You know crunchy peanut butter slathered generously onto cheesecake tastes like heaven. The crunch and the melt.

You know how whipped butter smells like heaven and tastes like paradise, a little like cheese? For years I'd been deigning to buy Body Shop's Vitamin E lipbalm; it was only when they didn't carry the cocoa butter flavor in Aussie that I had no choice. Rather than hemp which was too herbal, and which was way more expensive as well.

It smells and tastes like whipped butter.

Something I completely adore.

My lips. Whipped butter. Lovely.

Today it rained.

I obviously underestimated the power of rain. In a cumulative sense as the drops splatter on your being.

Despite an umbrella, I was soaked to the bone.

Despite being drenched, I never felt happier.

I rejoiced when it rained because when it's stuffy, you can get really itchy. And you know the deal with vicarious itching-- you see someone scratching and then you feel itchy too. I'd always been idiotic enough to collect tights and stockings and a whole throng of winter/fall jackets even though it's always summer here. It's ridiculous because I don't work in an office, so even if it's cold in school (I call uni/college 'school' because it just rolls off my lips), walking from place to place and the commute only means perspiration is the only constancy. Only during the wet monsoon season does the skies begin to open and pour forth. Anyhows, everytime I come back from a colder country I start becoming unaccustomed to the persistent humidity here, and then can I sit in an air-conditioned lecture theatre in thin clothes and not freeze. Most of the time, I can be in three jackets and be shivering, the blood flowing far away from my lips transforming them into corpse-white. As usual, ever since the return, I've been craving cold(er) weather and have since hung up my stockings, resigned that they should only be used when temperatures begin to drop. Rain, rain, rain felt like manna from the heavens. The perfect occasion to throw on my tweed dress (another Singapore-weather impractical number) and stockings. At the last minute did I decide to throw in the yellow clutch and the yellow-and-white polka dotted pumps. Plus the hairpiece. Even though I got quite a bit of stares, it's always interesting to imagine what the hell is lurking in the minds of others'. Like, "What's this psycho girl doing wearing that floral thingy". It's okay. You know those Philip Treacy headpieces? Oh God, I've always loved them to bits, tears and to death. When I move to London I'm going to finally be able to wear them and not look idiotic.

How I got this tweed dress precisely reminds me of my silliness. You know how cheaper brands sometimes have shoddy workmanship, and come without inner lining? Well, the latter condition is suicidal in humid conditions, you become unbearably itchy. So I shelved the idea of buying a tweed dress for some time since it'd be expensive and I'd only wear it once a year. My debit card is awful, it only allows me earn 1 pathetic point per four (or is it five?) dollars spent. Which means no matter how much I spend, it's still extremely little. Contrast it to an Amex Platinum wherein one can earn eight (and with Platinum Reserve, plus ten) points per $1.60 spent! With awesome gifts. The moral of the story is that I know people who charge tons to their cards, that amount to an eyepopping number. So rather than let their points go to waste-- which is what they always do-- I'd always be shamelessly and (rather) sweetly asking, "So could I cash in your points for (insert label's) voucher?" Of course, they're always happy to do a good turn unto me (ho ho ho). My entire ethos is that technically, I'm not accepting gifts, but rather, I'm not wasting money. Until one day I looked at my own debit card statement and nearly died of shock. Heck, I had accumulated enough to get quite a few vouchers. Talk about PotKettleBlack. So I claimed a Zara one, and walked into the store. This dress caught my eye, in its navy-grey color that reminds me of Russian Blue cats. From the puffed sleeves to the not-too-low neckline, I was sold. That was when I still used my Mini Debit, which is 2/3 of the size of a normal plastic. It's so adorable, and people always go, "I love your card" which makes me laugh because I think, "Heck, you don't even need to pay any subscription!". Especially when I travel, the cashiers always start to nudge each other and show each other my card. I liked it because it was so. . tiny. This year the bank decided to discontinue that card. My heart sank. And they mailed me another plastic instead. A full-sized lurid red one that is terribly designed. Since the ugly one doubles up as a transport card, I decided to keep it that way. But I've since used other plastics that give me oodles of points so I can claim oodles of vouchers. But heck, given how I'm on an Expenditure Diet, just how many points can I accumulate.

dress Zara; shoes Delicious; clutch free gift from L'oreal; headpiece Sportsgirl; stockings Ice Lemon Tee

