My Longest 24 Hours.

Come, Little One.
Stay with Me.

Fraught with worry. Stricken with fear.
Lord, I put my trust in You.
Please.

Luke 17:6
He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you."

Updated: 28 Oct 2007 (Sun), 6.30 pm

Thank you, God! Amen!

If you were wondering what the fuss was about, what would you do if your car went MIA for 24 hours? -.-

Getting A Grip.

Hold on, Little One.
Just a little while longer.


Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. [ James 1:12 ]

Welcome Home, Leion!

After yet another stint at Sydney and a marathon 2-hr conversation on the phone last week, Leion is finally back!

It's good to have you back again, hao peng you! =)

Mr Bad Day.

Weighing the depth of Troubles, Mr Bad Day hovered precariously. Irrevocably, Mr Bad Day dropped by and left Mich drained.

Mich's boarding the Tired Express.

Game for a ride?

*chug chug*

And I.

And I will have to live,
Watching frame after frame.
And I will have to accept
The diminishing of my name.

And I will have to smile,
Pressed lips in crinkled silence.
And I will have to turn,
Lest it betrays my slivered poignance.

And I will have to listen
To each word of yours, my friend.
And I will have to choke
In artifice to pretend.

And I will have to stop
Reels in time from playing.
And I will have to cease
The race that I've been running.

And I will have to give
A rendition of mock delight.
And I will have to halt
Of that in yearned respite.

And I will have to grit,
To tell the lie I must.
And I will have to cast
The laughters shared yet passed.

And I will have to trudge
With Yesterdays gone by
And You will never know
My regret that I did not try.

And that,
Is Letting Go.
If Only, Because,
I loved You so.

So go on, wriggle from
The cocoon with wings yet to dry.
Your kaleidoscope drenched,
My beautiful butterfly.

© Mich

Since 2001.

"Come away, O Human Child
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy hand in hand.
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand."

A satisfying movie engages all, or most, of your faculties, albeit weaning on extremities. Quelling all attempts at intellectual scrutiny, AI is perhaps, by far, the only movie since 2001 to have evoked repeated incidents of uncontrollable sobs - quivering, mind you - as the credits roll. Forget the Pinocchio metaphor, the directorial hybrid between Kubrick and Spielberg, the futuristic mire, human transgressions and criticisms of piddled inertia. (Note: I love long, slow-moving films.).

AI's yearning for love is simple, real and tangible. At least, to me.

Naiveté

David : Mommy, will you die?
Monica : Well, one day, David, yes, I will.
David : I'll be alone.
Monica : Don't worry yourself so.
David : (resting his head on Monica's lap) How long will you live?
Monica : For ages. For fifty years.
David : I love you, Mommy. I hope you never die. Never.

Abandonment

Monica : You won't understand the reasons but I have to leave you here.
David : Is it a game?
Monica : No.
David : When will you come back for me?
Monica : I'm not, David. You'll have to be here by yourself.
David : Alone?
Monica : With Teddy.
David : No. No, no, no! No, Mommy, please! No, no! Please, Mommy!
Monica :They would destroy you, David!
David : I'm sorry I broke myself. I'm so sorry I cut your hair off. I'm sorry I hurt Martin.
Monica : I have to go. I have to go! Stop it! I have to go now.
David : Mommy, don't! Mommy if Pinocchio became real and I become a real boy can I come home?
Monica : That's just a story.
David : But a story tells what happens.
Monica : Stories are not real! You're not real!
David : Why do you want to leave me? Why? I'm sorry I'm not real. If you let me, I'll be so real for you!
Monica : Let go, David! Let go! I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the world.

Hope

David : After I find the Blue Fairy, then, I can go home. Mommy will love a real boy. The Blue Fairy will make me into one.

Denial

David : My mommy doesn't hate me! Because I'm special! And unique! Because there's never been anyone like me before, ever! Mommy loves Martin because he is real, and when I am real, Mommy's going to read to me and tuck me in my bed and sing to me and listen to what I say and she will cuddle with me and tell me every day a hundred times a day that she loves me!

Gigolo Joe : She loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them. But she does not love you, David. She cannot love you. You are neither flesh, nor blood. You are not a dog, a cat, or a canary. You were designed and built specific, like the rest of us. And you are alone now only because they're tired of you, or replaced you with a younger model, or were displeased with something you said, or broke.

Childlike Conviction

Blue Fairy : You have been searching for me, haven't you, David?
David : For....my whole life.

Finality

Monica : I love you, David. I do love you. (whispers) I have always loved you.
Narrator : That was the everlasting moment he had been waiting for. And the moment had passed, for Monica was sound asleep - more than asleep. Should he shake her, she would never rouse. So David went to sleep too. And for the first time in his life, he went to that place where dreams are born.

A distinct favourite despite being a 2001 film & having been watched repeatedly ad nauseum.

*For the entire script & audio scenes, click here.
In addition, comprehensive details can be found here.

Letting Go.

Turning away, walking.
Moving on, not glancing over.
Standing in the face of the open seas
Arms yearning to be free.

I breathe.
A smile.
The wind -
Tickles my ears.
Gurgles.

A walk in the sand,
Come with me.
Yesterday, its sediments rue.

Tell me.
No - Wait.
Don't.

Cup your face,
That I have.
Coffee and lingers,
Those we've shared.

Look, this sidewalk streaks a meander.
You.
With Me.

Listen.
The fragmented minor.
Dwells.

My palms -
With Yours they blend.

Wants. Needs. Musts.
Above all, Love.
Yours.

Happy, Are You?
Loved, I am.
Happy was I
When I was loved by You.

