Ditching the disappointment of 2005, heralding a better 2006...

Another 5 1/2 hours till the clock tolls the arrival of the new year ahead...

2005 was a year to forget...sinking stock picks, still-born relationships, dying greats the world over....

The tsunami of 2004 was a bad omen for this year: killing many in it's merciless path, it presaged the death of some beliefs, brought my ego down several notches and rubbished much of my hard earned profits for the year.

Yet I can still console myself that I suffered far less than the victims of the gigantic wave last Boxing Day.

But hope springs eternal yet again as I tread my way towards the coming year.

I want badly to succeed in the coming year; I need desperately to find my direction, and change my current path to one which will bring a measure of happiness and fulfillment.

China? The US? Korea?Malaysia? Singapore?

Which country holds the key to my destiny?

My future direction(granted there is one) is as uncertain as the direction of equity markets the world over.

I believe that a blessing is birthed out of the debris of every failure, every fiasco.

I trust that a lesson is learnt from every botched plan.

Who can tell why spring is born of winter's labour?Or why the seed that lies under the harsh bitter snows becomes a captivating rose in time?

I believe firmly that spring will be my season soon. I believe that the rose will bloom for me in time.

I know that, with God's grace, my suffering will not last too long...

Haze of Indecision

The road ahead. Many a times we think we know it will travel on and on, in a straight,predictable, unchanging path that grows brighter and brighter with promise and hope.

For some, that is indeed true. But for a larger number of us, curves both gentle and acute become visible in the daylight and we negotiate them successfully most of the time.

It is in the night that one has to be wary of the undulating weave of the path of our life.
When we are depressed, anguished or emotionally drained, the view of the road ahead is obstructed as much by our pathos-induced short-sightedness as the night obscures a driver's view of the lane he has to negotiate.

Often, the headlights of wisdom see us through. Frequently, the streetlights of friendship light the way through the uncompromising fog of indecision.

I find myself driving along the road of my life through one of these fogs. My visibility is around two months, no further.

My road, I suspect, forks then.Several road branch from there. None are visible,nor any clearer than the one I'm travelling on now...

Yes, many a time I have yearned for a fast car to drive off away to a new place, much like the lyrics of the famous Tracy Chapman-sung song.Away from the prejudices, incomprehension and obligations that I am, by the wanton twist of Fate, unable to fulfill. I fear that when I've reached what apparently is my new destination, my mind would question : Why have I come here?


Indeed, I'm driving along a hazy road in the deepening dusk. I talk to God and hope that my vehicle will not stall or that I would have to drive back where I came because I suddenly discover that I shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Because of...

Happiness.

I want to go there.

Going Home

Tomorrow is the day I return home, and leave this place full of uncaring, unknowing strangers and people who masquerade as friends but haven't the slightest idea what true friendship entails.

I know I'll dread the inevitable day of my return but I try not to ponder that too much ...

May You Have Blue Skies and Find True Love

Flora's Secret
Roma Ryan

Lovers in the long grass
Look above them
Only they can see
Where the clouds are going
Only to discover
Dust and sunlight
Ever make the sky so blue
Afternoon is hazy
River flowing
All around the sounds
Moving closer to them
Telling them the story
Told by Flora
Dreams they never knew
Silver willows
Tears from Persia
Those who come
From a far-off island
Winter Chanterelle lies
Under cover
Glory-of-the-sun in blue
Some they know as passion
Some as freedom
Some they know as love
And the way it leaves them
Summer snowflake
For a season
When the sky above is blue
When the sky above is blue
Lying in the long grass
Close beside her
Giving her the name
Of the one the moon loves
This will be the day she
Will remember
When she knew his heart was
Loving in the long grass
Close beside her
Whispering of love
And the way it leaves them
Lying in the long grass
In the sunlight
They believe it's true love
And from all around them
Flora's secret
Telling them of love
And the way it breathes, and
Looking up from eyes of Amaranthine ...
They can see the sky is blue
Knowing that their love is true
Dreams they never knew
And the sky above is blue

Sojourn in Shanghai (II)

24th November 2005

I woke up slightly after seven, satisfactorily rested and ready to call my contact in Shanghai, Mr. Wee.