*******

When I awoke on Thursday I nearly died of shock. My alarm didn't ring because 'am' was set to 'pm'. It was 840am, my father thought I'd decided to cut school and strolled into my room to confirm that. There I was curled up on the bed like a hybrid of a lazy cat and a dead baby, lost somewhere in Sandman's Turf. Doubtlessly, I jumped out of bed. My parents are like that, they're used to me cutting school, and ever since I went to uni and decided I should learn to show up in school more often, they start telling me when I awake, "Go back to sleep". And then, highly open to suggestion, sometimes I stupidly walk back to bed. I had to leave home by 9am in order to make it for a 1030am tutorial. Shit, I thought. I normally awake an hour before leaving home to squeeze in about 70 micro-actions which includes snoozing to forcing in my contact lenses to ironing my clothes to making and eating breakfast. A bloody feat, especially if you are highly vain, must wear mascara everyday, and have curls to maintain. Sometimes out of perverse pleasure do I like to time how fast I can get-- the record time being 35 minutes. I closed my eyes and told myself, I'd achieve it in twenty minutes. This was the outcome. Y'all know how when many say they awoke late and threw on anything, it's normally jeans and some tee, but for me, I think that would take even longer. My Thursdays are insane, I sometimes wonder just when will I collapse of exhaustion. Like this. 1.5 hours commute, 1 hour tutorial, 3 hours cognitive research and quick lunch, 3 hours seminar, 1.5 hours commute, 3+ hours tutoring, then dinner, then home. Then some schoolwork or research work to catch up on. It's even more hectic now that my paper's been accepted at a conference. But. . irony of ironies is that I cannot go! I cannot go for an all-expense trip to Chicago! I cannot go for my first conference in the domain of Psychology! All because it clashes with my examination dates. Bleah. Bleah. Bleah. This is what I mean by my proclamation that I am Murphy-Sod's poster girl.

I love those wedges, but now I lament, "Dear VNC, why the hell are your shoes so fugly now!?!?" It was the store The Best Friend and I spent so much time in between 17 to 19 years old, hauling home many pairs of shoes everytime. We suspect their designer got poached, that wacky man who always chatted us up.

dress from Brunswick Markets; wedges VNC; bangles Dorothy Perkins and the zoo; earrings vintage

*******

I got this corset-like denim belt from Aussie as well. I'd always been sketching stuff like that since young, but never saw any here. I have a huge huge huge corset fetish and one day when it becomes practical to me, I will (get someone to) invest in a huge collection for me. Sometimes it worries me the types of taste I have. I like those dress-up stuff, bondage-like shoes, and those black feathered gear that seem to be favored by high-class callgirls at adult masquerade parties. Worse is how I never realize that these stuff make people giggle, euphemistically speaking, and they have to point out to me just how (insert adjective) the thing I have looks. I slipped it over one of my mother's tea dresses which I mercilessly slashed to make it length-appropriate for me. She has a bad habit of waking me up and asking me, "Hey you bought (insert item?) and oohing and ahhing". Which is crazy, because I need my sleep! (Okay, some nights I survive on two hours only). But she gave me this absolutely stunning idea. A huge version of this corset belt worn as a boob tube, and with a structured jacket thrown over it. Oh, why didn't I think of that. Then I would have bought two belts, not one. But it's been more than three weeks and I've only purchased two books (rather than three a week), and a whole hoard of sarongs and gorgeous saris secondhand for only $5. That's all. Therefore, I haven't been disturbed out of my sleep when she discovers the stuff I secretly smuggle home all the time.

As for the psuedo-ship anchor chains around my neck, don't ask. I love gold way too much, after I decided that pretending to like silver (when I was wayyy younger) because it was hip and young just wasn't me, and that gold suits me way better. If it wasn't so hot, I'd be in all my gold lamé stuff all the time.

dress M&S (my mother's); belt Supre; chains vintage; earrings ? (gift); clutch Guess?; shoes Therapy

*******

I swear I will never rest until I get the full set of holiday snaps sorted out. Most are still floating in the limbo of  my hard disk. .

This was when we went to the Old Melbourne Gaol. I wore the same floral dress as above.

