Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Then this is the one for you! This champagne coloured completely Swarovski crystal covered car will ensure you never have those pesky moments at 2 am in the carpark, when you're more than slightly pissed and can't tell one Merc from the other. However, makers do warn than while you are more likely to locate the car, you are also more likely to be arrested as a pimp. However, forewarned is forearmed. Leave the night's takings at home.

Well i'm on the home straight now. Five more days to go. A really packed five more days as well, except that it might not be. The chaos that surrounds the project is i am hoping, more perceptual than actual. As in because i am outsider i'm not aware of the rhythms, etc, but somehow, i don't think this is entirely the case. For instance, i was asked - and this is the main reason i am here - to do up a communications strategy and a media training workshop. This is what i have been preping to do now for almost a month. This was to be attended by Heads of Departments and some of their Deputies. However there are now guests, guests which people knew were coming from the start of the month, and i have now been told that many people cannot attend this. I told the Head of Comms whom i get on really well with, i am not doing a Communications Strategy workshop with fewer than X no of people because it will be a waste of time. I will do one specially for Community Development and Patr...

Today i went out with patrol and i think i might really have enjoyed myself if i joined the army. It reminded me of when i was with the outdoors activities club in RJC (Raffles Junior College) like 20 years ago and we would do things like go to Pulau Ubin, kill our own chickens, go trekking, play wargames in the middle of the jungle in the middle of the night, camp, make camp fires, rafts, canoe and well, you get the picture. Of all the day i was out i loved this one the most. And maybe in a previous life i was a real life eco warrior... anyway, before i get even further carried away... here are scenes from today...:) Fall in troops!!! The patrol team, and there are nearly a hundred, camp all over Harapan to stop people from illegally logging and clearing the land. It is not a party, no. But it is a bit fun when you get to do it for one day, obviously. They do so with the help of the Forest Police and this is really important because this is probably the single largest problem we ...

There was a possibility, a real one, that i could have ended up on Oslo. But i didn't. I ended up in Belfast instead. And often, when it was pissing with rain, or when the stupidity and futility of the craziness dragged on, i would say to myself, i will marry an 18 year old Italian carpenter in my next life. The weather is better, the food is better and he will be useful around the house. And he is 18. BUT i would also occasionally wonder, what life would have been like in Norway. I cannot begin to tell you how civilised a country Norway is. People are actually reasonable and adults are actually grown up. If you go hiking in the mountains, there are huts you can stay in provided by the Tourist Board, which are free of charge. All they ask of you is you leave them exactly the way you found them. And this is what people do. Down to ensuring there is wood in the fireplace and the matches are ready to be struck, in case anyone with numb fingers comes in and can't pick up a match ...

In the past half hour i have been cacking in my boots. Well i'm not wearing boots, but i was just you know... feeling completely shite because i thought that i had recorded nothing, no sound for all the interview. OMG OMG OMG, i was going. And the after just surfing the net in a kind of manner which would have otherwise been reserved for heavy drinking, i decided to look at the footage that i did have and discovered that i had managed to record great sound, the problem was i had worn the headphones the wrong way round. I am sooooooooo relieved. Shite. I thought i'm just going to have to disembowel myself here, on the floor of this forest. Nope. Hara kiri averted.

I cannot look at her. But her voice is everywhere. I cannot shut it out. Plaintively singing about her captivity, she implores us with her voice. I steal a glance. She is huge, over forty feet long, from head to tail. Her skin is a bluish reddish hue and her eyes are large orbs. You’d think her hair were made of snakes, but you’d be wrong. It is hair alright, but not as we know it. They are huge cables that drape over her back and down the front. They are not snakes, they just look like them. How can people bear to see her, and yet people do stand around and stare. She sits in a tank too small for her, she towers over them, but she is entirely helpless. There isn’t enough water for her, her arms stick out over the side. She looks both cold and not cold enough. I am horrified. But there are other people who are not paying attention at all. They are ordering drinks, paying waiters, some people are laughing and shaking hands, other people are getting coats and saying goodbye. Everyw...

The bird that makes the morning come, What bird would that be? The lark? The rooster?  The sweet black one? Which bird makes the morning come? We are sitting in front of the TV, watching ourselves. Except that it isn’t really ourselves. They are the Mannequins, which appear to be us. Ones which are meant to replace us when we return so that our absence will not be detected. Then slowly, they will deteriorate, and then the bodies they inhabit will we disposed of too. We have been away from the Centre, which is really home, for such a long time now that we are all so excited.  We received the news at the very last minute about the Substitution. It was only twenty minutes ago in fact when i was sitting with Ran. We were both chatting quietly about the vagaries of Intermanifestation when Im turned up and said, get ready. Her eyes were shining, we are going to go home. I drew a deep breath and we got up at once, all slowly heading for the TV room. Here we sit in front of the TV...