However, I decided to start my day off by singing some karaoke and turned my laptop on, powered by the socket initially supplying the table lamp.

After taking stock of my belongings, I decided to shower and take a drink a few cups of water and green tea, the water coming from an impressively new-looking water dispenser on an equally impressive wooden cupboard. The hotel information told me that rooms cost from 365 yuan so I might as well make full use of the facilities, I thought.

At slightly before 1030(after spending many rubbery minutes singing laptop karaoke and appreciating the many channels on Chinese TV), I called up the number I had gotten from Mr. Wee’s wife before my arrival.

On the other end of the line was a groggy voice that patently belonged to someone who had stayed awake through the wee hours of the previous night, and arranged to meet him just before the checkout time at 12pm.

To cut a long story short, I decided to stay another day at Liang liang after finding out that the room rate was actually only 170 yuan (S$36.55) a night! A better bargain for accomodation I’ve not found before or since.

The weather outside was chilly but appealed to my heat-sensitive, rash-inflicted skin.

After re-checking in, I emerged in the foyer just in time to bump into a very Malaysian-looking, rotund Mr. Wee, who struck me instantly as a personable, though outspoken character.

‘Ah, things are looking up,’ I thought, smiling inwardly even as I beamed outwardly while offering my handshake to him.

While having a typical Chinese style lunch(sans rice, which was how Shanghainese ate), I discussed various topics close to and more remote from my heart with Wee. He revealed to me that he was a longtime friend of my Uncle Ron, who had recently retired as MD of Hong Leong Industries. Also, he also let on that he was now in an alliance with The Lion group of Malaysia, selling shoes with their manufacturing base in China, to Malaysians.

Apparently he had lost big on his first business(which I felt it improper to probe through questioning) , to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars(ringgit I presumed). I tried amiability by mentioning that my rich aunt in Penang had also lost a fortune trying to run a franchise in Malaysia that competed with the inimitable Body Shop.

However, I sensed that although my aunt had wads of money left to fall back on
after failing in that business, Mr. Wee didn’t.

After paying him for the previous night’s stay and for the tickets I requested that he help me buy, we headed out to his ‘office’ in town, where he had a lively clash of ideas with his China associates over the design for a rubber sole as well as the faulty colouration of some shoes. He had seemingly already anticipated this by telling me to ‘watch how I handle these people’ before we had arrived.

But he had the charm to turn the disagreement into as nearly a friendly verbal jostling as it could be. He was both insistent and accommodating to limitations mentioned by an elderly shoemaker as well as a late middle-aged lady with a kindly face.

I tried their office coffee, which tasted better than MacDonald’s industrial brown liquid back in Singapore. He also introduced a young smiling Mr. Lin, who was the ‘boss’s’ son, and had matching waistline. When we left the office, he told me to contact Lin in case I had any problems so I duly stored his handphone number in my otherwise useless handphone.

After being dropped off at a famous shopping street, Nanjing Road, I walked towards the riverfront armed with my Lonely Planet guide to the city.

I managed to find a Chinese restaurant listed there(Xinya), had some late afternoon dianxin, saturated with oil, and walked on, snapping photos along the way. After passing a café mentioned for cheap eats(Donghua), I tried locating another café along the main thoroughfare parallel to the famous Bund walk by the Huangpu river.

Partly because the sky had already darkened considerably at 6pm, I was unsuccessful and headed straight down the road in the direction I vaguely knew my hotel was located.

The temperature headed steadily lower as I crossed a road under a bridge and then used a flyover pass. After browsing at a bookstore, I stopped over at a branch of Manabe café to have dinner.

Back at the hotel, I was relieving myself and preparing to soak in the bath when there was a knock at door. Totally naked, I clambered to the door to spy Mr .Wee in the peephole and agreed to come over to the neighbouring room(513) after I was done bathing.