It's replete with creepy energy, with the cells of the most vicious criminals ever. What struck me was how young most of them were went sent to the gallows-- around 19 to 20. Which is younger than me. I suppose, conditions of extreme poverty (since many of them were workers and settlers) brings out the ugliest in brutality, forcing the Hyde out of Jekyll. 'Nuff said.

These are the parts of the prison that are still in existence. The others have been converted to parts of the campus for RMIT, or demolished. I asked my housemate there, whose sister's home I bunked in, if she worked within the parts of campus that were old prison ground. She said, "Thank God, no! I would be so freaked out!" It was quite funny, because a bunch of us were exchanging creepy tales over drinks a few nights ago. And yup, that was where I got my gaol keys which have been re-configured into a necklace since.

dress from Brunswick Markets; boots Charles & Keith; handbag Chloé; scarf vintage; socks Bond's'; earrings vintage; trenchcoat Alano; ring Mango

*******

This was my first day in Brisbane. We went shopping around the markets. The sites said, "Be ready to spend an entire day at (said) market". And what happened? We spent half an hour, and then walked to another market, and then walked here there everywhere, through the mall arcades and. . essentially, this is what happens when you're infamous for shopping too fast. Sometimes I can murder my fellow gurlfriends for shopping sooo slowly, trying things on soooo slowly, and deliberating at an even slower speed. Men are better, they shop really quickly. My cousin shops fast too (yay!) I'm said to have the shopping appetite of a girl, and the speed of a man.

dress Mango; coat Cotton On; headband beaded by friend; ring Forever 21; bangles Forever 21; earrings Six; boots Charles & Keith; handbag Chloé

Have a glorious weekend!

Chang Li-Ann, undergraduate of the University of Singapore in 1980, wrote, in the middle of a boring lecture, a love poem to an as yet non-existent lover. She wrote with feverish energy, the tip of a pink tongue curled against upper lip, a swatch of hair fallen over one shoulder, unaware that watching her, were four pairs of eyes belonging to four already existing lovers-- if only she would allow them that role.

The pen, gripped firmly, glided effortlessly.

One of the hopeful young men who always went through an elaborate pretence of looking for a seat in the vast, seldom filled lecture theatre, his eyes tightly narrowed in earnest, frowning search, before alighting, with a great show of surprise, on the seat next to Li-ann's, now made the mistake of craning his neck to peep at the mysterious words flowing so smoothly from her pen. He withdrew instantly, stung by a cold look and an angry had slammed protectively over the writing.

For all his ardent admiration of her, the poor young man's existence went entirely unnoticed, except when it obtruded on hers, as so many stares to be averted, so many unwelcome offers of favours to be instantly declined. Undaunted, the poor young man whose name was Raymond Tan Sin Liang, watched, hid, followed. Once, he had left a bouquet of roses outside the door of her hostel room, with a card of effusive declaration tucked among the blooms. He had very foolishly decided, in a sudden access of bashfulness, to hide the elegantly beribboned roses under a huge mess of old newspapers.

Li-ann had stepped over them when she returned, and the cleaning women had later swept them into her dust-pan.

Raymond Tan Sin Liang, after the unfortunate incident of the roses, began to look elsewhere, his ardour by no means diminished, stoically smiling through varying degrees of female rejection. Then, in 1983, the year of his graduation, he was finally rewarded. She was a graduate from a polytechnic, pretty enough, and not fastidious as to looks or social finesse in a partner. Above all, she loved him for himself. To her, Raymond could now give, in full measure, the love of his simple, generous heart. He became a a very happy man.

But that would be 1983, still three years away. Now that honest heart found no takers.

The boring lecturer droned on, and Li-ann wrote on, now and again casting a suspicious glance at the intrusive peeper. She wrote defiantly and breathed life into a dream. Hitherto only an abstraction in the golden nimbus of her imagination where he had been sole resident for the past year, the ream now tumbled upon the solid back of a brown, used envelope, and acquired a habitation and a name.

She decided that like her, he was born and brought up in Singapore. Like hers, his name bore the chic hyphen. Wu-er-- she still did not know what he looked like-- was the sole recipient of all the love and ongoing that her young, ardent heart was capable of.

She wrote:
"There is a place I want to go to, but I don't know where
There is a someone I want to meet, but I don't know who."

Hers was a love, nurtured to fullness, in search of a lover. She had to fall in love with love, before she could fall in love with a person.