Come, sit with me.
Let's build sandcastles
And play and laugh and laugh and play
Till the sea beckons the sun.

We shall knock these down,
Wrinkle our toes in soaked shoes,
Blanket us in the sand
And close our eyes.

Drifts before we stir.
Awake, we will.

Then.

You will be You.
And I, be I.

Best Friends For Life.

Finally.

A moment with my best friend, Tricia.

Natter over coffee, we squealed and reminisced our numerous silly escapades.

Yes, I've known her practically all my life.

It all began in kindergarten. Apparently, I was sobbing in the throes of the new environment and she came to wipe my tears away. Adorable, isn't it?

Blessed with being a true-blue tai tai in Indonesia, she whiles her time away doing nothing but shop & dine. (LV, Gucci, Prada, SK2 and the works, mind you.) When she's really bored, she'll stroll into a salon. (The lady blew $600+ recently on having David Gan deal with her coif! A total waste of money, if you were to ask me. Madness! Yes, Mich chided her for frittering that amount on follicles.)

That said, Mich doesn't care if she's the tai-tai that she is or the ordinary N-level holder that she was prior to marriage. Before, Mich would be irked when people raised eyebrows at our different education levels. Scrunched-up noses scorned her qualifications, as if her worth were pegged against it.

This is the girl who's been with me through every single episode of my life. She's celebrated my ups, she's with me through my downs.

Trust, loyalty, kindness, character - these are the traits that Mich ranks high up on her priority list. Save the material saunters for impressing someone else. Not me.

"Best friends for life." she reiterated.

My sentiments exactly. =)

6 Days.

Without my Uncle Agony to come up with silly quips while discussing politics and global issues at hand on a daily basis.

Having been invited as a Guest Speaker at a seminar in Japan by the Swiss Ambassador, Mr A has left local shores in the afternoon. 6 days without the usual idle banter. "Abandon you!" he jested at the airport before his departure.

Friend A had better return with good stuff for Mich!
Mich loves Japanese intricates!
(No, please. Spare me J-pop. Trash those!)

** Erstwhile, Mich bears in mind that Leion is due on a flight home by 19 October if all is well in Sydney. Aye?

Through It All.

There I was, having a nose buried in the depths of my wardrobe with the strains of Hillsongs punctuating my otherwise mundane task. Notwithstanding the prosaic element at hand, spasmodic interruption came in the form of a musical measure - Fire by Sophie Zelmani - an incidental imprint.

You don't know of the strings you're pulling
They've been hanging loose on me
I go crazy when I feel them moving
Cause' it reminds me I don't let you be free

I'll go through a fire for this
I'll go all the way and hope there's a loophole we've missed.

My name can't live up to this matter
So don't say it if you don't want what it will bring
And if you are scared of this dirty weather
I think you should rush off for your thing

I'll be in the fire for you
My senses don't work so well when I'm hurt
But I've said I love you

I'll be in the fire for you
I'll wait in the fire
And I will hope I'm still there when you're through

Fire - Sophie Zelmani

Planned Parenthood - An Oxymoron

In the news :

Recent controversy has shrouded the opening of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Aurora, a relatively unknown suburb in Chicago. The petition for and failure to legalize an injunction came after Planned Parenthood used a subsidiary called Gemini Office Development on the permits to erect the building. Once the news broke, a few Aurora City Council members along with abortion opponents swept in and accused Planned Parenthood of committing fraud against the city. The abortion industry's whoppers go far beyond Aurora. For years, it denied that the grizzly partial-birth abortion procedure existed, and when called on it, the industry spread around some more lies, such as it's "rarely used," used only to preserve the mother's health or life, used only on severely ill unborn babies and so forth. Until Ron Fitzsimmons, head of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, his conscience hurting, admitted that he was "lying through his teeth." The procedure existed, he said, and was used frequently and for whatever reason the mother wanted. This was ten years ago, but the abortion industry has never owned up to the lie.

Mich's take :

Cloak it in various pseudonyms - abortion, genetic engineering, in-vitro fertilisation and the like, the semantics are similar.

Life is a Gift, not a Choice.

The Abominable Nose.

Warning : Frivolous post ahead.

The Nose has been up and running since Friday. The Throat decided to jump on the bandwagon. If that wasn't bad enough, I woke up with aching muscles and a Fever today.

As such, this photograph wasn't taken for vanity's sake but to assess the extent of the rickety state of health on my physical attributes. (ie. Do I resemble the Living Dead upon stepping beyond my threshold and thereby, create pandemonium? Ok, I exaggerate, but you get my drift.)

Suffice to say, I had unexpected compliments ranging from "Wow, you look uber young in this pic!" to "You look so different - so elegant, so ladylike." (Thanks, bro. Such altruism.) Now, that certainly left me agape and bewildered.

Medication had better prevail in the battle against my sinu.....*achoo*...ses!

Frills of a Different Kind.

Not quite the regular sashimi fodder.

The Daily Mail

The Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, was alerted by a fisherman at a nearby port on Sunday that he had spotted an odd-looking eel-like creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

Marine park staff caught the 1.6 metre (5 ft) long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a "living fossil" because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times.

The shark appeared to be in poor condition when park staff moved it to a seawater pool where they filmed it swimming and opening its jaws.

"We believe moving pictures of a live specimen are extremely rare," said an official at the park. "They live between 600 and 1,000 metres under the water, which is deeper than humans can go."

"We think it may have come close to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters," the official said.

The shark died a few hours after being caught. Frilled sharks, which feed on other sharks and sea creatures, are sometimes caught in the nets of trawlers but are rarely seen alive.

**Mich notes : The shark died. Would it have survived had the humans released their grip on the need to be lauded with media attention?