I was introduced to two Indonesian businessmen, an obese, balding Mr Cao, his two rather gangsterish-looking mainland ‘henchmen’, and a pretty young girl I assumed to be Mr. Cao’s mistress.


Fast forward two hours, and the more boyish-looking Indonesian guy had whisked me off to the landmark(and very 30ish )Paramount hotel, made our way up to the second floor via a spiral staircase, only to leave two minutes later after an elegant young lady told us amicably that the entrance was 200 yuan and a girl to accompany us would cost another two thousand.

\After a couple of phonecalls, we headed instead to a discotheque incompetently named Babyface and returned after a beer each and jiving self-consciously and inconsequentially to loud,beat-heavy, meaningless noise.

I was approached by a semi-attractive girl whose head only reached up to my chest but I declined firmly with a smile.

We headed back to the hotel at slightly after midnight, with my companion’s return flight only eight short hours later.

Sojourn in Shanghai

Part 1
23rd November 2005

Night had already set in, shrouding the airspace over China in blackness. Flight MU 548 was coursing through this night, with the lights from cities big and small creating a scene not dissimilar to a forest fire as viewed from all those miles up. The fire of urbanization seemed to be consuming their periphery, blazing with the flames of the emotional, physical and psychological hell most ordinary Chinese must be enduring each and every passing day. We must have been over Shanghai by then, the most populous city in the world’s most populous nation.

I wasn’t optimistic as my plane honed in on the city’s airport , having gone through my own emotional hell nine years earlier, having had my passport stolen in Beijing as winter loomed and temperatures plummeted ever lower.


Yet, I was determined to enjoy my hard-won vacation, knowing all too well that I had such chances only few and far between tumultuous years in my life. So, clutching my two most precious worldly possessions as I exited the airport, I braved the cold night air.

True enough, the airport was shrouded in a haze that resembled that in my own country only on the worst days of forest fires in Sumatra.

I called a contact at a payphone who told me to check in to Liang liang Inn at a certain given road and ask for room 514.

Not long after I had passed through the doorway, a short, rather stubby man whose slickly combed short hair gave him the look of a gangster approached me asking if I needed a car. Fatigued and a little cold to boot, I counter-instinctively answered ‘Yes’.
Just as quickly, I asked ‘How much?’.

“Liang bai,” (meaning two hundred).

A little dazed by unfamiliarity with the environs and feeling more than a tad lost, I nodded weakly, and followed the man straight ahead. Glancing left, I spied a dirty yellow cab and, with the notion that I was about to be Shanghai-ed by the man who approached me, I half ran towards the cab driver who was standing beside his vehicle and blurted the question of how much it would cost to go to my destination.

A hundred and fifty was his answer. I said OK.

Just as I was about to enter his cab, the first man was hurrying towards me, insisting that the car I was about to enter was not supposed to be used and insisting that I follow him. A group of shady-looking men nearby conveyed the notion that it would be foolhardy of me to enter the yellow car.With a heavier heart, I reluctantly followed the first man. Just before the doorway to the carpark, I asked him to drive his vehicle up to the first level ,afraid that I would be waylaid or deprived of my possessions if entered the deserted carpark. The other men who had prevented(or strongly discouraged) me from entering the
yellow cab lined the way to the carpark. Holding my breath, I did their bidding.

Fast forward through the next few minutes and I find myself in the car of a private Shanghai denizen, his girlfriend seated in the front passenger seat. Still, I harboured a sensation that they would whisk me to a clandestine location and deprive me of all my bodily possessions. That fear eventually proved to be unfounded, and after forty or so minutes of driving at a moderately fast speed through the dusty darkness, I ended up in my destination hotel and quickly found myself in room 514, a rather spacious, slightly smoky but otherwise clean room with a double bed and a dubious picture of a topless brunette tearing her way out of brambles over the toilet.

I turned on the TV, which was tuned to figure skating, and quickly dropped off to a welcome slumber.