She knew now. The place did not have to be Singapore. The name did not have to be Wu-er. These were only playful games of the imagination that she allowed herself while she waited. Playfulness, it was said, was the lover's special claim and privilege. All lovers, in their joy, became children again. For the present, she would be playful on her own. When HE appeared at last, he whose name could only be designated by the exalted capital letters of breathless worship, she would have a partner in love's laughing innocence.

When would he appear?She would know, with a certainty of the heart that surpassed any understanding by the mind, inferior organ by far, in the eternal human quest. She would know when place and person came together in the moment of love's epiphany. The road to love's Damascus had its blinding lights tooL she would be dazzled for one moment, then get up, rub her eyes and come face to face with  the promised presence waiting at the end of the road.

"This is the greatest nonsense I've ever heard," said her mother who had been very anxiously looking for a good match for her very pretty, very intelligent daughter from her seventeenth birthday. Now approaching twenty-two, Li-ann was in danger of the worst fate that could befall women-- spinsterhood. Mrs Chang's loving, motherly heart suffered severe palpitations at the horrible prospect.

She stood before LI-ann and raised her left had to show five outspread fingers, each representing a missed marriage opportunity, each hence a btter maternal disappointment. With the forefinger of her right hand, she systematically went through each of the five big fish that her daughter, foolish, headstrong girl that she was, had allowed to get away.

One, the youngest son of a High Court judge; two, the economics graduate who was a President's Scholar; three, the son of the business tycoon T.C. Khor who was a bit of a playboy but would surely settle into the contentment of domesticity after marriage; four, Terence Yong who came from a poor family but was holding a high-salarried job in an international finance company; five, Richard Low who had all the makings of a good husband and provider, though he was a little overweight, and not as good-looking as the rest.

They had all come courting, had all been allowed a date or two and then consigned into oblivion> After each date, as soon as the car roared away into the night, Mrs Chang, in pyjamas and curlers, appeared, followed her daughter to her room, watched her kick off her shoes and unzip her dress and said, "So?"

Li-ann who had a perverse pleasure in teasing her mother and watching her dilate her eyes or throw up her hands in horror said, "Mother, don't you understand? he cannot pronounce the 'r' sound and he begins each sentence with 'I understands. . . "

Mrs Chang said severely, "Young lady, don't you act stuck-up!" Her daughter allowed something as trivial as English grammar to negate the value of a high-paying job, a good family background, a totally dependable moral character.

Li-ann said, "It's no use, Mother. I keep telling you, but you won't listen. HE's already there, waiting for me."

An absurd figment of girlish fancy standing between spinsterhood and fulfillment, between stigma and prestige! Mrs Chang grimaced and twirled a forefinger against the side of her head, to signal the onset of madness in her daughter. But there was a glimmer of hope in her eyes when she asked, "What about K.S.?"

K.S. came far below any of the five, since he had no car and lived in a small, government-subsidised flat with his parents and sister. But Li-ann seemed to like him. She had seen them laughing together. SHe had peeped in, in her pyjamas and curlers, and seen them holding hands on the sofa. K.S. could be the last hope against a husbandless future.

Li-ann said, "My heart says, 'No, not him.'"

"Heart! Heart! Why don't you listen to your head for once? In a few years' time you'll be twenty five!" cried Mrs Chang, in exasperation, twenty five being the age for the alarm bells to start ringing shrilly.

She decided to resort to a shrewd maternal strategy that was known to have worked well: "Look at all your friends. They have boyfriends already. You are the only one left out." She held out the bleak prospect and watched her daughter's reaction. Li-ann was unmoved.

She resorted to a final, desperate strategy. Her eyes suddenly filling with tears, she said, "Who will take care of you when I'm gone?" Li-ann remained unmoved ad went on to brush her hair and get ready for bed.

She liked K.S. He had that something that the others lacked, a refreshing air of nonchalance, an ability not to take himself too seriously. Perhaps that was a cover for the depth of his feeing. He called frequently. "So?" he would sat, going straight to the point. It was amazing how into that single monosyllable a mother could squeeze so much reproach, an aspiring lover so much hope.

Her own language for repudiation as less terse: "Oh, K.S., you know I can't. I've already explained things to you."

