okok haven't updated in ages but this is what i've been wanting to share for weeks.

Guan Weixing was born in Dunhua County, Jilin Province, China in 1940. Here are some of his works. to view more, visit http://www.guanweixing.com/

Thanks to erick i now know they're called Pon and Zi. and they are very cute. lol. some are quite lame. take a look at some of these though:

(and this is so true. lol.)

awww..so adorable right. i love this one too:

huahaha.. i know, there's something about zi. she's so mean, lol, and yet you forgive her.

and speaking of watercolour. today in class i was introduced to Leng Joon-Wong. I am so awed and inspired. These are some of the paintings he did. These are uploaded photos (taken with my lousy phone camera) of bloody printed out miniature copies of his paintings. And they still look damned good!! imagine the originals. i am a big fan. unfortunately, can't find much on him on the web or even in singapore's libraries. so you have to make do with these stupid photos of miniature copies that i took.

hm.. no. i think i should entitle it 'Watered Colour.' i doubt anyone understands why. but oh wells.. Not quite in the habit of giving titles to my poems, so ya need all the inspiration i can get. thanks, callista, for this one.

anyhow, i really came up with the poem when i was caught in the rain. i thought about it with my pants rolled up to the knees and water seeping into my shoes, dampening my socks. and well, if you know me, you'll know that my umbrella actually leaks. so ya.. overwhelmed by water. and i suddenly thought of my watercolour class, and imagined painting something and then it got washed down in the rain, and imagined i was (were? no, i think 'was') that painting. sudden inspiration, lol. (recent weather being very conducive for the growth of depressive germs.) but it's not as well-expressed as i'd like it to be. well, im not that good yet. cos what i felt was really really sad. and the poem is nowhere near that. lol. the poem was more like pretty-fied to fit the rhyme scheme and all. anyway, i edited it the next day, on the train to pasir ris, when i sat in front of this like 12-yr-old kid doing the Rubik's cube so freaking fast.

Watered Colour

If I were watercolour,
I'd run and dance in water
and watch those pretty watermarks
spring and bloom into scars.

And if I had an umbrella,
I'd catch the merest splotches.
My feet would stick to my socks,
to the soles of my shoes,
and soon I'd be walking barefoot.

If I were watercolour,
I wouldn't even worry about flu,
though I'd lose some pink and colour
and turn into wet paper.

If I were watercolour,
I wouldn't be able to dress up (or wear my make-up).
The rain would ruin my rouge
(and smear my lipstick into frown).

I have no use for dresses and make-ups.

If I were watercolour, this is what I'd do:
I'd gladly erase the past year, (or maybe two) -
I'd will the rain to pour
and strip my memory down to the core.

09.04.2008

i've decided to start doing research on the backgrounds and inspirations of literary figures/people i find interesting. this first one will be on Gertrude Stein. i don't actually like MANY of her writings. she can get abit too.. cryptic. but there are several of her poems and quotations that i like. like this one i tried to draw inspiration from:

I caught sight of a splendid Misses. She had handkerchiefs and kisses. She had eyes and yellow shoes she had everything to choose and she chose me.

In passing through France she wore a Chinese hat and so did I.
In looking at the sun she read a map. And so did I.
In eating fish and pork she just grew fat. And so did I.
In loving a blue sea she had a pain. And so did I.
In loving me she of necessity thought first. And so did I.

How prettily we swim. Not in water. Not on land. But in love.

How often do we need trees and hills. Not often.
And how often do we need birds. Not often.
And how often do we need wishes. Not often.
And how often do we need glasses not often.

We drink wine and we make well we have not made it yet.

How often do we need a kiss. Very often and we add when tenderness overwhelms us we speedily eat veal.

And what else, ham and a little pork and raw artichokes and ripe olives and chester cheese and cakes and caramels and all the melon. We still have a great deal of it left. I wonder where it is. Conserved melon. Let me offer it to you.

anyway, here's the really concise biography. from an extract from a UPenn site from an entry from Encyclopedia Brittanica:

avant-garde American writer, eccentric, and self-styled genius (imagine). Stein spent her infancy in Vienna and Paris and her girlhood in Oakland, Calif. After further study at Johns Hopkins medical school she went to Paris, where she was able to live by private means. From 1903 to 1912 she lived with her brother Leo, who became an accomplished art critic; thereafter she lived with her lifelong companion Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967). In her own work, she attempted to parallel the theories of Cubism, specifically in her concentration on the illumination of the present moment and her use of slightly varied repetitions and extreme simplification and fragmentation. For general readers, she remained essentially the author of such lines as "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." Her only book to reach a wide public was The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), actually Stein's own autobiography.

Here is a portrait of Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso (who was a quite good friend of hers, as was Ernest Hemingway (not my favourite writer he is so dark (i mean his writings lol))):

haven't had much time to blog anything particularly nice so i'd just post two "recent" photos. random sceneries again.

the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music building in NUS.
the view from the skypark in vivocity. nice place. i like it.