Ah Wen

Ah Wen is a lighter thief. Ah Wen steals lighters. She got a few expensive ones in her collection, but she stopped stealing those because she feels bad about stealing those. Nowadays, she pretty much sticks to stealing disposable lighters. She likes them more than anything else. She likes it when she finds a new design, or a new colour, of something so familiar to her. She likes to use her stolen lighters as she wonders how the previous owner used it - mostly for cigarettes, she guesses, but possibly sometimes for flaming drinks or cakes or other things in her imagination. So, of course, Ah Wen doesn't take them from over the counter, because they are new and they are not yet special. Yes, she even takes them from her friends, who sometimes steal lighters for her. Ah Wen has too many lighters to count, so she does not bother to. She is sometimes afraid that her room will explode. She is sometimes afraid that the police will take her away. She is most times unhappy.

An informal piece of Bukit Timah Road nostalgia

It's quite something to be along Bukit Timah Road around evening time. The students never grow old. They look quite the same as we once did. And they remind us perfectly of who we used to know. Their distinctive after-school-smell... The way they chatter with their friends... Or the way they look into space so seriously.
I no longer remember what fills the mind of a student on his/her solitary way home. Something they said in class? An argument waiting at home? That special "meimei" or boy?
I can really only imagine like an outsider. Scary. It's like I haven't been there before!

Still, I wish to tell them that it's probably not important at all. That they should forget about everything completely, and enjoy the unspoken, yet unanimously acknowledged, rights to be irresponsible that belong to teenagers.
I wish somebody had told me...though I probably wouldn't have believed.
Oh well...

Oh well, I want to go into the schools though. I want to see to remember how it was like, before I become too far away, too old, and forgotten by myself. I want to sit where I used to sit, and remember who I used to laugh with, and what I used to eat every Friday, and how I psyched myself up to fake a fever.
I want to hide where I used to hide, and listen to the echoes of the whispers I used to whisper, to remember who I used to whisper to.
I want to watch where I used to watch, and imagine that that ageless faceless student over there is you, or anybody, and wonder how everything could have been different.
I want to go where you used to go and imagine how you used to go there and what you used to do and wonder how everything could have been different and how you felt and what was on your mind.
I want to eat what you used to eat I want to laugh at what you used to laugh at and imagine how it might have been if we might have been able to laugh at it together.
Not because I love you, but because I might have.
Not because I love you, but because of the past we have lived, and might have shared.

(For Junyao, though not about Junyao, to convince him of something secretive.)

Challenge

Smile, in a nice way,
at three strangers on a day
you feel quite okay.

(July - August Theme Song)

"this is pointless,
it can't be helped,
in this wonderful world,
we are just living our lives."

Jump on the spot.

Jump on the spot twice
and probably nothing much will happen except that you
jumped on the spot twice.

4 am

I must sleep too late
but I hear the insects' song
that is deafening.

(an old piece and old other things)
(sneak)

Ice Cream Sundae

I did not enjoy the peach coloured, peach flavored ice cream.

I took two tip-of-the-spoon-ful-s of it and everyone's paper umbrellas to play with them until it was time to leave.

I chose and took two paper umbrellas with me. One green, painted with morning glory. The other yellow, painted with another flower

I don't remember because I broke it and threw it away on the way home.

Now, I am not as happy as I could be.