No aspiring lovers, facing the beloved in the solidity of flesh and blood, likes to be outdone by a rival not yet in existence. He hid his vexation in childish play, taking out an imaginary knife to slit, with a flourish, the throat of his imaginary rival.

K.S. said with the bright gleam of sudden understanding, "I think I know what it's all about. You've been for too long on a diet of romantic literature where love's fulfillment is actually its unattainability. All those brooding, sullen heroes of Victorian novels that you girls swoon over, standing tall and upright out there upon a wild heath in a wild storm, out of reach. I bet you have devoured hundreds of these novels." He watched for her reaction. There was a suppressed amusement which animated her features and mad her look so beautiful his heart ached. But he went on with the spirited accusation. He got bolder. "Hey, rid yourself of those false dreams. If I were a surgeon, I'd recommend an illusionectomy."

She threw a cushion at him. He threw it back, and was upon her in an instant, his face very close, except that she moved hers aside swiftly, so that once again, he missed the opportunity for the first kiss.

She laughed. Now she knew why she liked him. He had such a wonderful way with language, such a delightfully refreshing way of expressing his feelings, whether of annoyance or longing.

She liked K.S. very much. But he claimed no part of her heart. It was a heart rich and abundant, ready for the claiming, and the claimant stood somewhere along the path. Fate was leading her. At some point, Fate, ever a gentle, benign presence, would stop, bend down and whisper, "That's HIM", closing the first chapter of ardent search and opening the next one of joyous meeting, discovery and fulfillment.



"I don't believe this," said Li-ann. "Resorting to a fortune-teler, in my desperation to find a man."

The desperation was actually her mother's. Mrs Chang had come home one afternoon excitedly exclaiming, "Fantastic! The name, the age, even the mole on the right cheek! And she doesn't accept any money, only a donation to her temple. Imagine predicting the mole! And she can walk everywhere without help."

Slowly, patiently, Li-an pieced together the story. One of her mother's mahjong friends, Mrs Khoo, had discovered an old, totally blind woman living in the Cheng Si Tok Temple, who had the uncanny ability not only to find her way around unaided, but also to look into the future. Her gift moreover took on the clear focus of a specialisaion, choosing to be at the service only of unhappy young women in search of husbands. It dedicated itself to love alone, and scorned to be used for men and women in search of health or that coveted prize in the Grand Singapore Lottery every month.

An old, blind woman, approaching ninety, who had never married and would die a virgin, held young women's soft trembling hands in her old, gnarled ones, and warmed their hearts with hope. There were rumours that he had been a very beautiful girl in a small village in China, had become blind uner the most cruel circumstances, and then awakened one morning to find the gift.

She had told Mrs Khoo's twenty six year old daughter that she would meet a man soon, describing him in detail. Mrs Khoo said that when her Rosie was introduce to Albert recently at a dinner party, she almost fainted upon sight of the mole on the right cheek. They had been dating since.

Mrs Chang said firmly to LI-ann, "Tomorrow we go together to the Cheng Si Tok Temple. I've got an ang pow ready," the cash donation being a substantial one, in keeping with her generosity.

Li-ann affected a massive indifference that hid an overpowering curiosity. She had heard that one in three women in Singapore had, at one time or other, consulted a fortune-teller about love or marriage, on behalf of daughters, sisters, best friends or themselves. With her dream securely locked in her heart, she would offer herself, with amused detachment, as one more statistic.

She had three good friends at the university with whom she shared her secrets.

"Well?" they asked. "Did the blind one tell you hen you will meet your dream man? Does he have a mole on his cheek? Or any observable part of the dream physique?"

They were inclined to be irreverent. They all had boyfriends and dated furiously.

"Nothing," said Li-ann. "She took my hands and began to talk rapidly. It sounded like a lot of gibberish to me. I didn't understand the dialect. Mother did and was upset. We left quickly."

It had been a strange morning indeed. Mrs Chang, hoping to hear good news, saw the old blind woman suddenly drop her daughter's hands and begin to sway from side to side on her small, wooden stool, shaking her head and making strange little sounds. Mr Chang watched for a while, in growing alarm, then decided to drag her daughter away, but not before pressing the ang pow into the old one's hands.

"Well, what did she say?" Li-ann had asked. Her mother became evasive.

"Nothing, nothing," she cried. "Don't tell anyone."

