DVD, if it comes out.

Posted by Zeathereal at 1:01 AM | Permalink

Haben joined my secondary school friends in their annual christmas celebration for a long time. The past two years I always went for Sayalay's retreat. This year, although a bit green eye that a lot of them got to go for her retreat, i have only myself to blame for not being able to go to her retreat. I wanted to go for Sayadaw's one but after much hesitation, in the end nvr go, and of cos i was way too late to register for the more popular Sayalay's retreat...

Back to the celebration. Usually they will walk Orchard Road on the eve. This year, much to my relieve, a lot of people complaint they don't want to squeeze with the crowd so the plan was adjusted to dinner, then movie, then stay @ hotel and it's 'daidee' again. They are all gambling kings, maybe that's why i don't feel a part of them anymore. But no matter what, still long time friends.

I decided to spend more efforts in preparing for the gifts exchange this year. I will almost always grab chocalates @ the last min, haha. This is because i know mine will not be the worst gift. My friends are all very boliao one and can really think of ultra boliao gifts. Example of such presents include newspaper, cabbage (yes, cabbage), big mac burger, etc... Decided on some necessity items. Personally i found them quite useful to bring along on trips like chalet or camps. Oh ya, the budget is $5 this year. I fall short a bit with the package i bought, so decided to top it up with an big pack of mentos, hoping that the person will share, lol...

Oh yah, i was in low spirits today, especially since today sales was extremely bad, but still glad to see Vincent Soh, who surprised me. I'm quite sure he din know I would be around today. Maybe he had hope to catch my sis but was disappointed to see me instead. Haha...

Posted by Zeathereal at 10:53 PM | Permalink

Kena screwed by a customer just now. Not my fault but for the sake of keeping this regular customer, have to say it is my fault, that I forgot and so on... Sigh, only did I got screwed by him for around 15mins, I blatantly lie to get myself screwed, so that mean breaking the precept. Sianz......

Actually I wasn't really angry, cos i tried to tell myself that he must have a reason for being so angry, like mabbe he can only take food w/o sugar, and his dinner is that porridge which i had sold away. Was a bit indignant that I have to carry the blame for my sis who had went off to her friend wedding dinner, but I reason that it would be better that I say it was my fault, cos i'm just helping out.

So i stood there like an idiot and let him rain insults (some pretty hurting) like 长这么大了， 没有脑的啊? All the other stalls people came over after that to kapo, and surprising I was pretty cool about it and told them it was our fault afterall, although i think his scolding got too personal... Good chance to practise my Brahma Vihara...

Actually, WK ask me if the person is bigger size than me etc that he dare to scold like that. The answer is no, he is more like a lor-soh auntie to me. But i agree that the fact that he dare to scold me like that means i look good to bully type? lol. 人善被人欺. Whatever...

Posted by Zeathereal at 10:49 PM | Permalink

词：Zeathereal/DJ 锋
曲：Zeathereal

Verse
在这寒冷的冬天 站在月台最端点 雪像针刺痛我的心扉
回忆起我们从前 兩人天真无邪地 漫步在樱花盛开的街
望着模糊的世界 思念有如大海般 无际无边地将我吞沒
想起分手那天 你双手的微温 至今仍让我思念

Pre-Chorus
听见你在呐喊 叫我要勇敢
我含泪回应 说珍重

Chorus
啸声响起列车即将要离去 远去的身影停留在彼此的心
无法掌控的命运 仿佛把我们卷入 永无止尽的悲剧
多年后当我再回返城市里 熟悉的画面唤醒沉睡了的心
如果能让时间停留在 海枯石烂的心 那有多美丽

Translation (by DJ 锋 aka Puay Hong aka Bae Yong Jun)

Standing at the edge of the balcony in the cold winter, snow penetrated my heart like sharp needles.
Remembering the last time when we were still young and innocent, we strolled along the pavement where the Sakura flowers blossomed.
Looking at this vague world now, resembling a vast ocean, reminiscences of those happy times we had, boundlessly flooding my mind.
Recalling the day when we parted, the warmth of your hand still lingers in my mind.

I heard you cried, “Please stay strong!”
I held back my tears and replied, “Take care!”

The train whistled, indicating it’s time to leave. The silhouette of our backs will always be imprinted in each other’s heart.
The destiny we couldn’t control, forced us to an eternal tragedy.
I returned back to the city many years later. Familiar surroundings awakened my long sleeping heart.
If only time could stop at the instance; when our love is everlasting for each other, how nice would it be?

Posted by Zeathereal at 1:14 AM | Permalink

The above photo was taken 6 months ago. The 2nd person from the left is Dr Raymond Ng. At his newly bought house in AMK (newly wed too). Seeing this reminded me of how i was very kua-zhang and msg him while i was sick sometime ago. Now think back quite embarrassing, but was quite touch by his concern though...

