"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed."

"A Berlin Diary", Christopher Isherwood

"Engineers in Singapore are moving from construction sites and factory floors to research laboratories to carve a slice of the burgeoning market for medical devices, estimated to be worth billions."

"Singapore Eyes Big Market for Medical Devices", Straits Times (30/08/99)

"The economy of modern Russia is haemorrhaging cash: every month, US$2 billion (S$1.7 billion) to US$2 billion slips out in wire transfers, phony import-export documents and insider price manipulations."

"Jong Song Ok won North Korea’s first ever athletics world gold medal as she survived a duel in the midday sun for the marathon title at the World Championships here yesterday."

"The last leaves fell like notes from a piano

and left their ovals echoing in the ear;

with gawky music stands, the winter forest

looks like an empty orchestra, its lines

ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow."

"Forest of Europe", Derek Walcott

"Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring,

The unpredictable fantail of sparks

Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.

The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,

Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,

Set there immovable: an altar

Where he expends himself in shape and music.

"Door into the Dark", Seamus Heaney

"The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head."

"Digging", Seamus Heaney