"But what did she say?" Li-ann persisted.

This time her mother was angry. "it's Mrs Khoo's fault. She should have been cleared about something she told me. It seems the old one sometimes gets into strange moods and can't tell fortunes. Or tells them all wrong. Mrs Khoo should have informed me properly."

"Mother, I still want you to tell me what the fortune-teller said."

"Something about pain and fire," said Mrs Chang slowly, in an awe-stricken voice. But turning to her daughter and vigorously fanning her body with both hands to disperse any malodorous airs that might still be clinging to it from that very regrettable visit, she said, with a final show of great casualness, "don't htnk about it anymore. And don't tell anyone." Neither of them had spoken of the incident since.

"Pain and fire," repeated Kim, the closest of the three friends. "She means you'll have to go through al the tortures of love's true paths, which never runs smooth, you know."

Li-ann pitied her friends. For they could not love, or chose not to love with joyous and complete abandon. In moments of honest, they qualified their love for their boyfriends with so many 'buts' and 'ifs', hateful words that should have no place in love's vocabulary.

Kim said, "I love Soong but. . . ", meaning that she was aware of all his shortcoming, including a tendency towards childish, selfish behavior, and the non-possession of a car which sometimes caused inconvenience in their dates. But he was better than no one; she had been so lonely since she broke up with LAwrence.

Suneetha who was even more forthcoming with her secrets, said, "I'll give all my love to Sanjay if. . .". The conditional had something to do with his meekness in the presence of his formidable mother who dictated the color of his shirts and ties, paced the floor with angry energy if he came back late from a date, and reduced his girlfriends to tears.

"Then why are you still dating him?" demanded LI-ann.

"I don't know," said Suneetha miserably.

She did know.

If Patrick, someone she had met in London a year ago, flew back to Singapore, appeared on her doorstep and said, "I've decided to take a job here after all. For your sake, " she would instantly call Sanjay, write him a kind but firm note, or simply ignore his calls until he got the message and stayed away. Goodbye to all that. It would be so easy.

But it was Jennie who went the whole way of brutal honesty.

"You want to know how much I love Julian? As much as he loves me, no more no less. Last wee was more, this week is going to be a little less. You want to know for how ling? Until I meet someone better. Then it's bye, bye! Don't be shocked, He's planning the same move. I know. It's all a game."

Jennie reduced love to a transaction of exact reciprocity-- so much from you, hence this much from me. Worse, she made lovers look like two sleek-shanked animals tensely, warily circling each other, waiting for the next move.

Kim, Suneetha, Jennie-- they squandered their love uselessly while waiting for the right one to come along. Soong, Sanjay, Julian-- they were only lovers by default, lovers in transit, the pitiful consolation prize in love's grand lottery.

It was horrible, the purity of this marvel called love, debased by the crude calculations of an abacus clicking away in the brain. She saw Kim, Suneetha and Jennie, three pretty maids in a row, their arms folded across their chests, their brows deeply knit, their eyes tightly narrowed, in a mental concentration on love's algorithms of cost and benefit.

She would never allow the tiniest crack, the smallest stain in her love's crystal.

Now it was the turn of the three friends to attack her. They said, "Why are you so sure that you will meet your Mr Right, your knight in shining armour on the white charger?"

She winced at the banality of the allusions, Mr Right suggesting the caricature of comic books, the knight in armour, the trite imagery of cheap romantic fiction. HE was simply "The Promised One", promised by Fate who had peeped into her heart and understood its yearnings ever since, at the age of twelve, she had looked scornfully at the gawky, immature boys around her and swore she would never get married, and at twenty had decided she wanted to get married after all, but in the way her heart wanted. Thereafter she had embarked on her secret dream. She made a bargain with Fate; Fate would deliver.

"Even if you met such a person, how would you know it was HIM?" Her answer irritated them to the point of exasperation/ The heart knows. The heart does. The heart simply is.

What sort of answer was that? They threw up their hands tat the outrageous illogicality of it all. Li-ann, one of the most promising students in the final Year Arts course was unbelievably irrational when it came to love and marriage.

They would not let go, and persisted with their questions, determined to drag her out of her irrationality.

"Even if you knew it was HIM, how could you be sure that he would return your love?"

Now it was his heart. His heart would know. It would know instantaneously and respond, in full measure.