Yesterday it was really awful going to ground. But after dinner i just went to bed and then fell asleep. Really fell asleep properly. I did wake a few times, but it wasn't the same startled awakefulness that had plagued me over the last week or so. I was so grateful for the good night's sleep. And yes it feel a whole lotta better. I have barely exercised here and i miss the running. But the HRF diet and the no alcohol means that i have now managed to lose almost half a stone in three weeks. Perhaps even more. I don't know because i haven't weighed myself. But all the clothes are now quite lose and the tight ones are perfectly fitting. I shall doubtless put it all back on when i return to Singapore but it has been an interesting experiment that just sensible eating alone can help you lose weight. There is no secret to staying on this side of the BMI scale! It's the last week in HRF and i've just had the most fantastic time. It has been a personal as well as a...

I really need to get this off my chest. Wendi Deng is not a hero. She is a money grabbing ambitious scheming unprincipled materialistic woman who in many ways has several examples in her own history, such as the Empress Dowager and other concubines who successfully rose to prominence on a lethal combination of beauty (lets face it Rupert wouldn't have given her a second glance if she looked like a pug), some brains and driving ambition. She is no different from Rebekah Brooks who has been compared to Sideshow Bob and other less than complimentary epithets. Her defence of Rupert was more of a nursemaid taking care of her charge, her charge which also happens to be her gold-plated meal ticket, and which she is hoping will secure her future in great plenty and comfort and continue to give her unprecedented access to other people who don't seem to have the good sense to see her for what she is. Call me old-fashioned, but when someone attacks my husband, of course i will defend ...

Today i am just hiding in my room. It's the second day and i'm not really up to facing people and it's my sabbatical, so i don't need to :). I was also thinking i could sleep now. I could sleep in the day time because i feel safe. At night i feel terrified because it is night. This is illogical, i understand that. But it i feel safe in the day. I did eventually fall asleep at 3.30 and slept till 6.45. Which was the longest time i have slept in the last week. I told Pak Worms that the dreams were getting out of hand, to the point that i no longer felt i was alone in my room. In a rainforest, with my background of belief in the unseen, this can be a rather unsettling experience. The great thing is the sleepness is being used to write fiction and i have written four stories already. If anyone would like to edit them, i'd be really grateful. When i get to 15, which might be at the end of these eight days, given the productivity and insomnia i have been facing, i will ...

One of my favouritest books in the whole wide world is Mrs Dalloway. It has to be. Woolf’s use of language and the beauty of the sentence, the tones and emotions it conveys, the light that is woven from the sound, the sound that makes no sense. When I first read it I was transfixed, as if I was Acteon that had come across Artemis as she bathed. Hopefully I would not be torn limb from limb as I pursue this ravishing book, but I decided that I would do my thesis on it. I have read everything about Woolf. Her own beauty, her life of insanity, her alleged abuse by her brother and then her strange relationship with her ferociously intelligent but distant father. How I long for a life like hers. Filled with creativity and surprise and insanity. I have also read almost every book by her. To A Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own, Orlando, but it really is Mrs Dalloway. I think it has something to do with London and the postwar feeling of things coming together. And that poor Stephen and the stra...

He got on the bus, paid his fare to the driver, took his ticket and looked for the nearest empty seat. It was sort of half way down and he made his way there, weaving unsteadily, side to side as the bus started up as well. He held onto the backs of seats, for balance, to make sure that he didn’t fall over. It was a wet day and he was soaking, having stood in the rain for almost five cold minutes. The floor of the bus was also wet with rain. Everything was either wet or smeared, making the bus and himself feel grubbier and older. He sat by the window, and tried to look out. Everything was steamed over. He could barely see where they were now. It was almost six in the evening and the light had almost faded. The orange glow that street lamps cast over everything made the world outside seem strange and far away. As if it was from an alien planet, or beneath the sea. The bus felt more like a submersible than a bus, he thought. I could be going to the moon, or to the bottom of the ocean...

The secret to losing weight meaningfully is eat three square meals a day and do not drink. Of course having a tummy big for about a week does contribute as well. It upshot is that I have now lost a little bit more weight and feel great. I don't look like Kate Moss, but hey, that's ok. I wasn't really going for that look anyway. The trousers that were snug and less snug and the trousers that were comfortable are now lose. It's great. Last night there was some talk about alcohol. Pak Worms is from Denmark but comes via Malaysia. It is a really international cast here. He is the Technical Advisor. I'm not sure what a Technical Advisor is. I think he sorts things out. It looks like that is what he mostly does. He was talking about how much Danish people loved beer and i was talking about how much Irish people loved their Guinness. I don't really like Guinness but as everyone knows i am partial to a glass of wine. Or two. Hmmmm. Anyway, when we were talking about t...