Today was a day like the holidays of the past. Nothing to do. Just slept and stone the day away. Until i went for meditation and accidentally hurt someone feelings (i think...)

Posted by Zeathereal at 10:10 PM | Permalink

Thought this was pretty funny so decided to put down the conversation.

Zeathereal : merci beaucoup mon ami! (means thank you very much my friend)
onelife : no problema de amis masmies! (suppose to mean not a problem my friend. correct one should be 'pas de probléme mon ami' )

Since that time i used the sentence 'pas de probléme mes amis' to him, he has been using broken up version of this sentence to reply whenever i said 'merci' but none as funny as the above.. All the 'ma-mees'! ahahahha

Yet more bad news today at Finger Food Street. The korean guy finally decided to end it. I feel so sad for him, all his efforts and money. Luckily he still have the restaurant nearby, which seems to be doing quite well. Counting the number of stalls left, gasp, only left 10! More than half have evacuate liao. From what i gather yesterday, the tenants side of the story, here is what the management have done wrong:

1. Rent too high. Despite many joint efforts by the stalls to petition for reduction by substantial amt, only 10% temporary reduction was given. It is not a rationale decision to me because starting up is the most difficult time for businesses, if they should quit, the whole place will look empty which will only make business worse.

2. Further petition was only heeded when things got to the stage beyond remedy. Most of the tenants got too du lan with the management and left one by one. Even then, only a further 10% reduction was given. Looking at the situation today, i felt quite sad. So many empty stalls.

Of course maybe the management side have some problems, but no doubt i felt the relationship and confidence with their tenants could have been much better.

Back to Dharmacamp. Suddenly wanted to blog about this final yr gal call jiahui. I kept staring at her, cos i found her resemblance to peiwen uncanny. Wonder if i have stared too much and create a bad impression, cos i din speak to her at all till towards the end of the camp. Tried to ask Ziyi about her name, using look like peiwen as my description. But obviously she didn't agree with the resemblance, cos she dunno who am i referring to. So i thought i was alone until finale night when i realise almost everyone who had gone for CEP agreed with me that she looked very much like peiwen. Except she is slightly prettier! (hope peiwen don't ever get to read my blog)

I have known many jiahui(s), and all of them have similar characters. Those of strong strong type. Hmmm, i wonder why....

PS: Thanx SW for asking abt the problem. Think you will not have known anyway especially since you are not a Buddhist. So spare you the long story...

Posted by Zeathereal at 12:53 AM | Permalink

So much to update after such a long time, but din have the mood to do it earlier.

I knew quite a number of people who had felt they have really benefitted a lot from the camp. Like Hendra. _/\_ Sadhu x 3. Felt happy for them. Think the quality of the Dharma talks and Meditation were good. Thumbs up for the organisers.

Something happen on the finale night evening which affected my whole mood for the camp. Something which i can't even blog about it cos i dunno how private my blog is... Though we have all agreed to hold the matter until they consult venerable again, on my part, i'm still escaping direct confrontation, because i know i will break the precept if i face the situation now.

Went back home, my mum is obsessed with the issue again and she took some ridiculous measures. After giving her a massage i told her nothing is more serious than 心病. Luckily her headache has somehow subside now, after acupuncture, else i was thinking of bringing her to find a Ven Chun Hui, whom i think she will be able to relate better. No more bringing my mum to theravadan monks, even though i'm towards theravada.

Yesterday, whilst looking after my sis stall, one previous stallholder came and hand out tim sum (a lot!) for us to eat. Delicious! And from our conversation i knew more about the situation and management issues at the Finger Food Street. Kinda of nice the people there can bond so well...

Today, had a talk with chun kiang after seeing his msn nick. He got posted to Combat Medic. But i think i got too excited and ramble non stop about what to expect, I/V, etc... He did not even know what is I/V, poor guy. That is the nightmare of all medics.

Posted by Zeathereal at 2:52 PM | Permalink

'Thanks' to shaowei for taking this shot while i was stressfully memorising my anatomy stuffs... Thanks to him, boon whye and francis though, had quite an enjoyable study period at Law Library. Kinda strange that i'm actually quite close to my french classmates, instead of joining BS pple for studying... Actually already have the feeling i will miss studying for exam, the campus, the people, everything... hmmm...

Can't believe i went to pester Mui Hwee at the request of SW. He wanted her msn and after thickening my skin to go and ask her for her permission, he din dare to add her! ahahaha.

Yesterday we had the games trial and i had a lot of fun being just helping out in the camp instead of doing the planning. Its like what om (w/o the -ve connotation, cos i'm actually more uncle than u, in terms of outlook i think) say, chap one kar in...

So think i would have enjoyed myself more if i had join NUSBS during my yr1 and just help out here and there, instead of jumping straight into 2 yrs of committee work...

Anyway really like some of the photos i took during the trial games.