The absurd girl had reduce love's long arduous process of meeting and discovery, evaluation and adjustment, deliberation and decision, to one blinding apocalyptic moment, There was nothing more to ask or say. They threw up their hands once more.

"Well good luck to you, you incurable romantic, and to that super, know-all organ of yours. Tell us when the golden clouds in the sky part and he descends to a blare of trumpets when the white charger comes thundering up!" said the three pragmatic women. They laughed and went back to their imperfect loves in an imperfect world.

It happened exactly a week later, as she was walking along busy Orchard Road. There were no golden parting clouds, only thick billows of grey smoke from a thundering lorry, that cleared to show him sitting at a table in a small corner open-air café called 'Blue Paradise'. He was reading a book and drinking coffee.

She stopped, caught her breath and stared. It would only be later that she could explain the sudden stopping, right in the midst of angrily honking cars.

"I was going to turn into Hong Keng Road to do an errand for my mother, when the whisper came at last. 'Stop,' it said. I stopped and there he was."

Through whizzing vehicles and hurrying pedestrians, she caught sight of a blue denim shirt, grey cotton pants. Neat glasses. A neat haircut. A flick of hair tumbling over the forehead and a strong hand moving swiftly up to push it back. A moment of looking up from the engrossing book to take out a white handkerchief to wipe the glasses and put them back on. A luminous dream that had come to earth as a concrete name on the back of a used envelope was enlarging before her very eyes into a solid corporeal presence in a roadside café,

"Go on," said the whisper, and suffused her whole being with a tremulous joy. "What are you waiting for?"



-Catherine Lim, A Leap Of Love

还记得许多年前我曾屡次对外婆说，“阿嬷做人的懂得看开”。 以潮州话说，就是说要看破。

那时我随小，可是敏感的我却感受得出她心内重重郁闷， 也晓得她对过去的贫困所造成的心结无法打开。

外婆已一年半年前与世长辞了。我有时还后悔没机会和她永别。

每当听起萧煌奇的福建歌，阿嬤的話， 就不禁感触深奥， 思潮起伏。

到底究竟什么才是‘看破’呢。

我想起了成语中的‘井底之蛙’。 那只青蛙也许在井里是看不到扩大的天空的， 它想像中唯一的世界可能是井墙。或许生处如此，在自己渺小的世界里感到欣然。不过对于经历过海浪及无边际的沙滩的乌龟，它是不会在看不到天空的井内开心的。一尝试过较精彩的生活后，一品尝不一样的滋味，一个人可能是无法回头转； 圣经传说中的夏娃一咬到苹果的那一刻起，已踏上无可回头的路途。

若看不到天空，一个人如何看破。

一些心理学家观察，每当问候一个华族‘你还好吗？’， 他将答，‘还不错’或者‘马马虎虎’。

反而以同一个问候面对个美国人，他会答，’好极了’或类似乐观主的。

本身每当去奥洲吃风，似乎感到一个人不管愉快或郁闷，总得给予乐观性的回答。这也许让人际间的关系添加了些亲切感，不过太过关注正确的乐观性答案好像有点虚伪。身于东西合屏的处境，也感到华人的答案也较属于悲观性。

可能是我们的作风，必须有缺陷的存在才能使一个人向上高升。不过总是不会辨出以珍惜能给自己满足感的， 总是不懂得自爱，也不是一样做个井底之蛙呢。

一个人到底的怎么说，怎么想。是否已被教的 ‘正确答案’回答呢？

我想，一个人虽重年累月面对一些字或词，不过总会在不同的时间，经过人生中的烤炉而对它有个更深奥的剖析， 取得新的领悟。

现在，似乎听到阿嬤告诉我，‘要看破’。 我们在每天的繁忙中不知不觉地在头上和肩膀上堆上了不少的累赘。那是埋伏心灵的瓦片，使我们变成了井底之蛙， 在也看不到蓝空，更加不懂得看破。

究竟该过于乐观到虚假的地步，或太讲究缺陷而不懂得珍惜眼前的一切，而 把这和使个人进步的那股气搞扎了。什么才是看破呢？我想，老子在数千年千还是对的。人生唯一的天法就是一切得历尽瞬息万变。我们是得怎么回答 ‘你还好吗？’。可能，最好的教诲藏卧于无言之教。