Closer

5 megapixels, with a minimum 3.2 digital zoom

These were the simplified minimum specifications for a digicam that many well-meaning friends have given the gadget-idiot me. Why? I still asked unabashedly...So that the photos would be clearer and sharper, they patiently explain.

But somehow, I don't want my photos to be that sharp and focused...

What looks fine and attractive at a distance, usually pales visibly and often disappoints upon closer examinations.

Happy, radiant and peaceful faces give way to reveal blemishes of fretting & stress and creases of worry and anxiety.

An elegant and exquisite timepiece on display that constantly entices and tempts one to get it cannot conceal the awkward watch movements and a scratch on its surface when one takes a closer look

One or two songs that have tugged at hearts and induced tears might be the lead up to disappointment when one decides to buy the album .The rest of the songs may at best, only be forgettable.

Someone so attractive and desirable from a distance may upon closer interaction, evolve to someone irksome and repulsive, shattering that pristine and charming impression that one first had.

At times, it may be better not too know. So that, the good times and excellent impressions stay. So that the ugly has no chance to rear their heads to mar and distort. So that there isn't the disappointment and weariness of making a wrong assessment; devotion of time and energy to a wrong cause. So that things/people remain the way they are, at least in one's mind.

Perhaps its denial, perhaps its escapism, perhaps its cowardly behavior, but there are times I prefer not to know. I don't want to know- the reasons, the results, the truth. Sometimes, knowledge is not power, other times, knowledge is power- but destructive ones.

And for the rest of time, knowledge is simply bothersome-like reading in the Sunday Times that a small, tiny char siew pau that takes less than 1 minute to gulp down is a ghastly 363 calories and 15 g of fat. Bleah...and i didn't run today.