The above was taken by Pak Wing. Not bad, think he will make a much better cameraman than me. Realised a few things, Robby is always posing, whenever he caught me aiming with the camera. Kwek always get caught by me in a not so nice pose, Guan Liang is quite photogenic, the girls usually just try to act normal. Although Yessy also like to pose, haha...

And finally, the group photos





Kevin will come for some part of the camp afterall so i actually do not really need to worry, since i probably will not have much chance of being a lone photographer, most of the time. Since there is also Yeeling. Kinda grateful that Kevin often help out during my time in charge. His pictures are great!!!

Posted by Zeathereal at 1:20 AM | Permalink

Its actually quite an old camera, with only 3.2 Megapixels (considering handphones can give you 2 MP easily nowadays!). After being appointed cameraman to Dharmacamp, i just sort of find out more about this old camera on the internet and read up on how to use some of the manual settings it offered. Think my sis got a lot of photography stuffs which she din touched at all. Not a strange thing since she was from Mass Communication when she was in NTU. Found a good and tall tripod. Found some materials on photography too... So now i know how to change the exposure settings and the aperture settings, and some default mode like sports or night or scenic or portrait.

Today tried out the camera whilst i was waiting for the bus.







The above was taken using the old trick of using a large aperture, such that the near objects are clear while the background are blurred. Often found in portrait photos. Tooo bad i don't have beautiful flowers to try and i also paiseh the pple at the busstop are looking at me...

The photos i took at the Dharmacamp meeting was an absolute disaster. Low bat means i can't use flash, which combine with the poor lighting conditions (cum the fact that i must have very steady hands under such conditions), the photos were awful... Tried to played with the exposure after i had thought the photos were too bright (from the camera lcd) BUT actually it was just nice, as seen from below. Regretted changing the settings...

The link for the photo is http://photobucket.com/albums/a74/autumntree/





Anyway managed to squeeze some battery life out of camera to allow me to capture 5 photos of Foo Hai to be used in the camp booklet.

Posted by Zeathereal at 10:51 PM | Permalink

最近的桌子总是比较乱
可能是最近的我比较懒
最近的我记忆力比较差
可能是某个amnesia的人的传染

最近的我精神比较差
处事待人态度也欠佳
毕竟内涵修养终究会败漏出

最近的我又开始静坐了
是时候收拾散乱的心吗？
还是心里内疚无法去禅修营？
只坐了短短十五分钟
就知道已经不行了。。。

Posted by Zeathereal at 12:52 AM | Permalink

Help my sister today at her stall. Was actually a bit irritated when she told me to call out to customers to promote the food. Because I don't really think that will help much. But i must admit it is more due to that I pretty uncomfortable doing that. What i do is I will just talk to them a bit when they stop to look at the stuffs, and not really called out to every passer-by. There is this new korean stall next to my sis stall. Today the korean guy brought his gf and her brother and the brother gf (haha) to the stall. Cos the inner part is shared between us, so actually quite crowded. Tooo crowded for my liking haha. But today the environment was quite nice. I got help out the korean stall to promote and sell their stuffs (they are always disappearing sometimes) and the stall opposite us (stephanie i think, a temp helper) sometimes got help me promote also. Not bad, helping each other out. And sharing food and soup, haha...

One customer, a teenage boy i think, was quite chatty and was curious about the korean stall, so i help them promote. Then he was quite surprised and say, 'wow, how come you help them to promote?'. Then i replied no lah, "their food really not bad (actually i only tried their soup, quite good!), just being honest mah ~_~" But wait, i wasn't lying, because my sister told me the other food is very nice, just that it is very spicy, so i did not dare to try.

It is really tough doing business there. Only three stalls are doing quite ok, as far as i can see. The rest are all closing down one by one. Today the ice-cream stall is closing down. The stall on both sides of my sis have already closed (before the korean took over). Not to mention the durian puff stall and the taiwanese dessert stall(closed after 1 week, haha). Really don't know how long my sis can survive. But i certainly hope she can do well. But sad to say, though the creations are quite good, it is the nature of the products itself that i think is the problem. Dessert porridge doesn't really seem appealing to the youths there i guess. After sampling both day of my sister porridge, my conclusion is that her consistency are improving. In maintaining food quality i mean. I liked all the three porridges on both days. I had commented (refer to one of my earlier entry) b4 that sometimes the standard drop. But for those reading this, not to worry, can always buy the cold dessert soup to be safe. That one sure ok one, haha...

Yesterday wairen (qinhan) and isen planned a Harry Potter movie trip cum visit to my sister stall. So thankful for their support. The movie was great, I liked it, and I liked the french spoken on the show even more, because i can catch. Ahahaha. "C'est magnifique" is one, and i think i heard "merci" too. Nine of us at the movies. Weiling left us to meet his friends and weiyang joined us for dinner (after visiting my sister stall).

Posted by Zeathereal at 1:29 AM | Permalink