My heart stopped beating for a split-second, I swear.

God wrapped up an extraordinarily generous dollop of talent in pretty paper, tied a flouncy ribbon around it and gave it to her.

Heart. heart. heart.

Wagonized by France Belleville.

A Handsome Man

Peace Hotel

Wo Peng
476 MacPherson Road
Singapore 368191
Tel: 6747 9892

This restaurant takes on a lofty name, that of the famed hotel sitting on Shanghai’s Bund – Peace Hotel.

Wo Peng, cantonese for ‘Peace’, sits snugly in a row of shophouses in the MacPherson Aljunied area and is fitted out in the comfortable, old-school Chinese restaurant style. A style where not much thought is given to style. What’s put on the table and who sits around it matter more at a meal here.

I’ve been twice already. They have plans in mind for the shophouse unit next door, currently still being worked on. Till completion, the restaurant won’t be officially opened – its sign board is still wrapped in red paper. Yes, when I say old-school Chinese, I mean old-school Chinese.

We had the claypot rice (advanced order required), pork ribs, jellyfish and bright eyed fish herbal soup

Chinese table setting – a select frame

A peep into the kitchen

The spicy condiment is always awaiting on a meal table in Singapore

Suicide

Salon.com: What do you think is uniquely magical about fiction?

Wallace:

Oh, Lordy, that could take a whole day! Well, the first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don’t know what you’re thinking or what it’s like inside you and you don’t know what it’s like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way. But that’s just the first level, because the idea of mental or emotional intimacy with a character is a delusion or a contrivance that’s set up through art by the writer. There’s another level that a piece of fiction is a conversation. There’s a relationship set up between the reader and the writer that’s very strange and very complicated and hard to talk about. A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I’m sitting in a chair. There’s real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn’t make me feel less lonely.

There’s a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone — intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I’m in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don’t with other art

.

An extract of a past interview by Salon with novelist David Foster Wallace who recently died. By hanging himself. Came across this while browsing my google reader, updates through Playing the Edge

Though I’ve not read any of Wallace’s work, I’m definitely curious now. Oblivious and Infinite Jest look very interesting.

Albert Camus’ the Myth of Sisyphus comes to mind. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.“

One question

What do you do when you’re bored, like, B.O.R.E.D.

Hot Pot

Nan Hwa Chong Fishhead Steamboat
814/816 North Bridge Road (S)198779
$15 – $25 pax aprx

Tofu & prawns

Chicken cutlet chop

Ngoh Hiang spring roll.

Tiger beer. On ice.

Clean licked

I ain’t big on fish, fish head or steamboat, for that matter. However, most people love these and it’s always a warm interactive meal at a round table.

I was told that the Fish Head Steamboat here is very good. The coffeeshop has tables lined up along the road and into the alleyways.

My experience was all right.

I feel like, when something is hyped up, I go in there with hyped up expectations and and if the subject doesn’t live up to the expectation, there is disappointment far greater than if I had tried it without any pre-emptive ideals.

Pork Chop

Loo’s Hainanese Curry Rice
57 Eng Hoon Street
Tai Kwang Huat coffee shop #01-88
>> Diagonally opposite the Tiong Bahrhu market escalators
>> About $6.50 for 2 people. 3 dishes.

I’d heard so much about this curry rice. Over drinks once, a friend was reminiscing about his lunch, “I went down to Tiong Bahru and bought two packets of curry pork chop rice. I ate one there and brought the other back to the office and ate it later on. I’m not very hungry now.”

I just had to try this much talked about ‘curry rice’ and its famous pork chop accompaniment.

Doesn’t get more local than this – a typical coffeshop scene. I like Tiong Bahru. It is alive yet laid back. Heartland yet not far-flung. Check out the mosaic floor tiles.

Washed down with a good ol’ black coffee. Kopi-O.

The Optimist’s Creed

Something I came across which I just had to share:-

Promise yourself:-

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.

To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.

To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

Why I Don’t Like Rich Men – Joan Collins

“I’ve never met a rich man who wasn’t in some way flawed. Selfish and arrogant toward their woman (or women), too many of them feel the need to conquer and subdue, and once they have succeeded, they are too often contemptuous of their conquests.”

“There are too many examples of women being treated like chattel by rich men, and there are too many ex-trophy wives. Beautiful and young, they marry a rich and powerful man, and for several years they have everything they dreamed about. Then comes the dumping, and suddenly they’re losing their looks, influence, and money.”

- Joan Collins

Just because a girl’s a legendary femme fatale doesn’t mean she’s a gold digger

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat which doesn’t go

When I am an old woman,
I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go,
and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension
on brandy and summer gloves and satin sandles,
And say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
and gobble up samples in shops
and press alarm bells
and run with my stick along public railings,
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick flowers in other people’s gardens
and learn to spit!
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at ago,
or only bread and pickles for a week,
and hoard pens and pencils
and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry,
and pay our rent
and not swear in the street,
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner
and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me
are not too shocked and surprised
when suddenly I am old,
And start to wear purple!

- – - Warming, Jenny Joseph

via Paulo Coelho’s blog

Dare to live. Dare to love. No better time than now.

30s are the new 20s.

18 year-olds carrying Miu Miu & Balenciaga.

*

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

- – The Invitation – Oriah Mountain Dreamer

*

When love beckons to you follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;

For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, I am in the heart of God.”

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

- – extracted from The Prophet, Kahil Gibran.